Gage hates birthdays. So when his daughter throws him a surprise party on the coldest night the Oregon coastal town of Barnacle Bluffs has seen in years, Gage finds himself in an equally frosty mood. And when a police cruiser stops him as he trudges along Highway 101, minding his own business, he can't imagine the night could get any worse. Oh, but it does. For the cranky private investigator with the bum knee, it can always get worse. When the cops collar one of the people closest to Gage for murder, the desperate hours ahead become a frantic push to right a presumed injustice. Add in a daughter’s secret life, a bad boy Hollywood star, and a troubled new police chief with something to prove, and the night doesn't just get worse. It forces a quickly unraveling Gage to choose between cold, uncomfortable truths—about himself, about someone he loves—and shallow but comforting deceptions.
The iceman cometh.— Hotel mogul Eben Spencer had learned long ago to keep his eye on the ball and his emotions under wraps. And where had this philosophy got him so far? In business, to the pinnacle of success. And in his personal life, it had brought him one beloved, if unhappy, little girl, and one shattered marriage. And he was not about to embark on another one anytime soon.—But then he met Sage Benedetto. The bewitching nature girl was everything Eben was not—warm, emotional, open—and everything he'd never dreamed he'd want. But lately he was having very different dreams.—
A brutally murdered federal agent and distrust among his close colleagues greet Port Stirling Police Chief Matt Horning as he faces down a second homicide in his new Oregon hometown. Federal agent Clay Sherwin, who was briefly a suspect in a murder in Shallow Waters, book one in A Port Stirling Mystery series, has been found shot through the heart and decapitated in a marshy area near the Pacific Ocean. Just when his police department gets back to normal after solving its first murder in decades, along comes another dead body, but this one has ominous overtones never seen before in Port Stirling. Did Matt Horning bring this trouble with him when he fled a painful professional experience in Texas four months earlier? With his colleagues Detective Jay Finley, Cadet Fern Byrne, and Oregon State Trooper Ed Sanders assisting him, Horning must also deal with the federal officials from the State Department to investigate Sherwin's death. Is there really an international drug ring operating in his remote coastal village where nothing ever happens? Is this what Matt Horning bargained for when he took this job last winter? As spring blooms on the Oregon coast, are there also blossoming forbidden feelings within him? The intimidating 300-foot bluffs ringing the white-sand pristine beaches may present the perfect locale for those intent on evil. Dogged by his own demons, Horning must quickly face the facts; this is more than a few bad guys exchanging pot for cash. Much more. Does he have the resources and the experience to take back Port Stirling from those who would harm its peaceful vibe before it's lost forever? Can he outsmart the bad guys? In this shocking story based on a real-life incident, Midnight Beach continues the saga of Matt Horning and Port Stirling.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Freaky pleasure...it scratches a nostalgic itch for those who grew up on Saturday morning Scooby-Doo cartoons and sugar-bombed breakfast cereal" --USA Today "Deliriously wild, funny and imaginative. Cantero is an original voice." --Charles Yu, author of How to Live in a Science Fictional Universe With raucous humor and brilliantly orchestrated mayhem, Meddling Kids subverts teen detective archetypes like the Hardy Boys, the Famous Five, and Scooby-Doo, and delivers an exuberant and wickedly entertaining celebration of horror, love, friendship, and many-tentacled, interdimensional demon spawn. SUMMER 1977. The Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon’s Zoinx River Valley) solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster—another low-life fortune hunter trying to get his dirty hands on the legendary riches hidden in Deboën Mansion. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids. 1990. The former detectives have grown up and apart, each haunted by disturbing memories of their final night in the old haunted house. There are too many strange, half-remembered encounters and events that cannot be dismissed or explained away by a guy in a mask. And Andy, the once intrepid tomboy now wanted in two states, is tired of running from her demons. She needs answers. To find them she will need Kerri, the one-time kid genius and budding biologist, now drinking her ghosts away in New York with Tim, an excitable Weimaraner descended from the original canine member of the club. They will also have to get Nate, the horror nerd currently residing in an asylum in Arkham, Massachusetts. Luckily Nate has not lost contact with Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star who was once their team leader . . . which is remarkable, considering Peter has been dead for years. The time has come to get the team back together, face their fears, and find out what actually happened all those years ago at Sleepy Lake. It’s their only chance to end the nightmares and, perhaps, save the world. A nostalgic and subversive trip rife with sly nods to H. P. Lovecraft and pop culture, Edgar Cantero’s Meddling Kids is a strikingly original and dazzling reminder of the fun and adventure we can discover at the heart of our favorite stories, no matter how old we get.
Gage might go mad. With most of inland Oregon enduring a record-setting heatwave, the hordes descend on Barnacle Bluffs seeking cooler ocean air, and it's all the curmudgeonly private investigator can do to keep from shooting somebody. What's the harm in one fewer tourist, anyway? Yet when a desperate young woman shows up claiming her depressed husband has gone missing, Gage will need all of his wits to find the man before something terrible happens. His complicated feelings for the beautiful but headstrong police chief, with dark secrets of her own, only make solving the case more challenging … especially when those secrets eventually bring Gage face to face with one of the most savage foes ever to cross his path.
When Henry Cooper inherits property in Thunder Point, Oregon, the fate of the entire small town rests on whether he decides to stay there or move on, a decision that is influenced by his growing attraction for Sarah Dupree.
A decades-old skeleton with a bullet in its skull, and a natural disaster give Port Stirling, Oregon, police chief Matt Horning all he can handle. Contemporary problems and an ugly story in Oregon's history make this a riveting read.
