Criminal Element - Original crime stories, exclusive excerpts, blog posts, giveaways
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Criminal Element is a community website featuring daily content for fans of the crime and mystery genres in all of their forms. The site features original short stories and excerpts from upcoming crime and mystery novels along with daily blog articles.
Criminal Element - Original crime stories, exclusive excerpts, blog posts, giveaways
1d ago
In a small dusty corner of southeast Texas, three generations of Evans women run the only funeral parlor in town. Unsurprisingly, this does not make them the most popular of the area’s inhabitants, particularly in 1999, with feminism still having a long way to go despite the movement’s continuing strides. A friendly hairdresser contracted to ..read more
Criminal Element - Original crime stories, exclusive excerpts, blog posts, giveaways
1d ago
The death of Annie Shaw’s mother sends the middle-aged artist reeling. Mẹ had fled the Vietnam War and made a home for herself and young Annie in America. Their ongoing struggle for survival wound up acutely damaging the mental health of both, as Mẹ became a hoarder who emotionally manipulated her daughter in extreme ways ..read more
Criminal Element - Original crime stories, exclusive excerpts, blog posts, giveaways
2d ago
Elizabeth Smith has always been something of a loner. Despite having the perfect marriage and job and a seemingly perfect life in the affluent Harbor Town neighborhood of Memphis, Tennessee, she always feels a little dissociated from her neighbors. Gregarious Patricia Fitzgerald is perhaps her best and only friend in the area. So when Elizabeth ..read more
Criminal Element - Original crime stories, exclusive excerpts, blog posts, giveaways
3d ago
It’s been a long time coming, but Emily Westhill is getting remarried! The loss of her beloved late husband, Alec, served to bond her with his parents, Tom and Cindy, so much that she and Tom opened up a donut shop together to help manage their grief. The older Westhills feel like a bonus set ..read more
Criminal Element - Original crime stories, exclusive excerpts, blog posts, giveaways
4d ago
I am a sucker for a good postmodernist novel, and Scarlett Thomas’ The Sleepwalkers is just that best sort of brain candy for readers like myself. I should have known from the Contents page alone that this was going to be a book that dropkicked to the curb the well-worn tropes of privileged tourists uncovering ..read more
Criminal Element - Original crime stories, exclusive excerpts, blog posts, giveaways
5d ago
I’ve been writing thrillers for years and let’s be honest—thrillers take place in a dark space. While there’s room for some levity and dark humor, it’s, well, dark. That’s part of the thrill, after all. Exploring things that go bump in the night and, for an author, making your reader’s heart race as they turn the ..read more
Criminal Element - Original crime stories, exclusive excerpts, blog posts, giveaways
5d ago
The Tudor monarch mystery that I never knew I needed came to life in Karen E. Olson’s An Inconvenient Wife. Taking the classic history of King Henry VIII’s six wives and setting them in modern day, Olson creates a truly clever novel. She explores not only what these women may have been like today, but ..read more
Criminal Element - Original crime stories, exclusive excerpts, blog posts, giveaways
5d ago
Young Will Schumacher considers himself lucky. Though poor and often hungry, he has steady work as a reporter for Seattle’s Daily Star, and a guaranteed one meal a day at the lodging house where he boards. That’s a lot more than most can say in 1933, with the whole country in the throes of the ..read more
Criminal Element - Original crime stories, exclusive excerpts, blog posts, giveaways
5d ago
Nest of Vipers by Harini Nagendra The latest novel in the award-winning Bangalore Detectives Club series finds amateur sleuth Kaveri Murthy involved in a dangerous plot that endangers the life of the visiting Prince of Wales. Disturbing the Dead by Kelley Armstrong MacmillanAudio · Disturbing the Dead by Kelley Armstrong, audiobook excerpt Disturbing the Dead is ..read more
Criminal Element - Original crime stories, exclusive excerpts, blog posts, giveaways
5d ago
Harry Dolan is a critically acclaimed author of series and standalone suspense. His David Loogan saga is comprised of Bad Things Happen, Very Bad Men, and The Last Dead Girl; his singular works include The Man in the Crooked Hat and The Good Killer. Born in Rome, New York, he majored in philosophy at Colgate ..read more