A collection of suspense stories, puzzle stories, whodunits and tricky whydunits involving police detectives, private eyes, talented and sometimes lucky amateurs, armchair detectives, and ethnic detectives

Por orden médica, Matt Scudder acaba de dejar el alcohol, pero mantenerse sobrio parece más difícil que mantenerse con vida, incluso en una ciudad como Nueva York. Una mole que, como Scudder sabe muy bien, puede aplastar a cualquiera. A pesar de su juventud, Kim también lo sabía, y por so había intentado escapar. Seguro que no merecía la vida de prostituta que el destino le había concedido, y sin duda no merecía la muerte que le tocó, y que Scudder no pudo evitarle. Para redimirse, el ex policía tendrá que encontrar a quien ha convertido a la chica en papilla, y para ello, arriesgar lo que aún queda de sí mismo. Esta novela le valió a Lawrence Block el premio Edgar, y marca un hito en la vida de su gran personaje, Matthew Scudder

Given its extraordinary span, its international scope, and its variant styles and groundbreaking stylists, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a singular achievement. A bestselling master of suspense himself Jeffery Deaver had the enviable task of selecting from the thousands of stories written over the past one hundred years those which best represented the classic form, as well as the justly celebrated authors whose ironic twists and stunning payoffs left a lasting, vivid, and unnerving impression. The result is a triumph. In this ambitious anthology you’ll revel in the sardonic, overtly amoral plotting of Patricia Highsmith. You’ll rediscover the strangely poignant and surprising turns of Stanley Ellin, and the profoundly underrated Margaret Millar, a genius who mixed savage social satire with brooding horror. You’ll be treated to Stephen King at his chilling best. You’ll find yourself on the violent urban streets of Ross Macdonald and Mickey Spillane, and seeped in the ominous regional flavor of Sharyn McCrumb and Tony Hillerman. You’ll marvel at the cunning webs spun by Lawrence Block, Ruth Rendell, Anthony Boucher, and Sara Paretsky, all of whom defy expectations as they reinvent the genre. And you’ll understand the awesome reputations of those authors who set the standard, such as the legendary Harlan Ellison, Fredric Brown, the master of the twist ending, and James M. Cain, uncannily skilled at knowing what went on between men and women behind closed doors. (The darker the room the better.) Delivering everything from the one-two punch of the detective story to the ingeniously precise trappings of the police procedural, from the disquieting corners of the criminal mind to sheer dread-inducing horror, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a rich anthology of this popular literary genre, a stunning tribute to the art of storytelling, and to the men and women who have done it best

“A Chance to Get Even” is a story about a poker game. A friendly game-or at least that's how it starts out. I played in a friendly game for years, and still take a hand now and then, but the evenings I spent at the card table never turned out like this. And that's probably just as well

Amazon.com Review Matt Scudder, the recovering alcoholic private eye from The Devil Knows You're Dead and A Ticket to the Boneyard, embarks on another descent into the nightmarish quarters of New York, this time to investigate the sex-for-sale industry. Hired by the brother of an heiress to investigate her rape and murder, Scudder tails her husband to a boxing match and notices another man whom he saw on video a few months earlier on a different case involving a snuff film. As Scudder calls on old friends for assistance and tours New York's dark physical and social landscapes, Block masterfully builds the pressure that leads Scudder to the violent resolution in this winner of the 1992 Edgar Award for best mystery novel. From Publishers Weekly Block masterfully builds the pressure in this Edgar Award winner, as newly sober Manhattan PI Matt Scudder investigates the death of a TV producer's wife

From Publishers Weekly The newest Matt Scudder novel by the blessedly prolific Block is right up to his usual standards. It takes a while to set up the situation (someone in an exclusive male dinner club that meets once a year is killing off the members at an alarming rate), but once it's established, Matt gets his man by his usual patient attention to detail and sheer doggedness. He almost misses him, however (giving rise to a matchless last line), and the punishment meted out to the villain is a highly unusual variant on the kind Scudder thinks up when the law, as sometimes happens, is helpless to act. His ex-call girl companion, Elaine, is her usual comforting self, and there's a brilliant portrait of an offbeat New York lawyer, obviously modeled on William Kunstler, who specializes in representing the underdog. The scene where the lawyer and suspicious ex-cop Scudder get to know and like each other is alone worth the price of the book. Those who become impatient with Scudder's determined pursuit of AA meetings-and it's possible to do so-should note his publisher's assertion that he now has a strong following not only among mystery buffs but also in "the recovery community."

