Lambda Literary Award-winning author introduces readers to the crime-fighting duo of Fin Donner and Devorah Longstreet—Lovers. Investigators. Women ahead of their time. New York City, 1899—a city on the cusp of a new century. A city growing taller, faster, a city of new inventions, new ideas—and old dangers on its shadowy streets where crime, misery, and murder lurk. When Pauline Godfrey, a young woman embodying the coming modern age, is viciously murdered, her throat cut, private inquiry agents Finola “Fin” Donner and Devorah Longstreet must navigate a world of violence and passion, lust and betrayal, where duty is twisted into bitter obedience and love is soiled. Fin, a tough survivor of the dockside slums, and her beloved companion, the elegant, intellectual socialite Devorah, probe deep into the festering secrets of a family, the rot and corruption of the police department, and the sinister world of the city’s thieves, whores, and thugs to find the killer.

New York City, 1954. Two women are found murdered. One is Lorraine Quinn, Cantor Gold’s most recent one-night-stand. The other is political power broker and aspiring New York socialite Eve Garraway, a regular client of Cantor’s stolen art trade. Police nemesis, Lieutenant Norm Huber, wants to pin the murders on Cantor, send her to prison, and put her in the electric chair. He’ll get evidence on her any way he can. Into this cauldron of danger and death come two other women, each with ties to Cantor’s past. One hates her until passion intervenes; the other harbors darkly hidden feelings. Set during the earliest stirrings of the Homosexual Rights Movement, Cantor begins to question her own tenuous identity, and the trade-offs she must make to get what she wants. Cantor Gold, dapper butch art thief and smuggler for whom survival is everything, must now grapple with two fronts: surviving the shifting sands of the criminal underworld, and navigating the changing tides of society.

Lambda Literary Award-winning author returns with a stunning mystery proving that Noir is the new black. A golden city of prosperity, energy, the exciting engine of the American Dream. Just underneath, though, is a dark city, with darker ambitions. This is the world of Cantor Gold, dapper art thief and smuggler, who has her own way of securing the rewards of the American Dream. In the conformist 1950s, when same-sex romance was illegal, Cantor decides that any Law that condemns her as a criminal just for her love of women is not a Law she owes any allegiance to. As an outlaw, she thrives earning fistfuls of cash and living life on her own terms. But someone wants to take it all away. Someone wants to rob Cantor of everything: her success in the underworld, her freedom, her life. Predators are out to destroy Cantor: the cops who violently raid the Green Door Club, Cantor's favorite watering hole, where the lights are low and the women are willing; and worse, an unknown predator who threatens to destroy Cantor's life, even destroy the lives of people close to her. Murder is one of the weapons in the hunter's arsenal, involving Cantor in the dangerous fate of each corpse. Another is the taunting, threatening notes that turn up on the corpses or at Cantor's door or at the door of people she visits. And then there are the phone calls and a disguised voice. Someone is invading every minute of Cantor Gold's life.

Lambda Literary Award-winning author, Ann Aptaker's Cantor Gold faces the questions of who are her real friends, and how far she would go to avenge their deaths. Early November, 1958 New York City Art thief and smuggler Cantor Gold's latest underworld caper begins when she arrives at big-time bookie Nick Fortunato's apartment to celebrate his birthday, a ritual the two friends have enjoyed for years. But Nick is missing, and there’s blood on the living room carpet. It’s not Nick’s blood, though. Nick’s death still awaits him. Despite crime lord Sig Loreale’s best plans to protect Nick, with whom Sig has financial dealings, a killer finds Nick hidden away in a cheap hotel owned by Loreale. Among the players in this tale of friendship, betrayal, and the competition for power between the young and the aging, is the beautiful and possibly deadly Abbey O’Brien. She was Nick’s right hand in his bookie operation, and now that he’s dead, she stands to either gain big or lose even bigger. The operatives and bettors in Nick’s bookmaking business have a stake in Nick’s death, too…and motives to either solve his murder or get him out of the way: there’s Freddie Holmes, who sizes you up before you’re allowed entry into the betting parlor; Mike Leandro, leader of the crew that takes phoned-in bets; Chickie D’Andrea, who posts the odds from every track and sporting event; Harry “Horsehide” Lanz, a major gambler and trackside aficionado; Sylvia Georgiadis, an aging grand dame of the gambling world; and others. Assisting Cantor, as always, are her young Guy Friday Judson Zane; cabbie, sometime getaway driver and sometime friend with benefits Rosie Bliss; and Cantor’s criminal mentor Esther “Mom” Sheinbaum. And always circling are the cops.

