mystery & thriller

Word Count: Click here to reveal117,000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Mac is afraid he won't recover enough to go back to being a cop; Tony's afraid that he will. Three months after being injured, Detective Jared MacLean is healing, but he's afraid it may not be enough to go back on the job. He won't give up, though. Being a cop is written deep in Mac’s bones, and he'll do whatever it takes to carry his badge again. Tony used to wish he could have Mac safely home, but watching his strong husband battle disabilities is far from Tony's dream come true. When Mac is asked to consult on a case involving one of Tony's students, both men will have to face old demons and new fears to find a way to move forward together. (This is a lightly edited rerelease of the 2013 original, bringing Mac and Tony to their HEA.)

Word Count: Click here to reveal92203 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay, Pansexual (Click here to hide)

Summary: An unexpected chapter in a vampire’s guide to staying alive. As the only vampire employed by the NYPD, crime scene photographer Noah Green isn’t popular. He’s worked alongside humans for decades and knows how to stay focused and avoid attachments with the bleeders around him … but hasn’t done much to avoid a certain West Village bakery owner, who has no idea Noah can’t eat the bread he buys. Baker Danny Kaes is done hooking up, at least when it comes to fangers. He’s too busy running Nice Buns, the Filipino bakery he owns with his sister, to dwell on the dramas of dating, and if he misses the thrill of sharp teeth on his throat, he still knows he’s better off with his own kind … like the CSU hottie who stops into the bakery before sunrise. While working a string of suspicious deaths, Noah finds Danny at a crime scene, traumatized after discovering a body. Worse, Danny’s also put himself in the killer’s crosshairs and needs a safe place to hide. Surprising even himself, Noah offers Danny his couch, knowing he’ll have to come clean about being a blood eater. Days bleed into nights as the killer closes in, leading Noah and the cops in a mad scramble to protect Danny from dangers he can’t imagine. But Noah can’t protect himself from his feelings for Danny, or how they’ve made him question everything he thought he knew about how humans fit into his carefully ordered vampire life. Overexposed is a 92+K paranormal mystery MM romance. It features a crime scene photographer who thinks he’s got his vampire life figured out, a bakery owner who’s definitely sworn off inter-species dating, an unfortunate number of murders, more mayhem than anyone asked for, and a hard-won, deeply satisfying HEA.

Word Count: Click here to reveal48000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: This client is all wet... After receiving a hot tip on the whereabouts of my almost-boyfriend’s nearly-ex-husband (hey, I told you—it’s complicated!), I thought my love life was finally coming up for air. But when we stake out the remote lake, it’s not the ex who surfaces. It’s the Faerie King’s long-missing mother (and I mean really long, as in double-digit centuries), and she wants to hire Quest Investigations. Since one of my bosses is the king’s brother, he has a tsunami of…feelings about her as a potential client, and refuses to take the case. Instead, he passes it to me. Yes! However… Should I be thrilled at the vote of confidence or suspicious that he’s tossing me in the deep end without a life preserver, the better to punish the woman who abandoned her kid all those years ago? You know what? It doesn’t matter. I may be Quest’s token human, but I’ve proven I can get the job done, so I dive right in. Then the lady explains what she wants me to do: find her missing child. Seriously? I expected more of a challenge. All I have to do is introduce her to the king and bingo, case closed. But when she says, "Not that one," this little family drama threatens to send ripples throughout the supernatural community—especially with my boss in over his head as the prime suspect in a fae kidnapping. As if things weren’t complicated enough… Remember that nearly-ex? When he shows up and muddies the waters, I’m faced with a choice: I can solve this case or I can finally hook my almost-boyfriend. Dammit.   The Lady Under the Lake is the third in the Quest Investigations M/M mystery series, a spinoff of E.J. Russell’s Mythmatched paranormal rom-com story world. It contains no on-page sex or violence, and although there is a romantic subplot, it is not a romance. The series is best read in order.

Word Count: Click here to reveal31600 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealAce, Gay, Non Binary (Click here to hide)

Summary: Can love last when one won’t leave, and the other can’t stay? Fear of moving farther away from his family had cost Eer the love of his life, but now, after twenty-five turns, Kat has returned…with a son, and Eer’s feelings resurface as if it had been only yesterday since they’d first kissed. But any hope Eer has of rekindling their love seems doomed to fail when a murderer’s taste for revenge forces Kat to choose between endangering their family or running… and leaving Eer behind, again. ___________________________ wordcount: 31,600 words TALES OF THE FOREST is an ongoing series of standalone stories linked by a forest world. Content warnings are available in the book's front matter and on the author's website.