Louis Pinell, the recently apprehended "Icepick Prowler," freely admits to having slain seven young women nine years ago — but be swears it was a copycat who killed Barbara Ettinger Matthew Scudder believes him. But the trail to Ettinger's true murderer is twisted, dark and dangerous… and even colder than the almost decade-old corpse the p.i. is determined to avenge

MATT SCUDDER RETURNS. More than 40 years after his debut and nearly a decade since his last appearance, one of the most renowned characters in all of crime fiction is back on the case in this major new novella by Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence Block. Well past retirement age and feeling his years — but still staying sober one day at a time — Matthew Scudder learns that alcoholics aren’t the only ones who count the days since their last slip. Matt’s longtime partner, Elaine, tells him of a group of former sex workers who do something similar, helping each other stay out of the life. But when one young woman describes an abusive client who’s refusing to let her quit, Elaine encourages her to get help of a different sort. The sort only Scudder can deliver. A Time to Scatter Stones offers not just a gripping crime story but also a richly drawn portrait of Block’s most famous character as he grapples with his own mortality while proving to the younger generation that he’s still got what it takes. For Scudder’s millions of fans around the world (including the many who met the character through Liam Neeson’s portrayal in the film version of A Walk Among the Tombstones), A Time to Scatter Stones is an unexpected gift — a valedictory appearance that will remind readers why Scudder is simply the best there is

A new breed of entrepreneurial monster has set up shop in the big city. Ruthless, ingenious murderers, they prey on the loved ones of those who live outside the law, knowing that criminals will never run to the police, no matter how brutal the threat. So other avenues for justice must be explored, which is where ex-cop turned p.i. Matthew Scudder comes in. Scudder has no love for the drug dealers and poison peddlers who now need his help. Nevertheless, he is determined to do whatever it takes to put an elusive pair of thrill-kill extortionists out of business — for they are using the innocent to fuel their terrible enterprise

It was all too frighteningly familiar. For the second time in his life, Alex Penn wakes up in an alcoholic daze in a cheap hotel room off Times Square and finds himself lying next to the savagely mutilated body of a young woman. After the first death, he was convicted of murder and imprisoned, then released on a technicality. But this time he has to find out what happened during the blackout and why-before the police do. Lawrence Block weaves his spell in this suspenseful taleof a man haunted by murders he hopes he hasn¹tcommitted… It was all too frighteningly familiar. For the second time in his life, Alex Penn wakes up in an alcoholic daze in a cheap hotel room off Times Square and finds himself lying next to the savagely mutilated body of a young woman. After the first death, he was convicted of murder and imprisoned, then released on a technicality. But this time he has to find out what happened during the blackout and why? before the police do

Consider Ariel Jardell, an adopted twelve-year-old girl driven by jealousy — her mother thinks — and by forces far more bizarre — as you will discern — to a precocious excursion into evil from mere mischief, to malevolence beyond compare... Haunting as The Turn of the Screw, chilling as The Bad Seed, Ariel spins a complex web of demonic circumstance with a fascinating, terrifying child at its center, giving new definition to the age-old conflict of good and evil, sane and insane

