Crooked Roads: Crime Stories

Crooked Roads: Crime Stories
Author: Alec Cizak
Publisher: All Due Respect, an imprint of Down & Out Books
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2018-02-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

You want heartfelt sensitive stories about the mid-life crisis of a middle-class white guy? How about ironic tales of suburban marriages where the love has faded? Yeah, if that’s what you want, pick up some other book, because Crooked Roads, Alec Cizak’s first short story collection, is not for you. This book is about real humans in the real streets of cities and small towns. People who are messed up, people at the edge of things—at the edge of sanity, at the edge of morality, at the edge of legality. Criminals, the homeless, the depraved, the perverted, and just normal folk at the end of their rope. Go ahead, pick it up, give it a read. We dare you. Praise for CROOKED ROADS: “With fists pounding against cliché and convention, Alec Cizak creates prose that is bold…and bloody.” —David Cranmer, author of Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles, and publisher of Beat To a Pulp Books

Crooked Roads

Crooked Roads
Author: Alec Cizak
Publisher:
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2015
Genre: Crime stories, plays, etc
ISBN: 9780615815411

Crooked Snake

Crooked Snake
Author: Lovejoy Boteler
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2019-02-19
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1496821726

In 1968, during Albert Lepard’s fifth escape from a life sentence at Parchman Penitentiary, he kidnapped Lovejoy Boteler, then eighteen years old, from his family’s farm in Grenada, Mississippi. Three decades later, still beset by half-buried memories of that time, Boteler began researching his kidnapper’s nefarious, sordid life to discover how and why this terrifying abduction occurred. Crooked Snake: The Life and Crimes of Albert Lepard is the true story of Lepard, sentenced to life in Parchman for the murder of seventy-four-year-old Mary Young in 1959. During the course of his sentence, Lepard escaped from prison six times in fourteen years. In Crooked Snake, Boteler pieces together the story of this cold-blooded murderer's life using both historical records and personal interviews—over seventy in all—with ex-convicts who gravitated to and ran with Lepard, the family members who fed and sheltered the fugitive during his escapes, the law officers who hunted him, and the regular folks who were victimized in his terrible wake. Throughout Crooked Snake, Boteler reveals his kidnapper’s hardscrabble childhood and tracks his whereabouts before his incarceration and during his jailbreaks. Lepard’s escapes take him to Florida, Michigan, Kansas, California, and Mexico. Crooked Snake captures a slice of history and a landscape that is fast disappearing. These vignettes describe Mississippi’s countryside and spirit, ranging from sharecropper family gatherings in Attala County’s Seneasha Valley to the twenty-thousand-acre Parchman farm and its borderlands teeming with alligator, panther, bear, and wild boar.

Danger Road

Danger Road
Author: JOHN P. CONTINI
Publisher: Liberty Hill Publishing
Total Pages:
Release: 2017-05-31
Genre:
ISBN: 9781545606483

Liberty Press announces the release of Danger Road: A true crime story of murder and redemption, by criminal defense lawyer and author John P. Contini. Contini was the trial lawyer who defended Gilbert Fernandez, Jr., the former Miami-Dade police officer once named, Miamis Meanest Cop. Danger Road is the riveting courtroom drama that recreates the true crime story of three drug dealers who were brutally murdered in 1983 on a lonely stretch of dirt road - ironically named Danger Road, in the Florida Everglades. Each victim had hoped this final drug deal in Hollywood, Florida would be their big retirement score. Instead, the drug dealers allegedly found themselves at the end of a gun wielded by Metro Dade officer Gilbert Fernandez, Jr., and eventually along Danger Road in Miamis Everglades. Fernandez, formerly known as a Mr. Florida bodybuilding champion, kick boxing champion and black-belt karate instructor, was also alleged to be the muscle for the mob in South Florida. He and his crew were not there to arrest the drug dealers that night, according to police - they were there to kill them and steal their nine kilos of cocaine.

Suicide Lounge

Suicide Lounge
Author: Greg Barth
Publisher: All Due Respect, an imprint of Down & Out Books
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2018-01-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Selena has settled in to being a crime boss with her cronies at the Red Light Lounge. But when a sadistic drug dealer attempts a bloody takeover of their territory, loyalties are strained and alliances broken. All forces are aligned against Selena, including her most lethal enemy—her own self-destructive lifestyle. Never one to back away from a fight, Selena puts all chips on the table and lets the dice fly. Suicide Lounge is the third book in the Selena series. Praise for the SELENA SERIES: “Greg Barth cooked up something mean and served it up and I hope none of you choke on it because it’s mighty tasty.” —Eryk Pruitt, author of Hashtag and Dirtbags “It’s like the wildest of the men’s adventure novels of the ’70s, updated for the new millennium. Definitely not for the faint of heart.” —Bill Crider “Reminiscent of Larry Brown’s Fay, but less innocent and more violent, Selena combines fine writing and an indelible character to help fill the gap of female protagonists in the world of noir.” —Vicki Hendricks, author of Miami Purity “Greg Barth writes with a knife-like edge…A fast, crazy read.” —Marietta Miles, author of Route 12 “Greg Barth writes a hell of a book. He steps on the gas and doesn’t let up for a second.” —Michael Finamore “Mister Barth writes well—hard charging and fast paced.” —Tony Knighton, author of Three Hours Past Midnight “This book had me turning pages and gritting my teeth…a total punch to the gut, and it hurts so good.” —S. W. Lauden, author of Crosswise “Selena is a visceral pulp thriller that had me gripped from the outset.” —Tom Leins, of Dirty Books Blog “This series is a literary legend in the making” —Will Viharo, author of Love Stories Are Too Violent For Me “Selena is a tour de force of unapologetic sex and violence, not for the faint of heart but definitely for hardcore fans of fast paced, unrelenting pulp-noir in the fashion of nobody except Greg Barth.” —Shane D. Keene

