Books

Marijuana is the everyman drug. Teenagers surreptitiously toke on it, politicians refuse to inhale it, even your mum and dad have had a go. Marijuana is a mellow, let’s put on a Barry Manilow CD, open a bottle of vino, and order a pizza drug. It’s the easy drug. The no howling at the moon drug. No shooting up and losing your job….

Melanie Joan Hall is a best-selling author in a bind. Her publisher needs her to tour on behalf of her newest blockbuster, and Melanie Joan needs a bodyguard-cum-escort to protect her from an overbearing psychotherapist ex-husband whose presence unnerves her to the point of hysteria. Step in P. I. Sunny Randall….

Buddy Bollen is a C-list movie mogul who made his fortune producing films of questionable artistic merit. When Buddy hires Sunny Randall to protect his rising star and girlfriend, Erin Flint, Sunny knows from the start that the prickly, spoiled beauty won’t make her job easy. And when Erin’s sister, Misty, is found dead in the lavish…

Boston PI Spenser returns – heading west to the rich man’s haven of Potshot, Arizona, a former mining town reborn as a paradise for Los Angeles millionaires looking for a place to escape the pressures of their high-flying lifestyles. Potshot overcame its rough reputation as a rendezvous for old-time mountain men who lived off the land,…

When a mature, beautiful and composed April Kyle strides into Spenser’s office, the Boston PI barely hesitates before recognizing his once and future client. Now a well-established madam herself, April oversees an upscale call girl operation in Boston’s Back Bay. Still looking for Spenser’s approval, it takes her a moment before she can…

Sunny Randall comes to the aid of three very different women, with deadly consequences. Hired by prominent feminist Mary Lou Goddard to protect her from threatening phone calls and shadowy pursuers, Sunny must contend with Goddard’s reluctance to reveal all she knows about the unwelcome attention bestowed upon her. When a member of…

Stiles Island is a wealthy and exclusive enclave separated by a bridge from the Massachusetts coastal town of Paradise. A group of ex-cons plan to blow the bridge and loot the island, and Paradise police chief Jesse Stone has his hands full battling the ruthless gang of thieves along with his own personal demons….

Lily Ellsworth – erect, firm, white-haired and stylish – is the grand dame of Dowling, Massachusetts, and possesses an iron will and a bottomless purse. When she hires Spenser to investigate her grandson Jared Clark’s alleged involvement in a school shooting, Spenser is led into an investigation that grows more harrowing at every turn….

It’s December in Boston, and Spenser is busy planning the menu for Christmas dinner when he’s confronted in his office by a young boy named Slide……

From Cocaine, that most troubling and fascinating of substances; through Speed, an oft demonized and misunderstood drug and on to Heroin, long seen as the most ‘literary’ of narcotics – the contributors to this all-new original anthology reveal that those who partake are forever changed, but the price of paradise is often steep….

A denounced President, her kidnapped daughter, a Hindu extremist group and the threat of nuclear war: America is once again thrown into turmoil in Peter Murphy’s sequel to Removal….

A new collection of crime stories from the legendary hard-boiled writer Dashiell Hammett. The author of classic novels The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon, Hammett has been called ‘a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer’ (The Boston Globe), while Raymond Chandler raved that Hammett…

At age eight, Jenny Rowan was abducted and kept for two years in a box beneath her captor’s bed. Eventually she escaped and, after living for eighteen months on cast-offs at the local mall, was put into the child-care system. Suing for emancipation, at age sixteen she became a legal adult. Nowadays she works as a production editor for…

That most “literary” of narcotics – the enigmatic opium poppy and its various derivatives – and as these stories reveal, those who partake of the sacred flower are forever changed, but the price of paradise is often steep: overdose, hepatitis C, degradation and self-destruction….

When Spenser’s closest ally, Hawk, is brutally injured and left for dead while protecting bookie Luther Gillespie, Spenser embarks on an epic journey to rehabilitate his friend in body and soul. Hawk, always proud, has never been dependent on anyone. Now he is forced to make connections: to accept the medical technology that will ensure…

Ronald Decker guilty of a first offence, minor drug dealing charge is put away in San Quentin where he is befriended by “old lag”, Earl Copen. Copen is well in with the White Brotherhood just one of the many White, Black and Chicano gangs in constant brutal conflict in San Quentin. Their growing friendship is tested by Ron’s rejection…