Barry Clayton has left the Charlotte police force to manage his ailing father's funeral home in the peace and quiet of the Appalachian mountains. But Buryin' Barry is an undertaker with a problem - he keeps finding unwanted business.
Moving a grave on a snowy mountainside should be routine, until Barry unearths an unexpected intruder, a skeleton lying atop the original occupant. A bullet hole in the skull piques his ex-cop curiosity; the photograph of his girlfriend Susan Miller in the murdered man's wallet makes the case very personal. Suddenly, Barry's life is turned upside down, as Susan becomes the prime suspect.
Joining forces with his pal Sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkins, Barry sets out to find the real killer. But a terrible secret had been buried in that mountain grave and one murder is only the down payment someone is willing to pay to keep it hidden.

Ex-musician Chris Klick is no slouch. And no sleuth. And when a chance to earn a fee by restoring missing royalties to other musicians comes along, he levers up his six foot four frame and has at it. So what's he to do when a beautiful woman with a mystery comes calling? When Nicole Russell invades his privacy and presents her story - a missing husband and a mislaid $50,000- Klickjumps right in with his missing person skills.
Luckily, for backup Klick's got an even taller friend, the former basketball star Lyel. Lyel, although 'dependently wealthy; is independent as hell and still a player who loves a challenge. Ridding nearby Snow Lake of its tangle of corruption while helping Nicole recover her money seems like sport. Unfortunately, the other side is playing for high- and deadly-stakes...

Wendell McCall is a pseudonym for NewYorkTimes bestselling author Ridley Pearson. Dead Aim is the first in a series of three novels about musician and amateur detective Chris Klick.

It's the eve of the French Revolution. Fiscal crisis and social tensions brew. Anne Cartier, a headstrong young vaudeville actress at Sadler's Wells company in London hears terrible news. Her stepfather, the actor Antoine Dubois, has mysteriously died in Paris. The official verdict: he killed his mistress, then himself. Anne enlists the aid of Colonel Paul de Saint-Martin and his adjutant Georges Charpentier of the royal highway patrol. But, in her search for truth, Anne befriends a deaf, illiterate seamstress with a talent for puppetry who gives Anne an entre into the Palais Royale.
The story rises to a violent climax in a vast limestone cave outside Paris where the city has begun to bury its dead. Historian O'Brien's debut novel is elegantly written as befits the times and explores borders between countries and between layers of society.

Robert Skinner has degrees in history and library science and studied creative writing at the University of New Orleans. He's widely known for his non-fiction writing on the career of African-American novelist Chester Himes and on the American hard-boiled crime story. He makes his home in New Orleans where he's University Librarian at Xavier University of Louisiana.

Les Standiford has written eleven books. He has received the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, the Frank O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and an NEA Fellowship in Fiction. He is Director of the Creative Writing Program at Florida International University in Miami, where he lives with his wife and their three children. www.les- standiford.com

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