Bøger udgivet af Black Opal Books

Jake Wanderman is not your average retired teacher and Shakespeare maven. He has tangled with the Russian Mafia in Moscow and assassins in Jerusalem and always come out on top. Now his childhood friend's long-lost daughter is a suspect in a murder investigation and Jake's help is needed. The daughter flees to London and he follows, searching for clues. Instead, he uncovers rape, suicide, and secret identities. And falling in love with the female detective on the case only complicates the issue. Like Sam Spade phoning in his reports to Effie, Jake Wanderman talks us through this corkscrew case in his own inimitable, Brooklyn-wise-guy style while quoting Shakespeare at every opportunity.

Her past was behind her...or so she'd thought. Bethany Acton has come a long way from the day she was an abused child-bride of a dissolute jet setter. Now divorced and single, she writes for a lifestyles magazine, lives out of her motor home, and answers only to her boss-when he can find her. She has overcome her horrendous past and taken control of her own life. But when Jonathan Merritt, a rising star in wildlife photography, enters her world, she learns that control is a tenuous thing. His past was despicable, but it hasn't affected his future...until now. Jonathan knows he has met the woman with whom he wants to spend his future, but first he must admit his role in her past. Afraid the truth will turn her against him, he tries to gain her trust and affection before confessing. But the longer he hesitates, the harder it becomes to tell her. Can Jonathan gain enough of her love and trust for her to forgive what he did-or will his past indiscretions destroy his only chance for happiness?

She's left with nothing and has no means of survival... In the Depression-plagued rural Wisconsin of 1932, Annalee Lines loses her husband to an accident and her home to a fire within a few short months of each other. The abusive husband she can do without, but with her home and possessions totally destroyed, Annalee and her two children are now destitute. She'd been supporting her family by caring for the daughter of a widowed engineer, but with no home of her own, she can't even do that. With memories of her brutal marriage fresh in her mind, Annalee vows never to tie herself to another man-but unless she wants to live with her sour-faced, forbidding parents, she may have no choice. He offers everything...but at what cost? Widowed engineer Jack Harrison mourns the loss of his beloved wife. Left with a small daughter, Sissy, Jack turns to Annalee for daycare while he works. Since he's not interested in remarrying, the arrangement is perfect-until Annalee's house burns down and she's left with no option but to move in with her parents. If she does that, she'll no longer be around. He's unwilling to leave Sissy with anyone else but Annalee won't risk her reputation by being a live-in babysitter, so Jack comes up with a plan: they'll get married, Annalee and her children will move into Jack's house, Annalee will take care of Sissy, and Jack will provide everything she and her children need. Annalee reluctantly agrees, after extracting a promise from Jack that this will be strictly a business arrangement, with no intimacy required or expected. Everything goes according to plan-until Jack kisses her at the altar. Now Jack no longer wants to keep his promise and Annalee is terrified. Her first husband was cruel, and Annalee doesn't care for intimacy...but how long can she keep her new husband at arm's length?

Ben and Kate are not too pleased to be left behind when their parents visit relatives-until a special room in their aunt and uncle's house piques their curiosity. The room is haunted by a ghostly lady who needs their help. She begs them to go back to 1718 in England and retrieve a medallion that proves her innocent of killing her baby. She gives Ben and Kate her diary so they can read about her history and they decide to go. But how can they get there? And if they do, will they ever make it back?

She stared at the sprawling body of a woman in the water. 'She is down there, ' the voice whispered, stiffening hairs on the back of Kate's neck. No! She slams down the lid of her laptop computer. That was where the picture and sound had come from. But it doesn't help. On her first vacation ever, Kate is plagued by visions she doesn't want. Now she has no choice but to place her trust in a Colorado sheriff, who wants to be more than a friend, even though Kate has serious doubts about his motives. In the sequel to One...Two...Buckle My Shoe, Death Has No Dominion takes the reader on a journey into the mind of a psychopathic killer. And the reluctant psychic detective, Kate Macklin, is the only one with any chance to stop him from unleashing his insatiable thirst for vengeance.

Victor Espinoza, a short, youthful LAPD patrol officer, is sent undercover as a cross-dresser to catch a serial killer. His ambition to become a detective gets snarled when, ignoring his captain's orders, he goes it alone and establishes himself at the Velvet Glove, a Hollywood bar that caters to transvestites and drag queens. The secret nature of his assignment not only strains his long-term relationship with his girlfriend, Jannine, who wants to marry and start a family, but hot on the trail of the killer, Victor gets a little too close-and now, he's targeted as the next victim.

