Angela Brown
During her nearly two-decade-long career in publishing, she has edited more than 500 published books, including Blue Days, Black Nights, by Ron Nyswaner, Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Philadelphia. For seven years, she was an editor at Alyson Books in Los Angeles, where she spent three years as the company’s editor-in-chief.
Angela has edited many high-profile and award-winning titles, including New York Times bestselling novelist Teresa Mummert's Perfect Lie, Alia Luria's Compendium (winner of the 2015 Indie Excellence Award for Fantasy Fiction), Dete Meserve's Good Sam (number-one Amazon bestseller and winner of the 2013 Readers' Favorite Gold Medal Award for Women's Fiction), bestselling thriller novelist Tom Kakonis's Treasure Coast, Chaz Bono’s The End of Innocence, two books by New York Times bestselling author Alison Bechdel, and five novels in Elizabeth Sims’s Lillian Byrd Crime Story series.
She’s been told she has a knack for making fiction the best it can be while retaining the author’s voice and style. In other words, she doesn’t change an author’s writing to suit her personal style; she lets the author’s voice shine through on each page. As one of her authors says, she helps push writing "over the brink of what's acceptable into the realm of what's extraordinary.”
Angela's favorite genres include mystery, science fiction, horror, fantasy, and literary fiction. Her select booklist and some testimonials can be found below.
Please click here to view Angela's complete booklist.
Testimonials
“Angela transformed my novels into novels that transformed me. Never did I expect such depth and dedication from my editor. She delivered in ways some authors can only dream of. Angela is the literary equivalent of an MRI. She sees everything, and she knows the ultimate diagnosis. And she’s a pure joy to work with. Welcome her into your manuscript with wide-open arms. You’ll not only get a great editor with brilliance and imagination—you'll also get a wonderful mentor. Plus, she's very funny.”
—Steven Cooper, author of "With You in Spirit," "Saving Valencia," and "Deadline"
"Angela spots the winners—novels and nonfiction books that have the potential for commercial success. She also guides authors in the rewriting process so that their books can achieve that high level of success. I consistently get my clients contracts with agents or publishers when Angela edits their books. Her manuscript analyses are more detailed than any editor I've ever worked with, and the guidance she provides authors is superb. My criteria is extremely high, and I consider Angela to be one of the best editors I've ever worked with. She receives my highest recommendation as a book professional."
—Randy Peyser, CEO, Author One Stop, Inc.
“While there's nothing fusty about her, Angela Brown is an old-fashioned editor who cares passionately about her writers and their work. Angela is shockproof, and she pushes her writers over the brink of what's acceptable into the realm of what's extraordinary.”
—Jane Summer, author of "The Silk Road"
“I've worked with Angela on five novels and have gotten to know her well. As far as I'm concerned, she's the best in the business, with everything you'd want in an editor: brains, common sense, tact, humor, and imagination. She has an excellent eye for detail and plot as well as a fantastic sense of what readers expect and should get. I recommend her without reservation.”
—Elizabeth Sims, author of the Lillian Byrd Crime Story series and "You've Got a Book in You: A Stress-Free Guide to Writing the Book of Your Dreams"
“Angela is amazing. She offers extraordinarily insightful comments and critiques with heart and professionalism. Her attention to detail is staggering, catching errors and inconsistencies in my book I wouldn’t have seen in a hundred read-throughs on my own. This doesn’t even touch the fantastic job she did in the edits. Her instincts are sound, and her suggestions are spot-on and incredibly valuable, giving you new perspectives on your writing and providing you the means to truly elevate your work. I’d work with her again without a second thought and recommend her to anyone looking for an editor.”
—Shawn Ketcherside, author of “Silicon Override”
"Angela Brown is the kind of editor an author needs. She strikes the perfect balance between investing in the story while remaining objective, respecting an author's voice while using her considerable skills to bring that voice up to the next level, and delivering pointed and constructive critiques regarding character, plot, and dialogue while being patient and kind. Angela truly wants to help you make your novel the best it can be. She will run down your typos, grammar issues, inconsistencies, and factual errors like a literary bloodhound, fixing them with brilliantly simple changes that will make you slap your forehead and wonder why you never thought of it. Angela's gentle, helpful criticisms and on-point editing helped me turn my manuscript into something I'm truly proud of, and she'll do the same for you." —Matt Kincade, author of "The Devil's Mouth"
"If you are a Nicholas Sparks or Richard Paul Evans fan, I'm betting you will like author Meserve's new book Good Sam. Uplifting, heart wrenching and a two hankie read, this story is a winner." - Cheryl Stout, Amazon Top Reviewer
When Los Angeles TV news reporter Kate Bradley is assigned to cover a story about ten people who have each found $100,000 in cash on their front porch she sets out to find the identity of the anonymous Good Samaritan, dubbed Good Sam, who is behind it all.
