Here are the new releases from Crossroad Press for July and August 2023. Unless noted otherwise, you can purchase any of them at Amazon, B&N, Apple, Google Play, Smashwords, or Kobo.
Long Waltz: A Si Reardon Thriller
An unsolved mystery upends Si Reardon’s sunny Florida plans to recover from the events of Fool’s Run and reconnect with his daughter. Si’s strange luck throws him into a bizarre sometimes zany maelstrom of Hollywood stars, sleazy producers grim practical jokers and a ghostly presence that won’t let him rest.
Gretta Carr disappeared years ago, just after a standout turn in a big-budget film. Now that film’s fading stars and producers are back on Florida beaches for a lower-budget sequel to jump-start careers.
Gretta’s sister sees it as an opportunity perfect for Si’s unconventional investigation style. Someone from Hollywood knows more than they’re telling. A premium fee makes it too promising to pass up. It might just be enough to stake Si for a custody fight.
Trouble on the film set soon draws Si into a security gig, and as the production’s bedeviled by escalating mishaps and worse, Si’s faced not just with unlocking secrets from the past but protecting troubled actors with dark secrets of their own. He’ll again need the muscle of the bayou-dwelling McCluskys, the brains of gender-neutral hacker Jael and new allies too if he’s going to come out the other side of a perfect storm of mayhem and wickedness.
by C. T. Phipps
Gary Karkofsky, a.k.a. Merciless: The Supervillain Without MercyTM is enjoying the bliss of a newly rebooted Earth. Ultragod is President of the United States, most supervillains are either harmless or imprisoned, and superpowers are being used to benefit all mankind. Of course it couldn’t last. Suffering a near fatal heart attack and under attack by extra-dimensional evils, Gary struggles to find an object that might repair the universe he’s unwittingly damaged the fabric of.
Gary will find himself dealing with an alien witch queen, a fantasy world with a massive dungeon, and a final showdown with his greatest foe!
Oh and he sleeps with a dragon.
A DIET TO DIE FOR
Tricia Hall desperately wants to lose weight. But no matter how hard she tries, she can’t stick to a diet. Then she meets Kiri, a foreign exchange student who tells her that she lost ninety pounds by taking special diet pills. Figuring she has nothing to lose, Tricia starts taking the pills… and the pounds begin to magically melt away.
There’s just one small problem.
After Tricia drops the weight she wants to lose and stops taking the pills… the pounds keep melting away.
Poor Tricia.
She wanted to be gorgeous.
Now she’s going to be gorgeous.
Drop dead gorgeous.
Harold “Funny Bone” Fenimore is the class clown. Trouble is, while Bone gets all the laughs, his best friend Tony gets all the dates. But everything changes when Bone wanders down a back staircase at The Elemental and finds a secret room filled with teen partiers. When he steps inside, a beautiful girl comes on to him, and he’s hooked. Soon, he can’t live without The Room.
But Bone’s place of dreams is really a living tomb—a sorcerer’s trap for souls. Unless Tony can make Bone see the truth, the door will close on his best friend for all eternity…
Darryl sees dead people everywhere.
Until now, it was a way to make a living, but competing causes would use Darrell’s skills for their own purposes. These organizations are all focused on changing the world, past, present, and future, to meet their needs, and Darryl is key to achieving their goals.
The struggle eventually lands him and his friends in New Orleans and the Robert Charles race riots, where the past they select will decide the future the world gets.
All Darrell has to do is decide how to die.
Humanity’s time is done.
The Earth is freezing over and human civilization is gone.
For Ira Hartman and the dysfunctional band of survivors that surround her, all that’s left of the old world are ghosts trapped beneath the still-forming ice sheets.
When Ira and the survivors discover a secret military research facility housed deep within the San Bernardino Mountains, at first, it seems like the perfect shelter. Plenty of rations. Water. Warmth.
Then they discover the remnants of horrifying experiments. Corpses, strapped to operating tables, horror etched on decomposing faces, experiment rooms filed with strange machines and occult symbols, and the logs of a raving lunatic. The unmistakable feeling that something is watching them, waiting in the cold, tubular concrete tunnels, in the shadows.
What Ira and the others don’t know might just kill them.
