Booked for a Hanging - A Dan Rhodes Mystery

Booked for a Hanging - A Dan Rhodes Mystery
Author: Bill Crider
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2019-11-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

The versatile mystery novelist Bill Crider has created a pantheon of marvelous characters, but none is more real, warm, and thoroughly delightful than Sheriff Dan Rhodes of Blacklin County, Texas. In his sixth adventure, Rhodes is confronted with what seems at first to be a suicide: the body of a man newly arrived in the county is found hanged in the dilapidated building he has taken over for his business. Simon Graham was a rare-book dealer. If it seems unlikely to find such an arcane entrepreneur in this extremely rural and sparsely populated part of Texas, it becomes less strange when it turns out that Graham was more con man than bibliophile. The presumed suicide begins to look more and more like murder when several newcomers swoop down on the scene and try to beat out one another to find a reputedly valuable rare book that Graham was rumored to have among his collection of hardly worthwhile items. Although Rhodes's two attenuated and eccentric jailhouse employees have gone overboard for the magic of the department's new computer, the steady, if put-upon, Rhodes and his clear-eyed observations of human nature have invariably been more useful to the solution of a crime—and that is still true in the case of the hanged book dealer.

Goodnight MooM

Goodnight MooM
Author: Jack Maclane
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 1989-01-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

LITTLE HARRY WASN’T LIKE OTHER CHILDREN Harry never cared for reading or writing. He never showed any interest in baseball or TV. Harry lived for other things — like the pleasing sound of living creatures screaming in agony. And the soothing feel of warm blood running through his fingers. But when his grisly experiments progressed beyond stray pets and farm animals to classmates, Harry’s dad decided to lock the boy away for good in the family basement. After all, the neighbors might begin to talk… In the solitude of the dank, musty cellar, Harry waited and grew… and grew… and GREW! And while he waited, he was counseled by his one and only friend — the bright silvery orb in the inight sky that he called “Moom.” Harry spoke to Moom. And Moom spoke to Harry. Moom told Harry what he should do when he finally broke out of his subterranean prison … Moom told Harry to kill… and Kill… and KILL…

Rest in Peace

Rest in Peace
Author: Jack MacLane
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2020-04-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

An Evil Secret Danny West knew that something was wrong from the first day his folks moved into the rundown house next to the creepy graveyard. The neighborhood kids would never come over to play. At night, he saw weird shadows prowling around the crumbling tombstones, and heard strange gurgling sounds. But his parents wouldn’t listen to him. They said he had a good imagination… Then bad things started to happen. Terrible, gruesome things that even scared his dad. There was something in the graveyard. Something in the graveyard. Something that no kid could ever have imagined. Something that should have been left alone to Rest In Peace.

Cursed to Death

Cursed to Death
Author: Bill Crider
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2019-11-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

In tiny Blacklin County, Texas, a curse is nothing more than a four-letter word hollered in a barroom or muttered in the heat. So Sheriff Dan Rhodes is more curious than concerned when he dutifully responds to a complaint of witchcraft. When Dr. Samuel Martin, the local dentist — and unpopular landlord — claims he's been hexed by a tenant, Rhodes does his best to smooth things out between the distressed D.D.S. and the would-be witch. But in two shakes of a black cat's tail, the good doctor disappears... and his wife turns up bludgeoned to death. For Rhodes, it means there's a bad moon rising over Blacklin County. And now he's got to do the voodoo he does best — asking pointed questions and extracting the painful truth from some tight-lipped suspects who also bite...

Dead on the Island

Dead on the Island
Author: Bill Crider
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2017-08-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

PI Truman Smith has become a loner after failing to find his sister Jan during a recent search of Galveston Island. He jogs on the Seawall, plays with his cat, and reads lots of Faulkner books. He is pulled from his self-imposed retirement when his old high school football buddy Dino asks him to find a young girl named Sharon. As Tru begins his investigation, dead bodies begin to appear and Tru himself is attacked. His search for Sharon takes him to all sorts of interesting places on and near the Island. Bill Crider spins a good mystery tale in a wonderful setting with interesting characters and enough plot twists to keep readers guessing until the last few chapters.

Winning Can Be Murder - A Dan Rhodes Mystery

Winning Can Be Murder - A Dan Rhodes Mystery
Author: Bill Crider
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2019-11-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

It's been a while since Sheriff Dan Rhodes's football days, but things haven't really changed, at least not with state playoffs coming up and excitement for the local high school team heating up to a fever pitch. But then coach Brady Meredith is found shot to death in his car, and his murder leads to troublesome rumors concerning illegal betting, black market steroids and the sheriff's old nemesis, a biker named Rapper, who has reappeared in Blacklin County. Too many coincidences for Rhodes's comfort. Especially when another corpse makes it a second down for a killer determined to lead Sheriff Rhodes into a game of sudden death.

