Race and civil rights in 1963 Los Angeles provide a powerful backdrop in Gary Phillips’s riveting historical crime novel about an African American forensic photographer seeking justice for his jazz musician friend. Los Angeles, 1963: African American Korean War veteran Harry Ingram earns a living as a news photographer and occasional process server: chasing police radio calls and dodging baseball bats. With racial tensions running high on the eve of Martin Luther King’s Freedom Rally, Ingram risks ending up one of the victims at every crime scene he photographs. When Ingram hears a call over the police scanner to the scene of a deadly automobile accident, he recognizes the vehicle described as belonging to his good friend and old army buddy, the white jazz trumpeter Ben Kinslow, with whom he’d only just reconnected. The LAPD declares the car crash an accident, but when Ingram develops his photos there are signs of foul play. Ingram feels compelled to play detective, even if it means putting his own life on the line. Armed with his wits, his camera, and occasionally his Colt .45, Harry Ingram plunges headfirst into the seamier underbelly of LA society, tangling with racists, leftists, blackmailers, gangsters, zealots and lovers, all in the hope of finding something resembling justice for a friend.
SHORT STORIES! BIG ACTION! Declassified at last! Snow Shorts delve into the adventures of Abraham Snow, his family, and his friends, in short, bite-sized action/thriller tales. Volume 1 contains stories featuring Abraham Snow, Big John Salmon, and we're introduced to Mama Snow herself in Laura Snow's first appearance in print.
Snow Short #1: Snow Flies featuring Abraham Snow by Bobby Nash.Abraham Snow goes undercover and takes to the air when a pilot friend of his goes missing. The trail leads him to a casino, smugglers, and dangerous skies. Can Snow disrupt the smuggling operation and save his friend and their unexpected passengers before they're shot down? Snow Flies was a 2020 Pulp Factory Award Nominee for Best Pulp Short Story.
Snow Short #2: Thieves' Alley featuring Big John Salmon by Gary Phillips.Big John Salmon had built a new life for himself after being incarcerated. But now an old friend, an unrepentant thief was dying in a prison hospital in the high desert. Pulled back in by personal honor as the man's family is under threat, Big John is recruited to carry off one last heist - against a quirky billionaire's fortified penthouse atop the Phan-Tan Casino under heavy guard. Yet the prize wasn't money. Squeezed by forces known and unknown, Salmon once again walks down thieves' alley as he puts his plan in motion. Calling on an edge forged in the fires of adversity might tip the odds in his favor to make it out alive...or wind up on the slab.
Snow Short #3: A Stranger Calls featuring Laura Snow by Nicole Givens Kurtz.Laura Snow (mother of Abraham, Douglas, and Samantha) is enjoying her life. A free spirit, Laura follows her bliss. The journey leads her to Taos, New Mexico where she has created a life for herself away from the dangers her family often finds themselves facing. Or so she thought. Laura is concerned when she starts receiving threatening phone calls and texts. A mysterious someone is stalking her and the threats are escalating. When official channels fail, Laura falls back on old skills she learned years ago from her father-in-law, Archer Snow to protect herself against a dangerous foe who wants her dead.
Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem is the first in an exciting new retro, rollicking adventure series. This re-imagined pulp novel follows the Doc Savage-style adventures of the first American to reach the North Pole-Matthew Henson.
The tail end of the Roaring Twenties. Harlem.
Hired by controversial spiritual leader Daddy Paradise to retrieve his adult daughter who has been kidnapped, adventurer Matthew Henson does just that. Then he must safeguard the two until the firebrand can deliver a momentous speech at a mass rally. Henson must employ all his survival skills to fulfill his task-skills that kept him whole in forbidden jungles, across Asia, and in sub-zero ice storms when he first reached the North Pole. Henson's charge brings him face-to-face with such illustrious characters as gangster Dutch Schultz, who's looking to muscle out numbers racket boss Queenie St. Clair; and famed inventor Nikola Tesla, who is using his electrical acumen to surveil plutocrats. Henson's pal Bessie Coleman, America's first Black aviatrix, lends a hand as well.
With a death ray zeroing in on him, Henson races against the clock to save lives, and to keep a mysterious and powerful meteor fragment he brought back from the Arctic years ago out of the hands of monied evil-doers.
For years, writers and filmmakers have speculated about the possibility of the Earth being invaded by aliens from another planet. But what if the aliens have been watching us, infiltrating us via human collaborators, or even surgically altering themselves to look human? Occupied Earth is a groundbreaking anthology that explores the idea of what the world would look like years after its conquest.Twenty years after a successful invasion by the Makh-Ra, human beings still exist, only they have become subservient to a new race of occupiers who now govern the devastated planet. But, as much at things continue with some sense of normalcy, something has happened in the Mahk-Ra's empire. Earth, once considered a strategic beachhead of major importance to the Empire, has been downgraded in its value. Things are starting to degrade. Our planet is the last place any self-respecting Mahk-Ra officer wants to be assigned. Yet, despite everything, life continues. Occupied Earth brings us face to face with annihilation-and shows how we can pull ourselves back from the brink.
Gary Phillips writes hard-hitting crime fiction that grabs listeners from start to finish. In The Warlord of Willow Ridge, O'Conner needs a place to hole up after an especially bloody job. Tooling his sputtering motorcycle into the suburban community of Willow Ridge, he expects to find a place of refuge. Instead, he tumbles headfirst into a world of desperate homeowners, gangs, and violence.
Gary Phillips has earned a widespread reputation for breakneck-paced fiction that perfectly captures the hard edge of life on the streets. Bangers features Rafael "Saint" Santian, a key member of TRASH (Tactical Resources Against Street Hoodlums). There's a war being fought on the mean streets of Los Angeles. The gangstas are bad, but the elite cops out to bring them down are even badder. And they aren't afraid to bend the rules either-not if it means getting the job done.
Hard-bodied and street-wise former showgirl Martha Chainey, who first appeared in High Hand, gets caught in the neon madness of Las Vegas in this fresh mystery. Shots ring out during a heavyweight fight, and in the ensuing mayhem, someone steals five million bucks that used to belong to a casino owner. If Martha can track down the loot, there's a cool quarter million in it for her troubles.
Gary Phillips has been published in The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Examiner, and Rap Pages magazine. High Hand introduces the unforgettable, six-foot tall Chainey (nobody calls her Martha), a former showgirl who transports under-the-table money for Las Vegas casinos. When masked shooters rob Chainey of seven million bucks, she's got three days to recover the money-or else.
