Books by A. F. Carter
The Yards (A Delia Mariola Novel)
by A. F. Carter
In this twisty crime novel, a hotel hook up gone wrong finds a single mother suspected of murder
Git O’Rourke is from the wrong side of the tracks―even if, in the depressed Rust Belt town of Baxter, it’s not always clear where that designation begins. A single mother, she works hard to support her daughter Charlie, but still finds time to cut loose every once in a while, to go to a local bar, drink martinis and find a companion for the night. Which is exactly how she ends up in a hotel room with a strange man passed out on heroin, and how she comes to possess the bag of money and guns that he left open as he got his fix.
When the dead body is discovered at the Skyview Motor Court, a bullet through its forehead, officer Delia Mariola is one of the first on the scene. She recognizes the victim as the perpetrator in an earlier crime―a domestic violence call―but that does little to explain how he ended up in the situation in which they find him. She knows he’s connected to the local mob, but the crime scene doesn’t exactly resemble their typical hit. Instead, all signs point to a pick-up gone wrong. Which means that all signs point to Git.
A twisted tale set in a tough town, The Yards is a multiple-voiced mystery with two unforgettable women at its core; its suspenseful, thrilling, and unpredictable plot will keep the reader guessing until the very last page.
Copies
No copies available.
The Yards (A Delia Mariola Novel)
by A. F. Carter
In this twisty crime novel, a hotel hook up gone wrong finds a single mother suspected of murder
Git O’Rourke is from the wrong side of the tracks―even if, in the depressed Rust Belt town of Baxter, it’s not always clear where that designation begins. A single mother, she works hard to support her daughter Charlie, but still finds time to cut loose every once in a while, to go to a local bar, drink martinis and find a companion for the night. Which is exactly how she ends up in a hotel room with a strange man passed out on heroin, and how she comes to possess the bag of money and guns that he left open as he got his fix.
When the dead body is discovered at the Skyview Motor Court, a bullet through its forehead, officer Delia Mariola is one of the first on the scene. She recognizes the victim as the perpetrator in an earlier crime―a domestic violence call―but that does little to explain how he ended up in the situation in which they find him. She knows he’s connected to the local mob, but the crime scene doesn’t exactly resemble their typical hit. Instead, all signs point to a pick-up gone wrong. Which means that all signs point to Git.
A twisted tale set in a tough town, The Yards is a multiple-voiced mystery with two unforgettable women at its core; its suspenseful, thrilling, and unpredictable plot will keep the reader guessing until the very last page.
Copies
-
$16.95
The Hostage (A Delia Mariola Novel)
by A. F. Carter
In this new thriller from the author of The Yards, a cop tracks the kidnapped teenage daughter of a wealthy developer in a transitioning Rust Belt town
A new Nissan plant is coming to the depressed Rust Belt town of Baxter, and Captain Delia Mariola has been busy cleaning up the crime-addled city ever since the deal was announced. But when the 15-year-old daughter of the lead bidder on the construction project―a wealthy out-of-towner―suddenly disappears, and it becomes clear that a professional kidnapping ring may be responsible, Delia realizes that the factory’s influx of cash could bring with it an entirely new sort of danger, never before considered in this working class milieu.
Though Elizabeth’s abduction was well-planned and bearing the mark of an experienced team, her captors could not have anticipated the quick and clever brilliance of the exceptionally smart teen. From the trunk of the car where she is held, she soon devises a clever trick to get cryptic messages to those who love her back down the highway in Baxter. The only problem is that the messages might be too cryptic even for their recipients to decipher. If Delia has any hope of bringing the girl home unharmed, she’ll have to crack the code and discover the meaning behind the message. And unless she does it fast, there may be nobody left to save…
Tough, thrilling, and filled with memorable characters, The Hostage is a gritty mystery set in the same hardscrabble town as 2021’s The Yards, which Kirkus praised as "a breathless suspenser that’s also a painfully acute evocation of the wrong side of the tracks."
Copies
-
$26.95
The Hostage (A Delia Mariola Novel)
by A. F. Carter
In this new thriller from the author of The Yards, a cop tracks the kidnapped teenage daughter of a wealthy developer in a transitioning Rust Belt town
A new Nissan plant is coming to the depressed Rust Belt town of Baxter, and Captain Delia Mariola has been busy cleaning up the crime-addled city ever since the deal was announced. But when the 15-year-old daughter of the lead bidder on the construction project―a wealthy out-of-towner―suddenly disappears, and it becomes clear that a professional kidnapping ring may be responsible, Delia realizes that the factory’s influx of cash could bring with it an entirely new sort of danger, never before considered in this working class milieu.
