Bøger udgivet af Stark House Press

UNLUCKY MONEYWhen Chinese American private-eye Wendy Lu takes on her first murder case, she doesn''t realize how dangerous it''s going to be. Probing into the murder of Susan Fontaine, the wife of her client, wealthy real-estate developer Whit Fontaine-the primary suspect in the case-Wendy fights to prove he was framed. Wendy used to be a cop but quit after a rookie mistake caused the death of her partner. Now she leads a more traditional life, dealing with her guilt, feeling she has disappointed her parents. Yet despite hostility from Fontaine''s arrogant business partner, opposition from the police, and violent threats on her life, she perseveres in the case.And that''s when Wendy discovers things that Fontaine, his partner Tom McKenna, and even Ryan Connolly, the police detective in charge of the murder investigation, would like to keep secret-that Fontaine-McKenna Associates is using criminal-syndicate money to finance the casino the firm wants to build. Now she is forced to use everything she''s learned just to stay alive.

THE FLAMING JEWEL Deep in the woods of upstate New York lives the disreputable Mike Clinch and his stepdaughter Eve. Clinch possesses a case full of jewels which he acquired, not entirely honestly, from the thief, Quintana. Quintana wants them back. To that end, he has assembled a gang to reacquire the jewels. But the jewels really don''t belong to Quintana either. He stole them from Theodorica, Grand Duchess of Estonia. And hot on Quintana''s heel is James Darragh, posing as a thief as well, who has pledged to return them to her. Meanwhile, state trooper Stormand, having fallen for Eve, also becomes involved. Together this motley group will play out a deadly game in search of the purloined treasure, and most especially, the Flaming Jewel! THE TALKERS From the moment when Sadoul first meets Gilda Greenway, he becomes mad about her. Unfortunately, she does not share the feeling. Then comes the masked ball, when Gilda meets Stuart Sutton. The spark between them is instant. Everything changes for her. Then, too, that is the night that Gilda dies. Or does she? Sutton certainly thinks she is dead. But then Pockman performs an operation on her, and the girl opens her eyes. Now Gilda seems in thrall to Sadoul. She becomes the new after hours belle of the ball. But she confesses to Sutton that another soul entered her body when she died, and now wants control of her-Sadoul exerts a hypnotic control over her and her Other. It is up to Sutton to figure out how to save Gilda. For not only is her life in danger, but quite possibly her very soul.

THE MONEY TRAPIt starts with a break-in. Detective Joe Baron and his partner, Pete Delanos, interview a Dr. Pantell who has just shot a man he found breaking into his office. Before he dies, the thief confesses that he was there to rob the safe, which though now empty, had earlier held at least a million dollars. So right away, Baron and Delanos know that something here is screwy. And then there''s the thief''s girlfriend who claims that Pantell set him up for the killing. Convinced that Dr. Pantell is not what he seems and that the cash in the safe is drug money, he and Delanos set about a robbery of their own. If only things had stayed that simple.... LOVE TRAPWhat would you do if you were an aspiring architect, more or less happily married, and working for two guys who had made their fortune on your designs? You resent the hell out of them, but don''t want to quit. And one day you overhear a plot to rob the business on payroll day. Would you warn your two bosses? Call the cops? Tell your wife? Harold Wilkenson doesn''t do any of these things. He doesn''t feel he owes the business a thing. But on the day of the robbery he''s dragged along by his boss to deliver the payroll cash. There is a crash, a stickup, guns fired. Harold wakes up in the hospital. Now what can he do? If he confesses that he knew about the heist, he''ll be arrested. If he rats on the thieves, they''ll kill him. Quite a trap...