Ameri-Scares: New Jersey: The Curse of the Barrens
by David Simms
Dominic Riley moves to Forked River with his grandmother to start anew. His own life was a mess, getting into trouble at school, getting bullied, and never quite fitting in. His new life at Forked River Middle School isn’t off to a great beginning. His new friend, Tobias Forren, carries with him a curse—or at least that’s what the other students say.
Yet deep in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, something stirs. For centuries, it has terrorized the people of the region. Many believe it to be a creature that shouldn’t exist, an abomination of nature. For many in the state, the legend of the Jersey Devil is far more than just a story. It’s a curse to be passed on from one generation to the next.
Tobias also has a strange gathering of pets, ones that take to the sky every night on dark wings, reminding him of the destiny his bloodline faces. Dominic’s grandmother forbids the friendship as something terrible happened to her years ago with Tobias’ family.
The curse is calling for a new victim—Tobias. Can Dom and he find a cure in time?
by Beth Sherman
Now in one volume, the first three books of the Jersey Shore Mysteries
DEAD MAN’S FLOAT
HER OLD HIGH SCHOOL CRUSH HAS CLEANED UP HIS ACT …
Annie Hardaway is a reluctant expert on house-cleaning, horticulture, and pet care, who specializes in making some of the country’s most famous how-to writers look good in print. But when her long-ago high school crush is found dead in their New Jersey shore hometown, Anne has no idea “how-to” find out the truth.
BY WASHING UP ON SHORE …
When Tigger Mills returned home to archly conservative devoutly religious Oceanside Heights, no one was happy to see him. Tigger left twenty years ago after being accused of setting fire to an old hotel that killed the owner’s little girl. Though the always maintained his innocence, no one believed him — except then teenager Anne Hardaway. After Tigger’s lifeless body is pulled from the surf, everyone but Anne assumes it was suicide. Now this woman with a relentless knack for research makes it her mission to tackle the town’s closed minds, curious suspicions and ancient lies, to dredge the past and uncover a twenty-year-old motive for present-day murder.
DEATH AT HIGH TIDE
Oceanside Heights Becomes Hollywood By The Sea
In the quaint New Jersey seaside town of Ocean Heights, freelance ghostwriter Anne Hardaway is frustrated by her latest assignment: a tell-all autobiography of Mallory Loving, the former local sexpot who has made it big in movies. Even though Mallory’s new film is being shot in town, Anne finds that her high-profile subject is a first-class prima donna. And Anne isn’t the only one having a hard time with the ego-driven star.
But Murder Wasn’t In The Script
Treating the film’s crew, cast, locals and her husband like personal minions, Mallory is a woman whose popularity, like her career, is on the wane. As several accidents delay shooting, a series of threatening letters from a deranged fan unsettle the star’s fragile nerves. In the midst of the turmoil, the actress disappears-only to resurface as a corpse. Though the police rule the death as an accident, Anne suspects murder. Using the biography as her calling card, Anne begins an investigation into Mallory’s murder to determine which suspect is only “acting” innocent.
DEATH’S A BEACH
A Brutal Storm Unearths A 20-Year-Old Secret …
An out-of-season nor’easter tears across the New Jersey coast, and the beach community of Oceanside Heights is a mess. Ghostwriter Anne Hardaway’s cottage-by-the-sea has seen better days to begin with, but she reluctantly decides to repair her rotting basement floor. Never mind that her newest assignment is writing a “how-to” home repair book for women—she still can barely tell a flat head from a Phillips, a lack of skill she’s grateful for when her handyman finds a twenty-year-old skeleton buried in the dirt beneath her basement’s wooden floor.
And The Forecast Calls For A Chance Of Scattered Murders
When her gruesome guest turns out to be the psychologist who treated her mother in the mid-70’s, Anne must consider whether her own mother could have been the killer. Some discreet investigating soon leads Anne to Sunnydale Nursing Home where elderly clients are dying at an alarming rate and the staff makes Nurse Ratched look endearing. Before she can say riptide, Anne is hip deep in the residue of a killer storm and uncovering a tale of dark desire that makes the climate ripe for more murder.
The Jersey Girl Cozy Mystery Series
The complete Jersey Girl Cozy Mysteries series in one volume.
NEW MATH IS MURDER
Reporter Colleen Caruso was never good at math.
A stingy ex-husband, a teenage daughter, and a rusted-out Ford Escort have multiplied her troubles. Tripping over a dead body while on her morning jog seems like another incident for the minus column.