As interest in the extraordinary gifts sweeps across the country, Kate finds the elusive Good Sam and her exclusive interview with him thrusts her into the national spotlight. Even as his message captivates viewers and wins ratings, Kate suspects he may not be all he claims to be and that the real Good Sam is still out there.
Sometimes love burns so hot in your veins that it consumes all rational thought. That’s why Brock and I never had a chance. I had to start my life over. College was my chance to become someone new. I changed everything about myself to fit in, but one person saw through my facade. The attraction between Abel and I was undeniable, but I still hadn’t healed from the painful secret I carried around with me. Abel struggled to get me to face my past in order to move forward. In doing so, he revealed a secret of his own; one that changed everything I thought I knew.
"This is a writer to watch. A superb novel, wonderful prose." - Sandra Scoppettone, author of the Lauren Laurano series
Light Coming Back is a haunting story of change, passion, and the search for an authentic and personal life, rendered in an exquisitely heart-rending manner by first-time novelist Ann Wadsworth. Mercedes Medina's struggle for equilibrium as her life simultaneously unravels and weaves itself into a new pattern is both unforgettable and universally recognizable.
Bill Yates is a middle-aged architect and husband in trouble. He has come to realize that at the sensitive age of forty-nine and eleven months he only has a fraction of a life left and he's never eaten Sushi, had an affair or, for that matter, fulfilled any of his red-blooded fantasies. Circumstances have thrown him into the role of carer for his ageing mother, protector to his teenage daughter and part-time puppet theater manufacturer for his wife's school. Is there enough time left to enjoy the things he's missed out on? He seeks advice from Elvis who has recently moved in with the family.
Adults have forgotten the feel of a teenager's love. For you a teenager will walk through glass doors, stay awake three days in a row, be an angel standing under your window in the rain. So what that we don't know how to order from the butcher or apply foundation or insert a diaphragm? Show us.
So advises Paige Bergman, a high school student who falls in love with housewife Fiona Gallagher in Jane Summer's lyrical debut novel, The Silk Road. Part dark comedy, part suburban epic, the book, set in the 1970s, hitches along with Paige as she explores her obsessions for fast cars, all things morose, and the search for one astonishing true love.
"I like to tell Liz that I'm her dark side," says Christine, the narrator of critically acclaimed author Lucy Jane Bledsoe's newest novel. And Christine and her sister, Liz, are indeed opposites. Liz, married to her high school sweetheart Mark, has an outwardly perfect life, but her fierce control is beginning to falter. Christine, a doctor in San Francisco's Tenderloin district who is buried in her work, cannot connect meaningfully with any of the women with whom she falls in love. But the sisters share a secret, one that has bound them tightly to each other for 30 years.
This collection of five short stories explores the themes of love and loss.
Grief Is A Hungry Business - a mysterious woman attends a funeral, but doesn't want to make her presence known. So why is she there?
The Ticking Clock - a young married woman explores the decision her and her husband made to forgo having a family.
The Engagement - a young man returns to India to do his duty and marry the girl his family has chosen for him.
Not Quite Perfect - a teenage girl falls pregnant and must deal with the repercussions.
Beneath The Silver Birch - an adult travels to a country she lived in as a child, to find the grave of her baby brother.
Suspicion and fear grip the city of Rivern as an epidemic of mysterious deaths claim victims in their sleep. Heath, a fallen priest turned professional assassin, is tasked with discovering the cause. Along with his companion, an intelligent sword, he must investigate layers of conspiracy to discover the culprit. A mysterious harbinger of whispers of dire prophecy. A deposed tyrant and her daughter seek refuge behind the walls of the great houses. An alcoholic wizard fallen on hard times stumbles upon a powerful magical secret that could alter the course of
the world. Murder, magic and politics create a menacing tangle that three unlikely heroes must resolve before Rivern is destroyed forever. They will face assassinations, godlike beings, buried secrets, and the restless dead as they race to thwart the machinations of the Queen of Lies.
