Download or read book Bitter Water Blues written by Patrick Shawn Bagley and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Bitter Water Blues written by Patrick Shawn Bagley and published by Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2018-03-19 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joe Collins used to be Joey Connolly, alias Joey Kotex, an infamous enforcer for the Petucci crime family. He left that world behind to run a blues club in Chicago, but Carl Petucci finds Joe and forces him to do one last job. Joe’s assignment takes him to Wesserunsett, a small Maine town that has seen better days. With a friend’s life at stake, Joe must kill a porn director and recover a video starring Petucci’s niece. Easier said than done, as the target’s girlfriend, Wanda, is a Wesserunsett cop. Then there’s Hag, a wannabe hitman, and his buddy Earl. Hag’s looking to make a killing in the killing business. As Joey, Wanda, and Hag each pursue their own agenda, they move ever closer to a bloody showdown. Praise for BITTER WATER BLUES: “A glorious boilermaker of noir and East Coast gothic. The action is as taut as a sprung snare and Bagley tightens the screws with every page.” —Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase “There ain’t much quaint and cuddly about Patrick Shawn Bagley’s Maine, where the only folks more dangerous than the thugs and gangsters From Away are the locals. Bagley sandblasts the chipped veneer of small-town charm to expose the rot beneath. Bitter Water Blues is a vivid, unflinching portrait of desperate people struggling at the margins of society to survive.” —Chris F. Holm, author of The Collector trilogy and The Killing Kind “Bagley’s debut novel is pitch perfect crime fiction, as dark and raw as it gets with a rich tapestry of intersecting characters who bring a beleaguered blue collar New England community to life with the style and powerful punch of a seasoned veteran…a story of redemption and revenge, second chances gone awry, double-crosses and finding loyalty where it counts, even if a little too late…a refreshingly masterful new voice in noir, and highly recommended.” —Ed Kurtz, author of Nothing You Can Do
Download or read book The Night of the Flood written by E.A. Aymar and published by Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2018-03-05 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It happened the night Maggie Wilbourne was to be put to death, the first woman executed by the state of Pennsylvania in modern times. That was when a group of women passionately protesting Maggie’s imprisonment struck. They blew up a local dam, flooding the town of Everton and indirectly inspiring a hellish night of crime and chaos. Fourteen of today’s new and most exciting contemporary crime writers will take you to the fictional town of Everton, with stories from criminals, cops, and civilians that explore the thin line between the rich and the poor, the insider and the outsider, the innocent and the guilty. Whether it’s a store owner grimly protecting his property from looters, an opportunistic servant who sees her time to strike, or two misguided youths taking their anger out against any available victim, The Night of the Flood is an intricate and intimate examination of the moment when chaos is released—in both society and the human spirit. Praise for THE NIGHT OF THE FLOOD: “Plenty of complex characters and hard edges. Take a breath, then hang on and enjoy this entertaining romp.” —Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author “Bravo to all the authors who contributed to The Night of the Flood, a collection of brilliant short stories about residents of the dysfunctional town of Everton who are thrust into the turbulence of decisions that will forever change who they thought they were. A stormy page-turner that will leave you wanting more.” —Sandra Brannan, author of the award-winning Liv Bergen Mystery Series “A brilliant, multi-leveled concept, Faulknerian in its structure. A novel in stories. Wow. Fourteen new exciting crime writers create a rare three-dimensional mosaic of a doomed town and the night hell flooded through it. Terrifically exciting. Wonderfully inventive.” —David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of Murder As a Fine Art
Download or read book The Manipulated written by Nathan Walpow and published by Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2018-06-04 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joe Portugal’s experienced killing before. He’s seen gunmen mow down a friend on little more than a whim. He’s known greed and ambition to drive his friends to murder. But now he’s face to face with a whole new degree of wickedness. A show business prodigy has been shot dead. Though no one—except perhaps the man’s father—will mourn him, his demise puts Joe in debt to a shadowy presence whose sway extends deep into Southern California industry, government, and law enforcement. And suddenly Joe begins to suspect that everyone he knows—his protégé, stunning television star Ronnie McKenzie; his new wife, Gina; and most disturbing of all, his prison vet father—is part of that clandestine coterie known as “the manipulated.” Nathan Walpow’s “snappy Chandleresque dialogue” (Los Angeles Times) adds punch to this intricate, darkly witty whodunit set in the trashier byways of Tinseltown. Praise for THE MANIPULATED: “I thought the last Joe Portugal mystery, One Last Hit, was unbeatable. Wrong. The Manipulated is even better. Suddenly this is a must-read series.” —Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher novels
