Death Comes Darkly

Death Comes Darkly
Author: David S. Pederson
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books Inc
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2016-04-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1626396264

JCan a detective and a policeman find love amidst murder? Heath Barrington is an attractive, clever, big city detective, confident, strong, and crazy about police officer Alan Keyes. Down-to-earth, noble, and naïve, Alan struggles with his desires for Heath versus 1940s America and his guilty conscience. JHeath’s skills of deduction and reasoning are put to the test as he and Alan work together to solve the murder of an eccentric millionaire in his mysterious, isolated estate. They search for clues and uncover long buried secrets of the weekend guests while keeping secrets of their own. JIt’s up to Heath to solve the mystery and convince Alan that some secrets aren’t worth keeping, and lust can lead to love.

A Scanner Darkly

A Scanner Darkly
Author: Philip K. Dick
Publisher: Del Rey
Total Pages: 291
Release: 1977
Genre: Impostors and imposture
ISBN: 9780345260642

Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, Fred takes on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D--which Arctor takes in massive doses--gradually splits the user's brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn't realize he is narcing on himself. Caustically funny, eerily accurate in its depiction of junkies, scam artists, and the walking brain-dead, Philip K. Dick's industrial-grade stress test of identity is as unnerving as it is enthralling.

Darkly

Darkly
Author: Leila Taylor
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2019-11-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1912248557

A fascinating journey into the dark heart of the American gothic that analyzes its connections to race and racism in 21st-century America Haunted houses, bitter revenants and muffled heartbeats under floorboards—the American gothic is a macabre tale based on a true story. Part memoir and part cultural critique, Darkly explores American culture’s inevitable gothicity in the traces left from chattel slavery. The persistence of white supremacy and the ubiquity of Black death feeds a national culture of terror and a perpetual undercurrent of mourning. If the gothic narrative is metabolized fear, if the goth aesthetic is

Death Goes Overboard

Death Goes Overboard
Author: David S. Pederson
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books Inc
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2017-04-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1626399085

Gregor Slavinsky went overboard. Or did he? He was murdered. Or was he? It’s up to Detective Heath Barrington and his partner, police officer Alan Keyes, to find out as they search for clues and a missing twenty-five thousand dollars aboard an old lake steamer and throughout 1947 Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They are up against gangsters, con artists, and a very seductive Grant Riker, a fellow policeman who could come between Heath and Alan, upsetting their romance. The three of them race the clock to find the truth amidst lies, secrets, and possible scandal, while riding the waves of a potential love triangle.

Death Checks In

Death Checks In
Author: David S. Pederson
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books Inc
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2018-09-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 163555330X

All Detective Heath Barrington and his partner Alan Keyes want is to get away for a weekend of romance, but they find murder instead when a missing tie leads them to the body of the peculiar Victor Blount, and Heath can't resist the urge to investigate. Who killed Blount, and why? Clues turn up around every corner, but what do they mean? The bloody "W," the green spool of thread grasped in the dead man’s hand, the newspaper left at the doorstep: they all lead down a strange and winding road of mystery and danger. As Heath and Alan work together to solve the case, they encounter various and eccentric suspects, old friends, and a hostile Chicago Detective, Marty Wilchinski, who doesn’t like Milwaukee police involved in a Chicago crime. Forced to act on their own, out of their jurisdiction, they race against time to find the killer before Wilchinski files the case closed.

Puzzles Can Be Deadly

Puzzles Can Be Deadly
Author: David S. Pederson
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books Inc
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2024-05-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1636796168

A bizarre old woman who worships the memory of her lost son. A nun with hidden secrets. A spinster housekeeper with a secret of her own. An angry young man with a troubled past. A neighbor who claims to talk to dead people at seances. Skip Valentine and Henry Finch encounter these eccentric people on their weekend trip to visit Henry’s uncle. When they learn of the groundskeeper who died in a mysterious fire shortly before they arrived, strange occurrences are imbued with ominous portent. The peculiar accidents, ghostly barking, a pounding heard late at night in the creepy old mansion, and a strange old box buried behind the burned-out carriage house all add up to something. Skip yearns to investigate. It’s all so perplexing. But when another death raises the stakes, the puzzle turns deadly. The solution may lie in a curious rhyme told by the groundskeeper before he died, but first Skip and Henry must decipher it.