No one in his small, impoverished town believes Rick when he announces that he heard a warning on his car radio. The townsfolk cling to the hope that Mors Mortis, the gang of violent vigilante vampire hunters who will kill or enslave anyone who crosses their path, has finally disbanded. Unfortunately for his neighbors, Rick is proved right. Mors Mortis descends, and soon most of the townspeople are lying dead in the streets.
In Rick’s lifetime, society has gone from tentative order to pure anarchy. With little left to hope for, Rick sets out across an apocalyptic landscape in search of a peaceful place to start over. He has as his companions Christiana, Robbie, and Billy. Rick falls for the lovely Christiana, while farm boy Robbie and former Mors Mortis mastermind Billy help them found a new town they call America.
All the while, Mors Mortis rampages across the countryside. An ancient order of vampires seeks to destroy the bloodsucking competition, but they need more human slaves as a ready food supply. Rick and Christine join the human resistance, but only Rick’s memoir, uncovered many years later, will tell the true tale of their fate - and humanity’s ultimate destiny.
On the heavily forested planet of Lumin, the Network has slept, dormant, for over six hundred cycles. Only a select few remember that it resides beneath the crust of the planet, waiting, and for them, the battle for Lumin's future has raged in the shadows. When Mia Jayne's path crosses with an ancient volume in the Archives of the Order of Vis Firmitas, the battle moves from the shadows into the light. Compendium opens up a world of knowledge, and, for the first time since arriving at the Order, Mia has the key to reclaim the freedom she lost. To do so, she must choose between her conscience and her heart. Conceived against an ailing world of fantastical beauty where long-lost technology tips the balance between extinction and survival, Mia must remember that there is always a choice, and that makes all the difference.
"Tom Kakonis is a master of the low-life novel. Nobody does it better." - Ross Thomas
Treasure Coast is the wild new thriller from Tom Kakonis, the acclaimed author of Criss Cross and Michigan Roll.
A compulsive gambler goes to his sister's funeral on Florida's Treasure Coast and gets saddled with her loser-son, who is deep in debt to a vicious loan shark who sends a pair of sociopathic thugs to collect on the loan. But things go horribly awry... and soon the gambler finds himself in the center of an outrageous kidnapping plot involving a conman selling mail-order tombstones, a psychic who channels the dead and the erotically super-charged wife of a wealthy businessman. As if that wasn't bad enough, a killer hurricane is looming...
"Readers who've enjoyed religious fiction from Taylor Caldwell and Francine Rivers will particularly enjoy." - Kirkus Reviews
The Pinnacle of History through the Eyes of a Boy
This spellbinding work of historical fiction offers the eyewitness account of 15-year-old James, son of Joseph bar Jacob, and the dangerous and heartrending choices his family must make in the days leading up to Joseph's relationship with Mary, and the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.
With crisp prose, tangible description and thought-provoking insights, Before Bethlehem takes readers on a vivid journey to the dusty Galilean village of Nazareth, where Joseph is summoned by Rabbi Boethus, a Sadducean high priest, to marry an orphaned virgin in Jerusalem.
Despite his young age - and mostly because of the slayer rune, the spell that quickens Sigve's sword and grants superhuman strength to him as its wielder - Sigve has gained a reputation as a swordsman. At the opening of this second installment, Sigve becomes the youngest chieftain in King Godred's realm. During the inaugural feast, he swears a sacred oath on his blade, only to discover it stands in the way of his bedding Yljali – the mysterious, beautiful thrall who, along with Sigve and Grim, knows the secret of the slayer rune.
He breaks the oath with dire consequences. He loses control of his sexual desires; he finds himself in conflict with both his mother and his captain-of-arms, and he becomes deeply involved in the war between King Godred and Harald Greycloak, two mighty kings. Soon Sigve has to fight for Yljali, for the people at Vik, and for his own survival.
New York City, 1949. At the Candy Box Club, three steps below the street, the show is about to begin. But in this club, the world is upside down. Emcee Blackie Cole is Blanche Cohen, the chorus line is led by a stunning dark-eyed boy named Titanic, and the only thing protecting the performers from the social reformers is Stevie, the kingpin of the mob's downtown operation, whose hand moves from the till to the pockets of the police. When a young gay man is murdered in the club, only Blackie cares enough to find out why.
