Mike Shayne is accused of homicide after a dying man stumbles into his office When an old friend calls begging to see him immediately, Mike Shayne is surprised to say the least. He hasn’t set eyes on Jim Lacy in ten years, and time has not been kind. Jim’s face is deeply wrinkled, and his eyes are glazed. His skin is gray—and there is blood seeping through his shirt. Jim mutters a few last words as he collapses on Shayne’s office floor. His stomach is filled with lead and he is dead before he hits the ground. Shayne reaches into Lacy’s pocket and pulls out his wallet. Emptying it, he finds $200—enough for a retainer fee. Mike Shayne has never let a client’s murder go unpunished, and he will not rest until he catches the men who shot Jim Lacy and sent him to die. But first he will have to convince the police that he was not the man who pulled the trigger. The Corpse Came Calling is the 6th book in the Mike Shayne Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Mike Shayne finds strange secrets hidden beneath the cover of a grisly double suicide It’s 10:30 pm, and Mike Shayne is sipping cognac, ruminating on the perfection of Lucy Hamilton’s fried chicken, when a shotgun fires upstairs. Following the acrid stench of gunpowder to a locked door halfway down the hall, Shayne has no choice but to batter it down, tumbling face first into the scene of a particularly ugly double suicide. The woman lies on the floor in the middle of the sitting room, her face twisted by the deadly kiss of cyanide. A few feet beyond her body is what remains of a man, his head obliterated by the shotgun’s blast. The woman’s father is one of Miami’s power brokers, and he refuses to believe that his daughter would end her life over a silly affair. Isn’t it possible, he asks, that she was murdered? Convinced or not, Shayne is the only man ruthless enough to find out. The Corpse That Never Was is the 45th book in the Mike Shayne Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Mike Shayne battles blackmailers to recover a valuable missing bracelet The picture in the paper shows one of the most beautiful women in Miami wearing nothing more than a negligee. She’s in her boudoir, posing for police photographers, pointing to where her emerald bracelet used to be. The bauble is worth $110,000, and whoever took it is either brave, crazy, or stupid, because Laura Peralta’s husband is the second most dangerous man in Miami. The most dangerous, of course, is Miami’s toughest private detective, Mike Shayne. After 3 weeks, the police have gotten nowhere, and Julio Peralta turns to Shayne. But there’s more at stake than a missing bracelet. And for the sake of the lovely Laura, Shayne will have to brave blackmailers, burglars, and a killer with a sense of style. The Careless Corpse is the 40th book in the Mike Shayne Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

When an author finds his friend murdered, he calls on hardboiled cop Jerry Burke to track down the killer In a lonely canyon high above El Paso, a ruthless millionaire and a hardline socialist live side by side. Raymond Dwight makes money mercilessly and Leslie Young hates the rich with a passion, but the men have coexisted peacefully—so far. But when Western novelist Asa Baker escapes to Young’s cabin for a weekend of writing, he can sense tension in the air. His friend has always muttered about tossing a few bombs at Dwight’s estate, but his jokes have stopped being funny. Baker has seen enough bloodshed to know that there is murder on the horizon. When he finds Young dead on the floor, a strange mark on his cheek, Baker calls the only man who can help: Jerry Burke, the toughest cop in El Paso. In the shadowy corners of this Texas canyon lie secrets that someone will kill to protect—and Burke is the only man daring enough to uncover the truth.

A mysterious woman draws Mike Shayne into a twisted murder plot The call comes just as Mike Shayne is pouring a much-needed cognac. A gangster’s voice warns, “Stay away from Wanda Weatherby.” Simple enough—except that Shayne has never heard of any woman by that name. A few minutes later, he receives another call, from a woman desperately worried about Wanda Weatherby. A third call then comes in from the woman herself: Wanda Weatherby begs Mike Shayne to save her life. He drives to her apartment, hoping that she’ll be able to explain just what is going on, but he’s too late. Wanda Weatherby is dead. Just who she was, and why every criminal in Miami seemed to know her name, will take some figuring out. By the time he’s done with this mystery, Mike Shayne will wish he had never picked up the phone. What Really Happened is the 22nd book in the Mike Shayne Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

the author of the yellow rose mystery series, leann sweeney, is... "A welcome new voice in mystery fiction." (Jeff Abbott, bestselling author of Collision ...and her brand new series about adorable cats that just can't stay out of trouble is bound to be a hit! Jill's quiet life is shattered when her house is broken into and her Abyssinian, Syrah, goes missing. Jill's convinced her kitty's been catnapped. But when her cat-crime-solving leads her to a murdered body, suddenly all paws are pointing to Jill. Soon, Jill discovers that Syrah isn't the only purebred who's been stolen. Now she has to find these furry felines before they all become the prey of a cold-blooded killer-and she ends up nabbed for a crime...

“Deliciously macabre and utterly decadent.” —Kerri Maniscalco, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Stalking Jack the Ripper In this dark and twisty feminist historical mystery, a teenage girl starts a new life as a grave robber but quickly becomes entangled in a murderer's plans. Soon after her best friend Kitty mysteriously dies, orphaned seventeen-year-old Molly Green is sent away to live with her "aunt." With no relations that she knows of, Molly assumes she has been sold as a maid for the price of an extra donation in the church orphanage's coffers. Such a thing is not unheard of. There are only so many options for an unmarried girl in 1850s Philadelphia. Only, when Molly arrives, she discovers her aunt is very much real, exceedingly wealthy, and with secrets of her own. Secrets and wealth she intends to share—for a price. Molly's estranged aunt Ava, has built her empire by robbing graves and selling the corpses to medical students who need bodies to practice surgical procedures. And she wants Molly to help her procure the corpses. As Molly learns her aunt's trade in the dead of night and explores the mansion by day, she is both horrified and deeply intrigued by the anatomy lessons held at the old church on her aunt's property. Enigmatic Doctor LaValle's lessons are a heady mixture of knowledge and power and Molly has never wanted anything more than to join his male-only group of students. But the cost of inclusion is steep and with a murderer loose in the city, the pursuit of power and opportunity becomes a deadly dance.

Caught in a horrific midtown ambush, the partner of NYPD cop Ray Nichols is gunned down right before his eyes. Another brutal murder soon leaves Ray the sole surviving eyewitness. A partner from his past returns as terror strikes again with deadly consequences. The minor league baseball team his father owns is set to battle Cuban all-stars while his father must face cancer. Ray returns to his hometown as the killers close in with fanatic desperation. Ray’s new love has secrets of her own. She is now a prime suspect when one of the Cuban ballplayers is murdered. While trying to clear her, Ray is in the crosshairs of the shooters who have vowed to bury him. If he didn’t know better, Ray Nichols would think he was cursed. Maybe he’s right. From Jeffrey McGraw, creator of the Ross Malone thrillers, catch the page turning, explosive action in The Corpse Hits Cleanup, where you’ll need a coroner to keep score.

In the south of France where hatred simmers in the heat, a man seemingly admired, and certainly feared, drops dead at a dinner party. All of the guests fall under suspicion, including Welsh-Canadian professor Cait Morgan. A criminologist who specializes in profiling victims, Cait sets out to solve the murder—and clear her name. Add to this the disappearance of an ancient Celtic gold collar said to be cursed and there you have the ingredients for a Nicoise salad of death, secrets, and lies. Will Cait find the killer before she too falls victim to a murderer driven by a surprising and disturbing motive? The Corpse with the Silver Tongue is the first in the Cait Morgan mystery series, a classic whodunit series featuring the eccentric Professor Cait Morgan.