Too Late to Die

Too Late to Die
Author: Bill Crider
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2017-08-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Everyone knew her. A lot of them like her. One of them killed her. Jeanne Clinton was a pretty and well-liked woman—though in her younger days she'd been known to be a bit wild. But she married an older man and settled down to a quiet, respectable life. Now she is dead, brutally murdered in her home. Dan Rhodes, the thoughtful, hard-working sheriff of Blacklin County, Texas, has enough to worry about already: a rash of burglaries in town and an election coming up against a hot-shot opponent. Now he's got to find a killer among the residents of his little town—a wily killer, bound and determined not to be caught. The deeper Rhodes digs into the hearts and minds of his neighbors, the more secrets he turned up...and the more violence he encounters. But Rhodes doesn't give up easily. And neither does the killer.

Shotgun Saturday Night

Shotgun Saturday Night
Author: Bill Crider
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2019-11-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Sheriff Dan Rhodes knows it's going to be a bad day when Bert Ramsey arrives at the jail with a neatly wrapped arm and lays it on Dan's desk. He has another out in the truck, he tells the sheriff, and "a couple of legs, too, but they don't match up." To Rhodes's relief, the severed limbs—part of a large cache Bert has discovered while clearing brush—are not evidence of a mass murderer at large in Blacklin County, but something more on a par with the usual emergencies the Texas lawman has to deal with: cows loose in the churchyard, ninety-year-old Mrs. Thurman's periodic attacks of "blindness" (which Rhodes cures by sending out a deputy with fresh light bulbs), and the like. Meanwhile, back at the jail, his attenuated employees are bristling about the new deputy, a highly qualified police officer, but a woman, and the air conditioner has collapsed during the heat wave. Plus his personal life has its own problems; does he or does he not want to marry Ivy Daniel? Then Bert Ramsey is shot to death, and serious crime takes over. A tattoo on the body discloses that Ramsey was once a member of Los Muertos, a violent motorcycle gang from the city, and current members of the gang turn up in Blacklin County. There are questions: Where did the town handyman get the money to buy two color television sets, two VCRs, and a houseful of new furniture? Not to mention six thousand dollars in cash rolled up in a sock in Bert's dresser drawer. Dan Rhodes doesn't have access to the high-tech detection methods of city police—and probably wouldn't use them if he had. Dan has to talk to people and sift the facts from the lies. If he is careful, he believes, and keeps it up, he'll usually get results. "Keeping it up" involves tangling with Wyneva Greer, Ramsey's former girlfriend now living with a mysterious newcomer to the town, Buster Cullens. Buster becomes the next murder victim—of the same killer? Rhodes isn't sure. He soon tangles with the bikers, sustaining a certain amount of damage in the process. Dan Rhodes is, in the words of Newgate Callender of The New York Times Book Review, "a quiet man, an honest man and a stubborn man," and it seems that no amount of violence is going to deter him from getting to the bottom of the murders in his relatively peaceful and beautifully evoked Texas county.

Murder Most Fowl

Murder Most Fowl
Author: Bill Crider
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2019-11-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Following Booked for a Hanging, Anthony Award-winner Bill Crider brings back his amiable, computer-phobic sheriff Dan Rhodes to investigate a murder that may or may not be related to a recent wave of emu-rustling. For an officer of the law, Blacklin County, Texas, used to be pretty peaceful, but now, what with the emu-rustling, cockfights, and protests at the new Wal-Mart store—not to mention murder—Sheriff Dan Rhodes has his hands full. Hit hard by the collapse of his little hardware store, Elijah ("Lige") Ward has taken to chaining himself to the Wal-Mart doors and generally making a nuisance of himself. And when Lige's dead body turns up, floating down a river in a portable toilet, Rhodes finds he has quite a case to investigate. What was the connection between Lige and chickens? Lige and the Palm Club? And was he involved in the area's emu thefts? It seems that raising emus ("taste like steak, not chicken") is a booming business, so much so that emu ("calmer than ostriches and more resistant to disease") are being stolen left, right, and center by would-be emu ranchers with little respect for the law. From theft to murder, the local crime spree seems unstoppable. But with a little help from the computer foisted on him by aging deputies Hack and Lawton, plus some good old-fashioned detective work, Rhodes just may be able to straighten out his county.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Are We Having Fun Yet?
Author: Carmen Morais
Publisher: Pocket Books
Total Pages: 148
Release: 1998
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780671016821

This activity book features Nickelodeon magazine characters such as Zelda the dog and Stick Stickly; games that spoof summer reruns, the heat, and air conditioning; quizzes to test Nick knowledge; summer-themed jokes; a Shelby Woo mystery to solve; and much more!