Down Out Books: 337 books

New Orleans attorney Jonathan Brooks is desperate to rebuild his law firm after Hurricane Katrina. Short on clients, he takes the only work he can find: a murky business deal in Ukraine. But after he lands in Kyiv, his client’s executive vanishes. Suspecting foul play, Jonathan enlists the...

Saving a senator’s daughter from LA’s porn industry is one gig that needs serious discretion. But discretion is not Jim Grant’s specialty. Los Angeles, California It’s not long before Grant finds himself on live television busting an armed robbery, spreading his arms wide to...

After being beaten and left for dead, Steven finds himself stranded alongside the 101 in a small Northern California town. When a mysterious stranger named Quinn offers a hand in exchange for help reuniting with his daughter in San Francisco, Steven gets in the car and begins a journey from which...

Frankie Avicious is a hard-luck fellow with a sordid past. Living in a dreary meatpacking town, stuck in a loveless marriage, and spending his days slaughtering cattle, Frankie has nothing to look forward to but his next swallow of bargain whiskey. His wife is threatening to leave him, and the local...

Grip McCormack has never stepped on an ant. But, at seventeen, he shoots his abusive father, Amos, off the roof of their Kentucky home. Go figure. The murder trial dominates the news for months and brings a torrent of notoriety to the agoraphobic young man, along with a string...

Nominated for the 2017 Anthony Award for Best Novella Fantine Park is not the woman her mother was — she's certainly not the safecracker her mother was either. Hell, she's not much of anything useful these days. Fresh off parole after a stint in the joint for a poorly thought out casino robbery,...

"O'Connor's lilting prose beautifies his tale [as he] tackles a serious theme of forlornness with sincerity, buoyancy, and wit." —Kirkus Reviews All families have secrets. Most go untold… In the summer of ’96, Benjamin Hackett has come of age, technically. And in the...

Three linked crime novellas that follow working class antiheroes as they indulge in theft, murder, and lawless shenanigans. Ain’t no cops running things out this way. In “Mesa Boys,” Ronnie plots a haphazard heist with a twisted con man. In “The Feud,” tough-as-nails Rex lets his...

It’s 1981 in Fort Myers, Florida. Scotland Ross hasn’t given up drinking, but he has sworn off of trouble. At a waterside tavern the day the Pope got shot, Scotland drank to cloud the memories of his dead infant son on an anniversary such as this. Distraction comes when the bar owner needs...

Ana Luz is a wily Iraq War vet, getting by working at a laundromat and doing the occasional favor for a neighborhood drug dealer called Espada. Her mysterious boyfriend Cyril convinces her to rip off Espada and sell the product to one of Cyril’s old friends out in Iowa. But the old friend...

Nominated for the 2017 Anthony Award for Best Anthology/Collection *** Proceeds from the sales of Unloaded will benefit the nonprofit States United To Prevent Gun Violence (CeaseFireUSA.org) *** For the first time, more than two dozen crime and mystery authors have joined together to...

Who wants to kill Austin Carr? Everybody. After all, he's a stockbroker. About to be ingeniously murdered — snatched off a private fishing yacht by a live, six-hundred-pound giant bluefin — a down-on-his-luck stockbroker recalls the events and bad choices that precipitated his gruesome...

When Jay Desmarteaux steps out of from prison after serving twenty-five years for murdering a vicious school bully, he tries to follow his convict mentor’s advice: the best revenge is living well. But questions gnaw at his gut: Where have his folks disappeared to? Why do old friends want...

Route 12 is two haunting novellas set in Appalachia in the seventies and eighties. These are stories of people down on their luck—a girl crippled by a bad dose of polio vaccine, a young pregnant woman with no one to turn to, a mother desperate for cash who makes a terrible mistake. In this...