The Dead and the Dark

The Dead and the Dark
Author: Courtney Gould
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2021-08-03
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1250762022

"Imagine Riverdale crossing streams with Stephen King's The Outsider and you'll get a sense of this gripping supernatural mystery...Gould's debut begins as a snappy paranormal yarn and unspools into a profound story about the complex interplay between grief, guilt, and identity." - Oprah Daily Courtney Gould’s thrilling YA debut The Dead and the Dark is about the things that lurk in dark corners, the parts of you that can’t remain hidden, and about finding home in places—and people—you didn’t expect. The Dark has been waiting—and it won't stay hidden any longer. Something is wrong in Snakebite, Oregon. Teenagers are disappearing, some turning up dead, the weather isn’t normal, and all fingers point to TV’s most popular ghost hunters who have just come to town. Logan Ortiz-Woodley, daughter of TV's ParaSpectors, has never been to Snakebite before. But the moment she and her dads arrive, she starts to get the feeling that there's more than ghosts plaguing this small town. Ashley Barton’s boyfriend was the first teen to go missing, and she’s felt his ghost following her ever since. Although everyone shuns the Ortiz-Woodleys, the mysterious Logan may be the only person who can help Ashley get some answers. When Ashley and Logan team up to figure out who—or what—is haunting Snakebite, their investigation reveals truths about the town, their families, and themselves that neither of them are ready for. As the danger intensifies, they realize that their growing feelings for each other could be a light in the darkness.

Fatal Foul Play

Fatal Foul Play
Author: David S. Pederson
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books Inc
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2024-11-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1636797954

When Milo agreed to accompany his friend Mark for a weekend getaway with six other men in northern Arizona, he did not anticipate a snowstorm stranding them all in their lodge. But they make the best of it. Their biggest concern is how they’re going to entertain themselves until the snowstorm ends. Complicating things for Milo is his secret attraction to Mark, not to mention Mark’s renewed attraction to his handsome ex-boyfriend, Brick, who seems like he wants to rekindle the relationship. But all is not as it seems in their cozy snow-covered lodge. When one of them is found brutally murdered, tension between the friends escalates. It seems that everyone has their secrets, and some of those secrets are proving deadly. Suspicion mounts as each person wonders who is behind the killing, and why. With no way to contact the authorities, it’s up to Milo and Mark to discover which of their friends is the murderer and stop him before they become the next target.

Death Foretold

Death Foretold
Author: David S. Pederson
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books Inc
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2021-08-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1636790852

A traveling spiritualist is found shot to death in an alley late at night with his underwear around his ankles. But the perpetrator is an enigma. Was it the young trick with a drug problem the spiritualist met in the alley? The unusual woman who runs the boarding house where the trick lives? The dead man’s wife, another spiritualist with secrets of her own? The handsome, alcoholic protégé? The beautiful woman who leads the spiritualist’s fan club? Or someone else altogether? With a list of suspects a mile long, only Detective Heath Barrington will be able to crack the murder. But Heath’s handsome fellow detective, Grant Riker, has an unlikely connection to their prime suspect that reveals a shady past he’s ashamed to admit. With more questions than answers, a séance may be the only way to the truth. Or perhaps the answer is in the cards? While Heath searches for the murderer, he uncovers more dark secrets than he bargained for, and witnesses firsthand the relentless pressure for LGBTQ+ people in the 1940s to stay hidden in the shadows.

Death Comes to the Ballets Russes

Death Comes to the Ballets Russes
Author: David Dickinson
Publisher: Constable
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2015-01-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1472113799

London, 1912, and the famed Ballet Russes have come to London to perform. Anticipation is high, for Diaghilev’s troupe is renowned throughout Europe. At the end of their famed performance of Thamar at the Royal Opera House, the Georgian queen stabs her prince to death and throws him into the river. But life mirrors art when the prince is found truly dead, stabbed through the heart in the orchestra pit below stage. But the corpse is not the dancer in the programme. It is his understudy. Powerscourt is summoned to investigate. But who was the intended victim – the understudy, or the star of the Ballets Russes? And the Ballet Russes are not the only Russian visitors in London this season. Lenin, Europe’s most dangerous revolutionary, has sent some bank robbery money to be changed into pounds. There are stolen jewels from St Petersburg to be sold. And there are other darker forces abroad too and Powerscourt has to look death in the face before he can solve the mystery of Death at the Ballet Russes