She wants him but knows he's going to marry someone else... When Maya Stewart arrives in London to visit her best friend Jay, she's aware that he's keeping the fact that he's gay a secret from his traditional Indian family. However, deceiving his dangerously good-looking older brother, Rajiv, is something Maya hadn't expected to deal with. The attraction between her and Rajiv is intense and immediate. But after being warned by Jay of Rajiv's reputation as a player and womaniser, Maya tries her utmost to keep her distance from him-although Rajiv doesn't give up easily. He wants her, but he's sure that she's his brother's lover... Rajiv Maddox has demons of his own to battle, including a darker side to his tortured soul. Highly suspicious of Maya, he thinks that she could be the reason for Jay's suicidal depression, yet Rajiv can't deny his attraction to this beautiful flame-haired Scottish girl. But one thing he knows for sure-if she finds out what a monster he really is, she'll run fast and hard in the other direction. Can two people from two different cultures and such dissimilar worlds find any common ground or has fate doomed their love from the beginning?

In a toxic world of peer pressure, torment, and rivalry, justice is just one click away for these three high-school underdogs. Thousands of miles apart from each other, each trapped in his own circle of hell, they find solace in a mysterious online ally named Nikki who strokes their fragile egos and urges them to realize their ultimate revenge fantasies. How far will the three outcasts go to impress the best friend they never met? Set in the grotesque and volatile e-universe, where nothing is what it seems, The Online Boys is a disturbing and psychologically authentic cyber-thriller for both bullies and victims.

The world has changed... Teenagers exist in a different world than you grew up in. Video games, gun violence, sexting, and bullying have all exploded onto the scene, leaving many parents shut off from their children and vice versa. In that vacuum, too many kids gravitate toward darker temptations, but there is hope. You are not alone. Come behind the scenes and walk the halls with school resource officer Jack Hobson, Ed.D. Firsthand he witnessed the scenarios that caused good students to turn bad or troubled teens to clean up their act. Sometimes, the difference could be a few simple words from the right person to stop the dangerous drift toward delinquency or worse. Some students drifted back. Others did not. These are their stories.

Saudi Arabia is an ancient culture as old as time itself, yet filled with all the modern conveniences that money provides. Restless and looking for something new and exciting, two nurses traveled to this ancient kingdom to ply their skills and practice close personal contact-along with modern medical care-with people for whom slavery, buying wives, and female subjugation is just a way of life. Living in a culture far different from their own, they met many wonderful people, both locally and from several other countries, all the while walking on eggshells with the religious police of Saudi Arabia, lest they do something, that as females, was forbidden and could have gotten them deported-or worse, thrown in jail. Join Ramona Forrest and Judith Corcoran as they explore life in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia-from a woman's point of view.

The Magdalenes is a story of redemption and reinvention.Jude Madigan is a successful plaintiff's attorney who lived out a nightmare and spent years keeping it hidden. After being raped and impregnated by a Catholic priest when she was fourteen, she has spent years creating a new life, now driven to get justice for her clients.She buries her past, and her emotions, under a solid veneer of ambition, but just as she's about to bring her biggest litigation case to trial, a strange assignment is forced upon her. Her law firm is given a huge commission to handle the estate of a recently deceased woman, with the catch that Jude, and no one else, must act as trustee. The terms require her to oversee the construction and finances of a Catholic halfway house for prostitutes.Jude fights against this agreement since she turned her back on the church years ago and intends to keep it that way. Her boss insists she complies, not knowing about her past-or the pain of having her daughter taken from her arms minutes after the birth by a nun.Damaged and patched together with anger and shame, Jude is reluctant, but becomes involved with a group of nuns and the prostitutes they're trying to help.But the mystery remains as to why the stranger specified her, a litigation attorney, not an estate attorney, to handle the case. Though Jude struggles both personally and professionally, she discovers that what she feared most was what she needed to heal. Every belief is tested, and a lost dream is realized.

Joe Traynor has fulfilled his obligation as the Interim President of The College of the Florida Keys and has been appointed as the Assistant Superintendent of the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. At 37, Joe is the youngest in history to serve in this position. His last 18 years have been filled with action, stopping the most horrific criminal groups in the United States. Now, his duties will be filled with days of administration, curriculum and planned events. Other than attending Brown University, Julie has never left the Florida Keys and is a true Conch. Bella, Joe and Julie's newly adopted daughter, born to a Cuban immigrant, who passed away from a brain tumor, speaks more Spanish than English as a seven year old. Tillie will be left alone in Key Largo at age 70 but has a new friend in Ed Lansing. How will this new life, and new careers for both Joe and Julie work out? How will Bella acclimate to the great northeast? On top of that, as soon as he arrives, there is a threat to the Academy by white supremacists that is real. Follow the new life of the family as they adjust. There are more twists and unexpected turns day-to-day, culminating in a crisis of major proportion that could change the Academy forever unless Joe Traynor is able to save the day. What seems to be an idyllic life is anything but...