Brand-new stories by: Thomas Adcock, Kevin Baker, Thomas Bentil, Lawrence Block, Jerome Charyn, Suzanne Chazin, Terrence Cheng, Ed Dee, Joanne Dobson, Robert Hughes, Marlon James, Sandra Kitt, Rita Laken, Miles Marshall Lewis, Pat Picciarelli, Abraham Rodriguez Jr., S.J. Rozan, Steven Torres, and Joe Wallace. As any Bronxite will tell you, being from Da Bronx is a permanent condition, no matter where you end up... For a time in the '70s and '80s, the name was synonymous (to non-Bronxites) with a vast urban maelstrom of lawlessness and decay. But the place was always more complicated than that. There's the Bronx Zoo, the Botanical Garden, universities, Yankee Stadium, grand estates, squalid housing projects, the sinking Concourse, and nautical City Island... The writers represented in Bronx Noir know the borough so well that, reading the book, you'll smell it, feel it, see it, hear it. The sights and scents will be multitudinous and as distinct as the neighborhoods. And everyone of them, in all their glorious mutual contradiction, is the Bronx

Brooklyn Noir is back with a vengeance, this time with the masters of yore: H.P. Lovecraft, Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, Pete Hamill, Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, and more!

The first Bernie Rhodenbarr mystery. Introducing Bernie Rhodenbarr, N.Y.C.'s prince of thieves – who really should have known better! When the mysterious pear shaped man with a lot of uncomfortably accurate information about Bernie and his career offered him five big ones to liberate a blue leather box – unopened – from an East Side apartment, it would have been a good time to plead a previous engagement…but times were tough. Everything was straightforward – the box was where it should have been but before the liberation took place, two men in blue coats turned up. Still all was not lost, there was always a way to work things out…that was before they discovered the body in the bedroom and Bernie decided to leg it

THE MASTER RETURNS — WITH NEVER-BEFORE-COLLECTED TALES OF MURDER AND DESIRE One of the most highly acclaimed novelists in the crime genre, Lawrence Block is also a master of the short story, with award-winning work ranging from the macabre to the slyly comic, from heart-stopping tales of revenge to memorable explorations of lust and greed, all told in Block’s unmistakable style. The sixteen stories (and one stage play!) collected here feature appearances by some of Block’s most famous characters, including gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr and alcoholic private detective Matt Scudder, as well as glimpses into the minds of a rogue’s gallery of frightening killers, dangerous sociopaths, crooked cops, and lost souls whose only chance to find themselves may be on the wrong side of a gun. You’ll meet a compulsive hoarder whose towering piles of trash and treasures hide disturbing secrets... a beautiful young tennis star with a rather too possessive secret admirer... a dealer in stolen art who is unwilling to part with his most prized possession at any price... poker players with agendas that have nothing to do with the cards in their hands... and a catch-and-release fisherman whose preferred catch walks on two legs. Terror and passion, cruelty and vindication — it’s all here, in a collection that will thrill you, scare you, and remind you why Lawrence Block is still the best there is at what he does

Matt Scudder fue policía de Nueva York. Ahora es un detective sin licencia que saca las castañas del fuego a sus amigos. Se divorció de su mujer, y ahora vive en un modesto hotel del West Side. Pero su verdadero hogar se encuentra en cualquiera de los bares de su zona, la clientela habitual forma su familia. Corre el verano de 1975, y Matt anda comprometido con varios favores a amigos. En primer lugar, debe salvar de sospechas a Tommie Tillary, un hombre de negocios de ropas estridentes cuya mujer ha sido asesinada. Matt Scudder no dejará de beber ni un instante, pero se mantendrá lo suficientemente lúcido como para encontrar la solución, hallando la inspiración en el fondo de la botella

It was a perfect setting for a honeymoon — a charming little cabin in the isolated Pennsylvania woods. It should have been the perfect beginning to a long and happy marriage. Then five shots rang out in the quiet woods and shattered Dave and Jill Wade’s perfect honeymoon. Terror had come crashing through their cabin door, snuffing out all thoughts of love. Now all that Dave and Jill Wade felt was haste — hate and the overwhelming desire for revenge

