Sal Anthony has been picked on his entire life. When his nemesis from high school, Moe Wolf, comes back to town, the old wounds boil to the surface. Moe competes with Sal for the affection of a dancer at a church that has been converted to a strip club. The rivalry turns violent and the old pecking order is established once again. But this time, Sal Anthony isn’t having it. He’s just lost his job. His apartment is infested with rodents. The entire world seems thrilled to walk all over him. His patience with the idea that God will exact vengeance on his behalf has run out. On the advice of another patron at the strip club, Sal sets out for Chicago to find a very special taco truck that holds the key to getting the bully Moe Wolf, and the entire, cruel world, for that matter, off his back once and for all.

There’s a taco truck in Chicago known among a certain segment of the population for its daily specials. Late at night and during the wee hours of the morning, it isn’t the food selection that attracts customers, it’s the illegal weapons available with the special order. Each episode of Guns & Tacos features the story of one Chicagoland resident who visits the taco truck seeking a solution to life’s problems, a solution that always comes in a to-go bag. Episode 10: A Taco, a T-Bird, a Beretta and One Furious Night by Ann Aptaker Episode 11: Sopa and a Streetsweeper by Ryan Sayles Episode 12: Dos Tacos Guatemaltecos y Una Pistola Casera by Mark Troy Episodes 7-9 of Season Two are featured in Guns + Tacos Vol. 3.

There’s a taco truck in Chicago known among a certain segment of the population for its daily specials. Late at night and during the wee hours of the morning, it isn’t the food selection that attracts customers, it’s the illegal weapons available with the special order. Each episode of Guns & Tacos features the story of one Chicagoland resident who visits the taco truck seeking a solution to life’s problems, a solution that always comes in a to-go bag. Episode 7: Burritos & Bullets by Eric Beetner Episode 8: Jalapeño Poppers and a Flare Gun by Michael Bracken & Trey R. Barker Episode 9: Four Shrimp Tacos and a Walther P38 by Alec Cizak Episodes 10-12 of Season Two are featured in Guns + Tacos Vol. 4.

Carl Ember has just been released from prison and is eager to reunite with Kate Vinson, his former lover and the daughter of his former boss. There’s just one thing preventing him—paperwork stolen from Alderman Sonny Vinson’s safe during a burglary Carl instigated. He has to find it and return it so he can prove his love. Kate Vinson, a Chicago Police Department sergeant, is after the same paperwork because she believes it reveals something about her past that might destroy her career. Her once-powerful father, now battling Alzheimer’s, is no help. Taking separate paths through the Chicago underworld, Carl and Kate find themselves reunited at the home of mobster Sammy the Hat in a showdown that leads to a fiery conclusion.

Coming home to Reston, Virginia, to bury his estranged father, Josh Handleman gets the shock of his life when he finds out that his thrifty father is actually a wealthy man who collected diamonds, but when Josh tries to locate the gems he discovers they are missing and begins to wonder if his father's death was really an accident or if it was murder.

There Are No Heroes In This World After fleeing a deadly romance, Blake Ness finds himself on an obscure island off the Gulf Coast. He befriends the island's owner and mayor, a Cuban counter-revolutionary, and takes a job as a bouncer at a local massage parlor. Just when he thinks he's found a home in paradise, he meets a Sarasota land baron who knows his real identity. Blake must choose between paying for his crimes of the past, or committing a new crime he may never escape from... Review: "In Cool It Down, Alec Cizak's follow-up to Breaking Glass, Blake Ness wends through a Florida town's web of paranoia and conspiracy. He soon realizes he's addicted to murder, and, like a Jim Thompson character interwoven with one of David Goodis, all he has to do to survive is surrender all he believes...Does it end well? Does anything by Cizak? A stunning novel"-Rob Pierce, author of Blood by Choice "Just when Florida couldn't get any weirder, Alec Cizak pulls you into Raro Key, a fictional coastal town rife with alligator worship, coffee-sipping spiders, pedophilic preachers, ghosts, and sins from the past, characters whose allegiances shift like shadows on cracked pavement. David Lynch meets Carl Hiassen in this sun-soaked revenge yarn" -Hector Duarte Jr., author of Desperate Times Call "In Cool it Down Alec Cizak does what he's always done best--kick back against the prigs of conformity while writing real prose with words that assault you like an iron fist in a silk glove. Cool it Down transcends genres and literary pigeonholes to stand alone and it is a novel that truly deserves to."-Stephen J. Golds, author of Always the Dead About the Author Alec Cizak is a writer and filmmaker from Indiana. His most recent books include Lake County Incidents, Breaking Glass, and Down on the Street. He is also the chief editor of the multi-genre fiction digest, Pulp Modern.