But then her new editor at the newspaper gives her a regular column detailing the investigation. He’s handsome, single, and just a bit mysterious. Suddenly, Colleen’s life is on the plus side.
Unfortunately, 1 dead algebra teacher + 2 secret affairs + 4 suspicious suspects quickly adds up to 3 perilous “accidents” for Colleen.
Which means Colleen needs to come up with the solution to the murder … before the killer removes her from the equation.
HIDE NOR HAIR
For this Jersey girl, big hair means big trouble!
Newspaper reporter Colleen Caruso just wants her unruly curls tamed into smooth, sleek locks. Instead, she finds her stylist dead, facedown in a shampoo sink. Faster than you can say Aqua Net, Colleen starts investigating. The case gets even hairier when the owner of a local fitness studio seems to have jumped from a plane … without a parachute.
Meanwhile, her suave editor, Ken Rhodes, steps in to help. And he may be looking for more than just a good story from Colleen.
Add in a missing bracelet, some suspicious husbands, and a little breaking and entering—and this Jersey girl is heading for a real blowout!
Can Colleen tie up these split ends? Or does she have an appointment with disaster?
ANOTHER MAN’S POISON
Has our Jersey Girl finally bitten off more than she can chew?
Crime reporter Colleen Caruso has an appetite for romance … and trouble. When someone tries to poison Ken Rhodes (her handsome boss and boyfriend), Colleen vows to hunt down the culprit and serve them up to the police. She’s whisked away into the scrumptious world of restaurants and gourmet food as she tangles with four culinary divas from Ken’s past.
Trouble is, Colleen doesn’t know when to turn down the heat.
Is this Jersey Girl’s investigation a recipe for disaster?
Or will the poisoner get their just desserts?
by Edward Lee
Alice has found a new life…
Yesterday, Alice Sterling was having a hard time. She had a less-than-perfect body that secretly shamed her—and a brute of a boyfriend who betrayed her. Then came the accident that crippled her.
…and an ancient evil has found Alice.
Today, Alice has it all. Or so it seems. She’s discovered a newfound erotic power over men, but it’s a power that soon turns deadly. For Alice has begun to dream…haunting dreams of a demon with the ravishing face of a goddess and an unmerciful soul.
Now, as Alice is lured into the buried depths of an ancient house, she is about to make a terrifying discovery about who she is. And what she has become.
Time Loopers: Five Tales of a Time War
by David Hambling, Matthew Davenport, John DeLaughter, Byron Craft, C. T. Phipps
Get rich. Wield incredible power. Get revenge.
But avoid paradox, or get erased from the timestream so you never existed.
Time travel offer endless possibilities and limitless dangers. What would you do if you could go back and relive your past? What if others could too? Who polices time? How do you win a time war?
Five tales from a time war by veteran SF authors:
Time’s Revenge
Craig repeats the same day, getting ever closer to pulling off the perfect murder. He just wants to make a fortune, but who gave Craig this power and why is the killing so important to them?
Time Trapped
Librarian Irene has started traveling through time, but someone else controls her destinations. As history starts to unravel, can Irene prevent a terrible future she has already seen?
The Comatose Man
In his attempt to right an old wrong, Ross accidentally unleashes something far worse. Can the past fight an invasion from the future?
The Terror Out of Time
Dimitri-Laurent de Marigny is a criminal mastermind with a plan to finally realise his dream of immortality. But has de Marigny really understood the price that he – and the world – will pay?
Academic Legacies
Mercy Halsey-Mason is a Goth self-proclaimed witch studying at Miskatonic University in the 21st century. Unfortunately, she’s about to discover that her academic program is a threat to reality.
Bonus story – A Stitch in Time
Time travel operative Art is on a simple mission to correct a previous mistake. But why is his partner behaving strangely, and are missions ever really simple?
It’s the fall of 1965 when 28-year-old Sister Francesca leaves her small town convent in upstate New York to study theology at a large university in the Bronx. She expects to face demanding professors and challenging classes; she doesn’t expect to become entangled in the controversies surrounding Vatican II. What she least expects is involvement in the mysterious death of her new Superior, Mother Ignatius.
Was the old woman a victim of greedy neighborhood businessmen? Or was she simply in the way of unstoppable changes in the Church?
In the process of investigating her Superior’s murder, Sister Francesca risks her life and must come to terms with the changing world around her, a challenge to both her faith and her vows.