I’M ED LONDON, Ph. D./PHILANDERER IN DANGER Nailing killers is my racket. But hiding their victims’ corpses from the law? Better conjure up Houdini, buddy, I’m not the man you want. That’s what I should have said. But I’ve got a heart as big as a bawdy house. When I saw my sister’s marriage going up in smoke because her husband's extramarital flame got murdered, I decided to stick my neck out and plant the body so it couldn’t be traced to him. That’s when the fur began to fly — and so, in fact, did the bullets. First, the girl had been leading a double life. Second, she had pulled a neat little doublecross that left me holding the bag — a bag with the keys to a priceless fortune — and up for grabs to every hood in town

Dolly, as you’ll see, is a person who finds it hard to let go of those things she holds dear

Martin Ehrengraf, the criminal defense attorney who takes cases on a contingency basis, made his debut in 1978; by 2003 he’d successfully demonstrated the innocence of ten clients. Now he’s back for the first time in almost a decade, in The Ehrengraf Settlement. A pillar of the community, a rich man with a trophy wife, exceeds his authority as a leader of the local Vigilance Commission and shoots a man down on a neighbor’s lawn. Ehrengraf, convinced of his client’s innocence, works his subtle magic, and charges are dropped. But the client makes a fatal mistake: he pays Ehrengraf only a tenth of the agreed-upon fee. And Ehrengraf realizes that he himself has made a tragic mistake. The client he presumed innocent must have been guilty all along

Nobody knows better than Matthew Scudder how far down a person can sink in this city. A young prostitute named Kim knew it also — and she wanted out. Maybe Kim didn't deserve the life fate had dealt her. She surely didn't deserve her death. The alcoholic ex-cop turned p.i. was supposed to protect her, but someone slashed her to ribbons on a crumbling New York City waterfront pier. Now finding Kim's killer will be Scudder's penance. But there are lethal secrets hiding in the slain hooker's past that are far dirtier than her trade. And there are many ways of dying in this cruel and dangerous town — some quick and brutal… and some agonizingly slow

Lawrence Block's novels win awards, grace bestseller lists, and get made into films. His short fiction is every bit as outstanding, and this complete collection of his short stories establishes the extraordinary skill, power, and versatility of this contemporary Grand Master. Block's beloved series characters are on hand, including ex-cop Matt Scudder, bookselling burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, and the disarming duo of Chip Harrison and Leo Haig. Here, too, are Keller, the wistful hit man, and the natty attorney Martin Ehrengraf, who takes criminal cases on a contingency basis and whose clients always turn out to be innocent. Keeping them company are dozens of other refugees from Block's dazzling imagination — all caught up in more ingenious plots than you can shake a blunt instrument at. Half a dozen of Block's stories have been shortlisted for the Edgar Award, and three have won it outright. Other stories have been read aloud on BBC Radio, dramatized on American and British television, and adapted for the stage and screen. All the tales in Block's three previous collections are here, along with two dozen new stories. Some will keep you on the edge of the chair. Others will make you roll on the floor laughing. And more than a few of them will give you something to think about. Enough Rope is an essential volume for Lawrence Block fans, and a dazzling introduction for others to the wonderful world of... Block magic!

New York’s a tough town. Hard to impress. Shrugs off hype, casts a cold eye on glitz. But once in a blue moon a killer with street smarts and a sense of theater will reach out and take the city by the throat. Maybe he’ll write letters to a popular tabloid columnist, proclaiming himself the answer to a failed criminal justice system. Maybe he’ll point a finger at the kind of villain the law can’t touch. A child killer who got off on a technicality, say. A top mobster with decades of blood on his hands. A rabble-rouser who incites others to murder. Maybe he’ll sign himself “Will,” as in “The Will of the People.” Then suppose he takes aim at a respectable lawyer, a defense attorney with a roster of unpopular clients. Suppose the lawyer’s a friend of Matt Scudder. Scudder is New York to the bone. He’s as tough as the big town itself, as hard to impress. And now he’s up against the self-styled Will of the People in a city with eight million ways to die, a city where not just the good guys but even the wicked get worse than they deserve

