Böcker utgivna av Crooked Lane Books

A 2022 ANTHONY AWARD NOMINEE for Best AnthologyFrom a simple robbery gone horribly wrong to a grisly murder in a secret love dungeon, this stellar collection of crime fiction short stories showcases some of today's finest voices of color.Edited by Wall Street Journal bestselling author Abby L. Vandiver, this thrilling anthology will keep you on the edge of your seat.Welcome to Midnight Hour...Jennifer Chow: "Midnight Escapade"After years of silence, two women decide to meet up in a unique escape room but get trapped in a deadly game from which there may be no escape.Tracy Clark: "Lucky Thirteen"A gun. A last meal. And only one survivor. Sometimes the stars align--but only for the lucky one--as predator and prey come face-to-face one fateful New Year's Eve.H. C. Chan: "Murderers' Feast"Techpreneur John Manley left a trail of duped investors and damaged women in his wake. What happens when two hundred of his closest enemies gather for a five-day gourmet retreat?Christopher Chambers: "In the Matter of Mabel and Bobby Jefferson"It's almost midnight, it's snowing, and a bored call center worker catches a customer inquiry that smells of murder. Is he a knight rescuing the intended victim or someone else's pawn?Plus, stories by Richie Narvaez, Frankie Bailey, E. A. Aymar, Faye Snowden, Tina Kashian, and many more.

USA Today bestselling author Ellen Byron is back at it with fan-favorite plantation B&B owner Maggie Crozat in a fourth installment of the Cajun Country mysteries. Southern charm meets the dark mystery of the bayou as a hundred-year flood, a malicious murder, and a most unusual Mardi Gras converge at the Crozat Plantation B&B.It's Mardi Gras season on the bayou, which means parades, pageantry, and gumbo galore. But when a flood upends life in the tiny town of Pelican, Louisiana-and deposits a body of a stranger behind the Crozat Plantation B&B-the celebration takes a decidedly dark turn. The citizens of Pelican are ready to Laissez les bon temps rouler-but there's beaucoup bad blood on hand this Mardi Gras. Maggie Crozat is determined to give the stranger a name and find out why he was murdered. The post-flood recovery has delayed the opening of a controversial exhibit about the little-known Louisiana Orphan Train. And when a judge for the Miss Pelican Mardi Gras Gumbo Queen pageant is shot, Maggie's convinced the murder is connected to the body on the bayou. Does someone covet the pageant queen crown enough to kill for it? Could the deaths be related to the Orphan Train, which delivered its last charges to Louisiana in 1929? The leads are thin on this Fat Tuesday-and until the killer is unmasked, no one in Pelican is safe. A simmering gumbo of a humorous whodunit, Mardi Gras Murder is the fourth piquant installment in USA Today bestselling author Ellen Byron's award-winning Cajun Country mysteries.

In an idyllic Colorado town, a young girl goes missing—and the trail leads into the heart and mind of a remorseless killer.The late summer heat in Echo Valley, Colorado turns lush greenery into a tinder dry landscape. When a young girl mysteriously disappears, long buried grudges rekindle. Of the two Flores girls, Marisa was the one people pegged for trouble. Her younger sister, Lena, was the quiet daughter, dutiful and diligent—right until the moment she vanished. Detective Jo Wyatt is convinced the eleven-year-old girl didn’t run away and that a more sinister reason lurks behind her disappearance.  For Jo, the case is personal, reaching far back into her past.  But as she mines Lena’s fractured family life, she unearths a cache of secrets and half-lies that paints a darker picture. As the evidence mounts, so do the suspects, and when a witness steps forward with a shocking new revelation, Jo is forced to confront her doubts, and her worst fears. Now, it''s just a matter of time before the truth is revealed—or the killer makes another deadly move.

In Elle B. White's delightful second Finn Family Farm mystery, farmer Charlotte Finn and her sleuthing baby pig are neck-deep in strawberries and crime.Things are finally growing smoothly on the Finn Family Farm. With the help of caretakers Joe and Alice Wong and farmer Samuel Brown, Charlotte Finn is starting to feel at home at the Santa Barbara County produce farm she inherited. But all is not strawberries and cream: A blight is destroying young berry plants. Worse, another mysterious death is shaking Little Acorn.The victim is grizzled, cantankerous Linc Pierce, the only farmer in Little Acorn whose strawberry crop was fruitful. Charlotte and her old friend Beau Mason find him hanging from the rafter, an apparent suicide. But a cursory search turns up a half-eaten sandwich. Who eats before he kills himself?Chief Goodacre suspects foul play. Her prime suspect is Beau, who exchanged words--and worse--with Linc earlier in the day. Meanwhile, Little Acorn's farmers point accusing fingers at one another, recalling Linc's suggestion that someone sabotaged their strawberries. As Charlotte searches for clues to exonerate Beau, she finds something on Linc's workbench not buried in dust. Could this be why Linc's strawberry plants are alive? And, perhaps, why Linc is dead?Now, if Charlotte and Horse--the farm's baby pig with a bottomless stomach and an insatiable hunger for sleuthing--can't root out the murderer, they, too, may end up dead and berried.