Christine Kling

SURFACE TENSION is the first book in this four-book suspense series featuring Florida tug and salvage captain Seychelle Sullivan. Working as she does in a man's world, Seychelle has to work twice as hard just to compete. Some have even called her reckless. In her view, she's just doing her job, salvaging boats and people's lives. On a steamy Florida morning Seychelle is answering a Mayday call launched from the five-million-dollar Broward yacht called Top Ten. Racing her fiercest competitor for salvage rights, Seychelle has a personal stake in this rescue: Her former lover, Neal Garrett, is the yacht’s hired skipper. But being the first to reach Top Ten leads to a bloody payday. A beautiful woman has been stabbed to death onboard. And Garrett is nowhere to be found. While the police treat her as the prime suspect, Seychelle begins to unravel a tangled plot centered on a strip club where “all the girls are tens on top.” Seychelle is connecting human predators with innocent victims, and a mystery on land with a mystery buried deep beneath the sea. Now, to find out what really happened to Neal Garrett, Seychelle must retrace his last steps, through two murders and a horrific crime wave, to a final confrontation with someone who may want to kill her . . . or be her salvation.

Surface Tension

Circle of Bones

Seychelle hasn't taken to motherhood as well as she hoped. Five years earlier, when Catalina Frias died in childbirth under B.J.'s care, Seychelle decided to adopt her friend's orphaned child. She promised the boy she would stop leading a reckless life, stop getting involved with crime, and restrict her business to towing. But now, as Nestor is about to start school, she is questioning her decision to try to raise the boy. Whatever made her think she had any parenting skills? Her adopted son calls her Seashell instead of mommy. She's refusing to marry BJ because she's convinced he will leave her eventually. And she's terrified of joining the PTA. Then, on a hot morning in June, she raises a wrecked fishing boat from the waters of a Florida swamp, only to make a horrifying discovery. She hadn't meant to get involved, but this time murder found her. The police are calling it a cold case, but when Seychelle learns the victim was Grace, the sister of her mechanic, she cannot turn her back on the sweet teenage girl who went missing months earlier. The search for answers takes Seychelle from an opulent yacht bound to do missionary work in the Caribbean, to a religious commune bordering on the Everglades, to a yacht race in the Bahamas' sunny Abaco Islands. Can she stop the killer from murdering again without endangering herself and her family along the way?

Mourning Tide

After rescuing a young girl off the coast of South Florida who is found with the body of a murdered woman, tugboat operator Seychelle Sullivan is drawn into an investigation into the bizarre world of voodoo in the region's Little Haiti and confronts a ruthless gang of smugglers operating out of the Bahamas whose cargo is child slaves. By the author of Surface Tension. Reprint.

Cross Current

Bitter End Book #3 of Christine Kling's Seychelle Sullivan series is loosely based on the real South Florida murder of Greek immigrant tycoon Gus Boolis, once the owner of South Florida's Sun Cruz Casino Gambling boats. In Seychelle’s new caper, she may just be in over her head when murder and corruption come bobbing to the surface. Since kindergarten, Seychelle and her best friend, Molly, had been as close as sisters. Molly even dated Seychelle’s brother. But it all ended suddenly when Nick Pontus, a slick, older, up-and-coming entrepreneur, came along. A smitten Molly quit school, married her new beau, and never spoke to Seychelle again. After thirteen years, it still stings. Seychelle didn’t see the sniper who picked Nick off at the helm of his yacht, but she knows that there are plenty of people in South Florida who wanted to see the gambling-boat tycoon dead: the Russian mobsters looking for a piece of his casino action, the Indian gamers who resent his competition, and the ecological activists fighting his plans to develop Fort Lauderdale’s waterfront. But it’s Molly whom the cops zero in on. And despite her bitter feelings and against her better judgment, when her back-from-the-blue friend asks for help, Seychelle can’t just weigh anchor and cruise. She’s got to dive in. What she finds is a money-skimming scam aboard Nick’s flagship gambling boat, Nick’s new trophy wife turned merry rich widow, and Nick and Molly’s teenage son, a scared kid with a big secret . . . and a killer on his trail. Protecting the boy, proving Molly’s innocence, and navigating between squalls of gunfire add up to a tall order as salvage jobs go. But like any good captain, Seychelle will never abandon ship. Even if it means risking her life.

Bitter End

SEA BITCH is a collection of four short stories by the acclaimed nautical writer Christine Kling. The women and girls who sail these waters might appear somewhat innocent, but all turn deadly dangerous before these tales are done. Look out guys, if there is one theme among these pages, it is that revenge is sweet. The first story "The Night Watchman" is the original story wherein Christine created Seychelle Sullivan, the tug and salvage captain who went on to appear in her first four books, and serves as a prequel to the series. "Dead Storage" first appeared in the popular collection Miami Noir published by Akashic Books. The collection concludes with bonus excerpts from Christine's new thriller CIRCLE OF BONES and from the first in her Seychelle Sullivan series titled SURFACE TENSION Praise for Christine Kling: "Ms. Kling is a rising queen in the suspense genre." – Midwest Book Review "[Kling] brings authority and authenticity to her novels, putting into lively focus the characteristics and personalities of the colorful people who make a living on the water." – The Miami Herald "Kling not only makes her readers curious – she sweeps them into the crosscurrent and makes them care." – Mystery Scene Magazine "Kling writes with crisp assurance, especially about life in South Florida." – Publishers Weekly "Seychelle Sullivan is a worthy successor to John D. MacDonald's fabled Travis McGee." – The (Cleveland) Plains Dealer

Four Tales of Nautical Noir

Sea Bitch

Former marine Maggie Riley has just set sail for the Caribbean, ready for a little R&R on her forty-foot boat before starting a work assignment in Dominica.Then Cole Thatcher appears. Sexy, naked—and possibly nuts—Cole turns out to be an archaeologist searching for the wreckage from a World War II submarine that may hold millions in gold coins and classified documents from a powerful inner circle of the secret society Skull and Bones. Maggie has enough skeletons to deal with, but when she learns her own past may intersect the Bonesmen's, joining Cole in the hunt for the sub may be the only course to uncover a hidden truth.

Christine Kling

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