Hit Your Brights captures people in tough spots, often of their own making. Fusing humor and tragedy, these thirteen gritty stories keep readers in suspense. Danger lurks, the needle skips, the bomb goes off, and the empties pile up. Outcomes are unpredictable, but the car always starts, and, sometimes, love wins. Constance Squires casts the diminished circumstances of her characters with authentic detail familiar to any reader who has spent time in flyover country—a swath of boom-and-bust middle America that often seems forgotten. Here, marriages, families, and friendships all hit crisis points in a mutable world of army bases, casinos, truck stops, churches, and bars. Hit Your Brights showcases a virtuosic range of styles and perspectives. The title story, told in second person, excavates the rationalizations of an alcoholic stumbling through the inexorable progress of her disease. After downing nine Rolling Rocks and three tequila shots, she races her car to the nearest liquor store before it closes, turning on her high beams to ease her double vision. In “Dopamine Agonistes,” a family man, recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s, ventures out to a casino and meets a child he tries to help. Other stories focus on people who find themselves in difficult, potentially violent situations. In “Wounding Radius,” two young women are checking on their marijuana crop in the Wichita Mountains outside of Fort Sill when they are discovered by a troubled soldier who has gone AWOL. And in “An Unscheduled Stop,” a mother traveling with her baby encounters diners at a roadside McDonald’s who might—or might not—be child traffickers. Beautifully crafted, with a distinctly modern edge, the stories in Hit Your Brights give voice to women and men, young and old, overlooked and disenfranchised, who inhabit worlds that feel at once strange and familiar.

The stakes don't get much higher than murder... It's January 1969 in the small rural community of Center Springs, Texas. Constable Ned Parker suspects a larger mystery behind the seemingly accidental death of his nephew, R .B., who was found in his overturned pickup near Sanders Creek bridge. It appears that R. B. drowned in the shallow water, but something doesn't add up for Ned, who begins turning over stones in search of what really happened the night R. B. died. The mystery leads Ned to the Starlite Club, a dangerous honky-tonk recently constructed in a no-man's land on the Lone Star side of the Red River. His investigations there uncover suspicious characters, drugs, and gambling, but even more troubling are a series of murders that seem designed to eliminate anyone who might know what really happened to R. B. on that cold January night. As he works his way through the cover-up, Ned lands himself in a high-stakes game of consequences with no good end in sight. Are the good citizens of Center Springs conspiring against Constable Parker in his search for the truth? In this thrilling addition to the historical Texas Red River Mystery Series, Constable Ned Parker bets big, but only time will tell if he'll win justice or a grave of his own.

David Baldacci brings back Sean King and Michelle Maxwell-former Secret Service agents turned private investigators, featured in the hit TNT TV series King & Maxwell-in their most surprising, personal, and dangerous case ever . . . KING AND MAXWELL It seems at first like a simple, tragic story. Tyler Wingo, a teenage boy, learns the awful news that his father, a soldier, was killed in action in Afghanistan. Then the extraordinary happens: Tyler receives a communication from his father . . . after his supposed death. Tyler hires Sean and Michelle to solve the mystery surrounding his father. But their investigation quickly leads to deeper, more troubling questions. Could Tyler's father really still be alive? What was his true mission? Could Tyler be the next target? Sean and Michelle soon realize that they've stumbled on to something bigger and more treacherous than anyone could have imagined. And as their hunt for the truth leads them relentlessly to the highest levels of power and to uncovering the most clandestine of secrets, Sean and Michelle are determined to help and protect Tyler--though they may pay for it with their lives.

Americans want to be reassured their law enforcement agencies are effective in carrying out primary missions that ensure protection wherever possible. This book epitomizes how agencies, with varying missions, can overcome adversity to achieve a common purpose. Several years after special agent Ray St. Giles vanished in West Virginia, Manfred Kurtz is assigned as ATF Detroit's Special Agent in Charge (SAC), and Angelo Tana is his assistant. Both had been Ray's DPD partners before joining ATF. Kurtz is contacted by DPD Deputy Chief Wendell Locke. He wants ATF assistance in finding those responsible for a string of bombings and murders. DPD sergeant Hugh St Giles, Ray's son, and Brian Culbert -- his counterpart at ATF, assemble a compelling team of agents and detectives. Together, they promptly develop leads on the bombings and a W.VA connection. As their case expands in several directions, agents bring in DEA. Now a Task Force, investigators will tie in political corruption, a major gun trafficking ring, stolen military materials, Colombian dope traffickers, and the man responsible for Ray St. Giles' disappearance. However, smack in the middle of the investigation further complications arise. A U.S. Senator and a White House mole strive to manipulate a Congressional subcommittee. Its Chairman struggles with his mandate - find a process to abolish ATF as a law enforcement agency. If successful, seeds for a National Police Force will have been sewn. Strings are being pulled by people with no love of country. Corrupt appointees in Departments of Treasury and Justice, a rogue ATF executive, and remnants of a home-grown terrorist organization - all conspire to bring Federal law enforcement, under a single, powerful agency. As the task force gathers evidence, agents and detectives explore connections to all these divergent angles, leaving Kurtz and his people to sort them out.

The most complete collection of Glenn Blake’s luminous short fiction published to date. “I was born in a land of bayous, raised between rivers,” Glenn Blake writes. “There is a place in Southeast Texas where two rivers meet and become one. There is a long bridge over these waters, and as you drive across, you can look to the south and see where the Old River and the Lost River become the Old and the Lost. You can look out as far as you can see and watch this wide water become the bay.” These fourteen stories are set in the swamps, bayous, and sloughs of Southeast Texas, a region that is subsiding—sinking inches every year. The characters who inhabit Blake’s haunting landscape—awash in their own worlds, adrift in their own lives—struggle to salvage what they can of their hopes and dreams from the encroaching tides.

“I was born in a land of bayous, raised between rivers,” writes Glenn Blake in his latest collection of short stories. “There is a place in Southeast Texas where two rivers meet and become one. There is a long bridge over these waters, and as you drive across, you can look to the south and see where the Old River and the Lost River become the Old and the Lost. You can look out as far as you can see and watch this wide water become the bay.” The stories in Return Fire are set in the swamps, bayous, and sloughs of Southeast Texas, a region that is subsiding—sinking inches every year beneath the encroaching tides. The characters who inhabit Blake’s Southern landscape struggle to salvage what they can of their hopes and dreams. They are the walking wounded—cautious, crippled, capable of any act. Magnolias, water, mescal, stars, and fire return again and again in these seven sparse—yet tightly written—vignettes.

Harper, New Mexico Population: 56 In a matter of a few short days the city's leadership would have to seriously contemplate repainting their city limits sign. But, for the moment, that decision would have to wait. A drastic reversal in census was about to take place, and Harper and its citizenry were going to have an entirely different agenda placed before them—how to be alive when the unnatural carnage ran its course. Jonas Birdsong. Randall Garner. Sheriff Brad Caldwell. Evie MacAntire. And a handful of others. All found themselves caught in the middle of a course of events with no familiar rules. But then again…Mother Nature had certainly never promised that survival or the natural Order of all things would be guaranteed or easily understood. Let the Old Men talk. Let the Cycle of the Rain begin.