Tales of crime, suspense and horror in the city.

SECOND CITY TALES brings together all nine of the stories from the three short story collections ONE SHOT, A LIVING, and THE MISFORTUNE TELLER, plus an exclusive extra, not available anywhere else: the original novella HALFWAY, which was later reworked into the novel HALFWAY TO HELL.

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In A LIVING, a solitary man contemplates life and death and thinks about exactly what it takes to make a living. This story was shortlisted for the Quick Reads 'Get Britain Reading' prize.

In THE LUCKIEST CORPSE IN THE RIVER, a body is dragged from the River Clyde at high noon. Reporter Jack Wood is on the scene, and he knows it’s nothing out of the ordinary. But then a potential sidebar turns into a dead-cert page one, because the dead man is carrying a winning lottery ticket…

In A JOB WORTH DOING, a repair man providing a discreet service to a niche market thinks he's discovered a way to make some easy money from death.

An incapacitated student gets more than he bargained for when curiosity leads him to join an online self help community. At first the members of THE ROOM welcome him with open arms, but things take a turn for the deadly when one of them confesses to a murder...

In IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME, an encounter with a mysterious stranger in an all-night café changes a young woman's life forever.

Two bored detectives investigate an unattended death in KITTY. The only witnesses were a harmless old lady and her cat, so it looks like an open-and-shut case. As a quiet afternoon escalates into an ordeal of dreamlike terror, the detectives discover how wrong you can be.

In ONE SHOT, Faith Badder needs to catch a vicious killer. To do so, she has to follow in the footsteps of his latest victim. It’s a one-shot deal, and the stakes are higher than she knows….

Dr Jeff Cairngorm is a single father with a dark secret in his past. A quiet evening in a new home explodes into horror as AUDREY returns to her family…

In THE MISFORTUNE TELLER, Miller is a private detective with an unusual talent. One that just might help him crack his latest case...

In HALFWAY, professional thief Johnny Park and a small crew of mismatched miscreants rendezvous in a small desert town following a botched heist. Things go from bad to worse when their fence is found murdered, and it soon becomes clear that someone has followed them to this dusty speck on the map with the intention of killing each member of this disparate group.

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Nine stories of mystery and suspense in one great package. This collection of dark thrillers draws on influences as diverse as Stanley Ellin, Jim Thompson, Stephen King and Alfred Hitchcock.

This collection also includes an exclusive extra: the original novella HALFWAY, the precursor to the full-length thriller novel HALFWAY TO HELL.

Book Length: 37,000 words; includes active table of contents for easy navigation between stories.