Showing results by author "Robert Beers" in All Categories

Vampires don't exist, do they? That is a question Private Detective Tony Mandolin finds himself pondering as the evidence piles up in a case involving a string of dead redheads and the usual dose of weirdness San Francisco has to offer. To complicate things, Mandolin has to deal with the perception that he has become the latest golden boy of the fog city's crime boss. Then there's his cross-dressing friend Frankie.... Just another day in San Francisco.

San Francisco's only PI with an eye into the supernatural, is having one of those months. His bad mood drives him to his local pub where he encounters his latest client, a Leprechaun who's lost his adopted niece, a runaway Dryad, and that's where the problems begin. Some days it pours and when Landau Bain, the city's crankiest wizard, arrives on Tony's doorstep, he knows what's coming down isn't rain.

Someone is poisoning San Francisco's foodies. Tony Mandolin, the fog city's only Private Eye with a view into the supernatural, has been retained to find out whom and why. Unfortunately this brings him to the attention of Medb, the Queen of the Unseelie Court and it seems that Tony's only hope of survival lies in the hands of Landau Bain, the alcoholic wizard, and Bain is cranky.

Over the years, San Francisco's Private Investigator with an eye into the World of the Weird, caps intentional, Tony Mandolin has tackled vampires, demons, dragons, pixies, and various members of the world of the fae, and assorted things beyond description. All of them had one goal, the death of a certain PI. Most of Tony's cases occupy a set of volumes, twelve of them, with more to come. However, a few of those cases were brief enough, pun intended, to fit into a shorter narrative. This collection holds the best of them. Enjoy with a pint of Anchor's best and one of Bunty's dogs.

Ho, ho, frickin' ho… When Santa's elves turn into Tony Mandolin's worst nightmare. San Francisco's favorite supernatural PI is knee-deep in eggnog and regret when the North Pole comes calling—with fists flying. Why is Kris Kringle siccing his pointy-eared minions on Tony? And why are the Bay Area's mob bosses begging Captain Monahan to sic Tony on a holiday-hating interloper who's dismantling their empires faster than you can say "naughty list"? In a city where vampires haunt the holidays and trolls trim the tree with barbed wire, Tony uncovers a conspiracy colder than a winter gale: ...

All families come with their own unique problems, but when that family is a clan of Eastern European vampires led by an extremely wealthy viscount living it up in a luxurious, imported castle, only Tony Mandolin can solve the problem. San Francisco's only flatfoot with an eye into the weird runs into trouble with a pregnant werewolf. Tony swears he never laid a hand on her. Now someone's burning the city's more corrupt citizens alive from the inside out. Needless to say, the city fathers are not pleased.

They were never meant to feel this much. When the exploration ship Magellan is torn apart in deep space, humanity learns the hard truth: we are not alone—and the things out there want us dead. The enemy has no name, only the chilling nickname pilots whisper across the void: Bugs. In answer, Earth’s military does the unthinkable. They fuse the minds of their convicted felons into living supercomputers—quantum-linked warriors who think, move, and kill as one. They call them Tankers. Lad is the newest link in the chain, a convicted innocent from the Star Force Academy. Every time the ...

Six garden gnomes just walked onto Tony Mandolin’s front porch and paid him in golf-ball-sized rubies. That alone should have been the first warning. The second warning should have been when the little red-hatted fellows admitted they’d “lost” their pet… a creature so cute it purrs, so cuddly it begs for belly rubs, and so illegal in every known dimension that even Odin personally banned it centuries ago. Meet the brugiti: part kitten, part nightmare, all appetite.When it gets hungry, it shapeshifts into anything—your neighbor’s labradoodle, the barista with the great smile, ...

San Francisco’s only PI who can see the things that go bump in the night is about to get bumped—hard. Twenty years ago, a little old witch named Nana hired a wet-behind-the-ears Tony Mandolin to break up a protection racket. He did. She paid him in potions that have saved his bacon more times than he can count, then vanished—along with the entire alley her shop sat in. Now Nana’s back, looking exactly the same, acting like two decades is just a long weekend, and Tony’s past is slamming into his present at full speed. High-end restaurants are dropping dead patrons all over again—...

Over the past several years, Tony Mandolin has had dealings with the Devil, old slew-foot himself. During those times, the guy from way down below has wound up on the losing end, but in their last encounter, the Devil lost one of his lieutenants, permanently—and now he is pissed. Tony had been dropped into the fairy tale world by someone Lucifer would prefer you not mention, and while there, San Francisco’s only PI of the weird managed to thoroughly mess up a scheme that had been millennia in the making. So now, even if it gets him a shortcut to the pit of fire, the Devil wants his ...

Does a clone have a soul? Or just a killer instinct? In the fog-shrouded streets of San Francisco, where the supernatural lurks behind every alleyway and the line between myth and murder blurs, Tony Mandolin has faced vampires, witches, and worse. But when his business partner and housemate, Frankie, sees a copy of himself, and the police come crashing in to arrest the said housemate—Tony's world gets a whole lot weirder. The twist? Frankie has proof he was miles away at the exact moment of the crime. Same face, same voice, same DNA. But in a city where fairies plot in the shadows of ...