Though Elizabeth’s abduction was well-planned and bearing the mark of an experienced team, her captors could not have anticipated the quick and clever brilliance of the exceptionally smart teen. From the trunk of the car where she is held, she soon devises a clever trick to get cryptic messages to those who love her back down the highway in Baxter. The only problem is that the messages might be too cryptic even for their recipients to decipher. If Delia has any hope of bringing the girl home unharmed, she’ll have to crack the code and discover the meaning behind the message. And unless she does it fast, there may be nobody left to save…
Tough, thrilling, and filled with memorable characters, The Hostage is a gritty mystery set in the same hardscrabble town as 2021’s The Yards, which Kirkus praised as "a breathless suspenser that’s also a painfully acute evocation of the wrong side of the tracks."
Copies
-
$17.95
Johnny-Boy
by A. F. Carter
In this newest entry in the Edgar-nominated Delia Mariola series, a serial killer stalks the streets of a depressed Rust Belt town on the cusp of revitalization. Johnny-Boy is a killer. He lives for the thrill of the hunt, the stalking of human prey. Fittingly, he works as a hitman but always finds time for extracurricular activity on the side. When a new assignment sends him to Baxter, a depressed Rust Belt town experiencing a chaotic upheaval at the dawn of a new economic beginning, Johnny-Boy plans to keep things professional. But when he realizes that the streets are awash with drug activity, small-time mobsters, and loads of transitory laborers in town to construct a new car plant, Johnny-Boy sees an opportunity to have a little fun while he’s there. . . .
The work of cleaning up a town of lowlifes and criminals is a never-ending slog for Delia Mariola, Chief of Detectives. But when a young teenager―nearly the same age as her own son―is found tortured to death, the stakes suddenly feel higher than ever. Delia brings her best detective, Blanche Weber, onto the case and together they set out to discover who the killer is and what he’s doing in this town. But having two female detectives lead the case seems to rub a certain segment of the locals the wrong way, especially when one of the women is a hothead, the other is a lesbian, and both have risen to the top due to their excellent and uncompromising work as detectives. As they watch the streets in an effort to catch a killer, Delia and Blanche must also watch their own backs for attacks from within.
The fourth installment in the saga of Delia Mariola and her hard-bitten town of Baxter, Johnny-Boy is a tough, gritty crime novel with an unforgettable queer heroine at its center.
Copies
-
$17.95
Boomtown
by The Overlook Press, Greg Williams, A. F. Carter
After the Y2K panic had subsided and the streets of Times Square were cleared, America woke up to a new century shocked to find itself more or less the same as it was before. Following the lives of a group of sharply drawn characters in this uncannily hip and savagely satirical new novel from the acclaimed Sewanee Writers? Series, Greg Williams takes us to the heart of the postmillennial psyche.
Jonathan Scarver, CEO of Internet start-up Allminder.com, has Midas-like visions of wealth and an IPO scheduled for late spring guaranteed to skyrocket the value of his stock options to obscenity, if he can only manage to keep it a secret that the company is nearly bankrupt. His publicity director, Brad Smith, has been relying on the comfort of all-night parties to relieve the stress of work and to drown out the calling of a secret ambition. Around his life circles Nicole, a struggling actress-slash-waitress coping with a post-breakup depression. In a series of just-missed chance encounters and lost opportunities of the kind that can only happen in Manhattan, Brad and Nicole's orbits nearly collide and are then repelled, spiraling with the city's gravitational pull toward their destiny.
A "Bright Lights, Big City" for the dot.com age, "Boomtown" exposes with dry irony and magnetic wisdom the hubris, vanity, and deceit that fueled the staggering climb and precipitous fall of that era's ambition.
Copies
No copies available.
Boomtown
by The Overlook Press, Greg Williams, A. F. Carter
An Edgar Award Nominee
One cop strives to bring order and justice to a lawless boomtown. Police captain Delia Mariola is still struggling to drive the predatory drug dealers from the rustbelt town of Baxter, before the new Nissan plant owners lose faith in this forgotten corner of America. It doesn’t help that a boomtown has grown up just outside of city limits?a wild west designed to feed every unsavory desire of the workers building the plant. And like vultures homing in on the weak, criminal gangs from the big cities have also been drawn to the boomtown, knowing how freely money will flow to those willing to supply drugs and women to these workers far from home, looking for comfort and distraction. With no police actively enforcing the rule of law in the unregulated town, the criminals have turned on each other as they try to claim control.
In the midst of this drug war, a young prostitute’s body turns up on the streets of Baxter, well within Delia’s jurisdiction to investigate. Hoping this might be the case that allows her to finally be able to crack down on Boomtown, Delia is relentless in her pursuit of the killer and the group she believes is behind the criminal enterprises plaguing her streets. But Delia isn’t the only person looking for the murderer. Two strangers have arrived in town, claiming to be the family of the deceased and possibly looking for a version of justice that has more to do with back hills vigilantism than the court of law. This complicates everything for Delia, who is unfairly made the target of criticism not only for the criminals running amuck in Boomtown, but also as a woman and lesbian in a small-town police force.
Once again, A.F. Carter brings a host of unforgettable characters to life in this gritty crime novel, the most memorable being the town of Baxter itself.
Copies
-
$17.95