Showing results by author "Al Sarrantonio" in All Categories

It wasn't the worst sound Paine had ever heard, but it came very close - a single strangled cry, and then a terrible gasping, then the sound of the receiver banging against a table leg again and again. Paine's caller had said that he was going to hang himself; the private detective didn't have time not to believe him. In a haunting novel of detection which calls to mind the writing of Ross Macdonald, Al Sarrantonio has created an investigator whose search uncovers clues about his own past and a crime that has its roots in secrets not only thought buried, but lost as well.

On Mars, in the distant future, the princess Haydn's arranged marriage cannot save her beloved Republic. Her arch-enemy, the warrior-woman Frane, seeks to make herself Queen while Haydn - the legitimate heir - must flee for her life. A reluctant symbol for those who would restore the monarchy, Haydn is too young and unprepared to assume the throne - but determined to become a great Queen. With a bounty on her head, she will journey to the realization that - in order to save her world - she must sacrifice all that she holds dear.

Professor Kevin Michaels has returned to the picturesque town of New Polk to fill a teaching position at the local university and a long-held ambition: to revive interest in the town's most illustrious citizen, author Eileen Connel and her neglected masterpiece "Season of Witches". But first, he must uncover the horror locked away inside the old woman's failing mind - a horror that had its birth one tragic Halloween night, over forty years ago.

Jack Paine was on what passed for a vacation, or maybe it was a regrouping, an opportunity to forget the events of the last year and especially of the last month. When the phone rang, he tried to ignore it. There were only a few people who knew where to reach him, and none of them would try. But the phone kept ringing. And Jack Paine finally answered it. Of course, it was bad news. Bob Petty, a friend from Paine's days on the force, had disappeared. Petty's wife, Terry, knew that he hadn't gone undercover....