Linden Publishing

Attention, shoppers! Today’s special is murder!

The Minimum Wage Manhunter is back, bagging groceries and a killer. After solving a murder at his last low-paying job, 20-year-old Li Johnson thought he would never see a corpse again. Unemployed and flat broke, Li catches a lucky break when kindly supermarket clerk Reuben Rodriguez gets him a job at Esther’s Family Grocery. But when a famously vindictive food critic is found bludgeoned to death in the spice aisle, the evidence suggests that Li’s new friend and benefactor might be the murderer.

Determined to clear Reuben’s name, Li sets out to find what really happened to the shopper in aisle six. But getting the truth will force Li to match wits against the city’s shadowy political boss and a homicide detective who hates amateur sleuths. Can a lowly grocery clerk uncover a secret that powerful people want hidden? Once again, Li Johnson delivers fresh value and everyday high quality to the traditional mystery.

Reopening a cold murder case uncovers disturbing secrets … and forces a young prosecutor to an agonizing decision.

Everyone knew Rick Harker was guilty. Twenty-six years ago he murdered Lisa Farrow and set her body on fire. Lisa’s three-year-old daughter Christine identified Harker as the murderer, and he’s been in San Quentin ever since. But now the adult Christine Farrow is recanting her testimony—handing assistant DA Matt Jamison a case that will test his character and his convictions. While Harker’s idealistic attorney demands a new trial, Jamison retraces the original investigation, trying to find if there is any doubt of Harker’s guilt. When Jamison finds evidence of corruption in the DA’s office he is faced with a question that will shatter his lifelong relationships, endanger his career, and threaten his faith in the justice system: Is exposing the truth worth the damage?

A sweeping novel of history, war, and courage in the face of injustice, Tears of Honor tells the story of the heroic Japanese American soldiers who fought against Nazi tyranny in Europe, while their families were imprisoned in America.

Sammy and Freddy are two all-American boys in the summer of 1941, dreaming of becoming professional baseball players and maybe asking a girl to the senior prom. But when the war comes, Sammy Miyaki, Freddy Shiraga, and their families are seen as enemy aliens, not Americans.

In San Francisco and Washington, General John DeWitt and Major Karl Bendetsen (the actual historical architects of the Japanese internment order) wage a bureaucratic war to persuade the government to give legal sanction to their plans to detain the Japanese population.

As the Miyaki and Shiraga families are taken from their homes and placed in internment camps, Sammy and Freddy decide the only way to prove their loyalty to America is to join the Army.

Assigned to an all Japanese American combat unit fighting against the Germans, Sammy and Freddy are placed under the command of the combat-hardened Lieutenant Young Oak Kim (a real-life person and one of the most highly decorated American soldiers in history), who leads them through some of the fiercest fighting of the war. Sammy, Freddy, and their comrades confront the prejudice of white soldiers and the horrors of combat, as they come to realize they are fighting not just for the United States, but for the honor of all Japanese Americans.

In the wealthy Gold Coast enclave of Westport, a feud between mystery writers turns deadly—and retired spy Dasha Petrov must find the real killer to clear her name.

Once one of the most lethal secret agents in the world, Dasha Petrov has hunted Nazis, Communists, and one common murderer (in The Sea Glass Murders, the first Dasha Petrov thriller). But now it’s 1991, two years after that unpleasantness, and Dasha is living a sedate life appropriate to an elderly widow in wealthy Westport, Connecticut, spoiling her grandchildren and innocently flirting with two of her neighbors, the rival mystery novelists Barnaby Jayne and Michael Aubrey.

The two writers, both wildly successful and many times married, cordially despise each other. Dasha thinks they’re just two silly men with big egos, but the writers’ feud boils over into a bizarre series of attacks that starts with a blowgun dart and escalates to booby traps and car bombs. And when Jayne and Aubrey both turn up dead, the evidence points to one suspect—Dasha herself.

Now Dasha has to once again call upon her cunning mind and capacity for extreme violence, honed by her younger years as a Nazi-killing partisan and a top-rank CIA agent. Teaming up with her old allies, Westport police chief Tony DeFranco and local TV reporter Tracy Taggart, Dasha sets out to clear her name, find the real killer, and figure out why she was targeted—while dodging jealous wives, a sleazy tabloid reporter, child spies, and a fearsome Mafia hit man, leading to a tense and dramatic confrontation.

Fast-paced and filled with intriguing characterization, Murder This Closeis a stunning murder mystery with a twisty cerebral plot and plenty of hard-hitting action.

Intrigue, terrorism, history, art, and the secrets of the Church collide in a relentless page-turning thriller.