Word Count: Click here to reveal79,025 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealBisexual, Lesbian (Click here to hide)

Summary: Solving mysteries is her business. Finding love is her dream. Will combining the two get her killed? Victorian Era England. Stetson revels in being unconventional. So when society shies away from her independent nature, the bold woman creates an imaginary boss and opens her own detective agency. And her keen observational skills, convincing disguises, and Holmesian methods quickly bring in a string of tough-to-crack cases. Struggling to squeeze a personal life in around a series of hazardous investigations, Stetson worries she'll never find a woman of like-passions. But with her heart set on true love despite the risk, she carries on hunting for the perfect relationship. Will her clever escapades lead to death… or delight? Daring Duplicity: The Wellington Mysteries, Vol. 1, Adventures of a Lesbian Victorian Detective is a collection of five sequential novellas, each encompassing its own exciting mystery while furthering the story of Stetson’s life in London. If you enjoy crime dramas, Victorian era fiction, or a sweet lesbian romance, then you’ll love award-winning author Edale Lane’s Daring Duplicity. Order yours today!

Word Count: Click here to reveal107000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Murder, trauma, and raising children - who said love was easy? Mac and Tony thought the hard part was over. They’re together openly as a couple, sharing a home and building a life with their two kids. It’s what they dreamed of. But daughter Anna struggles with the changes, Ben is haunted by old secrets, Mac’s job in Homicide still demands too much of his time, and Tony is caught in the middle. It’ll take everything these men can give to create a viable balance between home and work. Especially when life refuses to give them a break. (This suspenseful mystery-romance is a lightly edited rerelease of the 2012 original.)

Word Count: Click here to reveal52663 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Past crimes, present danger With a new Police Scotland job, a new-ancient home, a loving pet, and a fresh outlook, Rory and Alex are almost ready for their marriage—as soon as bonnie Scotland can figure out how to do it. Working on the restoration of an old Jacobite tower house, they find evidence of a serious crime. But with no handy forensics lab on the wind-swept heathland, they don’t know whether it happened recently, or a hundred years ago. For his part, Alex’s new duties also mean a new identity, as he follows the trail of drugs and dirty cops. Former playboy Rory is anything but a detective. But with Alex tied up in his current job, he finds himself chasing down clues to a mystery lurking in Brash Tower itself.  Their independent investigations uncover some startling secrets—and a source of immediate peril—as Brash Tower becomes once again a fortress against brutal enemies. Will Rory and Alex ever tie that infernal knot—or will the high moor become once again a desolate reminder of what might have been?

Word Count: Information not available

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Are you ready for another thrilling T.A.G. adventure? It's Mr. No again, here to bring you a tale of assassination plots, betrayal, and international debacles the likes of which we haven't seen since...well, last Friday. Agent code name Mr. Ti takes the lead in Operation Cyberlick. (Note to self: Stop letting Connor name the operations) Mr. Ti is hot on the trail of the Poacher, having finally discovered his identity. A trap is laid, but will it get sprung? Follow Mr. Ti as he hunts down his prey. But who is hunting whom? And will love smack Mr. Ti in the butt face? Find out this and more exciting answers to questions lurking in the depths of your mind in this next archive from The Assassins’ Guild. Attention: There is explicit language, violence, and sexual content suitable only for mature audiences. Who are we kidding? Only on bad days are we more mature than teenagers.   The Assassins'' Guild series is a continuous series and must be read in order. T.A.G. You're Seen T.A.G. You're Heard T.A.G. Family Christmas

Word Count: Click here to reveal103000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Sometimes a single moment defines a man For homicide detective Mac, it's been a good year. Having Tony to go home to makes him a better cop and a better person. For Tony, it's been hard being in love with a man he can't touch in public. Evasions and outright lying to friends and family take a little of the shine off his relationship with Mac, but Tony is determined to make it work. As the Minneapolis Police Department moves into a hot, humid summer, Mac is faced with a different challenge. A killer has murdered two blond women, and the police have no real clues. Mac hates to think that another murder may be the only way they'll make progress with the case. But when that murder happens, it hits close to home for Tony. And suddenly Mac faces an ultimatum: come out into the sunlight and stand beside Tony as his lover, or walk away and live without a piece of his heart.