Download or read book Pull Pray written by Angel Luis Colón and published by Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2018-07-30 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An estranged family member! A score to end all scores! Continued gastrointestinal issues! Five years after surviving the most harrowing heist of her life, Fantine Park is lured back to the United States by her aunt. The bait: a lead on the identity of her mother’s killer and a score known as the ‘pension plan’, a piece of software that can literally pay out in perpetuity if they can get their hands on it in time. Working with a team of actual professionals with their own motivations; Fan’s loyalties and beliefs will be tested as nothing is as it seems; especially when one of the members of this crew may have been the last person to see her mother alive. It’s going to be lies, murder, and gas station hot dogs all the way down as Fan races to get the answers about the day her mother died and maybe, just maybe, the kind of cash that will pull her away from a continued life of crime. Praise for PULL & PRAY: “Tough, sly, and funny as hell; Fantine Park is a noir hero for a new century. With Pull & Pray, Angel Luis Colón continues to show why he’s one of the finest voices in crime fiction.” —Nick Kolakowski author of Slaughterhouse Blues and Somebody’s Trying to Kill Me “Slick, smart and bristling with attitude, Pull & Pray is a fast-paced and fun romp of a heist novel. With the badass characters of Fan and Matty leading the way, Angel Luis Colón proves that he has his finger on the pulse of contemporary crime fiction.” —Steph Post author of Walk in the Fire “Pull & Pray will have you laughing a one minute and shaking your head in disbelief the next. Can’t wait to see where Colón takes Fantine Park next!” —Hector Acosta author of Hardway
Download or read book Unloaded Volume 2 written by E.A. Aymar and published by Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2018-07-16 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Anthony-nominated collection of crime stories without guns—the collection we didn't want to be necessary—is back for Volume 2. Two dozen more crime writers have come together to raise their voices and take pen in hand to call for a sensible and reasoned debate about guns in America. As the mass shootings continue, the avoidable accidents, the suicides, the gun violence that consumes our country rolls on unabated and unaddressed by our leadership other than to say, “Now is not the time to discuss it,” these crime writers have chosen to start the dialogue. In stories of crime, mystery and suspense these authors have left the guns out to show for a short while that we can do without them and the plot doesn’t fall apart. Maybe, in a small way, we can show that the American way of life doesn’t cease to be, either. Not anti-gun, Unloaded Vol. 2 is pro-reason. These authors comprise gun owners and non-owners, voters on both sides of the political aisle. The cause that unites us all is the desire to see the senseless killing stop and to be able to have the discussion without the divisive language, vitriol and name calling that too often accompanies this debate. The top priority in these stories is to entertain with thrilling action and suspense that readers know and love about a crime story. To do so without guns leads to some creative leaps from writers who spin tales of simians on the loose, androids with buried secrets, punk rock shows and tattoo shops. Bestselling authors like Chris Holm, Lori Rader-Day, Bill Crider, Laura McHugh, James Ziskin and John Rector along with many more join together to call for an end to the needless violence and a start to a reasoned debate. With a forward by legendary Sara Paretsky, Unloaded Vol. 2 is a book we wish wasn’t needed. But staying silent is no longer an option. Proceeds go to the non-profit States United To Prevent Gun Violence. Praise for UNLOADED VOLUME 2: “[A collection of] entertaining and often thought-provoking stories.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Monday s Meal written by Les Edgerton and published by Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2018-04-23 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stories in this collection represent a range in topics and styles and feature a wide assortment of individuals who, although diverse, all have in common a singular element—trouble in their lives. That’s what fiction is about—trouble—and short stories have a particular mandate to be about the frailty of the human condition as well as its strength. The author has an affinity for the disenfranchised among us and it is those often heroic people that interest him the most. In these stories he treats them with the sensitivity and dignity they deserve. Praise for MONDAY’S MEAL: “The sad wives, passive or violent husbands, parolees, alcoholics and other failures in Les Edgerton's short-story collection are pretty miserable people. And yet misery does have its uses. Raymond Carver elevated the mournful complaints of the disenfranchised in his work, and Edgerton makes an admirable attempt to do the same.” —The New York Times Book Review “Reading Les Edgerton’s stories is like listening to those old World War II broadcasts from the London blitz, with the reporter crouching under a restaurant table, microphone in hand, while the bombs drop on the city and the ceiling caves in. Edgerton reports on the world and the news is not good. There’s a kind of wacky wisdom in these bulletins from the underside of life; the stories are full of people you hope never move in next door, for whom ordinary life is an impossible dream. This is good fiction; Edgerton writes lean and nasty prose.” —Dr. Francois Camoin, Director, Graduate School of English, University of Utah “Edgerton’s best stories are uncompromising in their casual amorality. They stare you down