Pen Press: 94 books

In celebration of our 20th anniversary, Poisoned Pen Press has commissioned original short stories from thirty-five of its authors, past and present. Some names will be immediately recognizable to mystery aficionados--Kerry Greenwood with her Phryne Fisher mysteries, now also a popular television...

"Tourists are quite safe provided they don't do anything stupidly reckless," so Captain Owen, the Mamur Zapt, Head of Cairo's Political CID under British Rule, assures the press. But what of Monsieur Moulin, kidnapped from taking tea on the terrace at Shepheard's Hotel? How has Mr. Colthorpe...

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MARTIN EDWARDS 'I'm taking a revolver to Thrackley. You never know with blokes like Carson. I hate these harmless, potty people – they're always up to something.' Jim Henderson is one of six guests summoned by the mysterious Edwin Carson, a collector of precious...

AMERICA IS GONE. THERE IS ONLY ONE COMMUNITY. THERE IS ONLY ONE LEADER. Sixteen-year-old Taylor Jessup knows where her loyalties should lie. She is a Founder, one of the highest-ranking members of her society, and she is engaged to the atheist who will become its Leader. There is no greater...

The year is 548 and Empress Theodora is dead, the victim of cancer. Or so everyone in Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire, believes. Everyone except Emperor Justinian who orders John, his Lord Chamberlain, to find the murderer or suffer the consequences. John embarks on an impossible investigation....

War time Tangier, policed by Franco’s Guardia Civil, thick with many nationalities including Germans and Allies, bitter with the insults of Colonialism, is a dangerous place. Archaeologist Lily Sampson, recruited from her studies in Chicago by the enigmatic Dr. Drury, finds herself in Morocco digging...

It is 1943 and the world is at war. Archaeologist Lily Sampson has been sent to Trans-Jordan by the OSS, along with Gideon Weil, the famous director of the American School of Archeology in Jerusalem. As part of their survey, they roam the beautiful, silent desert where the indelible presence of Lawrence...

Several years have passed since we last saw Rachel Gold. The stunning and savvy attorney was then engaged to be married. Since, she’s become a mother, then a much-grieving widow, and now she is embroiled in a lost cause—the Frankenstein Case—where she represents a blue-collar neighborhood fighting...

When legendary Sheriff Burton Steel summoned his son Buddy home from LAPD Homicide, a reluctant Buddy agreed. Burton is debilitated by ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease. While Buddy is to cover his back, not an assignment he wants, the clincher is it's his last chance to connect with his proud, overbearing...

Zoo keeper Iris Oakley is sent to a remote farm in Washington State to rescue exotic animals after a drug bust. Instead of pets, she finds smuggled parrots and tortoises destined for sale to unscrupulous or unsuspecting collectors. The zoo’s facilities are full, and she ends up with two macaws shrieking...

Irreverent Chicago racetrack publicist Jack Doyle, former advertising man and amateur boxer, accepts a new job as a thoroughbred jockey's agent. His client is a seventeen-year-old riding phenom from Ireland named Mickey Sheehan. Mickey and Jack prove to be an effective team until someone begins secretly...

Even the cozy New England town of Newbury, onnecticut, is not immune to the relentless spread of McMansions carpeting the countryside. Ben Abbott, realtor and private detective, is so incensed that he refuses to sell them. That Ben is not the only citizen of Newbury who is provoked by over-sized, ugly,...

When an old friend buys a trenchcoat and opens his own detective agency, PI Cat DeLuca sees a train wreck. Everything Billy Bonham knows about being a private dick he learned from Humphrey Bogart. And that’s just enough to make him dangerous. The bungling detective is in way over his head on a case...

What does a woman do when she discovers her husband is an incurable cheater? If she’s Cat DeLuca she launches the Pants On Fire Detective Agency. Now Cat does what two years of unholy matrimony taught her. She catches cheaters.When a client (Cleo Jones) shoots her cheating husband’s bum full of...