Richly detailed, Under the Mink is both a boldly entertaining picture of the lesbian and gay subculture of pre-stonewall New York, and a first-class period mystery complete with gangsters, crooked cops, and notorious madams.
Little Miss Sure Shot is a fictionalized account of the life of Annie Oakley, drawing heavily on the real timelines and events of her life. However, the book is not a biography - it invents situations, people she meets, and a myriad of conversations. Moreover, while the book is presented chronologically, apart from the prologue, it skips certain periods and attempts to focus on those that are especially vital, such as the early years Annie spent with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, including the tours through Europe. A special feature of the novel is the framing of Annie's loving marriage to fellow sharpshooter Frank Butler, whom she married at sixteen and remained married to for 50 years until her death. Frank was far more than just her husband - he was her manager (he gave up his own shooting for that role) and her constant companion. The novel closes with an epilogue in Frank's voice, presenting an overview of their lives together and the circumstances of her death in 1926.
And in a society changing as quickly as the disease is spreading, survival is the ultimate test. When rules and morals are forgotten, the corrupt are quick to take advantage - making it a tough time to be alive, and an even tougher time to be separated from home and family.
That’s the situation Jimmy Burke finds himself in: staying with relatives on their farm miles from his hometown when the plague strikes, ravaging the countryside. But the teen is determined to make it back to his family, and when he comes across a girl named Dana looking for the same thing, he knows he’s found an ally - a friend - for the long haul.
Lambda Literary Award Winner in 2003
"Once again, Elizabeth Sims comes up with a nail-biting chiller of trophy caliber." - Stonewall News Northwest
After her narrow brush with death in Holy Hell, you'd think Lillian Byrd would have learned to keep her head down, but when a friend in crisis calls from California, Lillian jumps on a plane and wings her way from Detroit to Palm Springs - and danger. It's the weekend of the Dinah Shore golf tournament, the wildest women's sporting event in the world, when thousands of lesbians descend on the desert community and take over. At a pre-championship party, Lillian leaps into a slippery romance with a top LPGA star. But her superstar athlete has a secret: someone is quietly terrorizing her. Lillian, eager to help, goes undercover as a
high-profile reporter, an unhinged nun, and a professional caddie while uncovering layer after disturbing layer of the golfer's past. Finally, with violence erupting at every turn, Lillian discovers her lover's ultimate horrifying secret - and it is not at all what she had guessed.
Filled with Lillian Byrd’s trademark snark, nail-biting twists and turns, and a thrilling climax, Left Field scores a grand slam that’ll leave readers cheering in the stands.
Lillian Byrd has been searching her soul after the gut-wrenching experience of killing someone in self-defense. Scrabbling to make ends meet, she takes a job as a quasi detective, solving life’s little mysteries for a pair of eccentric women in one of Detroit’s last prestigious neighborhoods. When she spots a corpse on the next-door lawn, she jumps back into honest work as an investigative journalist.
He’s back. Once a Roman officer rejected as a lover by -Jesus of Nazareth, now a vampire still haunted by Jesus after two millenia of grisly revenge in monasteries around the world, Victor Decimus returns to his hometown, the Eternal City of Rome. At the Monastery of San Benedetto, "Brother Victor" continues his campaign of defiance against the Christian God, while remaining near his first love, whose apparitions have never ceased. Meanwhile, across the ocean in a small Kansas town, the gentle, sensuous artist Paul Lewis sees strange visions of a shadowy vampire. When he is hired to illuminate a new manuscript of the gospels undertaken by the monks of San Benedetto, Paul goes to Rome and falls in love with the bold Brother Victor. Sensing danger in this handsome visitor, Victor resists his attraction to Paul until the young artist witnesses Victor committing murder. Unwilling to destroy Paul, Victor transforms him into his vampire thrall. In a limbo between the living and the undead, Paul may choose full life as a vampire, but not without a price: the release of his beloved Victor to the Dark Kingdom and his own solitary existence for 200 years as stalker of the night.
Running a pub in the tiny Australian outback town of Wollegudgerie doesn't offer much fun or future to knockabout Aussie dyke Kylie Kendall. So when the father she never knew leaves her 51 percent of his Los Angeles-based detective agency, it's bright lights, big city for Kylie. Not so happy about her arrival is her partner in the business, the beautiful, enigmatic Arianna Creeling, who wants to buy out Kylie and gives her a decidedly chilly reception in sunny California.
