by admin | Aug 15, 2025 | Thriller & Suspense |
The dead need to stay dead
Maribeth thought she’d found a safe haven, but evil has other plans. Living alone in a cabin in the woods, Maribeth hopes to heal from the loss of her family to a serial killer the hunted as a detective. Haunted by her memories, she lives broken and scarred, trying to find a peace in the darkness.
When she finds a murdered woman left for her in the woods, she knows her simple life has changed forever. The woman looks like her dead daughter right down to the mark carved in her chest. The killer has returned.
Maribeth must either fight for her life or give up and join her family in the grave. Except her family’s murderer has been dead for two years. Who, or what, hunts her now?
A haunting mix of adventure and psychological thrills. Explore the limits of what one woman can endure and still triumph. A reading experience you won’t forget.
Thriller readers, like you, are saying, “Takes you by the throat on the first page and grips you until the wow of an ending.”
Clear your schedule and delve into a world of secrets and bravery in this addictive suspense thriller.
The masterful first book in the Maddison, Indiana Thrillers series.
Book 1 – I Killed You Once
Book 2 – Inheriting Elyse
Book 3 – Cage of Invisible Bars
Book 4 – 13 Doors
Book 5 – Jars of Things
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Enjoy this short excerpt:
My dog, Indy, turns on the wooded path, unsettled and blocking my way like he is spooked by a dead animal.
I push past Indy and jog over the small hill and around the turn in the trees.
I should have trusted the dog. The body propped against a tree is most certainly dead, but she’s not an animal.
Skittering to a stop, I slide down the snowy path and land on my rear.
The young woman sits against the tree, her dark hair, so much like Lilly’s hanging over both shoulders. The hair frames the mark carved on her chest.
The Roman numeral two.
For a moment, I think I’m seeing Lilly. Maybe she’s just playing a cruel trick on me.
But this young woman is really here, and Lilly never is.
My chest hurts, and I gasp for air. Indy paces next to me, whining, urging me to leave.
I crawl to the young woman instead, taking in details with my long-unused detective’s eye.
The bloody mark on her chest has already frozen into tiny clinging crystals.
The mark of Jesse Franklin, but Jesse Franklin has been dead for two years.
She wears no shoes, but her socks are soaked and dirty. She’d been forced to walk here through the snow, terrified and freezing. My heart aches for the woman in a rush of emotion that nearly breaks me.
I don’t touch her or get too close, preserve the snowy crime scene. Two sets of footprints lead to the tree from the direction of the access road nearby. Only one set of prints lead out. It was too easy for someone to leave the girl on my path.
My path.
The realization sinks like a stone.
Whoever did this knew where he left her. He brought her here for me to find. A killer has been in my woods. A killer who knows just how to torture me.
I’m on my feet and sprinting back towards the cabin before Indy realizes I’d intended to move.
I run like the devil is on my heels.
Because he is.
——–
Find out what happens next, enjoy I Killed You Once today.
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by admin | Aug 15, 2025 | Mystery |
“A heroic PI, a certifiable serial killer, and a captivating cat burglar …”
Private Investigator Nicoli, “Nikki,” Hunter has recovered from a near-fatal encounter with a multiple murderer and is happy to get back to her routine bar and restaurant surveillance jobs. Unfortunately, the universe has other plans. One evening, as she’s acting as a decoy/victim to attract a bartender accused of sexual assault, Jack, “The Cat,” McGuire settles on an adjacent bar stool and tells her a story that will change the course of her life.
Murder Over Cocktails is the second mystery featuring PI Nikki Hunter, a thirty-six-year-old, gun-toting, brainy beauty who excels at getting into other people’s business. Hunter’s office is in a marina complex in Redwood City, California, where she also lives aboard a forty-six foot Cheoy Lee sailboat.
by admin | Aug 15, 2025 | Mystery |
MURDER TO THE PEOPLE
The sixties aren’t just a bad memory in the tenth riveting installment of Dennis Carstens’ Marc Kadella legal thriller mystery series. Bucked up by global warming, socialist politics, and hormones, a group of college students model activism-run-amok when the urge to “do good” turns to corruption, armed robbery, embezzlement, and murder.
Professor Ben Sokol is exactly as you’d image him: a single, fifty-something-year-old history teacher, schooled in radical anti-Reagan pacifism of the 80s; an underappreciated, self-believing genius—with a dose of rage bubbling just beneath the surface.
Seemingly taking a page out of A People’s History of the United States, an out-of-left-field lecture pronouncing that capitalism itself caused the Great Depression lands Ben in the driver’s seat he’s always dreamed of: the darling of the impressionable Midwest State-Minnesota University student body and High Priest of the Left.
But when a student named Luke approaches Ben, distraught by family tragedy, the socialist professor and his trusty pupils trade their “Save the Whale” bumper stickers in for ski masks—and hatch a plot to rob the very banks that bankrupted Luke’s grandfather and left him for dead.
Meanwhile, hotshot attorney Marc Kadella is batting clean-up for the world’s most acrimonious divorce proceedings—fodder for entertaining distraction amid the pulse-pounding bank heists. But Marc’s case is about to get uglier: because it’s about to lead to murder. And that murder, coincidentally, is tied to Lake Country Federal—the very same chain of banks Ben and his band are targeting.
Like worker bees swarming around their queen, Ben’s students are oblivious to the corruption corroding their social justice cause (Ben’s purchase of a late model BMW is just the tip of the iceberg). With Tony “Tell It Like It Is” Carvelli and Maddy “Secret Weapon” Rivers hot on their tails, the kids are bound to get caught. And someone’s bound to get hurt—or worse.