Word Count: Click here to reveal80,000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: In 1888 Austin, Texas, a shy medium with clubfoot is visited by the horrific ghosts of murdered children and enlists the help of a rugged Texas Ranger to pursue their killer. As the two men hunt the murderer, they find themselves not only in the grip of a taboo love that could—at best—send them to prison, but also in danger of becoming the killer’s next prey. In the twenty three years of his life, Thomas Carillon has known nothing but unrequited love. People don’t notice him; they only notice his clubfoot. He has given himself up to a solitary existence with only the companionship of his cat and the ghosts who visit him. When a rare child ghost, her massive injuries evident, asks Thomas for help, the only law man that will listen is a hard-bitten Texas Ranger who reawaken’s Thomas’s secret desires. The two grow closer as they chase the killer, but can they hold onto their fragile, budding love in such hard times? Hadrian Burton thinks Thomas looks like an angel, except for whatever horror he’s hiding in that strange boot. Temporarily leaving life on the range and his complicated past to track down a killer with Thomas, Hadrian finds himself doing something he vowed never to do again—falling in love. Their “congress,” as Thomas calls it, is more intense than he has ever experienced. After a lifetime of virginity, the clubfooted man is going wild, and he doesn’t balk at Hadrian’s unconventional appetites. But they’re too different; Hadrian fears he will only hurt Thomas in the end. And yet, he has never fallen so hard for another man. How can he keep both his and Thomas’s hearts from being broken? And how can he bring the elusive Child Slayer to justice with only the help of a medium and ghosts? This erotic gay romance contains violence, period homophobia, period racism, period ableism, and graphic sex scenes.

Word Count: Click here to reveal69000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay, Pansexual (Click here to hide)

Summary: "Nichols has created something really fascinating here and I am very eager to continue on with the series."—Joyfully Jay Police officer Jordan and dragon shifter Edra might have to work together, but they don’t trust each other—even if sparks do fly between them. If anyone finds out Jordan’s a mytho sympathizer, it could kill his career. No one can know that he frequents the satyr dens and uses the drug Bliss. A dead satyr might not get much attention, but two dead humans who appeared to overdose on Bliss? That shouldn’t even be possible. And it might not be an accident. Edra, the Mythological Services Liaison, has been covering up mytho crimes to protect the community’s reputation. With a mayoral election looming, the last thing his people need is a scandal. To get a murderer off the streets, Jordan and Edra will be spending a lot of time together, and it won’t be easy to keep up with their deceptions… or to keep resisting each other. ~~~ Book 1 in the gay urban fantasy series that follows Jordan and Edra as they solve crime and figure out how to improve Mytho and human relations. For readers who like dragon shifters and forbidden romance. Also available in French: https://books2read.com/u/4AvRlN

Word Count: Click here to reveal90000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay, Pansexual, Polyamorous, Straight (Click here to hide)

Summary: “Bold of you to assume this is a seduction.” Richard’s stare never left Marcus’s face. “This is foreplay.”  Mobster CEO, Richard Mason, and his PA, Tino Santini, have wed after a whirlwind romance, with tempestuous results. Sex games keep their passion burning, yet after a fierce argument leads to a night Richard can't remember, Tino suspects he is having an affair. In reality, Richard is being blackmailed with compromising evidence, gathered by an old adversary. Meanwhile, a sensual dilemma looms in the curvaceous shape of Richard’s ex and her chivalrous husband, Marcus, whose attraction to Tino is obvious. When Tino and Marcus disappear, Richard enlists some London gangsters to help him find them, with explosive results.

Word Count: Click here to reveal60000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: People have been disappearing all across the State with no apparent connection to one another. Police are baffled and struggling to determine if the disappearances are connected or are simply isolated incidents. There are no bodies or evidence- only abandoned vehicles and missing persons reports. Meanwhile, Alex Sanders is battling his own demons... Almost a year after surviving a horrific weekend held captive by his former best friend, Marc, Alex is now a freshman at the University of Tennessee. Desperately trying to start over, he is consumed with depression, anxiety, and guilt for the murder that he helped cover up. Always fearful of being discovered, Alex can’t help but wonder, is Marc still secretly watching him? Could Marc's obsession with him have something to do with the current flood of disappearances across the State? All things seem to lead back to that fateful weekend… the one that started with murder … and ended in betrayal. Warning: This book contains scenes which may be considered triggering events for some involving extreme violence, murder, kidnapping, and torture.