Midnight, New York Harbor, 1949. Cantor Gold, dapper dyke-about-town, smuggler of fine art, waits in her boat under the Brooklyn Bridge for racketeer Gregory Ortine. In the shadow of the bridge, he'll toss Cantor a satchel of cash, and she'll toss him a pouch containing a priceless jewel. But the plan, and the jewel, sink when a woman in a red sequined dress drops from the bridge and slams onto Cantor's boat. She is Opal Shaw, Society Page darling and fiancŽe of murder-for-hire kingpin Sig Loreale. Through a night of danger, desire, and double-cross, Cantor must satisfy Loreale's vengeance, stay ahead of an angry Ortine, and untangle the knots of murder tightening around Opal's best friend and keeper of her dirty secrets, Celeste Copley, a seductress who excites Cantor's passion but snares her in a labyrinth of lies. The lies explode in a collision of love, loyalty, lustƒand death.

The ninth issue of Black Cat Mystery features a stellar lineup of new stories (and one classic reprint). Here are— LAST RITES, by Stacy Woodson THE JERICHO TRAIN, by John M. Floyd CORAL COVE, by B.A. Paul THE ALLEY, by Ann Aptaker SONNY'S ENCORE, by Michael Bracken SWITCH AND BAIT, by Cynthia Ward BECOMING ZERO, by James A. Hearn THE MURDER OF JONATHAN GREYSTONE, by Barry Fulton YOU GOTTA BE IN IT!, by Elliott Capon THE YOU-DON'T-KNOW-THE-HALF-OF-IT-DEARIE BLUES, by Michael Kurland A FIGHTER BY HIS TRADE, by Graham Powell Classic reprint: SMELLING LIKE A ROSE, by Gil Brewer

New York City, 1950. Cantor Gold, art smuggler and dapper dyke-about-town, hunts for a missing masterpiece she’s risked her life to bring through the port of New York. She must outsmart the Law that wants to jail her; outrun the dockside gangsters who would let her take the fall for murder; and outplay a shady art dealer, his lover, and a beautiful curator who toys with Cantor’s passion. Through it all, Cantor must stay out of the gunsights of a killer who’s knocking off rivals for the missing masterpiece—and stay alive to solve the mystery of her stolen love: Sophie de la Luna y Sol. A Cantor Gold Crime Novel.

New York, 1952. From the shadowy docks of Athens, Greece, to the elegance of a Fifth Avenue penthouse, to the neon glare of Coney Island, art smuggler Cantor Gold must track down an ancient artifact, elude thugs and killers, protect a beautiful woman who caters to Cantor’s deepest desires, and confront the honky-tonk past which formed her. Memories, murder, passion, and the terrible longing for her stolen love tangle in Cantor’s soul, threatening to tear her apart. Book Three of the Cantor Gold Crime Series

Havana, 1952, a city throbbing with pleasure and danger, where the Mob peddles glamor to the tourists and there’s plenty of sex for sale. In the swanky hotels and casinos, and the steamy, secretive Red Light district of the Colón, Cantor Gold, dapper art thief and smuggler, searches the streets and brothels for her kidnapped love, Sophie de la Luna y Sol. Cantor races against time while trying to out run the deadly schemes of American mobsters and the gunsights of murderous local gangs.

Our 81st issue is among our best so far, if I do say so myself. We have an original mystery by H.K. Slade (courtesy of Acquiring Editor Michael Bracken), a great modern tale by Ann Aptaker (courtesy of Acquiring Editor Barb Goffman), and a pair of mystery novels—Bruce Campbell’s The Mystery of the Iron Box, featuring Ken Holt (by special request of one of our readers), and The Girl Who Had to Die, by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding. And no issue would be complete without a solve-it-yourself mystery by Hal Charles. On the science fiction and fantasy side, we have a classic novel by Fritz Leiber: Conjure Wife, originally published in 1943. Don’t miss the introduction, which puts it into historical context. If that’s not enough, we also have an entry in Phyllis Ann Karr’s “Frostflower & Thorn” series and classic science fiction stories by George O. Smith, Kendell Foster Crossen, and Lu Kella. Fun! Here’s this issue’s complete lineup: Mysteries / Suspense / Adventure: “House in the Snow” by H.K. Slade [Michael Bracken Presents short story] “Death Visits Campus” by Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery] “Red Nocturne,” by Ann Aptaker [Barb Goffman Presents short story] The Mystery of the Iron Box, by Bruce Campbell [novel] The Girl Who Had to Die, by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding [novel] Science Fiction & Fantasy: “The Dragon, the Unicorn, and the Teddy Bear,” by Phyllis Ann Karr [Frostflower & Thorn short story] “The Dreamers,” by Lu Kella [short story] “Booby Prize,” by George O. Smith [novelet] “The Agile Algolian,” by Kendell Foster Crossen [novelet] Conjure Wife, by Fritz Leiber [novel]