A beached sailboat. A missing man. A distraught woman staggering ashore. There to greet her—Garrison Gage, full-time curmudgeon and part-time private investigator, who quickly finds himself thrust into his familiar role of crusader for the desperate and downtrodden. The woman claims to have no memory, but is she lying? When a body later washes ashore, the mystery deepens and the stakes ratchet up another notch. Dark money and even darker intentions. Violence both threatened and real. The woman may be at the heart of it all, or merely an innocent interloper who chose the wrong boat at the wrong time. Only Gage can discover the truth. The Garrison Gage Mysteries (in chronological order): A Plunder By Pilgrims (short story prequel) The Gray and Guilty Sea A Desperate Place for Dying The Lovely Wicked Rain A Shroud of Tattered Sails Keywords: Keywords: Mystery, Garrison Gage, Private Investigator, Oregon, Oregon coast, Hard boiled, Travis McGee, Spenser, crime fiction, mystery series

"Carter's writing is on target."—Publishers Weekly Former FBI agent Karen Pantelli lives by a simple philosophy: never, ever care. Three years after a tragic mistake ends her once-stellar career, she drifts from one dead-end job to another, quickly moving on when she finds herself getting too attached. A new city. A new life. A new way of forgetting and being forgotten. Until one chilly night behind a seedy bar, when a frightened girl leaps out of the back of a speeding van. As they end up on the run in a thrilling chase that spans half the country, Karen soon realizes it's much easier to say you don't care than to actually mean it. And that unlocking the secrets in this girl's extraordinary mind might not only save both of them, but bring down one of the most sinister organizations the world has ever known.

They called him Goon. Not the Goon. Just Goon, as if it was his name, which it sort of was … During a mafia hit with his sharpshooting partner, a thug named Goon finds a little girl hiding in a closet. Until now, Goon has been content playing the part of the dumb sidekick, but how far will he go when the girl's life is on the line? This riveting tale of redemption and sacrifice kicks off Carter's latest collection, six stories of crime, revenge, lost loves, and heroic choices. Whether the tale involves a down-and-out screenwriter looking for a fresh start as a journalist in his hometown, a grieving widower meeting an assassin-for-hire on an urban park bench, or a mysterious payphone at a rural gas station that might not be quite of this world, each of these powerful tales leaves its own indelible mark on the reader's imagination.

Harriet Abel never shows up for her appointment. Irritating as hell? Sure. It's hard enough to work as a private investigator without potential clients standing you up. Of course, it's difficult to show up when you're dead. A revered community figure in the Oregon coast town of Barnacle Bluffs, the teacher extraordinaire never gets a chance to explain why she wants to hire Garrison Gage before her body turns up in a sandy grave. Seldom deterred by the lack of a client, Gage barrels forward intent on discovering the woman's killer. Unfortunately, the professional curmudgeon stirs up a lot more trouble than he expects, putting innocent people in imminent danger. In the past, Gage always triumphed over whatever dark forces stood in his way, but this time he may have gone too far — and he won't be the only one paying the price.

Gage might go mad. With most of inland Oregon enduring a record-setting heatwave, the hordes descend on Barnacle Bluffs seeking cooler ocean air, and it's all the curmudgeonly private investigator can do to keep from shooting somebody. What's the harm in one fewer tourist, anyway? Yet when a desperate young woman shows up claiming her depressed husband has gone missing, Gage will need all of his wits to find the man before something terrible happens. His complicated feelings for the beautiful but headstrong police chief, with dark secrets of her own, only make solving the case more challenging … especially when those secrets eventually bring Gage face to face with one of the most savage foes ever to cross his path.

Ask Hagan anything. Anything at all. Even how to outwit a madman … Once a promising young novelist with big literary dreams, John Winsley wakes up on the other side of forty as a third-rate hack with a perpetual hangover. Fueled by bitterness, he creates an obnoxious online persona as something of a lark—a funhouse version of Ann Landers named Hagan T. Stone with mad eyes, a black beard shaped like a spade, and an irreverent wit. The Ask Hagan advice column becomes a surprising worldwide hit. And it makes Winsley a very rich man. Wracked with guilt about the wife and daughter he abandoned, Winsley feels conflicted about his anonymous success … until an imposter claiming to be Hagan T. Stone shows up to reap all the rewards. Now Winsley only has to answer one question: How far will he go to get what he deserves? This taut, suspenseful tale kicks off Carter's latest collection. From a mysterious elevator in an Iowa cornfield to a crowded superstore where android spouses are bought like toasters, these six provocative forays into Carter's wide-ranging imagination never fail to surprise.