But the two women soon have other matters besides their bickering to attend to. A psychiatrist to the stars whose slap, slap, get on with it approach has made him a celebrity, hires them to investigate the suicide of a successful but almost universally reviled film director. Concerned for his reputation, Dr. Deer would much prefer a finding of murder.
As the sparks between Arianna and Kylie fly, the City of Angels has turned out to be much more difficult and dangerous than Kylie had imagined.
Sheila Marie Palmer delivers a classic battle of good versus evil in Life and Death on Siesta Key, her follow-up to Life and Death on the Tamiami Trail, and the second installment in the Life and Death murder mystery series. Sheriff Charlotte Bernadette "Bernie" Raines Davis and her husband, Sheriff Buck Davis, are back, protecting their beloved community of Sarasota, Florida - this time from the evils of corrupt politics, greed, and the occult. Growth, too much and too fast, has decimated the simpler, more peaceful, and safer 1950s Sarasota that Bernie remembers from childhood. The natural beauty of a sandy beach is destroyed by the bloody murder of a beautiful woman. The prime suspect - a powerful politician who Bernie dated just months ago. Now he wants and needs her help. A desperate search for the truth finds Bernie face-to-face with the terror of ultimate evil. Can she overcome the darkness or will it destroy all that she holds dear?
"As a child I learned to dream... It scared me. It terrified me. Still does."
For sixteen-year-old Peter, a.k.a. Pi, his life explodes when his parents - scientists who created a revolutionary new type of artificial intelligence - are brutally abducted by a sinister establishment, The Organisation, desperate to acquire the technology. He flees to the Dream Factory, an old stone hut rebuilt by his father on the remote Eastcombe Beach - and a place people are able to visit through their dreams... Can the combined resources of Pi, the brilliant Navinda, and the new local vicar - a literal doubting Thomas - take on the might of The Organisation?
"Daniel Kim is a determined and talented young writer... Allison: The Adventures of Three Ordinary Kids and an Extraordinary Alligator, Daniel Kim's first middle-grade novel, will delight, entertain, and inform his future readers, and they will eagerly await his next book." - Trinka Hakes Noble, Author/Illustrator of Children's Books
Emma, Jason, and Danny Hollen are just three ordinary kids living near the Everglades National Park in Florida, that is, until they find an unexpected visitor in their backyard. To their surprise, the trio come across an egg - the egg of an extraordinary alligator. Keeping the situation hidden from their parents, the kids work to nurture the alligator. And with trouble and danger lurking in every dark corner and twisted shadow of the Everglades, the Hollen kids must use all their skills and knowledge to protect and help their newfound friend survive and grow.
For Mattie who was eleven and just a frizzy red-haired fifth grader, magic wasn’t even a remote possibility. Not in the basement of Sears in Hackensack, New Jersey. But October 10, 1968, would end very differently than it had begun. A mysterious Spyglass would choose Mattie as its mistress and hurl her friends Eddie and Geeta and old Mr. Herman Biddle across the treacherous eight precious stones pursued by the evil Uri Gneezy.
"Curiosity is dangerous, it might charge you with saving a world. Mattie Spyglass: And the 8 Magic Stones follows the young fifth-grader find a mystical spyglass that throws her through time with her friends as she finds herself pit against an evil witch and races against her to find the stones before she does. Mattie Spyglass is a strong pick for lovers of young adventure fantasy, not to be missed." -
Midwest Book Review
"This handsome 10-anniversary edition of a minor classic presents the story of Heather, a preschooler with two moms who discovers that some of her friends have very different sorts of families. Juan, for example, has a mommy and a daddy and a big brother named Carlos. Miriam has a mommy and a baby sister. And Joshua has a mommy, a daddy, and a stepdaddy. Their teacher Molly encourages the children to draw pictures of their families, and reassures them that "each family is special" and that "the most important thing about a family is that all the people in it love each other." In the afterword, the author (whose other children's books include Matzo Ball Moon) explains that although she grew up in a Jewish home, in a Jewish neighborhood, there were no families like hers on the television or in picture books. She came to regard her family as somehow "wrong," since there was no Christmas tree in the living room and no Easter egg hunt. Whatever the religious right may wish to think about nontraditional families, there is no denying that any child enrolled in an American school will encounter friends with single parents, gay parents, stepparents, or adoptive parents. This new, revised version of Heather Has Two Mommies offers an enjoyable, upbeat, age-appropriate introduction to the idea of family diversity. The book is essential for children (ages 2 to 6) with gay parents or family members, and a great addition to a Rainbow Curriculum." - Regina Marler, Amazon Reviewer
Syney Andrews has secrets - she just doesn’t know she has them. She spent the last eighteen years in the human realm with her adoptive parents unaware of her real powers and role in Altera Realm. Altera Realm has been at war for well over a century and is connected to the Human Realm by a portal and no human knows it exists. It is home to the five old and great races - Magic Users, Lycins, Vampires, Daemons, and Shifters. Each race is an entity of their own with its own life purpose, rulers and guarded secrets. Syney is the prophesized “chosen one”, the one destined to end the over hundred-year war and become the queen of the Magic Users. Not that Syney wants to rule or even knows anything about Altera. Falling in love with her Lycin Protector, a crime punishable by death, only serves to make matters worse and Syney’s new life more complicated.