Tony Mandolin, San Francisco’s only PI to the supernatural, gets yanked through a portal into the Grimm dimension—where fairy tales are real, and a lot darker than the bedtime versions. Snow White’s a scandal-plagued mess, her seven dwarves are horny, and Little Red Riding Hood runs a detective agency with the Big Bad Wolf as her partner. When enchanted murders start piling up and a conspiracy threatens to spill nightmare creatures into our world, Tony has to solve the case with sarcasm, a decent beer, and his partner Frankie. Poison apples, wicked witches, and zero chance of a happy ...

Tony Mandolin’s past just came back to bite him. Hard. San Francisco’s pickpockets are dropping dead, fingertips black with a toxin no morgue has ever seen. The money in their pockets is laced with enough poison to wipe out a city block. Someone is waging chemical warfare on the city’s sleight-of-hand artists… and doing the taxpayers a favor. Until the Vatican decides Tony is the real problem. Turns out breaking up a child-slavery ring that reached into the upper floors of power—and Rome—puts a permanent bullseye on your back. The Jesuits didn’t like the headlines. Now three-...

In a world where prophecy is real and magic comes with a price, two orphaned twins are about to discover they were never ordinary. Adam and Charity have spent their lives at the bottom of the barrel in a sleepy village—poor, parentless, and constant targets for the mayor’s spoiled son. But when an ancient wizard reveals they are the Promised Ones, heirs to the legendary Philosopher King Labad, everything changes. Armed with a sword and bow forged of pure spirit-power, the twins are thrust into a brewing storm: a dark sorcerer named Gilgafed hungers to tear the empire apart, fanatical ...

In the salt-crusted pirate haven of Weller’s Landing, where cutthroats drink beneath the sign of The Angry Tooth tavern, a dying dragon’s only hope lies in a legend older than sin itself: the blood-red Gem of Li—the Gwillt’hir Stone.Belkantihr, once a terror of the skies, now wastes away under an ancient curse. His last chance rests with Bandoor, a jaded mercenary who trusts coin more than comrades, and an unlikely band of outcasts drawn together by desperation and greed.There’s Falu, the sharp-tongued, fox-eared Llwyn bard whose songs hide sharper secrets; Tusse Hull, a mountain ...

The war was only the beginning. Now something far worse is coming. While the Southern Empire licks its wounds and Duke Bilardi descends into madness and dark sorcery, an ancient horror known only as the Destroyer stirs beneath the world. Its shadow stretches toward Grisham like black plague, and the prophecy that began with two orphaned twins is racing toward its bloodiest verse.Adam and Charity—separated by war, politics, and destiny—are finally reunited in the tunnels beneath a dying city. One heartbeat of joy in a storm of steel and sorcery. But joy never lasts long in the Milward ...

Scotland, 1746. The Jacobite dream lies bleeding on the moor of Culloden, and the English Redcoats are burning the glens to ash. Robert MacAllen and Duncan MacDonald—two hard-drinking, harder-fighting Highlanders from Wick—never asked to be heroes. All they wanted was one quiet night at the inn, a dram of whisky, and to forget the faces of the men they lost. But when English dragoons start throwing their weight around, insults turn to fists, fists turn to steel, and suddenly the two friends are outlaws with a price on their heads. Now, hunted across a land crawling with patrols, Robert ...

A cursed luck coin flips San Francisco's supernatural underworld from rigged games to rigged graves—and Tony Mandolin's the only one sober enough to chase it. When a frustrated scientist turns up at Tony's office seeking his lost experiment, an artifact that bends probability like a cheap horseshoe, turning long shots into sure things and sure things into body bags, Tony wonders where he went wrong. When a corpse in the city morgue sits up and begins talking to the ME, Tony figures he needs some help finding this lucky coin. Now every cartel from the Triads to the Russian syndicates is ...

The prophecy is no longer a dusty legend. It is flesh, blood, and fire. A thousand years after Emperor Labad sealed the fate of the world in words of power, the Promised Ones walk the land: Adam and Charity, twin heirs to a throne most believe never existed. But the dark sorcerer Gilgafed knows the truth—and he will burn empires to bury it forever. Separated by war and treachery, the twins face their greatest trials yet. Charity, captive in the gilded cage of the sadistic Earl Cloutier, must outwit a monster who believes her brother is dead and her future belongs to him. Adam, guided by ...

San Francisco’s only PI to the paranormal is back… and this time it’s personal. Tony Mandolin wakes up with a toothache from h***—literally. Someone turned one of his molars into a magical time-bomb set to blow his head into red mist. Thanks to a quick-thinking bartender and a blood-forged pendant that’s running on fumes, Tony survives. Barely. While he’s still looking for whoever wanted him dead, Police Chief Monahan drags him into a new case: a U.S. Congressman impaled through and through with a nine-iron on the 18th hole of America’s snootiest country club. The method is ...