<div><b>Desperate for cash, small town cop Joe Crow takes a security job that could cost him his life</b><BR>Joe Crow celebrates his thirty-third birthday in his patrol car, watching for speeders and sniffing fat lines of cocaine. A depressed cop with a faltering marriage, a rotten stomach, and an increasingly expensive drug habit, Crow is just looking for a drink and a poker game when he steps into Birdy&rsquo;s. Instead, he meets a man who might be able to save his life&mdash;or destroy it. He first notices Dr. Nelson Bellwether when the liposuction expert has a chair smashed over his head. A surgeon with a big mouth, a gambler&rsquo;s personality, and some serious debt to the IRS, he&rsquo;s on his way to deep trouble, and he&rsquo;s going to bring Crow along for the ride. Dr. Bellwether needs a bodyguard, and Crow is his man. Pretty soon, this small town cop will wish he had a bodyguard of his own.</div>

Overdrive

Apple

Google

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Short Money

<div><b>Targeted by drug addicts, a carnival taco vendor must defend his fortune</b><BR>After years playing professional poker, Axel Speeter knows not to trust people. Retired from the table, this no-nonsense old salt makes ends meet by selling tacos at the Minnesota State Fair, and he&rsquo;s got two things on his mind: developing a state-of-the-art burrito, and keeping an eye on the $260,000 he&rsquo;s got squirreled away in coffee cans inside his room at the Motel 6. He&rsquo;s so busy perfecting his Bueno Burrito that he doesn&rsquo;t even notice when James Dean walks into the carnival. This James Dean isn&rsquo;t famous, but he&rsquo;s certainly wild. A drug addicted ex-con with a taste for mayhem, he&rsquo;s got his eye on Speeter&rsquo;s coffee cans, but quickly finds that the old hustler is not as brittle as your average taco shell. When a crook meets a carny, someone&rsquo;s bound to get hurt.</div>

The Mortal Nuts

<div><b>A lottery jackpot winner decides to turn one of her millions into a bounty for the man who left her</b><BR>Barbaraannette is decorating a cake when the Powerball numbers come in. They sound suspiciously familiar, but she finishes the cake before checking her ticket, knowing that if she wins her hands will be too shaky to handle the icing. This quiet Midwesterner has just won nine million dollars&mdash;and nine million kinds of trouble to go with it. Accepting her money on national television, Barbaraannette promises a cool million to anyone who can bring her runaway husband home to her. When he hears of the reward placed for his return, Bobby decides to claim it himself&mdash;but first, he&rsquo;s got to get past a pair of bounty hunters, a psychotic pretty-boy, and a lovelorn humanities professor who won&rsquo;t take no for an answer. Getting her husband home safe will be tougher than winning the lottery. Whether Barbaraannette will want him when he gets there is another question altogether.</div>

Mrs. Million

<div><b>To save a friend&rsquo;s daughter from a bad marriage, Joe Crow confronts cultists, carnies, and cocaine wackos</b><BR>Poker-playing ex-cop Joe Crow has been dealt some rotten hands in his life, but he&rsquo;s survived them all. When Axel Speeter starts begging for help, Crow suspects his luck is about to run out. A taco-dealing former poker pro, Speeter&rsquo;s worried about his girlfriend&rsquo;s daughter Carmen. She&rsquo;s the sexiest trouble magnet the state of Omaha has ever seen, and she&rsquo;s about to drag Crow down with her. Carmen has just gotten engaged to Hyatt Hilton, a onetime drug pusher who&rsquo;s currently scratching out a living selling bootlegged Evian. Speeter wants Crow to make sure he&rsquo;s staying on the straight-and-narrow. And it looks like Hilton&rsquo;s involved in something much more dangerous than designer water. He&rsquo;s about to cross the Amaranthine Church of the One&mdash;a New Age cult convinced that it&rsquo;s found the secret to immortality, and doesn&rsquo;t mind killing to prove it. </div>

