T. Jefferson Parker_7 Stand-Alone Novels (Mystery; Thrillers) EPUB + MOBI

A different world then,
a different world now ...

California in the 1960s, and the winds of change are raging. Orange groves uprooted for tract houses, people flooding into Orange County, strange new ideas in the air about war, music, sex, and drugs, and new influences, ranging from Richard Nixon to Timothy Leary.

For the Becker brothers, however, the past is always present -- and it comes crashing back full force when the body of the lovely and mysterious Janelle Vonn is discovered in an abandoned orange-packing plant. The Beckers and the Vonns have a history, beginning years ago in high school with a rumble between the brothers of each clan.

But boys grow up. Now one Becker brother is a cop on his first homicide case. One's a minister yearning to perform just one miracle. One is a reporter drunk with ambition. And all three are about to collide with the changing world of 1968 as each brother, in his own unique way, tries to find Janelle's killer.

As suspects multiply and secrets are exposed, the three Becker brothers are drawn further into the case, deeper into the past, and closer to danger.



From the Edgar Award-winning author of Silent Joe, a new hard-hitting thriller of murder, vengeance, and secret passions that will keep readers spellbound.

Homicide cop Tom McMichael is on the rotation when an 84-year-old city patriarch named Pete Braga is found bludgeoned to death. Not good news, especially since the Irish McMichaels and the Portuguese Bragas share a violent family history dating back three generations. Years ago Braga shot McMichael's grandfather in a dispute over a paycheck; soon thereafter Braga's son was severely beaten behind a waterfront bar -- legend has it that it was an act of revenge by McMichael's father.

McMichael must put aside the old family blood feud, and find the truth about Pete Braga's death. Braga's beautiful nurse is a suspect -- she says she stepped out for some firewood, but key evidence suggests otherwise. The investigation soon expands to include Braga's business, his family, the Catholic diocese, a multi-million dollar Indian casino, a prostitute, a cop, and, of course, the McMichael family. Cold Pursuit is the novel that T. Jefferson Parker fans have been waiting for.



My life was ordinary until three years ago when I was thrown out of a downtown hotel window. My name is Robbie Brownlaw, and I am a homicide detective for the city of San Diego. I am twenty-nine years old.

I now have synesthesia, a neurological condition where your senses get mixed up. Sometimes when people talk to me, I see their voices as colored shapes provoked by the emotions of the speakers, not by the words themselves. I have what amounts to a primitive lie detector. After three years, I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the colors and shapes of other people's feelings, unless they don't match up with their words.

When Garrett Asplundh's body is found under a San Diego bridge, Robbie Brownlaw and his partner, McKenzie Cortez, are called on to the case. After the tragic death of his child and the dissolution of his marriage, Garrett -- regarded as an honest, straight-arrow officer -- left the SDPD to become an ethics investigator, looking into the activities of his former colleagues. At first his death, which takes place on the eve of a reconciliation with his ex, looks like suicide, but the clues Brownlaw and Cortez find just don't add up. With pressure mounting from the police and the city's politicians, Brownlaw fights to find the truth, all the while trying to hold on to his own crumbling marriage. Was Garrett's death an "execution" or a crime of passion, a personal vendetta or the final step in an elaborate cover-up? Amid rampant corruption and tightening city purse strings, whatever conclusion Brownlaw comes to, the city of San Diego -- and Brownlaw's life -- hangs in the balance.

A carefully woven novel of suspense, The Fallen brings to life a superb cast of characters against the all-too-real backdrop of a city fighting for its survival. Hailed by critics as "a powerhouse writer" (New York Times) and "a thinking man's bestseller" (Washington Post), T. Jefferson Parker delivers his most elegantly written, suspenseful, and moving novel yet.



Scarred for life by a brutal father, Joe Trona found a safe haven and a loving childhood in the home of the couple who adopted him. Now he spends his days as a deputy for the Orange County sheriff's department and his nights as a driver and aide to Will Trona, the influential politician who rescued him from the Hillside Children's Home. An expert in firearms and the martial arts, Joe has been backing Will up for a long time. Still, his skill isn't enough to keep Will alive, and when his father is killed right in front of Joe's eyes, the young deputy vows to avenge him. But first he must find out how the kidnapping of a tycoon's daughter, a scam to line the pockets of Will Trona's political enemies, the murder of two Guatemalan immigrants, the unholy activities of a charismatic minister who's a close friend of the Trona family, and the strange alliance of two rival L.A. gangs are connected to Will's death.

Every secret Joe uncovers leads deeper into his beloved father's murky past and ultimately his own. But the reader stays right with this extraordinary man as he battles his demons and ultimately vanquishes them. Author T. Jefferson Parker (The Blue Hour, Red Light, Laguna Heat) is one of the best thriller writers working today. Fans of Michael Connelly and Dennis Lehane--and Raymond Chandler, for that matter--will appreciate Parker's ability to create a complex, fascinating, and fully realized hero whose inner reality is brilliantly revealed by his actions. Will Trona is an equally intriguing invention; while ultimately he is an enigma, we remain convinced that he is worthy of his son's devotion. Silent Joe is a mindful, intelligent novel you can't put down. It should break Parker out with the really big boys of mystery fiction, the million-sellers with the marquee names. In fact, he's a much better writer than most of them, and unlike many, he never tells the same story twice. --Jane Adams



Bestseller Parker's 14th California crime novel opens with an unforgettable sentence: "Stromsoe was in high school when he met the boy who would someday murder his wife and son." The wife and son are both killed by a bomb meant for Matt Stromsoe, an Orange County detective on the trail of his former classmate, Mike Tavarez, now a leader of La Eme, the Mexican mafia. Tavarez goes to prison for life for the bombing, while the seriously injured Stromsoe, after a long recovery, takes a job guarding Frankie Leigh, a popular TV weather reporter in San Diego. Leigh has a stalker, who turns out to be employed by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power; the DWP wants Leigh—and her research on rainmaking—out of the picture. Parker (_The Fallen_) creates his usual interesting, multifaceted characters, though the plotting, which reconnects Tavarez with Stromsoe, is clunky. Still, the insights into La Eme and the science of rainmaking as well as the inevitable confrontation between the two principals show why Parker ranks as one of the top contemporary suspense writers.



When reporter/crime writer Russell Monroe finds his former lover brutally slain in an apparently ritual style, he suspects a connection to other recent murders in the county. Somehow, the case never appears on the police blotter - although Russell saw his former colleague, homicide chief Marty Parish, leaving the scene of the crime - and soon all evidence of the death disappears. Meanwhile, a string of killings continues in the same gruesome style, and Russell becomes the contact of the deranged man responsible. As Monroe gets dangerously entangled in this deadly intrigue, he must fight for his life while watching his wife fight for hers against a terminal brain tumor.



From the author of "Laguna Heat" and "Summer of Fear" comes an intense, masterful novel of murder and revenge on California's Gold Coast--a page-turning thriller with a deep emotional undercurrent about love, loss, and the need to make things right.

Amazon.com Review

When a woman is mistakenly assassinated by a sniper from a white supremacist militia, her death brings together her FBI agent fiancee and her journalist lover, John Menden. The two team up to exact revenge by destroying the militia group, known as the Freedom Ring, with Menden infiltrating the group's Liberty Ridge compound. When he falls in love with the commander's daughter the plot becomes tautly complicated. In a scenario grounded in events on the right-wing fringes of U.S. society, Parker engineers a grandly violent climax to assuage all Menden's macho hatred.