ADRIEN ENGLISH MYSTERIES
Fatal Shadows
Contemporary Mystery, Amateur Sleuth
One sunny morning Los Angeles bookseller and aspiring mystery author Adrien English opens his front door to murder. His old high school buddy (and employee) has been found stabbed to death in a back alley following a loud and very public argument with Adrien the previous evening.
Naturally the cops want to ask Adrien a few questions; they are none too impressed with his answers, and when a few hours later someone breaks into Adrien’s shop and ransacks it, the law is inclined to think Adrien is trying to divert suspicion from himself.
Adrien knows better. Adrien knows he is next on the killer’s list.
A Dangerous Thing
Contemporary Mystery, Amateur Sleuth
In this second LA-based adventure, bookseller Adrien English arrives at the Pine Shadow Ranch (left to him by a beloved grandmother) to find a corpse in his driveway. But by the time the unfriendly local sheriffs arrive, the body has disappeared.
Who are the mysterious strangers excavating on his land? And will he sort out his problems with LAPD Detective Jake Riordan, heavily into S/M sex but not so hot on relationships? Find out in this engrossing, slyly witty thriller.
The Hell You Say
Contemporary Mystery, Amateur Sleuth
Short-listed for a 2007 Lambda Literary Award in the Gay Mystery category.
Demons, death threats…
and Christmas shopping.
It’s gonna be one Hell of a Holiday.
In the third in the popular Adrien English series, the “ill-starred and bookish” mystery writer has to contend with a Satanic cult, a handsome university professor and his on-again/off-again relationship with the eternally conflicted LAPD Detective Jake Riordan.
And, oh, yes, murder…
Death of a Pirate King
Contemporary Mystery, Amateur Sleuth
Gay bookseller and reluctant amateur sleuth Adrien English’s writing career is suddenly taking off. His first novel, Murder Will Out, has been optioned by notorious Hollywood actor Paul Kane.
But when murder makes an appearance at a dinner party, who should be called in but Adrien’s former lover, handsome closeted detective Jake Riordan, now a Lieutenant with LAPD — which may just drive Adrien’s new boyfriend, sexy UCLA professor Guy Snowden, to commit a murder of his own.
The Dark Tide
Contemporary Mystery, Amateur Sleuth
Like recovering from heart surgery beneath the gaze of his over-protective family isn’t exasperating enough, someone keeps trying to break into Adrien English’s bookstore. What is this determined midnight intruder searching for?
When a half-century old skeleton tumbles out of the wall in the midst of Cloak and Dagger Bookstore’s renovation, Adrien turns to hot and handsome ex-lover Jake Riordan — now out-of-the closet and working as a private detective.
Jake is only too happy to have reason to stay in close contact with Adrien, but there are more surprises in Adrien’s past than either one of them expects — and one of them may prove hazardous to Jake’s own heart.
HOLMES AND MORIARITY SERIES
Somebody Killed His Editor
Contemporary Mystery, Amateur Sleuth, Comedy
For sixteen years Christopher (Kit) Holmes has enjoyed a successful career as a mystery writer, thanks to the popularity of elderly spinster sleuth, Miss Butterwith and her ingenious cat, Mr. Pinkerton. But sales are down in everything but chick lit and Christopher’s new editor doesn’t like geriatric gumshoes. It’s a pink, pink world for Kit.
Reluctantly the reclusive Christopher agrees to attend a mystery writer’s conference at a remote Northern California winery. But no sooner does he arrive then the bridge to the outside world washes out. On his trek to the Blue Heron Lodge, Christopher discovers the body of a woman in the woods. If nearly two decades of mystery-writing are anything to go by, the woman doesn’t appear to have died a natural death.
Thanks to the ongoing storm and washed-out bridge, local law enforcement is not able to come to the rescue. Déjà vu! It’s practically like all those classic murder mysteries in isolated country manors that Christopher has been penning for sixteen years! If only Miss Butterwith was on hand. Or even Mr. Pinkerton….
All She Wrote
Contemporary Mystery, Amateur Sleuth, Comedy
A murderous fall down icy stairs is nearly all she wrote for Anna Hitchcock, the “American Agatha Christie.” The cry for help from his old mentor cuts short mystery author Kit Holmes’ romantic weekend with his new lover J.X. Moriarity, and lands him an amateur sleuth gig in an elegant snowbound mansion in the Berkshires.