Matthew Scudder is finally leading a comfortable life. He's sober, he's married, and the state just gave him a private investigator's license. He's growing older, and he's even getting respectable. Then Scudder signs on to help his closest and most unlikely friend, the larger-than-life Hell's Kitchen hoodlum Mick Ballou. And all hell breaks loose. Scudder finds out he's not so respectable after all. He learns the spruced-up sidewalks of New York are as mean as they ever were, dark and gritty and stained with blood. And he discovers he's living in a world where the past is a minefield, the present is a war zone, and the future's an open question

What are the ingredients of a hard-boiled detective story? “Savagery, style, sophistication, sleuthing, and sex,” said Ellery Queen. Often a desperate blond, a jealous husband, and, of course, a tough-but-tender P.I. the likes of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. Perhaps Raymond Chandler summed it up best in his description of Dashiell Hammett’s style: “Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it... He put these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes.” Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind, with over half of the stories never published before in book form. Included are thirty-six sublimely suspenseful stories that chronicle the evolution of this quintessentially American art form, from its earliest beginnings during the golden age of the legendary pulp magazine Black Mask in the 1920s, to the arrival of the tough digest Manhunt in the 1950s, and finally leading up to present-day hard-boiled stories by such writers as James Ellroy. Here are eight decades worth of the best writing about betrayal, murder, and mayhem: from Hammett’s 1925 tour de force “The Scorched Face,” in which the disappearance of two sisters leads Hammett’s never-named detective, the Continental Op, straight into a web of sexual blackmail amidst the West Coast elite, to Ed Gorman’s 1992 “The Long Silence After,” a gripping and powerful rendezvous involving a middle class insurance executive, a Chicago streetwalker, and a loaded .38. Other delectable contributions include “Brush Fire” by James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raymond Chandler’s “I’ll Be Waiting,” where, for once, the femme fatale is not blond but a redhead, a Ross Macdonald mystery starring Macdonald’s most famous creator, the cryptic Lew Archer, and “The Screen Test of Mike Hammer” by the one and only Mickey Spillane. The hard-boiled cult has more in common with the legendary lawmen of the Wild West than with the gentleman and lady sleuths of traditional drawing room mysteries, and this direct line of descent is on brilliant display in two of the most subtle and tautly written stories in the collection, Elmore Leonard’s “3:10 to Yuma” and John D. MacDonald’s “Nor Iron Bars.” Other contributors include Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain), Jim Thompson, Helen Nielsen, Margaret Maron, Andrew Vachss, Faye Kellerman, and Lawrence Block. Compellingly and compulsively readable, Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is a page-turner no mystery lover will want to be without. Containing many notable rarities, it celebrates a genre that has profoundly shaped not only American literature and film, but how we see our heroes and ourselves

Keller’s a hit man. For years now he’s had places to go and people to kill. But enough is enough. He’s got money in the bank and just one last job standing between him and retirement. So he carries it out with his usual professionalism, and he heads home, and guess what? One more job. Paid in advance, so what’s he going to do? Give the money back? In Des Moines, Keller stalks his designated target and waits for the client to give him the go-ahead. And one fine morning he’s picking out stamps for his collection (Sweden 1–5, the official reprints) at a shop in Urbandale when somebody guns down the charismatic governor of Ohio. Back at his motel, Keller’s watching TV when they show the killer’s face. And there’s something all too familiar about that face… Keller calls his associate Dot in White Plains, but there is no answer. He’s stranded halfway across the country, every cop in America’s just seen his picture, his ID and credit cards are no longer good, and he just spent almost all of his cash on the stamps. Now what?

