Publisher: Linda Townsdin
In Close Up on Murder, L.A. Times photojournalist Britt Johansson is back in Spirit Lake recharging before her next overseas assignment when two murders and a string of threats against her brother set her in action. Are they hate crimes, a long-buried act of revenge or something else?
A shocking tale of secrets, guilt, and clerical child abuse. “God has made you special, but I will show you how to have an extraordinary life. Show you true love, as God intended for our kind.” It’s 1978. Blackburn Hamlet is a typical suburban village in eastern Ontario. In this vibrant Catholic community, life revolves around family and church. Then the safe comfort of both is destroyed by the arrival of a predator priest. When charismatic Father Sweet invites his new favourite altar boy on a camping trip, the boy’s parents insist he go. Trapped in the woods, the boy struggles to evade the priest’s sexual advances. But Father Sweet forces him to make an impossible choice. Twenty-five years later, he is lost, broken, and angry. His father’s death reveals secrets that spur the man to relive his own past. Desiring justice, in need of healing, he discovers, in a daring rescue mission, a way to achieve both.Show book
Secrets abound at a northern Ontario lodge when a teenage employee is murdered. It’s late summer and a restless Officer Kala Stonechild has taken her foster niece, Dawn, on a canoe trip at Pine Hollow Lodge in the wilderness north of Sault Ste. Marie. But the getaway turns deadly when a teenage girl goes missing on her way home from an evening shift at the lodge’s restaurant. After the girl’s body is found between the lodge and the nearby town of Searchmont, Stonechild reluctantly agrees to help with the investigation. She’s teamed with Clark Harrison, an officer she worked with during her last posting in northwestern Ontario. As the investigation heats up, Stonechild’s past threatens the close bonds she’s forged back home. Will she return to her life in Kingston, or will the rekindling of an old relationship lure her away for good?Show book
A circus arrives in Durham in the 1790s and the whole town is excited… until the body of a Shaker girl is found beaten. 1790s. The circus has arrived in Durham, Maine. Before weaver Will Rees is able to take in its spectacle, he spots Magistrate Hanson – the man he blames for his family’s having to flee Dugard two years earlier. On his journey home he encounters Shaker brothers searching for a girl from their Zion community. Despite women not being allowed inside the circus, Leah had snuck out to visit it. They quickly come across her lifeless body beaten and thrown into a farmer’s field on the road leading to the circus. Bored of his household chores, Rees begins investigating at the expense of his home life. He becomes entranced by the lives of the circus performers, including the charismatic horse rider and tightrope walker. Is his longing for his old journeyman’s life causing him to take his eye off the case, and can he stay out of Hanson’s way and keep his family safe?Show book
In a future that’s lost its soul, a prodigy rises. In the year 2060, an omnipresent network has made humanity into something new. Thought has been hijacked. Emotion has been co-opted. Sensation has been ramped up to eleven, and “what feels good” is all anyone needs. The monolithic O Corporation is the most powerful entity in what remains of the world, having manipulated society’s values for decades in the name of profit. O’s leader Alexa Mathis is genius, ruthless, obsessed with the idea of finding a digital savior nobody else believes in — and swings power even the rulers don’t know she has. Enter Chloe Shaw: too young, too inexperienced, and too naive for the task before her. In name, Chloe is an escort — the highest of the high in a world where sex is queen. But to those who’ve been searching, Chloe seems to be much more. Someone with strange abilities no one can explain. Someone, it seems, who’s able to control the next-gen AI network on the horizon — an omniscient and nearly omnipotent entity known as The Beam. Is Chloe who Alexa thinks she is? As society reaches its tipping point, she must try to stake a claim for our future … before our future is decided by The Beam. Sex sells, yes. But it’s never sold quite like this — with the soul of humanity as its ultimate price. The Future of Sex is a 12-episode, 6-book serial that takes place in Platt and Truant’s award-winning world of The Beam.Show book
“A stylish noir.” — The Globe and Mail on The Drop Zone Retired detective T.J. Peterson is working the table scraps that his former partner, Danny Little, sometimes throws his way. One of them has Peterson hearing from a snitch about a body buried 30 years ago, the same time a drug kingpin went MIA. Peterson is also ducking an ex-con with a grudge, a hitman who likes playing jack-in-the-box with a 12 gauge. Then a former lover re-enters Peterson’s life and begs him to find her daughter, an addict who knows too much about the local drug trade for her own safety. The search for the girl and the truth about the 30-year-old corpse takes Peterson down into the hell of it all, deep into the underworld of crack houses, contract killing, money laundering, and crooked professionals doubling down on their investments of black money.Show book
When Cherringham Drama Society invite a local TV celebrity to direct their Christmas show, they get more publicity than they bargained for. Someone's out to sabotage the event, and rehearsals spin into chaos. Jack and Sarah are asked to investigate and soon discover that there's a darker mystery taking place behind the scenes ... Cherringham is a serial novel à la Charles Dickens, with a new mystery thriller released each month. Set in the sleepy English village of Cherringham, the detective series brings together an unlikely sleuthing duo: English web designer Sarah and American ex-cop Jack. Thrilling and deadly - but with a spot of tea - it's like Rosamunde Pilcher meets Inspector Barnaby. Each of the 12 self-contained episodes is a quick read for the morning commute, while waiting for the doctor, or when curling up with a hot cuppa. For fans of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple series, Lilian Jackson Braun's The Cat Who series, Caroline Graham's Midsomer Murders, and the American TV series Murder She Wrote, starring Angela Lansbury. Co-authors Neil Richards (based in the UK) and Matthew Costello (based in the US), have been writing together since the mid 90’s, creating content and working on projects for the BBC, Disney Channel, Sony, ABC, Eidos, and Nintendo to name but a few. Their transatlantic collaboration has underpinned scores of TV drama scripts, computer games, radio shows, and - most recently - the successful crime fiction series Cherringham. Now into its second season of 12 novellas, Cherringham is popular around the world and has been adapted as a series of audiobooks in English and German.Show book