It’s summer, 2016. Chelsea Farmer has awoken from one nightmare into another. Once a call girl with no control over her life, she’s lost even more control, becoming another statistic in the opioid epidemic eating America from the inside out. Shacking up with a woman she may or may not be in love with, and three men unaware of just how useless they’ve become, she participates in home invasions to steal material goods that can be traded for pills or, even better, heroin. In between hits, the gang finds other ways to scrape together money, such as getting paid to march in a protest-turned-riot against presidential candidate Donald Trump. As the habit increases, calls for more crimes to feed it, the boys get increasingly violent with the victims of their home invasions. How long will it be before they actually kill a homeowner who refuses to cooperate? Chelsea must decide whether or not she’s willing to hang around and find out. Praise for BREAKING GLASS: “Alec Cizak hits streets we don’t want to live on and he hits them hard. For a writer as good as Cizak, that isn’t enough. Breaking Glass is the story of an addict who stumbles into a chance at recovery only to have her past come back on her. Can she redeem herself while maintaining her newfound peaceful self? This book raises brutal questions and gives the answers it must.” —Rob Pierce “Alec Cizak continues to tap into the bleakness of modern life that he did with Down on the Street. Breaking Glass is so dark and troubling it will make you cry for mercy as he joins Poe and Lovecraft in finding new ways to disturb you.” —David Nemeth “In addition to containing the single best death scene—ever, in the history of writing—Alec Cizak’s Breaking Glass paints a condemnation and a begrudging acceptance of our post-PC culture, told through the eyes of Chelsea Farmer, a millennial dope fiend. Part Tom Sawyer and part Alex from A Clockwork Orange, Chelsea takes us on a tour of an America where hardcore violence and sickening sexual predation are givens; yet subliminal microaggressions end careers and the definition of rape is as elusive and fluid as a spoon-cooked tab of oxycontin. I was hooked.” —Grant Jerkins “Alec Cizak’s writing is clean, full of dark humor and pulpy edge; all of which highlights his fast dialogue and faster plot. His expert use of language allows him to build believable, interesting characters and create realistic, though bleak, situations. Manifesto Destination and Down on the Street solidify his position next to the greatest writers of hard-boiled fiction. Every story he creates is thrilling and compelling.” —Marietta Miles

Elmore Johnson has only got two friends, the bottle of Jim Beam in his coat pocket and a revolver named Lorraine. He worked for the Indianapolis Police Department until they booted him for exposing dirty cops. Now he makes a meager living snapping seedy photos. But when Elmore shoots pictures of the daughter of a wealthy CEO making cheap porn, the girl ends up dead. As the bodies pile up, Elmore finds himself trapped in the heart of a bizarre conspiracy until he discovers the horrifying truth about a place called Manifesto Destination. Alec Cizak’s Manifesto Destination will take you back to dystopian 1998 Indianapolis where everyone—the cops, big business, and even the little guy—is dirty and only looking out for themselves. His writing is boiled rock hard and keeps you turning one noir-infested page after another until you find yourself as paranoid as Elmore Johnson. Praise for MANIFESTO DESTINATION: “Alec Cizak finds the naked truth on the printed page. An artist with no fear and thankfully no moral center.” —David Cranmer, editor of Beat To a Pulp “The city of Indianapolis like you haven’t seen it before (at least not yet), seasoned with a splash of noir, a dash of dystopia and almost but not quite hard-boiled. More like Eggs Benedict—though that breakfast was originally invented as a hangover cure, and this might cause one. Alec Cizak’s heady mixture of sci-fi and P.I., bad cops and Big Brothers, is a dark, funny read, full of twists and a barely controlled rage at the state of our corporate nation. And by nudging his detective story into a disturbing but recognizable future, the author paints this concoction with an extra layer of despair, as we realize his Phil Dickian satire of manipulation is not just familiar, but also inevitable. Best read with Charlie Parker in the background (the hero probably wore out his ‘Charlie Parker With Strings’ tape, but it weaves the perfect soundtrack). Jazzy and weird, the whole thing is probably a thinly-veiled threat, but I had too much fun to heed any warnings. See you at the Magic Carpet before they tear it down.” —David James Keaton, author of Fish Bites Cop: Stories To Bash Authorities

From the forward by Kevin Tipple:For the first time, this series is being collected into two volumes. You hold in your hands the first volume which collects together, The Drifter Detective, Hell Up in Houston, The Girls of Bunker Pines, Wide Spot in the Road, and The Don Juan of Eldorado. You have in your hands the stories of a legend. Jack Laramie may by nothing more than an entertaining figment of the imagination of several authors. Or, he may be a real person who did real things. Personally, I believe legends come from somewhere and are based on fact and real-life experiences. Jack, to me, is very real, as are his adventures in this collection.

When Samantha awakes she is half buried in bricks and the smoke still swirls in the air. The car bomb didn't killed her-small miracle. Her unfocused eyes see a figure coming nearer. A shape she recognizes somehow. As the person passes by the orange glow from the car fire's light, she sees the face. Her face. But how? The other Samantha stands over her and regards her twin. Something is off about this new face. It is her, sure, but harder somehow. The new Sam turns and walks away, back toward the building she came out of before her car exploded. Back to see the two drug kingpins in the top floor offices. And somehow Samantha knows-back to take the deal she just turned down. Samantha Whelan is a DEA agent, and not always a straight and narrow one. She's been taking bribes and doing favors for Calder and Rizzo-twin brothers and big players in narco traffic in southern California-for years. She turned down a deal that night, a deal to make her millions, but it meant killing her fiancé, an assistant district attorney building a case against Calder and Rizzo. And it meant betraying her DEA brethren more deeply than she had so far. It was too much. So Calder and Rizzo tried to blow her up. What happened then...she split. Samantha became Samantha and Sam. Two halves of the same person. The good side and the bad side. The two opposing forces living within her for so long were now free to fight it out to see who will win control. So begins a nightmarish rocket ride for Samantha to save her life and the lives of everyone she holds dear before Sam, her bad half, can burn it to the ground. Praise for TWO IN THE HEAD: "Two In the Head is a straight shot between the eyes. A gangbusters plot, punch-drunk pace, and gut-punch action propel this black hearted thriller from Eric Beetner." -J. Todd Scott, author of The Far Empty and Lost River