Keller is a regular guy, a solid citizen. He goes to the movies, watches the tube, browses the art galleries, and works diligently on his stamp collection. But every now and then a call from the breezily efficient Dot sends him off to kill a total stranger. He takes a plane, rents a car, finds a hotel room, and gets back before the body is cold. He's a real pro, cool and dispassionate and very good at what he does. Until one day when Dot breaks her own rule and books him for a hit in New York, his home base. She sends him to an art gallery opening, and the girl he gets lucky with steers him to an astrologer. Then the jobs start to go wrong. Targets die before he can draw a bead on them. The realization is slow in coming, but there's no getting around it: Somebody out there is trying to hit the hit man. Keller, God help him has found his way onto somebody else's hit list

Amazon.com Review A man known only as Keller is thinking about Samuel Johnson's famous quote that "'patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel'… If you looked at it objectively, he had to admit, then he was probably a scoundrel himself. He didn't feel much like a scoundrel. He felt like your basic New York single guy, living alone, eating out or bringing home takeout, schlepping his wash to the Laundromat, doing the Times crossword with his morning coffee… There were eight million stories in the naked city, most of them not very interesting, and his was one of them. Except that every once in a while he got a phone call from a man in White Plains. And packed a bag and caught a plane and killed somebody. Hard to argue the point. Man behaves like that, he's a scoundrel. Case closed." But Lawrence Block is such a delightfully subtle writer, one of the true masters of the mystery genre, that the case is far from closed. In this beautifully linked collection of short stories, we gradually put together such a complete picture of Keller that we don't so much forgive him his occupation as consider it just one more part of his humanity. After watching Keller take on cases that baffle and anger him into actions that fellow members of his hit-man union might well call unprofessional, we're eager to join him as he goes through a spectacularly unsuccessful analysis and gets fooled by a devious intelligence agent. We miss the dog he acquires and loses, along with its attractive walker. Like Richard Stark's Parker, Keller makes us think the unthinkable about criminals: that they might be the guys next door-or even us, under different pressures

Keller’s work takes him to New York, the former home he hasn’t dared revisit, where his target is the abbot of a midtown monastery. Another call puts him on a West Indies cruise, with several interesting fellow passengers — the government witness, the incandescent young woman keeping the witness company, and, sharing Keller’s cabin, his wife, Julia. But the high drama comes in Cheyenne, where a recent widow is looking to sell her husband’s stamp collection

The New York Times bestselling author and master of the modern mystery returns with a fierce and poignant new novel featuring his acclaimed killer-for-hire, Keller John Keller is everyone's favorite hit man: a new kind of hero for a new, uncertain age. He's cool. Reliable. A real pro: the hit man's hit man. The inconvenient wife, the aging sports star, the business partner, the retiree with a substantial legacy. He's taken care of them all, quietly and efficiently. Keller's got a code of honor, though he'd never call it that. And he keeps the job strictly business. "What happens is you wind up thinking of each subject not as a person to be killed but as a problem to be solved. Now there are guys doing this who cope with it by making it personal. They find a reason to hate the guy they have to kill. I don't know what's a sin and what isn't, or if one person deserves to go on living and another deserves to have his life ended. Sometimes I think about stuff like that, but as far as working it all out in my mind, well, I never seem to get anywhere." But while Keller might be a pragmatic and crack assassin, he's also prone to doubts and loneliness just like everybody else. There was a psychotherapist once. A dog. Even a woman. And though he's got Dot, his wisecracking contact and sometimes confidante, and his precious stamp collection, these days, it doesn't seem to be enough. Keller's been at this business a long while. Just maybe it's time to pack it in and find a nice little house in the desert. Only problem is, retirement takes money. And to get money, he's got to go to work… Hit Parade, the third novel featuring the fascinating Keller, displays the hallmarks that distinguish Lawrence Block's award-winning fiction: the intelligence, the clever plotting, the humor, the tricky twists and ironic turns, the darkness and emotional complexity – and, above all else, the humanity

