Crime & Mystery Books

Attorney Elizabeth Campbell turned her back on her silver spoon upbringing and finds emotional fulfillment in her work at a nonprofit legal clinic, much to the dismay of her parents.

Her propensity for bending the law, as well as uttering a few choice phrases, makes her pairing with a Catholic priest to investigate the case of a simple man with an IQ of a child, who confessed to a brutal killing, a challenge. But solving a gruesome murder is not even her greatest trial—it’s her growing attraction to sexy but cranky Detective Grace Donovan who is hell-bent on keeping her client in prison.

While chasing a mystery that found its way from the concentration camps of WWII to an abandoned Catholic school, Elizabeth and Grace struggle to set personal boundaries, as their relationship slowly evolves from one of hostility to indifference, to something neither wishes to define.

Advance praise from Foreword Reviews:

"A thematically compelling journey through a town’s dark underbelly, Sins of Our Fathers, by A. Rose Mathieu, is an excellent blend of mystery and romance....In addition to dealing with an ever-growing stream of murders, [Elizabeth] Campbell must also contend with her feelings for steely yet attractive Detective Grace Donovan....Sins of Our Fathers is excellently paced, introducing characters and situations in a way that allows for their natural extrapolation as the novel progresses. While the case that Campbell is charged with reinvestigating initially appears to be an open-and-shut claim, larger forces are shown to have influenced it. The novel weaves together a political and religious world outside of the courts....Sins of Our Fathers seamlessly blends a ghastly murder mystery with an intriguing romance."

In book three in the Dark Peak series, things are looking up for Detective Sanne Jensen and Dr. Meg Fielding. Dating each other seems to be working, their families are behaving themselves, and the worst of the post-Christmas crime wave is over. 

The discovery of a Pakistani girl’s body out on the moors changes all that. No one knows who she is, who hurt her, or how she came to be there. As pressure mounts on East Derbyshire Special Ops for a quick resolution, it becomes ever more apparent that the case won’t provide one.  

With the Pakistani community closing ranks, and threads of suspicion reaching farther than anyone could have predicted, the investigation leaves Sanne facing an ordeal she may not survive.

New York, 1952. From the shadowy docks of Athens, Greece, to the elegance of a Fifth Avenue penthouse, to the neon glare of Coney Island, art smuggler Cantor Gold must track down an ancient artifact, elude thugs and killers, protect a beautiful woman who caters to Cantor’s deepest desires, and confront the honky-tonk past which formed her. Memories, murder, passion, and the terrible longing for her stolen love tangle in Cantor’s soul, threatening to tear her apart.

Book Three of the Cantor Gold Crime Series

Alissa Reeves came out for Hannah Desarno. Hannah is smart, beautiful, and has just gone missing. Worse, she isn’t Alissa’s first girlfriend to disappear. Eighteen months ago, Alissa was caught kissing bad girl Lana Meyers. Too scared to admit her feelings for Lana, Alissa let her friends blame Lana. Weeks later when Lana disappeared, no one in their small town thought much of it until months later when her body was found.

With Hannah gone, Alissa finds herself following clues that will help her discover what happened to both girls, and the truth will change everything.

Three stories by three talented crime writers—Carsen Taite, Ali Vali, and Michelle Grubb—each packing her own special brand of heat.

In Hammersmith by Michelle Grubb: Officer Belinda Riley knew the signs of a suicide bomber, but this time she was blind to the obvious. This time she didn’t want to believe what was right in front of her eyes.

In Bow and Arrow by Carsen Taite: Bounty hunter Luca Bennett has always lived on the edge of the law, but now she’s living with a cop and doing her darnedest to stay out of trouble. When an old enemy resurfaces, will the shady ways of Luca’s past come back to haunt her? 

In Hell Fire by Ali Vali: Dr. Abigail Eaton stumbles into a massacre, but once someone tries to kill her it seems like no accident. While hunting for the perpetrators of a sex trafficking empire, Agent Riley Abbott saves Abigail from a professional hit and discovers the young mother might be the key to more than just her case. Riley takes Abigail and her family to what she thinks is safer ground, and runs right into the arms of reputed mob boss Cain Casey.

Murder is a seductive story that keeps Detective Jill Rogers hypnotized and soothes her road-hungry feet. Money and murder—the world’s most fascinating subjects. Jill quit romance when she left Sophie Walsh, the love of her life, starved and hurting. Love is for sunny, squishy people, and Jill is dark. 

