Vaughn C. Hardacker

Breathe is a community of writers based in Northern Maine. This is our fourth book together. In it, you'll find poetry, fiction and a little bit of ourselves and our community.

Here's some free advice: Retired or not, never double-cross a hitman.Upon leaving court after his fourth divorce, retired hitman Ian Connah learns that his financial manager has disappeared with Connah's retirement funds. While he is determined to get his money back, Connah's dilemma is that, in order to finance his quest, he must return to the trade. Connah becomes a bodyguard for two former girlfriends (each a rival for his affection) who detest each other. When a million-dollar bounty is put on them, a team of three professional killers takes the contract. Connah takes the women to a remote lodge in Maine's north woods where he must protect them from a killer who is afflicted with OCD, a ruthless former Irish Republican Army assassin, and a sadistic Mexican cartel hitman. The search for Harry Sandberg will lead Connah from Maine to Boston, Boston to the Caribbean Islands, and to the Amazon Rainforest of Brazil. He will be faced with crooked lawyers, South American drug lords, and the largest and most violent of Brazil's criminal syndicates.

Dylan Thomas is a former Maine State Police officer who obtained a private investigator license to support himself while attending law school at the University of Maine in Portland. He receives a phone call from his sister, Caitlin, telling him that her youngest daughter, Sandra, has gone missing.Caitlin's husband, Oreille Dufore, is the wealthy heir to a large Maine logging and land development corporation. Dylan's relationship with his brother-in-law has been strained at best. However, in times of crisis Dylan knows that a family must stick together.Dylan's investigation reveals that an itinerant handyman, Felicien Paradis, and his girlfriend, Claudette Beaupre, have taken the child with the intention of selling her in an adoption for money scheme.Dylan follows the abductors from northern Maine through central Maine and ultimately to Boston. In Boston he gets assistance from Boston Police Detective Shawna O'Reilly where they learn of an organization called The Child Exchange. The Exchange specializes in obtaining young children for an exclusive and wealthy clientele who are rich enough to circumvent the legal adoption process. As time runs out, Dylan and Shawna turn up the heat on disreputable lawyers and some of Boston's hardest criminals.

Retired detective Ed Traynor returns in the next exciting thriller from Vaughn Hardacker, and this time, the case is personal. When Private Investigator Ed Traynor is summoned to a remote spot in the New Hampshire woods by his old friend County Sheriff Buck Buchanan, he's puzzled. Since leaving the force, Buck has never called him to a homicide scene before. But when he arrives, Ed learns that the victim is his brother, John. Though there was no love lost between them, Ed vows to find and catch the killer and get justice for his little brother. The hunt leads Ed to New England's biggest drug kingpins, the Escobar brothers. Navigating a world where allegiances are up for grabs and motivations are never clear, his every step towards the truth could be his last. From Vaughn C. Hardacker, acclaimed author of Sniper and The Fisherman and twice finalist for the Maine Literary Awards, comes the action-packed follow-up to Black Orchid, which Publishers Weekly called "hard-hitting."

After tracking down a crazed sniper last year, homicide detectives Mike Houston and Anne Bouchard opted to leave Boston for the isolated mountains of Maine. They adjusted nicely to chopping their own firewood, relaxing in their log cabin, and simply enjoying the solitude of the mountains. But then Anne Bouchard, meets and elderly couple looking for help in locating their missing granddaughter. Anne becomes interested in the case and convinces Mike to meet the Guerettes. And suddenly they find themselves back in the game. Desperate for money to get her next fix, Cheryl Guerette, a known prostitute and heroin junkie, was last seen climbing into the car of an unknown John. Bouchard suspects that nameless John is a serial killer she’s been hunting?a man known to the BPD as The Fisherman. The suspect has been snatching homeless women and prostitutes off the streets from Portland to Boston, and Bouchard needs Houston if she’s going to catch him. Houston and Bouchard also turn to mob boss Jimmy O’Leary for advice. Not only does O’Leary have a hand in most of the crime that occurs in Boston, but he also knows a few Russian bosses and pimps who are angry that their employees are no longer on the job. With help from the darker side of Boston, Bouchard and Houston hope to locate The Fisherman before it’s too late for Cheryl and his other victims. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction?novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.