Down Out Books: 337 books

The girl has gone missing. Again. But this time people are trying to kill her. Trying to burn down everything she has touched or left behind. The girl's surrogate father feels responsible and to assuage his guilt, he hires Richard Dean Buckner, former Saint Ansgar homicide detective turned private...

It's 1960 and Frankie Valentine is doing just fine. The transplanted New York photographer is living it up in the Hollywood sunshine surrounded by beautiful women more than willing to dispose of their clothes and pose. He has no reason to go back east. That is, until the body of a childhood friend,...

After helping a frightened girl who flagged down their Kenworth in Austin and delivering her to safety, trucker Jojo Boudreaux and co-driver Gator Natoli believe that’s the end of it. Until they find her again in Oklahoma City, and this time she doesn’t want to be saved. They soon find...

Nominated for the 2017 Anthony Award for Best Anthology/Collection Here you are in New Jersey, but not Soprano-land New Jersey, this is central Jersey, the edge of the Pine Barrens, where the everydayness of life is interrupted by devils and angels, murderers and saviors, cheaters and music...

After seeing Frank deliver an impressive ass kicking in a bar fight, Russian mobster Popov hires him to be his driver. What Popov doesn’t know is that when Frank is sober, he’s inhumanly fast, deadly, and mute; when Frank is on the sauce, he’s a useless twenty-something wiseass. Double-crossed...

During a robbery, Blinky sees police activity down the street. His crew assumes cops have the art gallery surrounded, unaware of their true presence, which is responding to a car accident that has left one man dead. The thieves shoot at responding officers and take hostages. When Detective Reynolds...

Blackchurch is not the sort of place where folks are inclined to be up in each other’s business, and strange house guests at a neighbor’s pad are not likely to be noticed, let alone remarked upon. So on a day in early October, when two beat-up-looking crackers, a pregnant teenage whore, and a...

The ’80s hair-metal band Savage Night is living the rock star fantasy. They trash hotel rooms, run through groupies, and flaunt their goods in music videos with bloated budgets. All that changes while on tour in Japan, when the band learns they owe more money than they have. They discuss their options:...

When Jack was six years old, his parents were brutally slain by a serial killer. The police later found drifter Clyde Colsen driving a stolen car, his clothes soaked in blood. He was tried, convicted and executed. Jack grew up knowing the police got their man. Now a decorated homicide detective...

After barely escaping Boston with his life, Beto has settled in Baltimore and now leads a quiet life, working construction and carving a tiny existence for him and his wife, Luz, whose family was driven from Mexico by warring cartels. What they really want is a child, but because of Beto’s accident...

When Cillian Kennedy’s body was fished out of the canal, no one believed his death was due to natural causes. But when the police wrote it off as an accidental death, four of his friends and family roamed the city in the search of any clue that may lead to the killer. Answers were...

Elmore Johnson has only got two friends, the bottle of Jim Beam in his coat pocket and a revolver named Lorraine. He worked for the Indianapolis Police Department until they booted him for exposing dirty cops. Now he makes a meager living snapping seedy photos. But when Elmore shoots pictures of the...

Jake and his pal Bud’s journey begins six months after he is released on parole and is occasioned when his girlfriend Donna dumps him and aborts their child. After a suicide attempt where the Norelco shaver cord he used to hang himself breaks, on an impulse—everything in Jake’s life happens...

Down to the River is a collection of twenty crimes stories that take place on or near American rivers from some of the strongest voices in crime fiction writing today. As these stories show, rivers are not only sources of life; they can also be scenes of murder and revenge. All twenty stories...