This issue, we have original mysteries by Christina Hoag and Greg Herren (both courtesy of Acquiring Editor Michael Bracken), plus a crime tale by Greg Herren (courtesy of Acquiring Editor Barb Goffman). Our mystery novel is Annihilation by classic American mystery novelist Isabel Ostrander, whose detective fiction was influential in the early 20th century. Of course, there’s a solve-it-yourself puzzler by Hal Charles, too!On the science fiction and fantasy front, we have ...

A simple blackmail case goes south when Chanse finds the murdered body of his muscleboy client in what appears to be a hate crime. But neither Chanse nor the police are convinced it was a hate crime, despite the frenzy being whipped up in the city by a charismatic but attention-seeking gay rights activist. The trail leads to a call boy ring, blackmail of wealthy Uptown closet cases, and it's not long before Chanse's investigation has put not only his life at risk, but that of everyone he c...

Heath Brandon’s mother died when he was barely three years old. His father never spoke about her, or her family. So when her family reaches out to him after his father’s death, Heath decides to make the trip to Louisiana to get to know the only family he has left.But he soon learns that there was a lot more to his mother’s death than he ever knew…and the beautiful old mansion on the Mississippi River has many secrets, secrets someone would kill to protect.And the key to everything that hap...

The Sheehans are referred to as "Louisiana's Kennedys," a powerful political dynasty with connections in Baton Rouge and Washington. When Warren Sheehan is shot to death in his Garden District mansion, Chanse races to sort out the truth from the many lies surrounding the great family as another hurricane puts New Orleans squarely in its cross hairs.

After landing in the hospital after a bad breakup and an ensuing drug-and-alcohol binge, college student Jake Chapman is given two options: rehab, or spend the summer at his dying grandmother’s decaying home in rural Alabama. The choice is obvious.His grandmother’s land has been in Jake’s family since the early nineteenth century; the ruins of the old plantation house are a short walk through the woods behind her home. An archaeological team is excavating the ruins, looking for evi...

Eric Matthews survives a near-fatal accident only to find his whole life has changed.Eric Matthews wakes up in the hospital with no memory of how he wound up there—and soon learns that it’s vital that he remember. Apparently, he was in a car accident, and the body of classmate Sean Brody was found in his car, shot to death. But nothing makes sense to Eric. He and Sean weren’t friends. In fact, they disliked each other. Sean was gay, and Eric is...well, he’s not sure of much right n...

What would you do if your entire family was trapped in a house with a killer?A tropical storm turns into a hurricane overnight with no time to evacuate. Scotty and the boys stay in the carriage house on his grandparents’ estate in the Garden District temporarily. Scotty thinks they’re safe from the dangers outside but couldn’t be more wrong. When a tree branch crashes into the house, they discover a dead body outside in the rain. Forced to move to the main house when they ...

The city of New Orleans was rocked to its very shaky foundations when the body of six-year-old beauty queen Delilah Metoyer was found, strangled, in the carriage house behind her family’s Garden District mansion. The crime was never solved, and the Metoyer family shattered in the aftermath of the crime. Thirty years later, Delilah’s brother asks Scotty to finally find his sister’s killer…putting Scotty and his friends and family into the crosshairs of a vicious killer.A Scotty Brad...

It begins as a simple missing persons casea young MMA fighter's mother has mysteriously disappeared. But as New Orleans private eye Chanse MacLeod starts digging around, he discovers that she is the leader of a group fighting the powerful Archdiocese of New Orleans over the closing of two churches. As the trail leads from corrupt church officials to powerful real estate developers to the world of cage fighting, Chanse soon realizes there are a lot of powerful people who want to make sure s...

Life--and death--don't stop for disaster in the Big Easy.In the wake of Hurricane Katrina,, Chanse MacLeod struggles to reclaim his life in a shattered New Orleans. Unfortunately, his last client before the storm was murdered the very night she hired him to find her long-missing father. Determined to see the case through, he is drawn into a web of intrigue and evil that proves to be as devastating as Katrina.

Chanse MacLeod is hired to find out who is trying to undermine a new nightclub opening in the French Quarterbut when the nightclub's publicist is murdered, the prime suspect in his boyfriend, Paulwho has a sordid past he carefully hid from Chanse. And when Paul jumps bail, it's up to Chanse to clear his boyfriend and find him, before it's too late.The second Chanse Macleod mystery.

Former go-go boy turned detective Scotty Bradley is back!When an old family friend apparently commits suicide from his French Quarter balcony, Scottys life accelerates from boring to exciting again in a nanosecond. Why would anyone want the old man dead, and what were they looking for in his ransacked apartment? Its up to Scotty, Frank, his crazy family, and friends to get to the bottom of this bizarre mystery—and when an old, all-too-familiar face turns up, its not just Scottys li...