"An elegant, twisty thriller in which a gay couple investigates a mysterious suicide in a scenic Italian hill town. It's not hard to imagine that this book could do for Orvieto what Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil did for Savannah." –Armistead Maupin, author of the internationally acclaimed Tales of the City

An American couple in Italy investigate the suicide of a cleric in the picturesque Italian city of Orvieto—and find themselves plunged into a conspiracy that may destroy the Catholic Church. In the stunning thriller Upon This Rock, San Francisco business executive Lee Maury and his husband Adriano come to Orvieto to soak in the city's beauty and rich history, but Lee becomes fascinated with a local tragedy, the suicide one year earlier of Deacon Andrea, a much-loved candidate for the priesthood.

Growing obsessed with learning the truth behind Andrea's death, Lee and Adriano stumble upon a conspiracy of terrorism, human trafficking, and a plot to destroy one of the Church's most sacred shrines—all somehow linked across 500 years to Renaissance Pope Clement VII, who escaped to Orvieto after the sack of Rome in 1527. Before they know it, Lee and Adriano's dream vacation becomes a race to save innocent lives—and not get killed in the process.

Somebody wanted Minerva Rus dead. They succeeded. But Minerva isn’t letting a little thing like death stop her. After the dangerous adventure that killed her in Memortality, Minerva Rus has reconciled herself to being dead. She and her also-dead boyfriend Raven share an amazing gift that allows them to bring the dead back to life—including each other. Now that Jules, their most dangerous enemy, has been banished from reality and trapped inside her own mind, Minerva and Raven plan on enjoying the eternity of their unnatural lives.

But immortality isn’t safe. Minerva and Raven’s life-giving powers mysteriously fade, forcing them to take refuge in The Between, a shadowy realm of memories that lies between life and death. What's more, their old adversary Jules is on the loose, partnered with a resurrected Nazi scientist planning a monstrous experiment that will change the destiny of the human race. And now it's up to a 21-year-old dead girl to save the world—again.

Twenty-year old luxury cruise ship waiter Li Johnson is used to the humiliation of trying to satisfy entitled rich jerk customers and a sadistic supervisor, but his problems get even bigger when he finds a passenger sunburned to death on the Sunbathing Deck. Now Li has to catch a murderer before he's framed for the crime or worse, loses his crappy job...

For twenty-year-old Li Johnson, a job as a cruise ship waiter was supposed to be a way to get over his father's death and earn enough money to go back to college. Instead, Li is struggling to maintain his sanity while coping with the demands of a sadistic maitre d' and a boatload of entitled rich jerk passengers. Li just wants to keep his head down and survive his job from hell, but when he finds a passenger sunburned to a crisp on the Sunbathing Deck, something about the scene just doesn't add up. Before he knows it, Li is on the track of a murderer and if Li doesn't find the real killer soon, he might just get framed for the crime -- or worse, lose his crappy job.

A brand-new classic in the amateur detective genre, Sunny Side Up is a traditional murder mystery for the 21st century, with a glamorous setting, a gallery of suspects, clues that will keep readers guessing to the last page, and a delightful new hero in Li Johnson, the millennial minimum wage manhunter, who brings sleuthing to the service economy.

A bookish police detective and his roller derby star partner investigate a quirky mystery involving superintelligent animals, military conspiracy ... and murder.

When a body is found in the River Arts District of Asheville, North Carolina, the man on the case is police lieutenant Ira Segal, recently returned to semi-active status after being shot in the line of duty. Segal, who carries Elmore Leonard paperbacks as security blankets, isn't sure he's up to investigating a murder, and neither is his partner, military veteran and local roller derby star Sgt. Dinah "Dinosaur" Rudisill.

Segal discovers that the victim worked for the mysterious start-up company Creatures 2.0, which trains animals to acquire uncanny capabilities. Creature 2.0's eccentric founder, Francis Elah, has gone missing, and no one can find him, not even Elah's top client, the Office of Naval Intelligence.

As Segal and Rudisill investigate the murder and Elah's disappearance, they meet the bizarre animals Elah trained, including a raccoon who rolls cigarettes, pigeons who follow a priest to church, and a superintelligent crow who keeps bringing evidence to the detectives' attention. When the trail leads to a shadowy military contractor, more murders, and a threat to national security, Segal and Rudisill face a dangerous confrontation, and the only thing they can trust is each other.

Witty, engaging and fast-paced, As the Crow Dies is a mystery that veers from the norm in unexpectedly delightful ways.

A headless corpse tossed in a dumpster unites a small-town cop and a formidable retired lady spy to track a killer in a wealthy New England neighborhood.

A decapitated body burned to a crisp might be found in any dumpster in any city in America, but not in the aristocratic Gold Coast community of Westport, Connecticut. Local cop Tony DeFranco dutifully collects evidence, knowing that the State Police will take over the case. But when the state investigator tries to cover up the murder, DeFranco starts a rogue investigation.