THE LYING LADIESA rich woman''s maid is brutally murdered. What do you do if you believe that the young man who has been arrested for the crime is innocent? What do you do when you can see that the sheriff and the prosecutor want to close this case without looking at any of the contradictory evidence? If you''re news reporter Dan Banion, you start digging. After all, a man''s life is on the line. Does Mrs. Hibley, the maid''s employer, know more than she admits to? Could Beth Ridgely, owner of the local cat house, be involved? Is Mrs. Hibley''s daughter, Gail, to be trusted? And what of the murder victim herself? Is she who she appears to be? With the help of a local farmer and a courageous prostitute, Banion risks his life and career to cut through the lies and set things right.THE BANDAGED NUDEDan Banion has returned from the war and moved to San Francisco, writing for the local paper. Today he is sitting in a bar called The Wreck. There used to be a popular nude painting behind the bar, but someone bought it. The artist himself walks in, trying to find out who purchased it. But no one remembers. Later that evening, a dead body is found inside a spaghetti crate and Banion gets a look at the corpse in the morgue. To his surprise, it is the young artist, poisoned to death. Banion starts his own investigation, and tracks down a number of suspicious characters, including the artist''s ex-wife, a jealous lawyer, a shady detective, a vengeful photographer, a distraught girlfriend and a fellow artist. But who has been buying up all the artist''s work-and why? And which one of them wanted him dead?   MANY A MONSTER There is a killer at large, a fiend who hacks up young women. The police have arrested Rogan Lochmeister and are sure they have the right man. The murder weapon is found in his room along with his bloody clothes. But Rogan is a shell-shocked vet and doesn''t remember a thing. And now he has escaped. The very next victim is Rogan''s sister! She was convinced of his innocence, and had shared her thoughts with Dan Banion right before she met her own bloody end. And Banion is out to prove her right. All the evidence points to Rogan, but Banion finds a lot of suspicious characters in Rogan''s circle of friends, including his old army buddy, his ex-wife, the woman who lived in the upstairs apartment, and his fellow workers at Wyler''s department store. Could one of them have set him up?

THE NIGHT WATCHThey gathered in Lieutenant Detective Eckstrom''s office for the assignment: jittery McCallister, stolid Ahern, and blond, relaxed Sheridan. They need to maintain a continuous watch on an apartment in a new housing development to catch a bank robber named Wheeler when he returns to his wife. They set up 12-hour shifts, and to relieve the boredom, McCallister begins to watch the young nurse in the next apartment. But it''s only when Ahern leaves his post for a few drinks down the street that Wheeler returns. Sheridan spots him on the street, and he and Ahern brace the guy by his car. That''s when everything starts to go wrong. Because Wheeler is carrying the cash, and Ahern is a little tight, and that is just more temptation than Sheridan can resist...THE DARK WINDOWRay Cassidy has recovered from the police shootout that put him in the hospital, but the psychological scars still linger. He takes a job as security officer at the ritzy Hotel Imperial, but he''s still gun-shy. When he spots Janisek and his stooge Emil in the corridors, his cop instincts kick in-he knows something is amiss here. But when he confronts Emil, Cassidy freezes up, and Emil is accidentally killed. What he doesn''t know is that Janisek is here to work a switch with Bishop Hruba, recently escaped from an Iron Curtain prison, in order to steal the bishop''s donations. Now it becomes a cat and mouse game between Janisek and Cassidy in Park Avenue''s finest. And Cassidy''s demons must finally be faced...   

"This is not what one could call in any shape or form a pretty story. It is the plain unvarnished tale of a man who has been a notorious criminal from his boyhood days, and it is printed only because it will prove, in a way that all the prison statistics in the world cannot prove, that you can''t win at the crooked game...."So begins the introduction to the original 1929 edition of I Was a Bandit by Eddie Guerin, a notorious thief who kept newspaper readers entertained on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 1800''s. After a lifetime of crime, he was eventually given a life sentence on Devil''s Island-from which he escaped-and sold his life story to a publisher. This reprint from Staccato Crime is the first new edition of that book in over 90 years. 

THE VOICES IN MY HEADCharles is born into the American Catholic Dream. Father is cruel to be kind ("Charles was good this week. Charles was bad this week."), pitting him against his sister in the battle for affection. Momma, in her native Italian language, calls him piccolo Ges├╣ (Little Jesus). In his personal battle of good versus evil, Charles turns to daydreams. Can he be saved? Seeking redemption requires more than good intentions. It requires luck too, the kind that places the exact right person in the exact right time and place. It requires love that has nothing to do with money and everything to do with finding a soul that has been petrified by lifelong emotional rejection.A woman to the rescue? Or is the voice of a saint that does the trick? Or maybe it''s the voice of young political activist, or is it the voice of the Archangel Metatron?Little Jesus tells his tale in the second person voice of "You" ... just one of the many voices in his head.

The woman comes into the bar and catches Jake's attention immediately. Not beautiful, but there is something striking about her. She asks for Steve Canby, who's just left, and dismisses Jake with a glance. Then she leaves. Jake doesn't think much of it until he comes out of the bar and finds the woman being choked by a huge hulk of a man. Coming to her rescue, he barely manages to keep from being strangled himself.Later, they end up at his apartment. Her name is Angela, and she just wants someplace safe to spend the night. Someone is out to get her. Jake Barrow is a private detective between jobs, so he agrees. But later that night when he returns from a false alarm from someone claiming to want his services, he finds her gone. Was the call a ruse? Who knew she was here? But this is just the beginning-it's not long before his pursuit of Angela leads to murder.