over the barrel of a gun, rip you up whether or not the trigger gets squeezed.” —Diane Lefer, Creative Writing Instructor in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts “When it comes to short stories, Americans rule the roost. Flannery O’ Connor, Raymond Carver, Stephen King, Dorothy Parker, Charles Bukowski, Richard Ford, Kyle Minor. And you can add Les Edgerton to that list. Monday’s Meal contains twenty-one tales of dirt realism, sharp slices of American life. Edgerton has a strong and sure grasp of the lives of people who are standing on the edge of a precipice.” —Paul Brazill, author of Too Many Crooks and The Last Laugh “Filled to bursting with writing you can taste. Whether dining on bisque and blackened redfish at an upscale cafe, or eating rank mule meat in a pine board cabin, the characters in Edgerton’s world bite down hard and grind up one another with their back teeth. Monday’s Meal is a most satisfyingly vivid and visceral feast.” —Melody Henion Stevenson, author of The Life Stone of Singing Bird “This collection of 21 unsettling stories will appeal to readers looking for nontraditional contemporary plots with characters living on the fringes of society. Several selections will haunt readers for some time as events often take a morbid twist; others will leave them wondering about the endings.”—School Library Journal
Download or read book Exacting Justice written by TG Wolff and published by Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2018-04-23 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unknown killer is waging a war on drugs. The murders are horrendous but with a silver lining—now stop signs are the only objects lingering on corners in the city’s toughest neighborhoods. Half the city calls for the police to end the killer’s reign. The other half cheers the killer on, denouncing the tactics but celebrating the progress police haven’t been able to achieve. The gritty details of Cleveland’s drug underworld are nothing new to Homicide Detective Jesus De La Cruz. Two years earlier, Cruz worked undercover narcotics and was poised for a promotion that would have placed him in a coveted position within the drug organization. The deal went bad. Now he has a new face, a new job, and a new case. The killer moves through the streets with impunity, identity still unknown. Demands for progress from his superiors, accumulated grief of the victim’s relatives, growing pressure from the public, and elevated stress from his family quietly pull Cruz apart. With no out, the detective moves all in, putting his own head on the line to bait a killer. Praise for EXACTING JUSTICE: “TG Wolff’s Detective De La Cruz is caught in the crosshairs of solving heinous crimes, defending himself against a wrongful lawsuit, helping an abusive drug dealer’s family, thwarting his mother’s matchmaking, and falling in love. Pit against those who subvert justice and twist the law to suit their own ends, Cruz stands true while suffering his own demons—everything a hero should be. Wolff’s unsentimental and precise writing draws readers. Add Exacting Justice to your ‘to be read’ pile.” —E. B. Davis, mystery author “Working with an incarcerated population, I deal regularly with people who have made poor life decisions but who can be inherently funny, surprisingly talented, or overly concerned. I know that simple labels of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ don't work in the real world. In Exacting Justice, TG Wolff created characters just as messy, complicated, and dynamic as real life that keep you wanting to read page after page.” —Vincent Giammarco, Director of Behavioral Health Care
Download or read book East Bay Grease written by Eric Miles Williamson and published by Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2018-06-18 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: East Bay Grease, Eric Miles Williamson’s now classic first novel, has received worldwide acclaim as one of the great depictions of working-class America in the latter half of the 20th century. The story of T-Bird Murphy, born in the tumultuous 1960s and raised in the ghettoes of Oakland by his mother, who rides with the Hell’s Angels, his father, who is an ex-convict, and the father figures who range from musicians to construction workers, East Bay Grease is a novel of dignity, honor, and courage that has been compared to the works of John Steinbeck, Jack London, and Upton Sinclair. Praise for EAST BAY GREASE: “Williamson’s writing becomes transcendent. His prose cuts loose in torrid rhythms that evoke the peril and exuberance of jazz.” —The New York Times Book Review “A confident debut, an arresting, often harrowing read.” —The London Times
Download or read book Once a Killer written by Martin Bodenham and published by Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2018-06-11 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You can never really escape your past… Michael Hoffman has come a long way from his deprived childhood in Chicago’s South Side. Now he’s a young, successful partner in a major New York law firm, handling some of its clients’ most prestigious M&A deals. With a beautiful wife, and two young daughters who look up to him, he has built the perfect life. But Michael has a secret: one that goes back to his childhood; a secret so dark it would destroy his family and brilliant career. Discovered by the wrong people, it would certainly get him killed. There is only one person who knows about his past, and he is a career criminal who manages a low profile hedge fund, bankrolled by Eastern European mafia money. Michael is safe, but only for as long as he agrees to feed details of his firm’s deals to the fund so it can make millions from insider trading.