Arctic Inferno, the sequel to Arctic Meltdown, is a timely and gripping international environmental thriller set against the background of the devastation of climate change and the melting of the polar ice cap. The heroine, Hanne Kristensen, the beautiful Danish geologist appointed Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources for the newly independent Greenland, has to maneuver through a wave of setbacks to foil both a Chinese attempt to control Greenland's natural resources and a more aggressive Russian attempt to gain hegemony over the sparsely populated fledgling country as well as to save her friend, the ousted Premier of Russia, Pavel Laptov. Her suitor, Canadian diplomat Richard Simpson, aids her in this process as well as in the design and signing of a new and more environmentally focused Arctic Treaty to save the region from complete environmental catastrophe. But at the same time Hanne's private life is complicated by this relationship, as she has to choose between Richard and her long-time lover and childhood friend, Kristi Olafson. This is an action-packed novel with lots of twists and turns guaranteed to keep the reader at the edge of their seats, but also one that brings home the realities we could be living in the very near future.

The pastor's wife is murdered; her dog is also killed. Using a "hair-brained" theory to find a matching dog hair, Sheriff Colton Mitchell follows twists and turns to locate the killer.

Trusting a stranger may prove to be her only means of escape...but at what cost?Abandoned as a child and desperate for the love of a family, Salt Lake City costume designer Tess Horton refuses to believe her newly discovered relatives are part of the Mafia-until they try to kill her. Plagued by assassins, and prophetic dreams she doesn't understand, Tess flees to Mexico only to stumble upon CIA field officer, Max Maxwell.Is he willing to betray her trust...if it means stopping an attack on America?Max is chasing terrorists during a storm on the Sea of Cortez when he runs into an ambush. Knocked out cold he awakens without any memory of who he is and what he is doing in Baja. When assassins arrive, Max follows his instincts and helps Tess escape. With every step they take together Max is drawn closer to his brave companion only to discover when his memories return that betraying her is the only way to stop the worst terrorist attack in US history.

Fired at age fifty, dumped by his wife and grown, college-age children-his wife moved her lover, a UPS deliveryman, into the house as soon as Jack left-Jack Manning is humbled beyond words. Six months later, he's down and out, living in a rented room in the Burgh, cooking meals for his eighty-year-old landlady, while walking to work at the corner convenience store. No car. The only job he could get was for $12.00 an hour for the night shift, six days a week.He bought a Powerball ticket, using the birthdays of all the people who hated him, woke up, turned on the news, and found out that he'd split 990 million dollars with two others across the country. Taking a cash payout, he would net $198 million. What would he do now that he was rich with no support payments or any family who cared about him? He was sure he would make a lot of friends real soon. But, like a lot of folks, he'd divvied up his winnings a long time ago in his daydreams when he was bored. This could be very interesting. Maybe he could right some wrongs, change lives, payback through kindness not revenge, help those who want to help themselves. Will it work? Will a lot of money make a difference? Maybe...

It's just another day in paradise for US Coast Guard Lieutenant Joe Traynor, stationed in the Florida Keys...until he gets a call from his boss, Rear Admiral Jake Barnes. Barnes suspects that some Coast Guard members in Miami have been selling seized cocaine back to the Colombians, and Joe and his team are called in to investigate. But as Joe leaves the rear admiral's office, he runs into an ambush, at the same time that his second in command is shot and nearly killed. It seems that members of the US Coast Guard Seventh District are selling more than cocaine to the drug cartels. They're also selling information obtained from bugging the Coast Guard offices. How deep does it go, who is involved, and how are they getting away with it when audits of the warehouse where the drugs are stored show nothing is missing? Joe needs to find out-and fast-before any more top personnel and their families are threatened, including his own fiancée, Julie. However, keeping Julie safe while she negotiates a movie deal for her new book with Walt Disney Studios, outsmarting drug lords and their minions, and tracking down missing fifteen-year-old girls who have been sold into the human trafficking network are all in a day's work for Joe and his team of special investigators...if they can just survive long enough.

After ten years in the Coast Guard, graduation from the Academy, and receiving his MBA, Joe Traynor takes his first real job at a small nonprofit agency in Albany, New York, working to help impoverished youth. But when he discovers a national rip-off and money-laundering scheme, Joe fears that he might have bitten off more than he can chew, and he's not sure if his education, training, and experience in the Coast Guard-the only other job he's ever had-have fully prepared him for what's now happening. As the bodies begin to pile up, Joe can only hope that he and his friends can stop the gang responsible before any more people are killed...