"HELL SHIP TO KUMA: Johnny Roper should be captain of his own ship by now, but bad luck seems to follow him around. He's forced to hire on as bridge officer on the Wanderer, a rusty old freighter with a dubious crew, to get back on his feet. The engineer is a drug addict, the mate a coward, the second mate a thief... and the captain, Murdock, a sadistic bully. Their mission is to pick up freight on Kuma. But as Roper soon finds out, they have a passenger on board--Karen Gorman has been hired by Kuma's big boss, Da-Chong, as an entertainer on the island. Roper should have known better than to sign on, because the Wanderer is a hell ship headed for disaster. BARGE GIRL: The first time tug captain Joe Baski sees Stella she's standing on a coal barge, hanging up her washing. The way the sunlight shines through her tight dress, Baski knows right off he's going to have to meet her. But he quickly finds out that Stella--raised on the New York East Side, looking for a way out--married an older guy named Murk. Undaunted, Baski seduces the blond beauty. That's when his troubles begin. Because a near-fatal accident involving Murk arouses the attention of Delancy, the local cop, and more importantly, the insurance claimer, Coletti. Colleti says the accident is Baski's fault, that he had been planning murder. And in his heart, Baski knows that Colleti might be very close to right."--Provided by publisher.

STRAIGHT DOPEBobby Zorn, a once successful screenwriter and recovering addict, gets a call from an ex-girlfriend. But she doesn''t want to get back together, she wants him to find Kyle Strange, an old running partner of Bobby''s. Kyle was with the ex''s sister when she overdosed at a seedy L.A. motel. The ex claims she''s trying to recover a family heirloom that was in her sister''s bag, but what she''s really after is something far more valuable. Can Bobby find Kyle before the pull of his old life takes him down, and what about his big pitch, a last gasp chance to get back the screenwriting career that drugs took away?Sharp, fast-paced, and deftly observant, STRAIGHT DOPE is 21st century noir straddling two L.A. worlds: The panic and desperation of addiction, and the even more desperate ambitions of Hollywood!

CRIME COPDetective Jeff Flavin gets assigned to head the Burglary detail when a rich guy named Sturgis is beaten and his beautiful wife murdered during a robbery of their safe. He and his partner, George Gilman, interview the murder victim''s best friend. They suspect the friend knows a lot more than she''s telling about what went on at the Sturgis''s. But overall there are very few clues-no fingerprints, only a light shoe print. This is the fourth robbery involving safe cracking and husband beating-all but the most recent involving the same kind of safe-so they start looking at disgruntled workers at the safe company. That''s when they discover Leonard Ferenc, who fits the bill perfectly. But finding Ferenc is another matter altogether. BODY OF THE CRIMELt. Ben Tutchek has been promoted to Commander of the Homicide Division. Delegating responsibility isn''t coming easy to him. But today, the day after the Fourth of July, it''s all hitting the fan at once-there''s a rape killing in South Branch Park, a drowned woman found floating in the river against the East Coast Fisheries dock, cop-fighters down at The Point, and the holdup of a Park Liquor Shop in which the owner is almost killed. As it that weren''t enough, the president of a large Manhattan company has fallen down dead in his office from a mysterious head wound. The Commissioner wants answers. And as the paperwork mounts on his desk, Tutchek is caught right in the middle, trying to solve it all himself.

THE FATAL PICNICThe Mallory family gathers for a picnic at the park. It looks like a perfect day for it, and they all start to arrive, ready to feast and play. Then Uncle Maurice shows up. Maurice of the sadistic tongue and crude humor. His wife Esther puts on her usual brave face, but no one is pleased except the kids, who love his antics. Most of the family have good reason to hate Uncle Maurice. He swindled Jocelyn and Marvin in financial deals. He found out about Fred''s affair, and holds it over him. He torments Alison every time he sees her, belittling her unmercifully. Even his son, David, hates him, and with just cause. Maurice has spread so much poison among the Mallorys, it really comes as no surprise when the shots ring out... THEIR NEAREST AND DEARESTSalinas lettuce grower Stanley West is found murdered at his desk, shot in the chest with his own gun. At first they police are completely baffled. West had many visitors that day, but who dropped in on him that evening with such a grudge that could only be settled by murder? His wife Laverne becomes their first suspect, simply because she is his wife. Chuck Willet, a slightly shady real estate friend who wanted West to back him in a local political bid, could have been upset when West wouldn''t support his campaign. Hal Schmidt owned him a lot of money, and might have wanted to cancel a debt. But then Laverne''s daughter Patty tells the cops about a young man she had been dating, a young man from the worker camp whom her father didn''t approve of. And the cops know they have their man. Or do they?