 A few things Jill knows for sure: the more violent the crime, the closer the relationship is between victim and murderer. Murder investigation is a two-piece puzzle. One piece is the crime scene and it forms half the picture; the other is the witnesses and suspects. Ideally, the two halves come together and form a complete whole and the case is solved. If they don’t, either Jill made a mistake or someone is lying. And she doesn’t make mistakes.

Winter in the Derbyshire Peaks: months of knee-deep snow, short days, and rocketing crime rates. 

Detective Sanne Jensen is living in self-imposed isolation and quietly falling apart, while Dr. Meg Fielding—Sanne’s best friend and occasional lover—is struggling to cope with her violent brother, who is back in town and demanding money that she doesn’t have. 

When the murder of a drug addict is dumped onto Sanne’s already unmanageable caseload, she suspects the death may be the start of something more sinister. But how can she investigate a crime when no one cares about the victim? And how can she stop a killer who has no identity, no motive, and no conscience? 

New York City, 1950. Cantor Gold, art smuggler and dapper dyke-about-town, hunts for a missing masterpiece she's risked her life to bring through the port of New York. She must outsmart the Law that wants to jail her; outrun the dockside gangsters who would let her take the fall for murder; and outplay a shady art dealer, his lover, and a beautiful curator who toys with Cantor's passion. Through it all, Cantor must stay out of the gunsights of a killer who's knocking off rivals for the missing masterpiece—and stay alive to solve the mystery of her stolen love: Sophie de la Luna y Sol.

A Cantor Gold Crime Novel.

"I can't do this. I can't do any of this without her."

Detective Sanne Jensen (not blonde, not tall, definitely not Scandinavian) and Dr. Meg Fielding (scruffy, scatterbrained, prone to swearing at patients) are lifelong best friends, sharing the same deprived background and occasionally the same bed.When a violent kidnapping stuns the Peak District village of Rowlee, both women become involved in the case.

As Sanne and her colleagues in East Derbyshire Special Ops search for the culprit, and Meg fights to keep his victim alive, a shocking discovery turns the investigation on its head. With the clock ticking, Sanne and Meg find themselves pushed closer by a crime that threatens to tear everything apart.

Faye Blakemore is a photojournalist for a major New York newspaper. Faye has been taking photos since she was a small child, taught by her photographer grandfather, after spending hours in the strange blood-red light of his darkroom. Now Faye specializes in what one reviewer calls, "blood-and-guts journalism." Her first book of photos is as celebrated as it is controversial—and as harrowing.

Faye convinces her editor to send her to Afghanistan and the Congo to report on the acid burnings, the machete attacks, and the women survivors. Yet that series of assignments—each darker and more dangerous than the next—brings Faye closer to her both her own demons and to the family secrets that still haunt her and threaten to destroy her and the woman she loves.

Winner of the Lambda Literary Award (Lesbian Mystery) and the IPPY Bronze Medal (Horror).

Midnight, New York Harbor, 1949. Cantor Gold, dapper dyke-about-town, smuggler of fine art, waits in her boat under the Brooklyn Bridge for racketeer Gregory Ortine. In the shadow of the bridge, he'll toss Cantor a satchel of cash, and she'll toss him a pouch containing a priceless jewel. But the plan, and the jewel, sink when a woman in a red sequined dress drops from the bridge and slams onto Cantor's boat. She is Opal Shaw, Society Page darling and fiancée of murder-for-hire kingpin Sig Loreale. Through a night of danger, desire, and double-cross, Cantor must satisfy Loreale's vengeance, stay ahead of an angry Ortine, and untangle the knots of murder tightening around Opal's best friend and keeper of her dirty secrets, Celeste Copley, a seductress who excites Cantor's passion but snares her in a labyrinth of lies. The lies explode in a collision of love, loyalty, lust"...and death.

A Cantor Gold Crime Novel.

Ex-Chicago cop and new PI Josie Harper has been hired by an outside group to clear the name of publisher Lauren Wade, recently acquitted of the murder of her lover. That means finding the real killer, a task made more difficult by Lauren's unwillingness to cooperate and a large family problem—Lauren's parents have been kidnapped for a ransom she can no longer pay. Josie has a big challenge of her own: how to redeem herself after losing her job as a detective. When Josie and Lauren join forces to rescue the parents, they discover they make a great team, in more ways than one. 

Will Josie's troubled past come back to haunt her? And who did kill Lauren's lover?