Ring Game

<div><b>After losing a poker hand to a sleazy stockbroker, an ex-cop must work to pay off his debt</b><BR>Before cocaine, Joe Crow had a wife and a job with the Big River Police Department. Now he has neither&mdash;and he&rsquo;s left behind coke, too. Sober, quiet, and reflective, his only vice is poker. One night he gets into trouble, and winds up in debt to the drug-addled slimeball Dickie Wicky. As repayment, Crow agrees to do Dickie a favor. Dickie thinks his wife, a slender young thing called Catfish, is running around on him. He wants Crow to find her lover and pay him to leave her alone. But Catfish has charms and troubles of her own, and she will draw Crow into the underbelly of Minnesota&mdash;a world of drugs, murder, and the dangerous business of counterfeit comic books. This girl is one fish that Crow should have thrown back.</div>

Drawing Dead

<div><I> You could say that my railroad, the Madham Line, is almost the most important thing in my life. Next to Andy Morrow, my best friend. </I><BR><BR> Lots of people think Doug Hanson is a freak -- he gets beat up after school, and the girl of his dreams calls him a worm. Doug's only refuge is creating an elaborate bridge for the model railroad in his basement and hanging out with his best friend, Andy Morrow, a popular football star who could date any girl in school. Doug and Andy talk about everything -- except what happened at the Tuttle place a few years back. <BR><BR><I>It does not matter to Andy that we live in completely different realities. I'm Andy's best friend. It does not matter to Andy that we hardly ever actually do anything together.</I><BR><BR> As Doug retreats deeper and deeper into his own reality, long-buried secrets threaten to destroy both Doug and Andy -- and everything else in Doug's fragile world.</div>

Invisible

<div>Consumption of alcohol: <B>Illegal.</B><BR><BR> Football and other "violent" sports: <B>Illegal.</B><BR><BR> Ownership of guns, chain saws, and/or large dogs: <B>Illegal.</B><BR><BR> Body piercings, tattoos: <B>Illegal.</B><BR><BR> It's late in the twenty-first century, and the United Safer States of America (USSA) has become a nation obsessed with safety. For Bo Marsten, a teenager who grew up in the USSA, it's all good. He knows the harsh laws were created to protect the people. But when Bo's temper flares out of control and he's sentenced to three years of manual labor, he's not so down with the law anymore. <BR><BR> Bo's forced to live and work in a factory in the Canadian tundra. The warden running the place is totally out of his mind, and cares little for his inmates' safety. Bo will have to decide what's worse: a society that locks people up for road rage, or a prison where the wrong move could make you polar bear food.</div>

Rash

<div><B><BR> Jack Lund figures a good day is when his dad's too drunk to beat up his mom. <BR></B><BR> For Jack, Bogg's End <I>is</I> the end. The end of the turbulent, see-saw years of watching his father go on the wagon and fall right back off gain. Once it took two years, but the inevitable inevitably happened. Now it's just Jack and his mom starting over in the strange old house his grandfather left them. <BR><BR> But the ride's not over yet. Jack's father returns, full of apologies and promises, and for a little while, things are looking up. Then in one terrifying, sickening moment, everything comes crashing back down again. <BR><BR> So Jack runs. He runs through a strange hidden door that takes him back in time to before his parents were born. Before <I>he</I> was born. Maybe with a second chance he can stop the inevitable. At least he's got to try. What Jack doesn't understand, though, is that he can't change his future until he faces his past.</div>

Mr. Was

<div>Shayne Blank is the new kid in town&#8212;but that doesn&#8217;t stop him from getting into a lot of trouble, very quickly. The other kids don&#8217;t understand him. He&#8217;s not afraid of anything. He seems too smart. His background doesn&#8217;t add up. And when he walks into the police department to confess to a murder, it quickly becomes apparent that nothing is as it seems. There&#8217;s more to Shayne&#8212;and his story&#8212;than meets the eye. And as the details pile up, the only thing that becomes clear is that nothing is clear at all.</div>

Pete Hautman
Follow this author

Books By Pete Hautman (9 Books)

Short Money

The Mortal Nuts

Mrs. Million

Ring Game

Drawing Dead

Invisible

Rash

Mr. Was

Blank Confession

Get weekly updates and deals from Early Bird Books

More from

Corporate

© 2024 OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Pete HautmanFollow this author