Down Out Books: 337 books

Issue four closes our exciting first year with the very talented debut of Arthur Klepchukov. His intelligent “A Damn Fine Town” is followed by film director and writer John Shepphird and a prequel to his award-nominated “Shill” trilogy, a bit of a teaser for those of you who may not have discovered...

Hugh Patterson is an old-school cop and die-hard Giants fan rooted in the San Francisco Mission District. When he's struck down in the line of duty, the whole city is aghast. But Oscar Flores, a 15-year old Latino boy obsessed with baseball, witnesses the gruesome crime and has a plan to assuage...

Nominated for the 2017 Anthony Award for Best Novella Life can turn on a dime against the jagged cliffs of California's Central Coast … Bruised, battered, but determined, Jane Innes must navigate a tangled web of deception, depravity and murder, and turn the tables on cunning swindlers....

After suffering a lifetime of tyranny under her father’s oppressive rule, when Lou-Lou sees a chance to make a break with the man she loves, she takes it. Problem is, daddy’s also known as Big Bobby Joe, a dangerous and powerful man in the local area—powerful enough to put out a sixty grand...

The “black car” has appeared both conspicuously and inconspicuously throughout the annals of fiction—its presence both mysterious and menacing, its appearance enough to pause your heart. It’s the sedan just within sight that seems to be mimicking your speed and movements as you walk...

When half-brothers Mick and Jerzy Sawyer are summoned to their father’s prison deathbed, it isn’t for a tearful goodbye. The spiteful old man tells the two estranged brothers about an old diamond heist with outstanding loot, and sets them on a path of cooperation and competition to recover the...

Artesia, New Mexico. Pop. 3012. There’s nothing 14-year-old Doc Candy likes better on a hot summer afternoon than snapping pictures of dead armadillos off Route 82. Until a no-good grifter of a father he hasn’t seen in eight years comes blowing up to his window at two in the morning in...

It’s summer, 2016. Chelsea Farmer has awoken from one nightmare into another. Once a call girl with no control over her life, she’s lost even more control, becoming another statistic in the opioid epidemic eating America from the inside out. Shacking up with a woman she may or may not be in love...

When Almario “Go Go” Gato, a handsome young Cuban baseball player, goes missing mid-season, his agent Veronica Craven hires a private investigator to track down her best client. No police. No press. Enter Eli Sharpe, an Asheville, North Carolina-based ex-ballplayer turned private detective who...

Millionaire lawyer Carlton Phillips has lost track of his daughter Marcy. Her last known whereabouts were at her school, Syracuse University. While trying to track down Marcy and/or her geeky boyfriend Sean Loomis on a quick trip upstate, Swann follows the clues to a sorority house, a pizza joint,...

Wall Street's miasmal garbage washes up on the Jersey Shore when a small time broker falls in love: Is he attracted to the beautiful lady — or her brother's inside information? Held spellbound by a steamy, auburn-haired woman with a dubious past and a get-rich-quick, insider trading scheme,...

Vicki Leydig thought she was going to have a few drinks with her friend Mary. She didn’t expect Doug Stirnweiss to offer her a ride home, and she sure didn’t expect to watch a stranger blow Doug’s head off in the parking lot. Penns River police don’t have much to go on until Detective Ben...

Nick Gillis grows marijuana and minds his own business, a policy that pays off in the small Midwest town he calls home. But when he breaks his own rule by helping out a girl at a bar, it’s enough to put him on the radar of the most dangerous man he knows. It’s truly a case of no good deed...

When conservative law professor Alex Johnson is found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at his house in Chicago, everyone thinks it is suicide. Everyone except his brother, Royce, an FBI agent. Without jurisdiction or leads, Agent Johnson leaves his cases and family to find...