Bøker av Richard Levesque

Attempted assassination. Royal kidnapping. When Beatrix is blamed for a national calamity, she'll stop at nothing to restore order even if it costs her life.Beatrix Philby is a loyal and fearless agent in the employ of California's royal family, charged with protecting the heir to the island nation's throne. She's also just as loyal to her twin sister, an ambitious actress in California's fledgling film industry. When her sister gets into an embarrassing bind, Beatrix must call upon her most cunning skills to save her reputation. But that also means turning her attention away from safeguarding the princess at the same time that sinister forces decide to strike. In the resulting upheaval, Beatrix must shoulder the blame. Setting things right means following a handful of clues that lead across a hostile landscape. Soon, Beatrix and a small group of allies are in a race against ruthless foes, each side seeking to uncover long buried secrets. If Beatrix succeeds, she can save a princess and herself. But if her enemies outwit her, Beatrix and all she holds dear will be obliterated.If you like strong heroines, intricate plots, and an imaginative steampunk world, you'll love Califia's Gold.

Hollywood is a town full of secrets, and you'd think that would mean steady business for an investigator like Jed Strait. But when his trusty robot assistant goes AWOL just as his only case takes a deadly turn, Jed is forced to make a difficult choice: Save his business, or save Carmelita from the mysterious new boyfriend who seems too good to be real. No matter how Jed plays it, somebody is bound to lose now that he's riffing to The Shakedown Shuffle.

After her research mission goes awry, Lespeth is desperate to go home and put the nightmare behind her. Unfortunately for her, home is light years away. Trapped in 1921 Hollywood, all she can do is find a way to blend in with the aliens who surround her until she can get back to her native planet. And that's going to mean dealing with the hoodlums, drug dealers and dope fiends who dwell on the city's dark edges. She doesn't know that her journey is about far more than a safe homecoming. By the time Lespeth discovers that the fates of both her species and all of humanity are tied to the choices she makes-and the ones that more powerful entities have made for her-the path back to her planet may be closed to her forever.

When the world ends in one sweeping catastrophe, can this teen survive a corpse-strewn future?Fifteen-year-old Scarlett Fisher thought she was done with being angry. Getting past her parents' divorce with the help of friends, she's finally enjoying some stability. But nothing could prepare her for the devastating plague that wipes out everyone she loves...and leaves her fending for herself in a treacherous wasteland.Left with no choice but to endure, the ordinary girl must learn to become extraordinary-especially when she learns she's not alone. Now the key to triumphing over humanity's ugliest side and finding just one other survivor might lie in channeling the rage she worked so hard to forget.Can Scarlett stay alive in a new dawn where friends are scarce and foes are lethal?The Girl at the End of the World is a thrilling, fast-moving, stand-alone post-apocalyptic adventure.Get your copy of The Girl at the End of the World now and find out what it takes to survive.

Jed Strait has let his nemesis, Elsa Schwartz, get away one time too many. Now, he needs to track her down before she can do real damage-and that means following her into an alternate world where all the rules are different.But pursuing Elsa means putting everything else on hold-his business, his latest case, and the relationship with Sherise that's now moving in surprising directions. Worse, his hold on reality is starting to slip, and if he keeps chasing Elsa, he runs the risk of losing what little ability he has to cling to the world he's made his own.Faced with the choice of letting Elsa rise to power in an unsuspecting world or chasing her down and losing his chance at happiness, Jed Strait can do nothing more than let the notes play out in a deadly dance called The Jetpack Boogie.

There's a man in the shadows who's wearing his face. Can a private detective solve an impossible case and still keep himself out of trouble when his double might be manipulating him at every turn?Jed Strait is trying to solve a 40-year-old cold case, but someone has worked long and hard to keep the killer's identity a secret. If he fails, he loses out on the opportunity of a lifetime. The more he digs, though, the more trouble he gets into. Even worse, it's not long before his friend Guillermo is in the crosshairs of powerful people who seem to know the secrets behind his technological wizardry.With his and Guillermo's fates on the line, Jed throws everything he's got into fighting a shadowy foe who's an expert at playing The Smoking Gun Serenade.Get your copy of The Smoking Gun Serenade now.

Stripped of every resource, can a gritty PI solve the ultimate missing person case in a world gone mad?When Jed Strait sees through the lies his latest client has told him, he figures he's got the case just about solved. And solving the case should free him up to keep things going smoothly with his girlfriend-despite the bumps their newly found fame threatens to throw at them. But when an old nemesis resurfaces with an attack worse than anything Jed has faced before, he's left with much bigger problems than a dishonest client and a grumpy girlfriend. With his very sanity and identity on the line, Jed has to call on all his skills if he's going to stay in the world he calls home. If not, he may spend the rest of his life in a cell, humming a tune that he doesn't even realize is called The Madhouse Mambo.The Madhouse Mambo is the seventh book in The Crossover Case Files. Get your copy now to see how Jed Strait fares against his ultimate foe.

