Exclusive Look Inside: The Townhouse Massacre
The Tyranny of Whores Shirley Anne Speck was a whore, and that was all there was to it. No, not Speck. Malone. That bitch didn’t deserve to carry the same name as Richard’s saint of a mother. How dare she treat him this way? Leaving him just because he wasn’t around for a few days.…
Exclusive Look Inside: Buried Beneath the Boarding House
Mama Knows Best The first time that Peggy came to the house on F Street, she had no idea what to expect. Usually, the lodging houses in Sacramento that were willing to take in the homeless and the addicted were one bad day away from demolition — some slum lord’s last attempts to squeeze a…
Exclusive Look Inside: Kill ‘Em All
Lost at Sea Carl wanted him before he even knew why. There were plenty of sailors in the bars of New York each night, and there was a lot to be said about the appeal of a man in uniform. Even just the appeal of the uniform itself had been enough to tempt Carl into…
Exclusive Look Inside: Black Widow
Domestic Goddess Smooth jazz crackled out of the radio on the kitchen windowsill, and Nannie hummed right along with it. Funny to think that just a few years back that kind of music was the province of rebels and teens, when now you could hear it with the turn of a knob. The late afternoon…
Exclusive Look Inside: Trust Me
Hear My Confession The car lay unmoving by the side of the highway; not with the cold stillness of a dead thing, but the waiting stillness of a coiled rattlesnake, just waiting for its time to strike. Out here in the middle of nowhere the desolation of the American South was abundantly present. There were…
Exclusive Look Inside: Man-Eater
All that Kathy ever wanted was for somebody to love her as much as she loved them. After a brief tussle, David was on top of her again, his sweat trickling down on her as he thrust inside her over and over. All of that weight—the mechanical inevitability of each thrust and groan—was like riding…
Exclusive Look Inside: Killer Cop
Nancy’s foot slipped and the noose bit into her neck. Her feet scrabbling, she cursed her stupid sandshoes and their lack of grip. She was so desperate to right herself that she ended up slipping in the other direction, heel tipping off the back of the smooth curved tops of the arched mangrove roots. Pamela…
Exclusive Look Inside: Torture Mom
Jenny lay on the heap of dirty clothes that was meant to be her bed and stared up at the blue smoke curling across the ceiling. Here in the bedroom, it wasn’t too suffocating but if she crawled out into the hallway then it was as thick as fog. The smoke wasn’t keeping her awake.…