Unfortunately, a clever killer is still one step ahead of Kit…
A SHOT IN THE DARK SERIES
This Rough Magic
Book #1 in the Shot in the Dark Series
Historical (1930s) Mystery, Private Investigator, Comedy
Josh riffs on the classic Thin Man films (and Shakespeare) with This Rough Magic, the first book in the new, lightly comic A Shot in the Dark mystery series set in 1930s San Francisco.
Wealthy playboy Brett Sheridan thinks he knows the score when he hires tough guy private eye Neil Patrick Rafferty to find a priceless stolen folio of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Brett’s convinced his partner-in-crime sister is behind the theft — a theft that’s liable to bring more scandal to their eccentric family, and cost Brett his marriage to society heiress Juliet Lennox. What Brett doesn’t count on is the instant and powerful attraction that flares between him and Rafferty.
Once before, Brett tok a chance on loving a man, only to find himself betrayed and broken. This time around there’s too much at risk.
But as the Bard himself would say, “Journeys end in lovers meeting.”
STAND ALONE NOVELS
Fair Game
Contemporary Mystery, Thriller
A crippling knee injury forced Elliot Mills to trade in his FBI badge for dusty chalkboards and bored college students. Now a history professor at Puget Sound University, the former agent has put his old life behind him — but it seems his old life isn’t finished with him.
A young man has gone missing from campus — and as a favor to a family friend, Elliot agrees to do a little sniffing around. His investigations bring him face-to-face with his former lover, Tucker Lance, the special agent handling the case.
Things ended badly with Tucker, and neither man is ready to back down on the fight that drove them apart. But they have to figure out a way to move beyond their past and work together as more men go missing and Elliot becomes the target in a killer’s obsessive game…
The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks
Contemporary Mystery, Cozy, Amateur Sleuth
Josh’s first stand-alone novel. His romantic weekend in ruins, shy twenty-something artist Perry Foster learns that things can always get worse when he returns home from San Francisco to find a dead body in his bathtub. A dead body in a very ugly sportscoat — and matching socks. The dead man is a stranger to Perry, but that’s not much of a comfort; how did a strange dead man get in a locked flat at the isolated Alton Estate in the wilds of the “Northeast Kingdom” of Vermont? Perry turns to help from “tall, dark and hostile” former navy SEAL Nick Reno — but is Reno all that he seems?
Mexican Heat
By Laura Baumbach and Josh Lanyon
Crime, Thriller, Law Enforcement
Tough, street-smart SFPD Detective Gabriel Sandalini is willing to do whatever it takes to bring down West Coast crime boss Ricco Botelli —including a dangerous, deep undercover gig as one of Botelli’s hired guns. But Gabriel’s best laid plans may come crashing down around him when he falls hard for Antonio Lorenzo, the sexy, suave lieutenant of a rival Mexican drug lord. Turns out Antonio may have a few secrets of his own: secrets that could destroy both men and the fragile bond between them.
Mexican Heat is a collaboration by long-time M/M favorites Laura Baumbach and Josh Lanyon.
Strange Fortune
Fantasy
Dashing soldier of fortune Major Valentine Strange, late of the Emperor of Alba’s 21st Regiment of Benhali Lancers, is hired by Brahman Ehimay Warrick to find a legendary diadem reputedly hidden in a lost monastery somewhere deep in the distant, snowy mountains of Hidush. To ensure Strange’s success in this quest vital to the future of the politically unstable Hidush, the powerful Holy Orders designate Master Aleister Grimshaw, a powerful young witch with his own history of instability — political and other — to accompany the dashing major. But long before Strange and the unwilling Grimshaw reach the tea bushes of the foothills and the lost city of Nagara, they realize there are forces both natural and unnatural at work to stop them from ever achieving their objective. Their only chance for success relies on each other and their tentative friendship — as does their only hope for survival.
Come Unto These Yellow Sands
Contemporary Mystery, Amateur Sleuth
Once a bad boy, the only lines Professor Sebastian Swift does these days are Browning, Frost and Cummings. When a student he helped to disappear becomes a suspect in a murder, he races to find the boy and convince him to give himself up before his police chief lover figures out he’s involved.
Max likes being lied to even less than he likes sonnets. Yet his instincts —and his heart — tell him his lover is being played. Max can forgive lies and deception, but a dangerous enemy may not stop until Swift is heading up his own dead poet’s society.