Word Count: Click here to reveal91000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary:

Word Count: Click here to reveal55000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: This case is really going to the dogs… After I try a little off-the-books interrogation to locate my selkie almost-boyfriend’s nearly-ex-husband (don’t ask, it’s complicated), I’m in the doghouse again with my bosses, who bust me back to surveillance. Ugh. So when another human inexplicably storms into Quest Investigations—something our security spells ought to prevent since I’m supposed to be the only human admitted to our offices—I’m reduced to staking out local fast food restaurants to check out the guy’s alleged sighting of a giant, glowing-eyed, dumpster-diving spectral hound. Ridiculous, right? Humiliating, too, not to mention boring. But at least they didn’t fire me. Imagine my surprise when there actually is a giant, glowing-eyed, dumpster-diving spectral hound—one of the Cwn Annwn, Herne the Hunter’s traitor-tracking dog pack, to be exact. Jeez, who let this dog out? It’s my case, though, so it’s up to me—Matt Steinitz, aka Hugh Mann—to return him to Faerie. But while Herne’s normally hopping kennels are inexplicably unpopulated by pups, they’re playing host to one extremely dead body. Uh oh. Looks like someone’s bite was a lot worse than their bark. Guess my love life will have to take a back seat again while we nose out the truth. Dammit.   The Hound of the Burgervilles is the second in the Quest Investigations M/M mystery series, a spinoff of E.J. Russell’s Mythmatched paranormal rom-com story world. It contains no on-page sex or violence, and although there is a romantic subplot, it is not a romance. The series is best read in order.

Word Count: Click here to reveal311000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay, Lesbian (Click here to hide)

Summary: Everyone has secrets… but some are fatal. 1932, London. Late one December night Simon Sampson stumbles across the body of a woman in an alleyway. Her death is linked to a plot by right-wing extremists to assassinate the King on Christmas Day. Simon resolves to do his patriotic duty and unmask the traitors. But Simon Sampson lives a double life. Not only is he a highly respected BBC radio announcer, but he’s also a man who loves men, and as such must live a secret life. His investigation risks revealing his other life and with that imprisonment under Britain’s draconian homophobic laws of the time. He faces a stark choice: his loyalty to the King or his freedom. This is the first in a new series from award-winning author David C. Dawson. A richly atmospheric novel set in the shadowy world of 1930s London, where secrets are commonplace, and no one is quite who they seem.

Word Count: Click here to reveal237403 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: These four novels span about a year, from late October 2013 until early October the following year. A pivotal date to remember—and to celebrate—is February 4, 2014. On that day, around eleven o’clock on a fair morning, Scotland’s Parliament approved the country’s historic same-sex marriage bill. These novels serve as a commemoration of that lovely day, its foreplay, and its aftermath. Rory Drummond and Alex Dominguez are an unlikely pair…a bigger-than-life Scot with an immense appetite for sex and adventure meets a shy Nevada State Trooper who’s been thrust into the job of “baby-sitting” him during a big game hunt in the mountains of Nevada. What could go wrong? More important, what could go right?  The first novel, Nevada Highlander, brings these guys together. And boy howdy, as some folks might say, do they come together—a lot—until Rory finds out that the man on his tail is doing it only as a job. One reviewer said it well: “Sparks and Levi’s fly.” In The Kilt Complex, Rory is back in Scotland, at the castle he oversees as a laird or “landlord.”. But there’s an interesting new meaning to the words “castle keep,” because Alex is now living with him. As Alex struggles to extricate himself from his role as boy toy, Rory tries his best to understand why his lover needs to earn his own way in such wide open spaces. And thereby hangs a tale of guilt and kilt…the story of a lovely girl named Thistle…and the mystery of a killer in paradise. Alex’s need for space comes to a climax when he moves out of Rory’s castle, into a small cabin called Hunter’s Point. And speaking of points—he now has a job as Special Constable, overseeing the point of land where a famous lighthouse stands. The action ramps up when a local teacher turns up missing, and the trail of a possible killer leads to the lonely lighthouse. It also leads straight to a very troubling time in Rory’s past…and to the fateful date of February 4. When an old friend and former war comrade of Rory’s father disappears, Rory and Alex team up as a pair of ersatz constables in Scotland’s Highlands. Rory finds out the hard way that being the mate of a hard-ass cop means he’ll always be Sleeping with Danger. On the trail of the missing man, they find a Jacobite tower hiding recent violence…a 300-year-old elbow of the devil…and a graveyard whose crumbling bones cover old secrets worth killing for. In four novels, a pair of intriguing men go from the Highlands of Nevada to the Highlands of bonnie Scotland. The romance is full of bumps and detours, a silver wolfhound, several silver foxes, and surprising self growth for both of them. PS, a fifth novel (Brash Tower) is due to be released in early 2022. A jawbone and an old relic serve up a deadly mystery for Rory and Alex, just as they move into their new home and try to plan an official wedding ceremony that Scotland has not decided how the hell to do.