Meat City on Fire and Other Assorted Debacles

Meat City on Fire and Other Assorted Debacles
Author: Angel Luis Colón
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2017-12-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Angel Luis Colón invites you on a short tour of the world as a literary mix tape to that strange goth girl with the lazy eye who still wants nothing to do with you; no matter how good that fedora looks on your head. So what’s in store for your brain? Follow three major moments in the life of gambling addict and mafia muscle, Sean Clarke as he goes from softhearted kid to full blown bastard to broken old man. Thrill at the short-lived and incredibly violent courtship, marriage, and honeymoon of Hank and Annie. The set of the country’s most popular trash TV talk show is appropriately trashier than what makes the air. Beards make absolutely terrible trophies. Sometimes you’ll crawl through the fire and smoke for a chance at a semi-decent score and a way out of working in a place called “Meat City”. All that along with even more violence, revenge, Lee Van Cleef, light sex crimes, and cannibals than you can shake a stick at!

Bitter Water Blues

Bitter Water Blues
Author: Patrick Shawn Bagley
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2018-03-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Joe Collins used to be Joey Connolly, alias Joey Kotex, an infamous enforcer for the Petucci crime family. He left that world behind to run a blues club in Chicago, but Carl Petucci finds Joe and forces him to do one last job. Joe’s assignment takes him to Wesserunsett, a small Maine town that has seen better days. With a friend’s life at stake, Joe must kill a porn director and recover a video starring Petucci’s niece. Easier said than done, as the target’s girlfriend, Wanda, is a Wesserunsett cop. Then there’s Hag, a wannabe hitman, and his buddy Earl. Hag’s looking to make a killing in the killing business. As Joey, Wanda, and Hag each pursue their own agenda, they move ever closer to a bloody showdown. Praise for BITTER WATER BLUES: “A glorious boilermaker of noir and East Coast gothic. The action is as taut as a sprung snare and Bagley tightens the screws with every page.” —Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase “There ain’t much quaint and cuddly about Patrick Shawn Bagley’s Maine, where the only folks more dangerous than the thugs and gangsters From Away are the locals. Bagley sandblasts the chipped veneer of small-town charm to expose the rot beneath. Bitter Water Blues is a vivid, unflinching portrait of desperate people struggling at the margins of society to survive.” —Chris F. Holm, author of The Collector trilogy and The Killing Kind “Bagley’s debut novel is pitch perfect crime fiction, as dark and raw as it gets with a rich tapestry of intersecting characters who bring a beleaguered blue collar New England community to life with the style and powerful punch of a seasoned veteran…a story of redemption and revenge, second chances gone awry, double-crosses and finding loyalty where it counts, even if a little too late…a refreshingly masterful new voice in noir, and highly recommended.” —Ed Kurtz, author of Nothing You Can Do

Texas Two-Step

Texas Two-Step
Author: Michael Pool
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2018-04-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Cooper and Davis are a couple of jam band-obsessed Texas ex-pats growing some of Denver’s finest organic cannabis and living the good life on tour. Or, at least they were, until legal weed put the squeeze on their market and cramped their playboy lifestyle. When their last out-of-state distributor gets busted by an Illinois task force, they're left with no choice but to turn to their reckless former associate Elroy “Sancho” Watts to unload one last crop down in Teller County, Texas. But Sancho Watts has troubles of his own in the form of Texas Ranger Russ Kirkpatrick, tasked under the table with nailing Watts for anything that will stick because of his involvement in the drug-induced suicide of a state senator's son. Not to mention his infamous new business partner, Heisman quarterback and NFL burnout Bobby Burnell, a man working to rise from the ashes of his self-destructed football career by making a name for himself in his criminally inclined Teller County family, no matter who he has to double-cross to get there. What ensues is a pine-curtain criminal jamboree where everyone involved keeps their cards close to their vest, and all the high-stakes two-stepping is sure to result in bloodshed.

The Geneva Connection

The Geneva Connection
Author: Martin Bodenham
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2018-03-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Brilliant investor John Kent is living his dream. The success of his private equity firm has propelled him into the ranks of the world’s super-rich, allowing him to give his family the security and advantages he didn’t have in his own childhood. But John’s dream is shattered with the discovery that his largest investor is bankrolled by the most vicious drug cartel in Mexico. Then one of his partners is murdered to guarantee his silence, and John realizes he cannot cooperate with the authorities. When the ambitious head of the DEA threatens John with incarceration, his nightmare is complete. If he resists the DEA, what will happen to his family while he’s imprisoned? But the alternative is worse. For if John chooses to betray the cartel, he and his family will pay the ultimate price. Praise for THE GENEVA CONNECTION: “The Geneva Connection has a menacing opening with a hook and a barb to make the hook stick. Thriller readers are hooked, barbed and immediately reeled in. The narrative mesmerizes from the outset. The pace is swift and the action enough to make any reader’s toes curl in frightening expectation.” —Art Cockerill, Writer and Journalist “I couldn’t put The Geneva Connection down once I started it. The intricate plot, laced with just enough background information to make it realistic and understandable, takes twist after turn until you reach the final destination, white-knuckling it all the way. An intense thrill ride through the world of investment banking, drug cartels, and money laundering.” —Long and Short Reviews “Novelist Martin Bodenham has penned The Geneva Connection, a thriller straddling the City, the English countryside, Mexican back roads and the US Drug Enforcement Administration. With this page-turner, Bodenham aspires to do for fund managers what John Grisham has done for lawyers.” —Corporate Financier Magazine “Bodenham, a dealmaker who made his name in the cut and thrust world of turnarounds, is a fine writer of thriller fiction.” —Real Deals Magazine