Jed Strait made it through the war unscathed. Or at least, that's what he thought. But now that he's home, he's not so sure, because he's plagued by horrifying flashbacks. Only, they're visions of events that never occurred.All he wants is to reconnect with the woman he left behind and get on with his life, but according to the visions, that's the worst thing he could do. If he follows Annabelle to LA, his nightmares could actually become real, but staying in New York with no Annabelle and no explanations will surely drive him mad.Damned if he goes and damned if he stays, the only path forward is the one leading west, to the final crescendo of either marriage, misery or madness waiting for him at the end of a road that's paved with The Blacktop Blues.

What if all you had to do to make your dreams come true was violate the laws of the universe?That's not just a philosophical question Eddie Royce has to answer. It's a choice he has to make when the most famous science fiction writer of the 1930s goes missing and his unscrupulous publisher becomes convinced that Eddie knows all of the older writer's secrets--not just the secret of where he's gone, but the secret of how he's traveled in time.Until now, Eddie's fooled himself into thinking he's got the system figured out, "borrowing" plots from Shakespeare and rewriting them as space operas to make a name for himself in the pulps. But when he finds out that Chester Blackwood--his idol and inspiration--has been cheating the system in ways Eddie could never have dreamed of, the hack science fiction writer finds himself in the middle of a plot that his pulp readers would never have imagined.Now he has to do all he can to save himself--and Blackwood's beautiful daughter--from the powerful figures who all want Blackwood's secret. And violating the laws of the universe might just be the least of Eddie's problems.

A chance encounter with a burlesque dancer drags Jed Strait into the sleazy alleys of Los Angeles, where he finds the police following a string of murders along a path that will lead them straight back to his assistant. But Jed's efforts to unravel the truth and clear Carmelita's name are frustrated when his witnesses keep turning up dead. Is the killer onto him? Could Carmelita be playing him for a fool? It's all on the line as Jed races to find the killer - whoever it is - before he himself becomes the sour note at the end of The Double-Time Slide.

What's a private detective to do in a future where nothing is private any more? For Ted Lomax, the answer is to find clients who need their info kept off the grid, and that's what Ted has done for years, skirting the high tech that runs the new California and living on the fringes of society. But when his daughter is accused of murdering her boyfriend-an agent in the Secret Police-Ted has to dig himself out of the hole he's been in for years in order to save her. Before long, he's pulled into a shadow world of underground hackers, high-end programmers, and renegade gear-heads, all of whom sebuyem to have a stake in California's future. The further he digs into the case, the clearer it becomes that it's about more than one dead agent. Solving it might save his daughter. And it might get him killed. And it just might open the door to secrets that reach back to the attack that almost killed him eighteen years before. At any rate, Ted Lomax will never be the same."...fast-paced futuristic thriller..."-Publishers Weekly*"...a well-crafted story with realistic characters we can root for in a hard-boiled landscape...It's a story that should appeal to fans of early Gibson or Sterling. And now that our world is much closer to the cyberpunk vision of tomorrow that was forecast decades ago, the story should appeal to contemporary detective fiction fans too. Strictly Analog is highly recommended."-The New Poddler Review of Books"The main character, Ted Lomax, is strong and believable while the writing style, brisk and no-nonsense fits perfectly with the premise."-Amazon Expert Reviewer*This review was of the manuscript version submitted to Amazon's Breakout Novel Awards competition in 2012.

When reformed dream hacker Nix Nighthawk's sleep chip malfunctions, he is forced to seek help from a world he is trying to avoid-his old friends in the pirate dream network. But that world has changed, and Nix soon finds himself at the center of a complex plot to overthrow the vast corporation that controls every aspect of society. Betrayed by his lover, his friends, and even the technology that defines him, he has to choose: go back to living his safe and controlled existence, or be the hero and join forces with the revolutionary known only as The Somniscient.

With his grip on reality growing flimsy, can a gritty PI protect the innocent from his Nazi nemesis?Jed Strait has faced challenges before, but none of them had stakes as high as what he's facing now. With his girlfriend Sherise in the crosshairs of a ruthless killer, all Jed wants is to lay a trap and dispatch his enemies.But when his old friend on the LAPD calls in a favor Jed can't refuse, he's forced to split his energy between protecting Sherise and another innocent victim of a crime so serious that it threatens to blow the LAPD apart. Worse, Jed is starting to realize he has a new enemy to deal with, and it's someone he can only see when looking into a mirror.Does Jed save Sherise, the innocent victim, or himself? The answer lies somewhere in the complicated rhythms and fiery notes of The Fedora Fandango.Get your copy of The Fedora Fandango at the pre-order price now!