Poisoned Pen Press imprint: 675 books

2018 Winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction "As one for whom certain story lines and characters have become as real as life itself, Crossing the Lines was a pure delight, a swift yet psychologically complex read, cleverly conceived and brilliantly executed." -Dean Koontz,...

One beautiful Hawaiian morning Storm Kayama walks into her lucrative Honolulu law office to find her adopted uncle, Miles Hamasaki, at his desk, stiff and cold. Years before, Miles had fulfilled a promise to Storm's father to raise Storm with his own family. But now questions emerge about Hamasaki's...

"Talton's summer mystery, a first novel, shows how fertile the desert can be as a mystery setting... A stunning debut." —Booklist STARRED review Having recently lost his job as a history professor, David Mapstone returns to his boyhood home of Phoenix, Arizona, to find the city...

It is 28 CE, the time of the feast of Tabernacles. A servant girl is found in the baths of the palace of King Herod Antipas, her throat cut. Jerusalem is buzzing over the brutal death of a prophet, John, known familiarly as the Baptizer, and Prefect Pontius Pilate wants no more trouble. So he coerces...

It's Passover. Gamaliel and his physician friend, Loukas, are crime-solving a third time - reluctantly. Pontius Pilate has been accused of murder. He denies the crime. If convicted, he might escape death but would be removed from Judea. Those rejoicing urge the Rabban to mind his own business. But...

Ruth Harris, Sherriff Ike Schwartz's fiancée, is involved in a near fatal automobile accident. But Ike is convinced the crash was rigged. Even though he is embroiled in a close election, has no jurisdiction over the investigation, and can find no support in the usual law enforcement community, he...

Desperate Jack Doyle accepts a sketchy job which leads to a deadly game of fixing horse races and murder--of the four-legged kind.... One-time amateur boxer Jack Doyle, an irreverent and rebellious advertising account representative, goes to work one fine Chicago day and finds his desk--and his job--both...

No one really notices that a fix may be in until Matt O'Connor, a Chicago-based columnist for a national racing newspaper, gets a call from Moe Kellman, a horse-owning acquaintance. Kellmans question for Matt: Was the death of ninety-two-year-old Bernard Glockner, Chicago's oldest active bookmaker,...

Seven lifelong friends and racing fans from their student days at the University of Wisconsin strike it lucky at Saratoga Race Track when they combine to win a plus million dollar Pick Six. They subsequently use some of those profits to buy race horses, one of which, The Badger Express, turns out...

The New York Times Magazine piece famously opened: "She has pouting lips and high round breasts. Thousands of men have dreamt of her. Hundreds have chased after her. Two have died in pursuit. Her name is Sirena, she weighs 193 pounds, and she vanished in 1959. Without a trace." Barrett...

  Ex-amateur boxer and failed advertising account executive Jack Doyle, hero of Blind Switch, returns to the world of thoroughbred horse racing at a suburban Chicago track in this new thriller by the author of award-winning Riders Down. With the help of furrier-to-the-mob Moe Kellman, Doyle...

The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing the Modern Whonunit has guided and inspied mystery writersveterans as well as beginners-- for nearly a decade. Here William G. Tapply, with more than 20 popular mystery and suspense novels under his belt, isolates the crucial ""elements""...

With an introduction by Betty Webb. At the age of four, Lena Jones was found lying unconscious by the side of an Arizona Highway, a bullet robbing her of any memories. Now a private detective and scarred survivor of a dozen foster homes, Lena has vowed to find the truth about her childhood. But...

Tom Bridger, who is half Melungeon, thought he had escaped his mountain community's lingering prejudice against the mixed-race group when he left to work for the Richmond, Virginia Police Department. Tom was moving up the detective ranks when a family tragedy brought him back home and moved him into...