Ever wry and cunning, author Dennis Carstens pulls no punches here. Conservatives will love the abundant political commentary, peppered in throughout nail-biting thriller action and engaging courtroom drama. And series fans will revel in Tony Carvelli and Maddy Rivers’ basking in the spotlight—a comeback of one of the private investigator genre’s most satisfying dynamic duos.
For readers who like their legal thrillers smart and conservative. Fans of John Grisham, Richard North Patterson, Brad Thor, John Ellsworth, and Scott Pratt will be in heaven.
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by admin | Aug 15, 2025 | Mystery |
It was supposed to be easy…it turned out to be murder.
In the thrilling start to the Trask Brothers Murder Mystery Series, identical twin brothers Dave and Don hunt a silent killer terrorizing anglers in the great north woods.
“Spellbinding! I could not put it down. It will keep you on the edge all the way to the end.”
When Dave Trask ran for sheriff of wild Lake County, he thought the job would entail locating lost campers and catching poachers, and he didn’t really expect to get elected. He was wrong on both counts.
Before he can be sworn in, two guests at a small fishing lodge are discovered brutally murdered. As Dave surveys the murder scene, he becomes aware of two things: he has an inexperienced staff and he will be looking for a killer who walked up to his victims unseen and then disappeared into the wilderness.
As the murders continue, they threaten to destroy the tourism business vital to the county and set off a war between lodge owners and Native American guides. Dave feels his only choice is to enlist the help of his identical twin Don, lead agent for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. But their hunt for the killer does not go as planned.
“Great story! Reminds me of something William Kent Krueger would write.” – Jack B.
“This was a great beginning to the series.” – Kindle Reader
“The story, set in the wild country of Minnesota, captured my interest from the start – and kept it to the very last page.” – George P.
Readers of John Sanford, William Kent Krueger, Tami Hoag, James Patterson and like authors will enjoy this fast-paced psychological mystery.
Start reading the first installment in the highly rated Trask Brothers Murder Mystery Series today!
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by admin | Aug 15, 2025 | Mystery |
AN IRRESISTIBLE TREAT FOR FANS OF JOHN GRISHAM
Move over, Jake Brigance. No-nonsense, world-weary Minneapolis lawyer Marc Kadella shines through gritty, street-wise narrative in Dennis Carstens’ action-packed legal thriller series, sure to please fans of courtroom drama and classic noir alike.
Marc takes the proverbial road less traveled, going from life as a frustratingly floundering defense attorney to that of a celebrated criminal lawyer, while representing a handful of colorful clients running the gauntlet from vigilante to psychopath. And Marc deftly adapts to each of them. But the hero’s journey is only part of the fun. You can almost see the men sporting fedoras, and the babes would stop traffic even without the cleavage Carstens makes their standard attire. And there’s a contemporary angle sure to please fans of both sexes—the toughest guy in the series is gorgeous investigator Maddy Rivers.
BOOK ONE – THE KEY TO JUSTICE
Financially embarrassed, getting a divorce, living in a shabby apartment, and distinctly short of clients, Marc Kadella’s beginning to question why he ever went into the law when a friend brings him the case all Minneapolis is watching–defending an accused serial killer. If he wins, it could turn his life around— if he blows it, he better go into sales.
BOOK TWO – DESPERATE JUSTICE
After winning the case of a lifetime, Minneapolis criminal defense lawyer Marc Kadella welcomes the infusion of energy his career is receiving. Another lawyer asks him to represent the co-defendant in a murder trial resulting from a petty crime that spiraled out of control—the somewhat “accidental” murder of the nephew of Vivian Corwin, grande dame of the influential Corwin family.
BOOK THREE – MEDIA JUSTICE
An adorable—and photogenic—two-year-old girl is kidnapped, and, when her remains are found, her twenty-two-year-old widowed mother Brittany is charged with her murder. But before she can even be charged she’s been tried and convicted by the media—with tragic consequences.
BOOK FOUR – CERTAIN JUSTICE
Marc was torn about representing oft-assumed psychopath Howie Traynor—his first homicide case—but even he was relieved when Howie was put away for forty years… Until, a decade later, his case is re-opened. And now not only Howie, but a handful of wrongfully-accused felons are back out on the streets.
BOOK FIVE – PERSONAL JUSTICE
In Dennis Carstens’ fifth hard-boiled legal thriller, we meet the classic black widow. All of Mackenzie Sutherland’s late husbands were millionaires. Each died suddenly and quite mysteriously of massive heart attacks (in spite of no history of heart trouble). And each left their children with nothing—and their young, beautiful bride (of about a year or so) with millions.
No one can resist Mackenzie’s charm. Not her current family attorney, not even sharp, successful lawyer Marc Kadella.
BOOK SIX – DELAYED JUSTICE
Maddy’s new beau, investment analyst Rob Judd, is found brutally murdered in his home—with an unconscious Maddy at the gruesome scene of the crime, clutching the murder weapon. Convinced she was framed, Marc decides to take on the case in spite of his close connections to the client. He finds he must delve deep into the complex money laundering schemes of Rob’s employer to save Maddy from false imprisonment. Or worse.
Carstens’ realistic take on the law as a nuts-and-bolts, often rickety way to make a living blends nicely with his worldly-wise portrayal of backroom deals, crooked cops, and conniving judges and politicians. Now bundled as a page-turning box set in an offer legal drama fans can’t refuse!
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