Syney's life may seem like a fairy tale but it is far from perfect... Six months after her coronation, the newly discovered seated queen of Altera Realm is finding it harder and harder to conform to the rules. This passionate and brilliantly written installment finds Vilori Princess Syney Andrews in the thick of sadistic Vampire Gabriel's intricate plot. Under the strain of an escalating Great War, Syney must figure out how to get Queen Mellisandrianna off the throne in an attempt to finally bring peace to Altera. Romantic relationships among the Palace residents rise and fall as secrets are exposed and the people of Altera begin to question old traditions and find love beyond the boundaries of their own races. Hunter is on the front lines with Fern, dangerously close to Shifter territory and deliberately faraway from Syney. This, along with the sudden arrival of a charming new guy in the palace, forces Syney to deal with the many complications of her own love life as she comes to terms with the surprising truth about her birth parents. All the while, the last Vilori Princess struggles to master the full extent of her powers after learning that she is much stronger than she ever had imagined, and that not everyone in the Village is who they say they are...
The Advents were to be Humanity's saviour... Historical records say the Advents just appeared. Millions of powerful ruptures in space providing a limitless energy supply. A solution to one of Humanity's greatest problems. Now everyone works towards their ultimate potential as judged for them by the Conglomerate, and they all serve willingly. Almost all of them anyway.
Thrain Attandee has always wanted to know more than is good for him. Now, after pushing the authorities too far, he is snatched away to face something he never expected: the possibility of getting what he wants.
Morgan has her own life turned upside down as she reluctantly joins the hunt for Thrain. Working with the frustrating Mr. Jones who seems thrown out of time, she will be forced to endure excitement and terror – things the Conglomerate fears and will seek to contain.
Jonathon Tait, whose demon-enhanced 170-year-old life has helped make him the richest man in the world, secretly renounces his alliance with demons in order to save his twins and redeem himself in the eyes of the two women he loved and lost. Jonathon has visions that his beautiful college-aged adopted daughter, Jennifer Ainsley, may be the key to humanity's survival and works with an underground movement to fight back against both the demons and the human leadership that is guiding our civilization towards total annihilation.
Can Jennifer fulfill her destiny even as the planet hurtles towards its destruction? Is she mankind's only hope and can Jennifer save everyone that she loves or after enduring the loss of her own family as a child, is she destined for even greater sorrow?
Connor Hawthorne and Laura Nez travel to Boston to attend the funeral of Catherine Pettigrew, the mother of Connor's college friend and former lover, Grace. Before the funeral, Grace reveals to Connor that she is troubled over the manner of her mother's death, and Grace's concern is made graver by the sudden appearance of a sibling she never knew she had. Even worse, the mysterious sibling appears to have inherited the lion's share of Catherine's sizable estate. Connor's attention, however, is diverted by the presence of her own mother, Amanda, with whom Connor has not spoken in years.
Matters take a horrifying turn when the limousine carrying Amanda and Grace's aunt, Florence Earnhardt, is forced off the Fore River Bridge and plunges into the water, killing all the occupants. Joining forces to investigate the deaths of Catherine, Florence, and Amanda is the stalwart cast from the previous Connor Hawthorne mysteries, including Connor's father, Benjamin, FBI agent Ayalla Franklin, and Washington D.C. police captain Malcolm Jefferson. Their investigation uncovers a Pettigrew family conspiracy dating from 17th-century America through Hitler's Third Reich into present day. What is the nature of the special gift of the Pettigrew family, and will Grace use it for good or for evil?
