It's curtains for Gotham in Deadly Debut, which takes the first bow in the Murder New York Style series. In these pages, a Bronx teen steeped in Poe confronts a tormentor; a recovering alcoholic sweeps up deadly secrets; and a gutsy lie shatters lives in post-war Queens. From a Brooklyn nanny's street smarts to a small grocer's grit, from a nightclub's belly dancers to a P.I. reared on jive, the characters in these twisted tales will keep you cheering.

Includes a 2015 Derringer Award winning short story: "The Kaluki Kings of Queens."Come meet the relatives. As diverse in theme and mood as the city itself, these stories take us from from the explosive excitement of the New York City Marathon to a secret cellar in Queens, from the warmth of an immigrant culture to the moneyed New York art world, and from brutality and poverty to Wall Street's privileged thugs. What the families have in common is this: their lives ha...

Brooklyn native and young widow Erica Donato wants to focus on her PhD research. But when her teenage daughter Chris finds a skeleton behind a wall in their crumbling Park Slope, Brooklyn, home, she and her daughter are both touched and disturbed by the mysterious tragedy. Are the remains more recent than they at first appear?Chris' dangerous curiosity and Erica's work at a local history museum lead her right back to her neighborhood in its edgy, pregentrification days, when the ag...

Slices of life beyond the tourist's view. By turns funny, tough, and somber, the twenty-one helpings of New York attitude in Fresh Slices reveal neighborhoods both rich and poor, where oldtimers desperately protect their secrets and brand new arrivals indulge dangerous appetites. There is as much variety in tone and setting as in Gotham itself, and yet each of these crime stories also reflects the city's most infectious and unifying principle, that specia...

A brutally murdered family man without an enemy in the world. A box full of charming letters home, written a century ago by an unknown female worker at the famed Tiffany studios. Historic Green-Wood cemetery, where a decrepit mausoleum with stunning stained glass windows is now off limits. Suddenly, all of this is part of Erica Donato's life.Erica is a youngish single mother of a teen, an oldish history grad student, and the lowest person on the totem pole of the history museum whe...

"Brooklyn's rich history comes to life in Stein's wonderful descriptions, and Erica is an engaging tour guide."— BooklistErica Donato, Brooklyn girl, urban history grad student and single mom, is researching the 1930s when Brownsville was the home of the notorious organized criminals the newspapers called Murder Inc. She quickly learns that even in rapidly changing Brooklyn, Brownsville remains much as it was. It is still poor, it is still tough, and it st...

"Stein's sure hand weaves history and mystery together for a colorful tale of love, loss, greed, and murder." — Publishers WeeklyFrom the earliest days of the Republic until the administration of LBJ, the Brooklyn Navy Yard was, proudly, both an arsenal of democracy, in FDR's words, and the creator of 70,000 local jobs. In time it became best known as the scary place New Yorkers had to locate to rescue their impounded cars. And then it came back to life, b...

Next in the Erica Donato Mystery SeriesMurder strikes the neighborhoods of Brooklyn—the hip, the historic, and the hoodThe search for a lost portrait of Brooklyn's own genius Walt Whitman sends urban historian and curator of mysteries Dr. Erica Donato into Brooklyn Heights, a neighborhood of quaint and charming streets, family names out of history, and spectacular views of the harbor and the world-famous bridge. New York's first suburb has ...

Erica Donato—Brooklyn girl, urban history grad student, and single mom—is researching the 1930s when Brownsville was the home of the notorious organized criminals the newspapers called Murder, Inc*.* She quickly learns that even in rapidly changing Brooklyn, Brownsville remains much as it was. It is still poor, it is still tough, and it still breeds fighters and gangs. Doing field research, Erica stops in at the landmark local library and meets Savanna, a young woman who is the pride of he...

Unburying history can have unintended consequences.In Brooklyn Bones, a crime of the past comes much too close to home when Erica Donato's teenage daughter Chris finds a skeleton behind a wall in their crumbling Park Slope home. Erica—a young widow, overage history PhD candidate, and product of blue-collar Brooklyn—is drawn into the mystery when she learns that the skeleton is of an unknown teenage girl and that it was hidden there within living memory. Erica and Chris are...

A well-seasoned 69, Sheriff Bill Gastner knows his Posadas, New Mexico territory as well as he understands the foibles of the human condition. So when a backhoe crushes a man to death, it's more instinct than fact that leaves him feeling there is more to

Wesley Crocker is accused of the murder of young Maria Ibarra, who was found near the "camping place" of the drifter. Crocker's account of the previous night leads Undersheriff Bill Gastner to more troubling questions.