DeFranco forms an alliance with retired CIA case officer Dasha Petrov, whose elderly, ladylike appearance masks a lifetime’s experience with violence and deception. As the body count mounts, DeFranco relies on Dasha’s insights and skills acquired over decades of global troubleshooting to stop a killer operating at the pinnacle of American power.

A glimpse at the sordid underside of position and wealth, The Sea Glass Murders is an action mystery with an immersive, fast-paced plot and unforgettable characters.

Trapped in an isolated old house on Martha’s Vineyard in winter, Diana Barlow is either seeing ghosts or losing her mind …

After an estrangement from her parents, Diana came to Martha’s Vineyard to start a new life with her husband Ford and young daughter Samantha. The beautiful Victorian house that Ford inherited seemed the perfect home for a fresh beginning. But in the winter, when the tourists go home and the island is deserted, Diana is afraid she’s going crazy. Specters of people long dead flicker in and out of her vision. The antique dolls in her house never stay where they’re put. Samantha suddenly has a whole group of imaginary friends who live in the house and tell her terrible things. And Ford is becoming increasingly moody, unpredictable, and violent.

While Diana investigates the horrifying history of the house, the past, the present, the living and the dead fatally intertwine, and Diana realizes she and her daughter must escape — if Ford and the house will let her.

When investigators are called to a meticulously staged crime scene on a canal bank in rural Central California—the latest in a series of murders that have killed three young women in one month—they realize a dangerous serial killer is on the loose, someone who is highly adept at hiding his tracks. And before the murderer can be brought to justice, young assistant DA Matt Jamison will lose his illusions about what justice means.

As a fourth victim is abducted and investigators race against time, Jamison must cope with a sophisticated and elusive killer, a politically-minded sheriff eager to claim credit and spread blame, mounting pressure to win a high-profile trial, and his own conscience as part of the machinery of justice.

A gripping, fast-paced, and coldly realistic thriller that tracks a killer from the crime scene to the courtroom and to a devastating aftermath, Fractured Justice is a stunning debut crime novel from a former investigator, prosecutor, and judge who intimately knows the real world of attorneys, detectives, and men who kill.

The Mafia comes to Comic-Con in this fast-paced suspense caper and outrageous pop culture satire.

Joey Volpe hit the high watermark of his acting career when he played a small role as a mobster on The Sopranos. If you blinked, you missed it. But now he’s unemployed, broke, and forced to make a living by signing autographs at pop-culture fan conventions, or “Fan-Cons,” for $35 a pop. His lack of income, along with his chronic womanizing, has put his marriage at risk, too. But Joey’s life gets even worse when real mobster Tony Rosetti shows up in the autograph line with a plan to rob the next Fan-Con—an offer Joey can’t refuse. When the heist goes awry, Joey has a beef with Rosetti and two long years to plan. Partnered with a smooth-talking con man, Joey is using all his acting skills on new projects: Revenge. Money. And saving his marriage.

Minerva Rus can raise the dead. And it might get her killed.

Minerva’s life has never been the same since the childhood car accident that paralyzed her and killed her best friend, Raven. But when the long-dead Raven reappears in her life, now as a very attractive grown man, she discovers that her photographic memory has the power to bring the dead back to life ... heal her paralysis ... and shape reality itself.

Pursued by a rogue government agent who wants to eliminate her and her talents, Minerva must learn to control her powers to save herself and Raven. Because if she dies, he dies as well—again.

Aaron Schuyler is a ne'er-do-well, a cheat, an exploiter, a drunk, and a lifelong New Yorker. New Mexico is about to change everything about Schuyler, in this fresh and witty comedy about second chances and redemption.

At 52, Aaron Schuyler has destroyed his life and doesn't care. Professionally ruined, flat broke, and estranged from his ex-wife and children, Schuyler's only concerns are sponging free drinks by crashing funerals and staying on the good side of his primary money supply, his formidable British mother, Clementine.

But Clementine has a plan. Praying for divine aid from her personal god, Winston Churchill, Clementine creates a Winston-inspired scheme to reform her worthless son. Clementine presents Schuyler with an ultimatum—she'll bail him out one last time, if he moves from New York to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and takes a job at the local Sam's Club.

In New Mexico, Schuyler meets people unlike any he's ever known—the enigmatic Indian artist Lone Goose, the blue collar Sam's Club workers who accept him as one of their own, and the beautiful and no-nonsense Anita Chatterjee, with whom Schuyler is immediately smitten.

For the first time in his life, Schuyler wants to be a better person—and as he rereads his diary of his past life, he realizes the extent of his failures and his misdeeds. Can Schuyler adapt to a life of responsibility? To a mature relationship? To New Mexico? To shaking scorpions out of his boots? Winston help him!