Showing results by publisher "Wordwooze Publishing" in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Here is a time when the old west became new - the 1930s-50s - as Louis L'Amour witnessed it first-hand in Southern California before and after World War II. Many people think the age of gunmen, scheming land barons, murderous bad guys, and the determined men who stood up against them, went out with the end of the Old West around the 1890s. But, in L’Amour’s own time in the New West, there were far more bad men toting guns and making grabs for far more wealth and valuable land than in the fabled days of the Old West.  

She needed to learn the hard way that bad girls who spy on men like me don't just get spanked. They get taken roughly and shamefully, with every climax more overwhelming than the one before.

Just north of Lake Okeechobee in central Florida, Brad Dolan’s Ford goes bad. He pulls in for repairs, finds a sack for the night, then goes out for a drink and maybe some action with the dice... All routine enough, except that Brad Dolan is no ordinary guy, and the town is Carterville, no ordinary town. It’s back-country: jukes fronting for gambling joints, bootleg whisky, sporting houses, cockfights—everything to take a man’s mind off his own troubles. Down here, Dolan finds out, a man can be rubber-hosed for buying a drink for a blonde who’s made a pass at him.

When the mayor of New York City’s grandson and the grandson’s wife are murdered execution style in their Tribeca apartment, NYPD Detective Louis Martelli and his partner, Detective Sean O’Keeffe, are left completely in the dark. Months go by without any actionable leads until a meeting with the wife’s doctor and the bizarre torching of Stephanie Martelli’s car turn the investigation upside down and land Martelli and O’Keeffe in the hot seat.  

Diana Fanning, aka the Professor, runs The Academy, the only genuine BDSM bar in Bangkok. She's the first person police colonel Apichat Weeranwongsakul consults when a bar girl turns up brutally murdered, tightly bound, with clamped nipples and every orifice stuffed with sex toys. The colonel figures the killer might be one of her customers. But he has his own secrets. He needs Diana to satisfy his shameful dreams of being beaten and abused.

A secret hidden for 40 years is about to come out. The man at the centre of this secret discovers from his dying adoptive mother that he has a family he knew nothing about. With nothing to go on, he is determined to find them whatever the cost. However, the more he learns, the more dangerous his quest becomes. But when he finds out the truth it is so shocking and scandalous, it may well cost him his life and the lives of his family.

Gloria Morris is a respected private detective with an explosive sense of honor who cherishes frisky ladies, reads Poe and Twain, believes in justice, and kicks a lot of ass. Her investigation into the disappearance of a popular and notorious seductress, whose pervasive presence affects the lives of two compelling women, takes her to San Francisco’s sexual underground and the discovery of treasonous political intrigue.

Even as a child, Katlyn Lundquist was drop-dead gorgeous. She also was willful. In her teens, perhaps out of spite, she created her own name and persona. As she grew up, she readily accepted money and gifts from her parents but thumbed her nose at society and her parent's way of life. A seeming infatuation with Tommie Lupinacci, head of a major crime-infested cartage association based in Brooklyn, led her to move east with the mobster. But when she showed up dead with a bullet in the back of her head, NYPD Detectives Louis Martelli and Sean O'Keeffe were stumped.  

Former rent boy Kim Crosley faces more hurdles in his attempts to establish a relationship with his benefactor. He knows Kit cares for him—didn't he help Kim and his flatmate Toby get away from Angel Delahanty, their former pimp?—but he still keeps Kim at arms-length. When Angel reappears and threatens Kim, Kit's feelings will be put to the test. Angel's ready for blackmail and murder if he doesn't get what he wants, and he doesn't care which man is his victim.

From December 1961 through early March 1962, I participated in the 16th Chilean Expedition to the Antarctic. In recognition of my work, the US Board of Geographic Names in October, 1964, named the geographical feature Cohen Islands, located at 63° 18' S. latitude, 57° 53' W. longitude in the Cape Legoupil area, Antarctica, in my honor. I think the 4 months I spent “on the ice” were perhaps the most exciting—and challenging—of my life.