Unlicensed PI Matthew Scudder returns after a three-year absence to investigate the murder of a wealthy couple savagely slain in their Manhattan townhouse. Matt's now 62, and his age shows in this relatively sedate outing. There's less violence than in many cases past, and the urban melancholy that pervaded his earlier tales has dissipated, replaced by a mature reckoning with the unending cycle of life and death. The mystery elements are strong. To the cops, the case is open-and-shut: the perps have been found dead, murder/suicide, in Brooklyn, with loot from the townhouse in their possession. Matt enters the scene when his assistant, TJ, introduces him to the cousin of the dead couple's daughter; the cousin suspects the daughter of having engineered the killings for the inheritance. At loose ends, Matt digs in, quickly rejecting the daughter as a suspect but uncovering evidence pointing to a mastermind behind the murders. Block sounds numerous obligatory notes from Scudder tales past the AA meetings, the tithing of Matt's income, cameo appearances by Matt's love interest, Elaine, and his friend, Irish mobster Mick Ballou and he adds texture with some familial drama involving Matt's sons and ex-wife. His prose is as smooth as aged whiskey, as always, and the story flows across its pages. It lacks the visceral edge and heightened emotion of many previous Scudders, however, and the ending seems patly aimed at a sequel. This is a solid mystery, a fine Block, but less than exceptional. (Nov.)Forecast: All Blocks sell and Scudder's return will do particularly well, especially with the attendant major ad/promo, including a 17-city author tour

Bad cop Jerry Broadfield didn't make any friends on the force when he volunteered to squeal to an ambitious d.a. about police corruption. Now he's accused of murdering a call girl. Matthew Scudder doesn't think Broadfield's a killer, but the cops aren't about to help the unlicensed p.i. prove it — and they may do a lot worse than just get in his way

This anthology was edited by Michael Connelly. His essay is called "Once Upon a Midnight Dreary." A collection of stories by thriller master Edgar Allan Poe with essays by beloved and bestselling writers, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Poe's birth. Authors involved include Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver, Nelson DeMille, Tess Gerritsen, Sue Grafton, Stephen King, Lisa Scottoline, Laura Lippman, and twelve others. *** Few have crafted stories as haunting as those by Edgar Allan Poe. Collected here to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Poe's birth are sixteen of his best tales accompanied by twenty essays from beloved authors, including T. Jefferson Parker, Lawrence Block, Sara Paretsky, and Joseph Wambaugh, among others, on how Poe has changed their life and work. Michael Connelly recounts the inspiration he drew from Poe's poetry while researching one of his books. Stephen King reflects on Poe's insight into humanity's dark side in "The Genius of 'The Tell-Tale Heart.'" Jan Burke recalls her childhood terror during late-night reading sessions. Tess Gerritsen, Nelson DeMille, and others remember the classic B-movie adaptations of Poe's tales. And in "The Thief," Laurie R. King complains about how Poe stole all the good ideas… or maybe he just thought of them first. Powerful and timeless, In the Shadow of the Master is a celebration of one of the greatest literary minds of all time. The Mystery Writers of America, founded in 1945, is the foremost organization for mystery writers and other professionals dedicated to the field of crime writing

The sharpest, most stylized, and ambitious anthology of Native American literature ever published. Readers enter into a welter of troubled history throughout the Americans where the heritage of violence meets the ferocity of intent

Keller, a faithful husband, doting father, and dedicated philatelist, has become a guilty pleasure for an increasing number of readers. They don’t think they should like the guy — but they just can’t help themselves

When you’ve already got blood on your hands, what’s a little more? Turner needs to start a new life and that means he needs cash… fast. So the twenty thousand he’s offered for a job sounds pretty good, even if it means killing Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. And he’s not alone. There are four other men—killers, idealists, mercenaries—all with the same target. Can they band together to overthrow Castro and get Turner his chance at a new life? This ebook features an illustrated biography of Lawrence Block, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from his personal collection, and a new afterword written by the author

