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Rich Zahradnik

Biography

Rich Zahradnik

Rich Zahradnik is the author of the thriller THE BONE RECORDS and four critically acclaimed Coleridge Taylor mysteries, including LIGHTS OUT SUMMER, winner of the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America.

LIGHTS OUT SUMMER won the 2018 Shamus Award for Best Paperback Private Eye Novel. The first three books in the series collected awards in the three major competitions for books published by independent presses. A BLACK SAIL was named best mystery in the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. DROP DEAD PUNK received the gold medal for mystery ebook in the 2016 IPPY Awards, while LAST WORDS won the bronze medal for mystery e-book in the 2015 IPPYs and honorable mention for mystery in the Foreword Reviews competition.

“Taylor, who lives for the big story, makes an appealingly single-minded hero,” Publishers Weekly wrote of DROP DEAD PUNK.

Zahradnik was a journalist for 27 years, working as a reporter and editor in several different media, including online, newspaper, broadcast, magazine and wire services. He held editorial positions at CNN, Bloomberg News, AOL and The Hollywood Reporter.

Zahradnik was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, and received his B.A. in journalism and political science from George Washington University. He lives with his wife Sheri in Pelham, New York, where he writes fiction and teaches kids around the New York area how to publish newspapers. He is providing guidance to the Pelham Examiner, the first community newspaper in New York State managed, edited, reported and written by people under the age of 18.

Rich Zahradnik

Books by Rich Zahradnik

by Rich Zahradnik - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

NY Police Academy washout Grigg Orlov discovers an eerie piece of evidence at the scene of his father's brutal murder: a disc-shaped X-ray of a skull. It's a bone record --- what Soviet citizens called banned American songs recorded on used X-rays. But the black-market singles haven't been produced since the ’60s. What's one doing in Coney Island in 2016? Grigg uncovers a connection between his father and three others who collected bone records when they were teenage friends growing up in Leningrad. Are past and present linked? Or is the murder tied to the local mob? Grigg has too many suspects and too little time. He must get to the truth before a remorseless killer takes everything he has.

by Rich Zahradnik - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Historical Thriller, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

In March 1977, ballistics link murders going back six months to the same Charter Arms Bulldog .44. A serial killer, Son of Sam, is on the loose. Constantly on the lookout for victims who need their stories told, Coleridge Taylor uncovers other killings being ignored because of the media circus. He goes after one, the story of a young black woman gunned down in her apartment building the same night Son of Sam struck elsewhere in Queens. Just as he's closing in on the killer and his scoop, the July 13-14 blackout sends New York into a 24-hour orgy of looting and destruction. In the midst of the chaos, a suspect in Taylor's story goes missing. Desperate, he races to a confrontation that will break the story --- or Taylor.