In this dual series mystery, Lanie Anders and Cosmo Hill (Piney Falls Mysteries) are excited to share a Christmas celebration with Lanie's newly identified cousin, only to discover he's changed his plans at the last minute. Feather Jones (Charming Mysteries) and her boyfriend, Tug, are in Piney Falls, Oregon to celebrate the holiday, their first away from Charming as a couple. Upon arrival, they are shocked to learn that their hotel room is no longer available because a murder occurred there earlier in the day.

The head of US public relations at Kobayashi Motors, the largest automaker in Japan, is Cadence St. James that is, until she's forced to take on the dangerous new role of corporate whistleblower. Cadence's twin sister, Cushmeer Kincaid, is a human rights statistician who suffers from a fear of public speaking. When Kobayashi cars start spontaneously accelerating and the death toll rises, Toshio Nakamura, a company executive, heads due north to Minneapolis, Minnesota and pulls Cushmeer into the treacherous fray.

The year was 1943. He was a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corps, on loan to the British, flying a reconnaissance mission over occupied France. Shot down, he had to make his way back to England with what could prove to be a very important reel of film taped to his chest. Wounded, he was grounded and sent back to the States to the Air Cadet Base in San Antonio, Texas to teach. Plagued by nightmares stemming from his wartime experiences, he was easy pickings for a woman like her

Lanie Anders has a perfectly ordered life. From her half-foam morning latte to her high-powered executive job—she controls every outcome. But when her house burns to the ground in mysterious circumstances, her life is thrown into confusion. Searching for some kind of purpose, she stumbles across a century-old mystery and flees to Piney Falls, Oregon, an oceanside hamlet with a curious past. But something isn’t quite right in the picturesque town. Her neighbor speaks in riddles, the death rate is alarmingly high, and the impossibly handsome town baker is hiding something.

Heart on Her Sleeve is the story of a patriotic American college girl who steps up to run her father’s war plant when he is hospitalized by saboteurs. Not long after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and US entry into the Second World War, the government realized the draft would seriously deplete the country’s entire workforce, including entry-level labor, skilled trades, office staff, and management. The only possible replacement was to be found in the ranks of the nation’s women. But for women to join the workforce, major changes would have to occur.

Bugged! begins at a college reunion in a moldering mansion in the midst of an isolated swamp. Howard Banks, accompanied by his daughter Karen, is looking forward to seeing his old college chums when his car stops dead. After he gets out to see what the trouble is, hundreds of insects swarm over him and strip the flesh from his bones. Ronald Reid, owner of the mansion, begins to grow concerned for the Banks when hours pass and they fail to arrive, so he sends his butler to look for them.

The Cardiff Giant Affair is set in 1869 Syracuse and features a happy mélange of medicine shows, con games, "brawling canawlers", high society, and murder, with two highly spirited women and incidental glimpses of P. T. Barnum. All this is interwoven with the splendid true story of the Cardiff Giant hoax.

Following hot on the heels of his rescue of Carmel's mayor from the ship Wicked Joe in Monterey Noir, Barker once again finds himself in a hot mess of danger and intrigue. From an encounter with the disturbing Easter Bunny Man at Pacific Grove's famous Lover's Point to a diabolical plot by the homeless denizens of Deadrent Kingdom, trouble is never very far from Barker and his collection of loyal canines. And mystery has a way of following this strange man who deliberately chooses to live in the margins of society.

Columbine Pepper Drugget's background wasn't one that equipped a young woman to manage a motel worth a million dollars, or cope with rude guests, jewel thieves, an unscrupulous competitor - or even the attentions of a brassy but oddly attractive lawyer. She had spent her life so far as an assistant to her aunt at Miss Cordwainer’s School for Girls from 5-to-10. What she knew about the world was limited to the novels of Jane Austen and such bits of knowledge as the pupils possessed.

Morocco Jones challenges the Mafia in a-kill-or-be-killed novel of murder, molls, and mayhem. The Syndicate made a big mistake when they murdered Chris Shane because Shane was the man who had saved Morocco from torture and death at the hand of a despot's most savage secret agent back in Eastern Europe during the war - his best friend and the man to whom he owed his life. No bunch of gun-happy gorillas could scare a guy like Morocco.