OAKLAND. A CITY SHAPED BY WATER.

BY MONEY, GREED – AND MURDER.

Jeri Howard worked at an Oakland private investigator firm before she set out on her own. Her former colleague Cal Brady had a history with the bottle. It didn’t end well. That’s why he’s not a private eye anymore.

But Cal reclaimed his life with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now he’s a security guard at a construction site on Oakland’s gritty waterfront. Then Cal’s body washes up in the estuary. Did he fall off the wagon and into the water?

His daughter Madison isn’t buying that story. She thinks Cal was murdered. She wants Jeri to find out what really happened.

Home to ship and rail yards, the waterfront is changing at a breathtaking pace. Long-abandoned industrial sites are being transformed into apartments, condos, and retail spaces. Money to be made, hand over fist. And unscrupulous people doing business their way, ready to push aside anyone who gets in their way.

Jeri delves into what’s happening on the waterfront. What she discovers convinces her that Cal was murdered. But how to prove it?

"A haunting look at Oakland's past clashing with its future. What I love about Dawson's mystery is the deep connection to old California and the battle to save it..." -- Lise McClendon, Blackbird Fly
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A Valkyrie with Haphazard Magic
A Fallen Angel Seeking Redemption
An Unlikely Crime-Solving Duo

***Cross-over series from the A Witch in the Woods series with Shayla Loci and Alex Stone!

What happens when a Valkyrie detective joins forces with a fallen angel who works for the Paranormal Apprehension and Detention Agency? Well, when you add in a kick-butt Valkyrie grandma, a sword-wielding pixie, and a talking cat who majored in sarcasm...you get an unlikely crime-solving team who finds themselves constantly embroiled in hilarious shenanigans.

When Detective Kara Hilder turned forty, she had no idea her shocking birthday present would come from a devilishly handsome fallen angel named Zane. But when Zane sprouts wings and flies her to the supernatural town of Mystic Cove, to see a grandmother she never knew existed...and then drops the bomb Kara is actually a Valkyrie...Kara is convinced she's going crazy. Nothing a couple hormone pills can't fix though...right?

When a famous supernatural musician turns up murdered in Mystic Cove, Zane enlists Kara's help to solve the crime. But when Kara recognizes one of the suspects as Alex Stone's ex-wife, she has no choice but to call Alex and Shayla and warn them Camille has resurfaced. Between learning about her new paranormal powers, trying to discover who her father is, and interviewing vampires, witches, and myriad other supernaturals she never knew existed...Kara finds herself drawn more and more to Mystic Cove and its hidden secrets. Can Zane and Grandma Rota convince Kara she needs to stay in the supernatural world and fight crime with them? Or will Kara insist on returning to Seattle and turn her back on this amazing new world she just discovered? Find out in Book 1, Sounds of Murder, a new paranormal cozy mystery series by Jenna St. James.

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“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.

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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