Download or read book Sunk Costs written by Preston Lang and published by All Due Respect, an imprint of Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2018-05-18 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dan is a con man and a drifter just looking for a ride east. A strange woman in a business suit picks him up on the highway, and soon they’re going 70-miles-an-hour and she’s got a gun pointed at his head. Instead of shooting him, she hits him with a proposition to make some fast money. Against his better judgment, Dan sneaks into her office and steals the key to a safe deposit box. He thinks he’s made a clean getaway until he’s stopped on the way out by Kate, a sultry accountant who knows something is up and is looking for a way in on the score. Kate offers Dan a better deal, and the two figure out a way into the box. But there’s no money inside. What they do find is enough to track down a shady photographer who holds the promise of even more treasure. But deception, misdirection, and murder keep Dan on the run, as he begins to realize that Kate the office drone is not what she seems, and the lady on the highway who he double-crossed may be the most dangerous criminal he’s ever met.
Download or read book Street Whispers Stories written by Liam Sweeny and published by All Due Respect, an imprint of Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2018-02-23 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eclectic collection of pulp, grit and noir stories inspired by the Capital Region of New York, a rust-belt crossroads in the shadow of the city that never sleeps. Here’s a trip led by fat slobs in smoky, vomit-stained cabs, heading to the oasis of the strip club on a street lined with rusted out factories, ventilated with beer cans and rocks. No heroes and villains in these pages, just shades of grey and characters making choices between bad and worse. Tales of woe and macabre, the profane and ordinary dance with each other in a building where the forgotten stay, passing their street whispers like bottles from the bottom shelf.
Download or read book Out of Mercy written by Jonathan Ashley and published by Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2018-07-02 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It’s the fall of 1882. Kentucky, the land of dark and bloody ground as the Indians called it, has far from recovered from the Civil War. The small town of Mercy, a rest stop for the emotionally and physically disfigured drifters left over from the war, will soon pay the price of the violence inherent in American culture, and the racism still palpable throughout the hills and hollers of rural Kentucky. The first sign of doom arrives on horseback: three outlaws wanted in Virginia and other parts for robbery and murder. A beautiful, tomboyish white young woman with blue tattoos on her face, markings from her time as a captive of Apaches; a former slave whose days of cowtowing to polite white society are over, and the most deadly and mysterious, the motley gang’s leader, Tompal Banks. But the source of Mercy’s impending doom, the rioting and bloodshed that touch the lives of every resident, from the alcoholic Marshal to the haunted Mayor, will come from within the community, incited by the apocalyptic gospel spoken by the syphilitic Reverend Thurman on the Banks of the Ohio to his congregation of repressed sexual deviants and bloodthirsty war veterans. Praise for OUT OF MERCY: “A savage, horrifying and gut-bustingly funny Western, set in an Old West that would have made John Wayne turn and run for his life and featuring a cast of characters so richly imagined I’m afraid they’ll turn up in my nightmares. I loved every word of it.” —Scott Phillips, New York Times bestselling author of The Ice Harvest “Think Elmore Leonard or Cormac McCarthy—with a dash of Nick Hornby to keep things suitably bent. But make no mistake—Ashley has a strong, savage, uncompromising voice of his own. Out of Mercy is the kind of flat-out, heart-stopping, psycho-emotional thrill ride that just might put this author on the map with the giants. Personally, I can’t wait to read more of Jonathan Ashley’s work—once I recover from this one.” —Jerry Stahl, New York Times bestselling author of Permanent Midnight “Hard, stark and brilliant, Out of Mercy is the best Western I’ve read in years.” —Benjamin Whitmer, author of Cry Father “A dark gem, a bleak tale of survival and revenge in the bloody hills of Kentucky. Vividly written, filled with compelling characters and laced with black humor, this is frontier noir at its best.” —James Reasoner, author of Texas Wind
Download or read book Crooked Roads Crime Stories written by Alec Cizak and published by All Due Respect, an imprint of Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2018-02-04 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You want heartfelt sensitive stories about the mid-life crisis of a middle-class white guy? How about ironic tales of suburban marriages where the love has faded? Yeah, if that’s what you want, pick up some other book, because Crooked Roads, Alec Cizak’s first short story collection, is not for you. This book is about real humans in the real streets of cities and small towns. People who are messed up, people at the edge of things—at the edge of sanity, at the edge of morality, at the edge of legality. Criminals, the homeless, the depraved, the perverted, and just normal folk at the end of their rope. Go ahead, pick it up, give it a read. We dare you. Praise for CROOKED ROADS: “With fists pounding against cliché and convention, Alec Cizak creates prose that is bold…and bloody.” —David Cranmer, author of Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles, and publisher of Beat To a Pulp Books
Download or read book Dead Guy in the Bathtub written by Paul Greenberg and published by All Due Respect, an imprint of Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2018-03-30 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dead Guy in the Bathtub is a collection of crime stories with a dark sense of humor and irony. These characters are on the edge and spiraling out of control. Bad situations become serious circumstances that double down on worst-case scenarios. A Lou Reed fan gets himself caught on the wild side. A couple goes on a short and deadly crime spree. A collector of debts collecting a little too much for himself. A vintage Elvis collection to lose your head over. A local high school legend with a well-endowed reputation comes home. Paul Greenberg’s debut collection is nothing but quick shots of crime fiction.