"Hilarious . . . uncompromising." - The New York Times
"Searing." - Publishers Weekly
"Nyswaner nails the memoir form... lush in content." - Entertainment Weekly
In the years immediately following his Academy Award nomination for Philadelphia, screenwriter Ron Nyswaner fell through the rabbit hole. This gripping, intimate, and darkly comic memoir chronicles this period in his life, a period where a raging drug addiction collided with an obsessive and almost fatal love affair.
Valencia Brandywine, heiress to a hotel empire, has been kidnapped, and the ransom is $7 million and her brother Rico's denouncement of his homosexuality. Valencia has been kidnapped by a group of zealots determined to convert the world's homosexuals to a life of heterosexuality. Rico, with friend D'vora Wasserman at his side, trots the globe in search of Valencia... a search that turns out to be a deeply personal and somewhat mystical journey as well. What follows is a romp through psychotherapy, religion, romance and several inauspicious erections.
"My father’s body was found floating facedown in the waters off Chappaquiddick. Naturally, everyone assumed a Kennedy did it." Well, perhaps not everyone, as Graydove Hoffenstein, the Native American Jewish heir to a parking meter empire discovers after his mother, Celeste Garrison Hoffenstein, is arrested and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her husband, Colin Lightfoot Hoffenstein. But Gray believes in his mother’s innocence, as does his sister Chaka, who arranges a seance at the family’s Martha’s Vineyard home with the renowned psychic Brenda Cloudholder, who arrives in a Yugo driven by her spookily mysterious chauffeur, Derderva. So begins Steven Cooper’s rollicking tale of love, murder and ghosts, where skepticism meets spiritualism, ghosts communicate using lemons and Gloria Gaynor’s "I Will Survive," and family eccentricities hold the key to just about everything.
As Gray tries to juggle both a police investigation and Brenda Cloudholder’s increasingly weird communications with the afterlife, he has problems beyond getting his mother out of jail. His best friend, Stevie, has begun dating Gray’s younger sister Skye; his Puerto Rican boyfriend, Pedro, has decided to become a woman named Carmen Cuernevaca, and his sister Chaka has decided to become black. With You in Spirit charms and delights as it races toward a resolution, which is not just rewarding but deeply moving as well. Steven Cooper’s debut novel is an uproarious blend of mystery and camp humor that will have you begging for a sequel.
In 1314, King Philip of France desperately needs the Templar treasure to save his country from financial ruin. Jacques de Molay accepts the secret mission to find and deliver his country’s salvation. But his most trusted friend’s betrayal soon leads to the king sentencing Jacques to be burned to death. With a bitter heart and nothing to lose, Jacques offers his soul to Mithras, the vampire god, and devotes the rest of his existence to converting legions of mortals to his following.
Fate, however, has a different plan for Jacques. The beautiful gypsy Violca plants the spark of human emotion inside him, and she tells him it may be possible for him to become mortal once again. But to do so, he must resist the urge to consume human blood - until he finds his true love, and she allows him to drink freely of hers.
"Unforgettable!" - Claire McNab on There Came Two Angels
Who was Natalie Wolf? A Russian mail-order bride married to an oafish husband? A desperate woman who disappeared, trying to escape from an international prostitution ring? Or the deadly third in a triangle of blackmail and white slavery? Hired by Natalie's husband Abel to find his missing wife, Loy Lombard learns quickly the pitfalls of finding a missing person whose identity keeps changing. Following on the success of There Came Two Angels, Julia Lieber once again proves herself adept at putting her surly sleuth in deep jeopardy and leading her out safely!
In the heyday of pirating that was in the late 1600's, a group of pirates buried an enormous treasure of gold bullion in the Galapagos Islands. It lay unmolested for more than a century, until two whalers from Nantucket, Massachusetts, stumbled across it in the 1830's. Clandestinely, the two whale men hauled their stash back to Nantucket.
Yet due to a complicated series of events, the gold bullion once again laid buried until 2011, when a local brick mason named Cedric Cross discovers the gold and plots to live handsomely off it. To turn the bullion into cash and live the good life of a multi-millionaire, Cross will tangle with theft, conspiracy and murder. Yet his criminal machinations and his scheme to live a louche life on stolen gold will come to a halt when local hero Jack Kendrick arrives on the scene.
Despite resistance and apathy from the local police, Jack investigates. In doing so, Jack will solve a 200-year-old mystery, foil a ring of theft and murder, and instigate a series of events that conclude in several villains being apprehended.
