Showing results by publisher "Desert Bookshelf Publishing" in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

In the beginning it was easy and quite lucrative. When wealthy couples, childless and sterile, want to start a family by way of a quiet and private adoption and are willing to spend what it takes, why not help them out? Put together a team and have one of them dress like she belongs, then walk out of the hospital with a newborn tucked in her bag. It worked perfectly in Tampa and then Orlando, followed by Miami a few months later. An easy hundred grand per child split among the four team members.

This audio bundle includes books one to four of the exciting CJ Washburn mysteries: Deserving of Death, Sailing into Death, Angel of Death, and Never Surrender to Death.

Parker DuPont is a family man, with a wife, three children, and sister. As happens to many men Parker’s age, he faces the mid-life thing, and decides he wants to hang his own shingle, rather than spend the next 20-plus years as a St. Petersburg police detective. Private investigator sounds very appealing, and so off he goes into the private world to become his own boss. Welcome to his world.

One might say that CJ Washburn is obsessed with Stella Summers. After all, common sense all but takes flight when she goes missing for a time. How could he not think to check his email or voice mail or not find the note she had left in his apartment? He runs to the scene of a body dump in fear that it is her, possibly the third victim in what appears to be turning into a serial killing rampage. "And this guy calls himself a private investigator?" A private investigator he is, and a good one at that.

Lester Winters, in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, submits to an experimental procedure (a pacemaker for his brain) to restore his memory. He first recalls a dead woman who, it is assumed by his wife, is his mother from years past. As weeks go by and Lester’s "pacemaker" does its job, he recalls that it is Caroline who is dead, not his mother. His wife decides that it’d be prudent to hire an attorney to help find the answers. The attorney hires Parker DuPont, who soon discovers there is a lot more to Lester’s memory than just a dead woman by the name of Caroline.

Sky Deakins doesn’t believe that her husband committed suicide; however, to get to the truth she may have to reveal a secret that she’s kept close to her heart for 23 years, 22 of which she has been a widow. It’s a secret that she’s thinking she may not want to take to her grave anyway. At 80 years of age, that time may not be far off. And what does the 2016 future senatorial candidate, Dallas Maguire, have to do with any of it? And what about Gracie’s secret? Will Randi Leigh make Parker an uncle? Can Parker and his dad actually become friends?

Detective Parker DuPont turned in his letter of resignation (he forgot to tell his wife) and is just weeks away from officially hanging his PI shingle when he catches his first case. At first, he thinks it’s a joke being played upon him by a colleague jokester. It is certainly not a joke. Charlie Porter was struck by a golf ball and killed on the sixth fairway of a Riverview, Florida, golf course. Accidental death by golf ball, it is ruled. But there are no witnesses, nor does anyone come forward to fess up to being the individual who hit the ball.

The P.I. team, CJ Washburn and his wife, Stella, the former Stella Summers, have been married only a few days when they head out on their honeymoon to New Zealand, the land of sailing, penguins, and volcanoes, as well as a bloody bedroom of death. Liam Henwood and two of his young children were brutally murdered in their Papatoetoe home while his wife, Chloe, and oldest daughter were away in the States. Now the devastated pair are on the plane with the Washburns, flying home to bury their family.

Jo'Baer has his team and his weapon. He had the maps and instructions for the target until he lost them. And everything was going so well. So much for keeping a low profile in this little Montana hick-town. Now he must kill to get the documents back. And he's running out of time. For some strange reason Maureen entrusts an envelope to her best friend, Natasha.

Imagine recreating the saber-toothed cat for fun? The possibility sounds exciting, but the reality could be nightmarish. In James Paddock’s new novel, Smilodon, the main character is drawn into in a world where man becomes the hunted. It is fast-paced fiction, where cats change the rules and people run for their lives.

Alexandria's father walked out of her and her mother's lives five years ago. Now Alexandria has been murdered. Her killer is dead; case closed. Does her father deserve to be told of his daughter's death even though he abandoned his family? According to Alexandria's aunt, yes. First, he must be found, and who better to find him than Private Investigator CJ Washburn? After all, wasn't it because of CJ that she wound up dead in the first place, targeted by a deranged killer?

After eight years, Zechariah Price assumes it is all behind him. Nightmares filled with huge sabre-toothed cats and women screaming still leave him in cold sweats, though less often. He had lost an eye the first time around; Tanya had fractured her back; their marriage had petered on the brink. There was no way he or any of his family was going to set foot in that Montana wilderness again.

CJ and Stella are to be married in eight days. Yes, finally, they are doing the deed. They've been declining new, involved cases (Stella is now a licensed P.I.) in preparation for the honeymoon to New Zealand, but the call from Parker DuPont in St. Petersburg, Florida has them on a private jet and then settled into a luxury stateroom aboard the French super yacht, Angel of Paradise. They have their own steward who calls them monsieur and mademoiselle. Their client, and yacht owner, billionaire Édouard Philippe Monnier, is paying three times the going rate.

Hieronymus is not only ready to die, he wants to die. It’s his time; however, the laws of Florida forbid him from carrying it out on his own. Self-murder, they label it. How many of the youngsters - a title he freely applies to anyone under the age of 65 - who put their blessings on such a law would change their minds about the whole self-murder thing once they, themselves, come to realize their days are at an end, that there is no point in trying to hold on, that there is no longer a life while certain death hoovers about them like a cold fog?

Three weeks after her mother’s death, Rebecca (Reba) Price cannot stand the oppressiveness filling her Texas home. Her sister, aunt, and maybe even her father blame her. She cannot disagree. Hacking into her father’s accounts she takes what she sees as her rightful inheritance and escapes to school in Montana. She convinces herself it’s not to be near where her mother died nor near the sabre-toothed cats. However, as her freshman year ends, she is drawn back into those mountains.

Three women in black gaze over the cemetery during Zach’s memorial in Texas and then again later in Montana as they prepare to mix his ashes across Lake Tanya so that the two, Zach and Tanya, can finally be back together. It’s the events in between that have their daughters, Reba and Christi, wondering if they’re on the road to a future as old maid cat sisters. Then Jaxton and Myranda Burchfield knock on their door wanting their help in finding out their origins. Were they several of the cloned babies born in the bowels of Sans Sanssabre in the early '90s?