Download or read book Sort Em Out Later written by Jim Wilsky and published by Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2018-08-27 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malefactors is defined as “those who commit an offense against the law”, or more simply put, “one who does ill toward another”. This collection of short stories from Jim Wilsky is chock full of them. Tales that are all different, yet all the same. The locales and characters range from rural to urban. Office buildings, swamps, wealthy estates and corn fields are some of the places. The people range from folks with money to flat broke, from those who have a lot on the line to those who have nothing to lose, old and young alike. There are stone cold killers to good guys and those in between. Those walking on that shaky bridge, that thin tightrope that connects good and evil. The stories all share the same common ingredients though. Plots that are brutal, chaotic, desperate, vengeful and violent. These pages paint the rage and burning fire that dwells within almost everyone but only surface and re-erupt in some. From guns, to knives, to swords and bare hands, this collection will push all the right buttons for crime fiction readers. These specially selected stories touch every base. So, buckle up and read on.
Download or read book Gunshine State written by Andrew Nette and published by Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2018-02-26 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gary Chance is a former Australian army driver, ex-bouncer and thief. His latest job takes him to Surfers Paradise, Queensland, working for aging standover man, Dennis Curry. Curry runs off-site, non-casino poker games, and wants to rob one of his best customers, a high roller called Freddie Gao. The job seems straightforward but Curry’s crew is anything but. Frank Dormer is a secretive ex-soldier turned private security contractor. Sophia Lekakis is a highly-strung receptionist at the hotel where Gao stays when he visits Surfers Paradise. Amber, Curry’s female housemate, is part of the lure for Gao. Chance knows he can’t trust anyone, but nothing prepares him for what unfolds when Curry’s plan goes wrong. Praise for GUNSHINE STATE: “Part heist novel, part revenge tale, Gunshine State is a searing action story in exotic locales populated by fascinating grifters and unsavory characters. You won’t know where it’s going next but you’ll love getting there. Add this to your must read list.” —Eric Beetner, author of Criminal Economics and The Year I Died Seven Times “A tense, fast-moving, vividly-drawn thriller.” —Garry Disher, author of the Wyatt novels “A gritty slice of Down-Under noir, served lean and mean.” —Wallace Stroby, author of The Devil’s Share and Shoot the Woman First “A phenomenal, hard-as-nails thriller with more tight corners than a maze and a double cross around every one of them. I loved it.” —Timothy Hallinan, award-winning author of the Poke Rafferty and Junior Bender mysteries “A lean, mean, hard-boiled knockout.” —David Whish-Wilson, author of Line of Sight and Zero at the Bone “Gunshine State moves like a bullet. The prose is taught without sacrificing atmosphere, character or psychological depth. Brimming with evocative settings, sharp dialogue and vibrant characters, this novel firmly positions Nette as one of Australia’s leading writers of hard-boiled crime.” —Alex Hammond, author of The Unbroken Line and Blood Witness “Gunshine State is magnificent. Taut, tense-a tremendous thriller.” —Andrew Grant, author of False Positive and Run “Gunshine State is a breakneck ride from first page to last. Nette drags the reader into a sharply drawn world of dark motives and even darker morals. A must for lovers of hard-boiled crime fiction.” —Emma Viskic, author of Resurrection Bay “This brutal, hard-boiled thriller comes at you like a furious street brawler and pins you to the wall with a white-knuckle plot and authentic characters. Like a vicious left hook to the ribs it will leave you breathless.” —Leigh Redhead, author of Peepshow, Rubdown, Cherry Pie and Thrill City
