In 1992, Los Angeles burned. In the aftermath of the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots, a ground-breaking ceremony at the infamous intersection of Florence and Normandie unearths the body of a Korean liquor store owner. Black private eye Ivan Monk searches for the killer—many suspect the motives for the murder were racial. But then another body turns up, and while the FBI and the Rolling Daltons, the largest gang in the city, dog Monk’s trail, Monk questions who the real perpetrators are and whether he can prevent more from dying, including himself, before he uncovers the truth.

Joe King Oliver was one of the NYPD's finest investigators until he was framed for sexual assault by unknown enemies within the force. A decade has passed since his release from Rikers, and he now runs a private detective agency with the help of his teenage daughter. Physically and emotionally broken by the brutality he suffered while behind bars, King leads a solitary life, his work and his daughter the only lights. When he receives a letter from his accuser confessing that she was paid to frame him years ago, King decides to find out who wanted him gone and why.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell has been "exiled" to a low-key post policing rustic Catalina Island, after department politics drove him off a homicide desk on the mainland. But while following up the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and petty thefts that come with his new territory, Detective Stilwell gets a report of a body found wrapped in plastic and weighed down at the bottom of the harbor. Crossing all lines of protocol and jurisdiction, he starts doggedly working the case.

Gary Phillips has been published in The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Examiner, and Rap Pages magazine. High Hand introduces the unforgettable, six-foot tall Chainey (nobody calls her Martha), a former showgirl who transports under-the-table money for Las Vegas casinos. When masked shooters rob Chainey of seven million bucks, she's got three days to recover the money-or else.

Los Angeles, 1963: African American Korean War veteran Harry Ingram earns a living as a news photographer and occasional process server: chasing police radio calls and dodging baseball bats. With racial tensions running high on the eve of Martin Luther King’s Freedom Rally, Ingram risks ending up one of the victims at every crime scene he photographs. When Ingram hears a call over the police scanner to the scene of a deadly automobile accident, he recognizes the vehicle described as belonging to his good friend and old army buddy, the white jazz trumpeter Ben Kinslow.