Welcome to the Bite Club - where the only requirement for membership is death. West Hollywood, California. The Creative City. Liberal and welcoming. Free from discrimination and hatred. A safe place to live if you're gay. But West Hollywood isn't safe anymore... Someone in town has a macabre passion for beautiful young men. Healthy, gym-toned male bodies keep turning up - tortured, drained of blood, missing parts and quite, quite dead.
Weho City Coroner Becky O'Brien is helpless to stop the accumulation of corpses. At the end of her investigative rope, she calls upon an old college friend, Christopher Driscoll, who is something of an expert on serial killers. Rushing to her aid, Chris arrives in town with his quirky boyfriend Troy in tow. Prowling the dark alleys and cruisy bars of WeHo in search of the psychotic fiend, the trio soon realizes that something possibly not human has taken up residence in Boys' Town - something with an insatiable hunger for the flesh and blood of hot young men.
Left behind by their sisters, they’ve become the hunted. In this gripping sequel to Daughters of a Coral Dawn, Katherine V. Forrest tells the story of an Earth beyond nightmare, ruled by dictator Theo Zedera - known simply as Zed - whose weaponry is invincible. With ruthless determination he seeks the vanished women remaining on Earth. Among these women is the leader of the Unity, the extraordinary Africa Contrera, Zed’s childhood friend as well as his colleague and intellectual equal.
As Africa struggles to build a world safe for women, she is haunted by her past - a time when she trusted Zed and shared with him the deadly knowledge he now uses to hunt her. What future can there be for the women who call themselves the Unity? How can they possibly conceal themselves from a world of savagery and a man who intends to find them at any cost?
Fifty-five years have passed since 4,000 women escaped a tyrannical Earth and colonized the planet of Maternas. The women of the Unity have brought children into their world, the first in the history of humankind to inherit a legacy of ultimate freedom and possibility.
But these children are a breed unto themselves. They have bonded and communicate with each other in a way the older generation cannot fathom, and most disturbing of all, they question many of the Unity’s cherished precepts, laying claim to a rival standard of conduct.
Into this widening schism walks young Joss. She becomes deeply involved with
Emerald, a woman who struggles to locate her long-lost daughter and finds herself caught between two factions in a burgeoning conflict of the gravest proportions.
The University of Pittsburgh campus is anything but quiet the summer Jamie, a hunky college sophomore, feeling brokenhearted after being dumped by his first boyfriend, decides to audit a summer class on Egyptology taught by the magnetic Dr. Danilo. Several of the university’s star athletes are then found murdered, their bodies completely desiccated, but Jamie has other things on his mind, as Danilo’s attention turns decidedly nonprofessorial. Soon, he is swept up in a passionate affair with his teacher. When Danilo invites Jamie to travel with him, first to Paris and then to Egypt, the young man leaps at the chance, but in Paris, events turn sinister. At the Louvre, an exhibit of Egyptian artifacts includes a relief of a pharaoh kissing his son and successor, who bears more than a slight resemblance to Danilo. Taken alone, this means little, but a murder identical to those in Pittsburgh occurs, and Jamie begins to have uneasy suspicions. In Egypt, Jamie questions Danilo and learns of an ancient cult of kings connected by a single bloodline extending through centuries. Danilo is on a quest to invigorate this line of kings by initiating them and training them to use their power. Those who had been denied their birthright died so that Danilo might live. Now Jamie must choose whether to return to the world he has known, or to join his lover and mentor in a life of passion, power and blood.
Danny wants a wonderful gift for his mother. Cluster, Danny’s friend, wants to help him. The two of them decide a tree would make a wonderful present, but not one from the local Christmas lot. As Christmas nears they make up their minds and set out into the frozen wilderness in search of the perfect Christmas tree.
Jenny Spencer is missing after a violent encounter on a beach. Her aunt, Susan Blake, asks wisecracking PI Jake Travis to intervene. Susan and Jake spent only one dinner together and both felt an instant attraction. Jake walked away. He was, and is, committed to Kathleen. As Jake and his partner, Garrett Demarcus, close the circle on finding Jenny, they discover that Kathleen's past ties to organized crime and Jenny's life are strangely entwined. They fight a two-front battle to find Jenny and to protect Kathleen. But by protecting Kathleen, will Jake become the type of man that she could never love? Does he have a choice?