Congratualtions to Kris Neri and Revenge for Old Times' Sake on the Left Coast Crime's 2011 Lefty Award Nomination!

Revenge for Old Times' Sake -- A Tracy Eaton Mystery by Kris Neri

Publication date: March 2010

Cherokee McGhee

Fortune Island by E.M. Schorb

From Jessie Judas’s birth during World War II U-boat raids to her fame at the dawn of the new Millennium, she endures an isolating life, a life of changes, like the shifting shores of Fortune Island.

Growing up practically orphaned, with little education, Jessie meets a visiting folklorist. The woman becomes Jessie’s protector and mentor while Jessie’s eccentric traveling-evangelist stepfather sinks into possible psychopathy. Her biological father returns to the island to ensure her well-being, but hesitates to reveal himself.

A storm of passion and deception threatens to destroy Jessie’s fragile sense of self and trust.

Under a Copper Moon by Greg Lilly

It's 1894 and a young woman finds herself alone and hopeless after her mother dies, then she discovers adventure in a newspaper ad.

After a long train ride across the country, Inez meets her future husband Josiah who paid for her trip to the mining town of Jerome in the Arizona Territory. Before the wedding, she boards with Sam and Lottie, Josiah's friends. Being a true Victorian age woman, Lottie decides to mold Inez into the perfect lady.

The copper mining town of Jerome is booming. Inez has never encountered so many different types of people, some more mysterious than others. Her inquisitiveness may get the best of her.

As circumstances twist, turn, and buckle, Inez discovers another side of the town: elegant parlor houses, the mysterious Navajo Onalee, Mr. Zhen and his Chinese laundry girls, the town's handsome sheriff, and a new best friend Pearl who fancies striped stockings and a sip or two of wine.

Cherokee McGhee Mystery

Scalping the Red Rocks - A Derek Mason Mystery by Greg Lilly

Something's askew in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona. The town's inhabitants are divided by urban growth. Some entrepreneurs try to make a quick buck by selling out the very aspect of the town that drew them: the awe-inspiring views and natural beauty. Spirited, passionate, and a bit mettlesome, Derek Mason helps his aunt Ruby find her place in the New Age haven, but instead they discover her real estate agent scalped in an empty condo. The crafty real estate agent had intended to sell off part of the pristine landscape, to scalp the land to the highest bidder, but someone scalped him first.

Derek meets Myra and Topher, best friends with a shared secret from Devil's Bridge; Kimbo Blue, a former child star from Hollywood with a eunuch-ness that defies his adult persona; Clarity Received, the new-age girlfriend of the victim; and Tricia, the diva ex-wife. Along with a troupe of paranoid art gallery owners, gossipy sales clerks, sexy day workers, and a Jeep-driving Yavapai Apache, the quirky characters of the resort town hamper Derek's attempts to expose the killer.

Small town secrets, shady deals, and serial arsonists threaten to throw Derek off the trail. The destructive power of greed materializes in the idyllic setting, and Derek struggles to keep his sense of self-value over the immediate gratification of self-indulgence. Temptation from his past jeopardizes his future, unless he can tame his libido and focus. Or will he lose his head too?

Scalping the Red Rocks is a story of greed, indulgence, desire, and the bitch Karma.

Revenge of the Gypsy Queen - A Tracy Eaton Mystery by Kris Neri

When her snooty in-laws would rather meet the bizarre ransom demand than call the police, Tracy knows if justice is to prevail, it will definitely need her help.

But the whole Eaton clan begins behaving suspiciously. The groom takes to riding around in a gangster's bulletproof limo…the bride's loveable con man uncle disappears under mysterious circumstances…there are also strange doings at the engaged couple's trendy restaurant, The Gypsy Princess, which the world's richest man is obsessed to own.

Even the family legend of the evil Gypsy queen comes under Tracy's scrutiny - is it the childhood fable her sister-in-law claimed it to be, or a dark prediction of things to come?

It will take all of Tracy's innate noisiness and wacky crime-fighting approach to get to the truth. But not even she could have predicted the curious path her debut case would take, or that she'd become the keeper of the Eaton family's most closely guarded secret.

Dem Bones' Revenge - A Tracy Eaton Mystery by Kris Neri

Only Martha seems determined to impede Tracy's attempts to clear her. That just convinces Tracy that her mom has pulled a doozy this time, even if Tracy can't see how anything Martha does relates to Sperry's murder.

Not that other suspects don't abound - but those scare Tracy even more. Was Martha right? Had Tracy's stuffy lawyer husband, Drew, settled his career-making lawsuit with a bullet? Or did her dad, aging Hollywood heartthrob Alec Grainger, decide to end an old feud once and for all?

All roads lead to the past, to one Hollywood scandal after another. Will Tracy's digging clear Martha? Or will she unearth something that's sure to slam the cell door shut on her exasperating, but well-loved, mother?

Cherokee McGhee Mystery

Who Killed 20G? - A Trent Jones Novel by Mark Phialas

Drifter Trent Jones can’t get decent cards, his putts aren’t falling, and he’s run out of single malt and cash. College basketball coach "20G" is killed in a Myrtle Beach golf community the night Trent arrives, and a day later, Trent's best friend is murdered in New York City. Trent discovers evidence that the murders, though 800 miles apart, are the same case. His instincts keep screaming for him to flee, but so does his urge for revenge. Someone killed his golden goose and that someone is going to pay.

Cherokee McGhee

Love on the Big Screen by William Torgerson

Meet Zuke, a college freshman whose understanding of love has been shaped by late-eighties romantic comedies, and who attends a school so strict it’s against the rules to go to the movies. Zuke and his buddies, separated from the women on campus and forced to entertain themselves, form a club called the Brothers in Pursuit, which holds weekly meetings during which all the members dress in matching and embroidered boxer shorts, stand at attention to Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors,” and report back to one another on their objectives: God, knowledge, compassion, and women. Love on the Big Screen is a novel of friendship, the dangers of romanticized love, the complexities of faith and real life, and what happens to one young man as he finds out that life is nothing like the movies he loves.