Word Count: Click here to reveal50000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealAce (Click here to hide)

Summary: Mystery beckons when a young woman seeks out budding amateur detective Pineapple “Motts” Mottley to find her missing mother in the third novel of the Motts Cold Case Mystery series. Murder comes to Motts’s doorstep when a stranger asks her to investigate a suspicious disappearance. Past experience tells her to say no yet her curiosity wins out. What’s the harm in asking a few questions? The missing person case quickly evolves into murder when a body is found in the strangest circumstances. Motts sifts through various suspects and lies, only to come face to face with danger. Things become even more personal when a killer from her childhood makes an unwelcome appearance. How many close calls can Motts escape? Will she survive amidst a flood of beer and a catastrophic inferno?

Word Count: Click here to reveal42642 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealBisexual, Gay, Transgender (Click here to hide)

Summary: Haunted by his last case and still struggling financially, private investigator Nick Fabian is floundering when a birthday surprise from his best friend Connor Long and boyfriend Roy Constas—a home of their own—offers a ray of hope for a future life beyond living in a cramped trailer and staring into the depths of human depravity. Nick's optimism soon fades when he finds human remains crammed into a suitcase dumped in the attic. The bones belong to a local child who was reported missing three years ago. The news only gets worse when Roy reveals he was the one who took the suitcase up into the attic at Connor's request, but he insists he had no idea of its grisly contents. With Connor Long the prime suspect in a murder yet again, battle lines are drawn in Point Clear. Connor's pregnant wife Lillian and girlfriend Sabrina stand by him, but Roy and Emily aren't so certain of his innocence. Nick finds himself trapped in the middle, drawn to Connor by an attraction he's never fully explored, but forced to accept the fact that Connor's hiding something. Connor's brother, Sheriff Thomas Long, hires Nick to investigate and find out the truth, no matter how ugly it may be—but will he regret asking the question once he knows the horrifying answer?

Word Count: Click here to reveal103000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Forgive when there is nothing to forgive, and forget when there is. Barbary Fleet, September 1890 Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, September 1890 Deaf since birth, Joe Tanner is destined for a life of misery in the workhouse until Lord Clearwater offers him a place at the curious Larkspur Academy in Cornwall. There, while adjusting to his new life, His Lordship challenges Joe to unlock the mystery of the Colvannick stone row. As Joe sets about his task, he suspects a connection between the standing stones and a series of unsolved murders. The problem is convincing others, and his obsession soon threatens his relationship with his lover, Dalston Blaze. Joe's determination to unearth the truth also jeopardises his place at the academy, but a man's life is at stake, and the only one who believes in the mysteries of the past is Joe — and the killer who is prepared to murder anyone who interferes. The second of The Larkspur Mysteries continues from book one, 'The Guardians of the Poor.' The Larkspur Mysteries are inspired by existing locations and newspaper reports from the time, and combine fact, fiction, adventure and bromance. If you have not yet read the preceding series, ‘The Clearwater Mysteries’, you might like to start with book one, ‘Deviant Desire.’ There are 11 books in the ongoing series including a prequel, ‘Banyak and Fecks’ which can be read first although it is not a mystery. To get the most out of it, you should read it just before you read book nine, ‘Negative Exposure.’