She’ll push his every boundary!

Crime novel. Vero Beach, Florida: (85k words) Rick Edwards comes roaring to life as a troubled young man trying to find his way in the world when he receives a ?calling? to become a police officer in a scenic seaside resort town. Rick learns what it means to strap on a gun belt and protect a great community from those who seek to do the unimaginable. There?s a fuzzy line separating right from wrong - and Rick comes out swinging. Rick reveals himself to be a clever street-smart cop while dealing with missing kids, battered spouses, crazed derelicts, and a bank robber, too. He handles them all with a positive mindset and a twisted sense of humor. Rick learns to hunt crime. He enjoys it. And he has a unique ability to find clarity in the confusion of chaos. He?s open minded to the helpless, yet spring-loaded for violence. You'll feel the passion in his triumphs and the desperate ache of his failures. The day comes when Rick lands his first major case - the murder of Caylee Davison, a prominent local businesswoman ? being a girl he once knew as a reckless teenager. After a careful review of evidence in an apparent open & shut case, Rick discovers an ulterior motive; and he starts to dig deeper. Rick teams up with a trusted friend from the state police and the two chase down leads in the flip-side of paradise. A web of lies begins to unravel exposing a notorious powerbroker. When Rick gets too close to the truth, a mobster targets his own family and all hell breaks loose in this true-to-life crime story. Rick believes most bad guys simply need some direction, while others... just need killing. While reading LOST, you can almost feel the warm surf lapping at your feet. The swanky beach lifestyle and local history are spellbinding.

The First Day in Paradise tells the story of a young orphaned family who have been passed on from one set of relations to another, and whose eldest sibling, Adam, becomes enthralled by the impending opening nearby of a gigantic and beautiful shopping-mall by a flamboyant entrepreneur. To the consternation of his aunt and uncle, who run a small business, he joins the staff of one of its stores, and begins a dizzying ascent through the ranks, until circumstances induce him to question whether his entire value-system has become corrupted. Functioning both as social-economic critique, and as a personal moral fable about the conjuration of ambition from present-day consumer culture, The First Day in Paradise is an engrossing and layered tale loosely modelled on Dante's Paradiso, but most of all it's simply a great read.

Merciless Daniel Caruana will do anything to prevent his sister marrying his nemesis! It just so happens that her wedding planner is the groom's sister—and in the flesh, despite her prim clothes, Miss Sophie Turner is very tempting. An eye for an eye, a sister for a sister…. Daniel will have Sophie exactly where he wants her—with him on his private island and willing in his bed! But when Daniel realizes that true love does exist, it's not just his sister who's in trouble….

Hotshot New York criminal defense lawyer Kevin Corvelli was rolling. He had all the right connections to get way ahead. Guilty? Innocent? It didn't matter so long as he won, got in the papers, and got paid. That's until he loses---and loses big---when a client, who was convicted and then killed in jail, is later proven innocent. The media has a field day plastering Corvelli's face all over Manhattan, so Corvelli, disgraced and in a professional free fall, bolts for Hawaii. Committed to being a lawyer if only because of the knee-buckling debts he accumulated becoming one in the first place, he sets up shop in paradise and swears to handle only misdemeanors this time around---no felonies, no murders, no media attention, no high stakes, no real responsibility. But his first case turns out to be exactly that: law student Joseph Gianforte, Jr., is accused of chasing his ex-girlfriend to Hawaii and killing her. He's innocent, same as Corvelli's last case, only this time Corvelli knows it, and with that knowledge comes the chilling realization that the killer is still out there with plenty of incentive to make sure that any proof of Gianforte's innocence doesn't go any further than the three of them. Douglas Corleone's One Man's Paradise, the winner of the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition, is a gripping story of failure and the search for redemption, and it marks the stellar debut of an exciting new crime-writing voice.

The second Commissario Cenni investigation In the peaceful Umbrian village of Paradiso, the murder and mutilation of an elderly German woman is bewildering. That is, until Inspector Alessandro Cenni of the State Police discovers that this retired cultural attaché was not only a difficult tenant and a blackmailer, but a bisexual swinger who recently had a female lover in residence. The dead woman grew up in occupied Venice, and one of her secrets from World War II might have surfaced. And the bucolic village is not that innocent: it was the site of a scandalous murder fifty years earlier. Cenni’s boss wants a scapegoat, and the woman’s young former lover is the obvious target, but Cenni cannot bring himself to close the case without bringing the true perpetrator to justice.

It sucks to be caught off guard, especially before coffee on what's otherwise a perfect, sunny, Florida Keys day. Luckily, Madison and Fabiana have friends who owe favors on speed dial. Travis West, a shady Miami lawyer with a swanky address, is dead, and the prime suspect is Tarpon Cove's very own Professor Crum (first name none of your business). Crum is a lot of things-including a major pain in the booty-but he's no murderer. Mad and Fab set out to prove he's innocent-as long as they stick to their promise to Creole and Didier to stay out of trouble. Like that's going to happen.Before the sand settles, someone's gun is going to end up in an evidence box-and someone's flip-flopped foot may end up with a toe tag.

Simon, a middle-aged architect separated from his wife, is given the chance to live out a stereotypical male fantasy: freed from the travails of married life, he ends up living with three nubile lingerie models who use him as a sexual object.Set in the 1980s, there's a further tension between Simon's desire to exploit this stereotypical fantasy and his (as well as the author's) desire to treat the women as human beings, despite the women's claims that Simon can't distinguish between their personalities.Employing a variety of forms, Barthelme gracefully plays with this setup, creating a story that's not just funny--although it's definitely that--but actually quite melancholy, as Simon knows that the women's departure is inevitable, that this "paradise" will come to an end, and that he'll be left with only an empty house, booze, and regrets about chances not taken.

Cinderella will go to the ball... and be seduced by the prince. Prince Vittorio's spontaneous invitation to shy hotel maid Rosa is supposed to end at Venice's most exclusive Carnival ball. Yet their instant chemistry soon leads to a scorching encounter! It's meant to be Vittorio's last taste of pleasure before duty demands he marry and provide an heir. But will one night with unexpected virgin Rosa be enough to slake his desire for her?