Rockstar Games has partnered with Mulholland Books to publish a collection of short fiction expanding the world of the newest groundbreaking achievement in storytelling: the interactive crime thriller L.A. Noire. 1940s Hollywood, murder, deception and mystery take center stage as readers reintroduce themselves to characters seen in L.A. Noire. Explore the lives of actresses desperate for the Hollywood spotlight; heroes turned defeated men; and classic Noir villains. Readers will come across not only familiar faces, but familiar cases from the game that take on a new spin to tell the tales of emotionally torn protagonists, depraved schemers and their ill-fated victims. With original short fiction by Megan Abbott, Lawrence Block, Joe Lansdale, Joyce Carol Oates, Francine Prose, Jonathan Santlofer, Duane Swierczynski and Andrew Vachss, L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories breathes new life into a time-honored American tradition, in an exciting anthology that will appeal to fans of suspense and gamers everywhere

Una joven prostituta aparece asesinada en un apartamento de Greenwich Village. El principal sospechoso acaba de suicidarse en la cárcel. La policía de Nueva York ha cerrado el caso, pero el padre de la víctima quiere reabrirlo. Y nadie mejor que Matthew Scudder para buscar respuestas en un entorno sórdido de perversión y placeres… Un mundo donde los hijos se ven abocados a morir para expiar los pecados más secretos de sus padres. La novela negra norteamericana tiene tres grandes autores: los clásicos son Dashiell Hammett y Raymond Chandler. El tercero se llama Lawrence Block

Brand-new stories by: Jeffery Deaver, Lawrence Block, Charles Ardai, Carol Lea Benjamin, Thomas H. Cook, Jim Fusilli, Robert Knightly, John Lutz, Liz Martínez, Maan Meyers, Martin Meyers, S.J. Rozan, Justin Scott, C.J. Sullivan, and Xu Xi

Following the commercial success of the original Manhattan Noir, mystery titan Lawrence Block explores the historic literary roots of this dark island. Featuring stories by: Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, O. Henry, Langston Hughes, Irwin Shaw, Jerome Weidman, Damon Runyon, Evan Hunter, Jerrold Mundis, Edgar Allan Poe, Horace Gregory, Geoffrey Bartholomew, Cornell Woolrich, Barry N. Malzberg, Clark Howard, Jerome Charyn, Donald E. Westlake, Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Block, and Susan Isaacs

Here is a savage crime novel based on the television series MARKHAM, starring Ray Milland KISSES OF DEATH. “He had obviously taken a rugged beating. One eye had been hammered shut and his face was caked with blood from nose and mouth. He was missing an occasional tooth and it was an odds-on wager that a few of his ribs were dented...” Roy Markham was after those photos: The photos that had meant bullets for Linda, a knife for Gwen, and “suicide” for Barbara. Someone wanted Markham out of the way bad. They'd tried female “persuasion,” then they tried to scare him off. Now they'd marked him for murder. It was one private eye against the syndicate

A walk on the wild side! In this series of collections of gritty Noir and Hardboiled stories, you’ll find some of the best writers of the craft writing in their prime

This anthology features some of the most famous authors writing at the peak of their careers!

This anthology features some of the most famous authors writing at the peak of their careers!

It’s a jungle out there. Literally. At least for Evan Tanner, eternally sleepless sometime superspy, who finds himself in Africa on the trail of the AWOL ruler of tiny Modonoland. It seems the petty despot’s gone missing, and he’s taken the state treasury along with him. No stranger to impossible missions and international peril, Tanner’s been in over his head before. This time, however, he’s in imminent danger of being buried alive. And it all has to do with the CIA, white supremacists, moderate revolutionaries… and a blond jungle bombshell named (no joke!) Sheena. Tanner’s always been a sucker for a pretty face and a curvaceous body, especially one that’s wrapped in leopard skin. But this red hot renegade daughter of a local missionary is a man-eater. Which means this time Tanner’s goose is well and truly cooked

What does it mean to be a father? What does it mean to be a son? What does it mean to be a man? In Men From Boys seventeen masters of crime fiction answer these questions in a multitude of ways. Here are worlds that are instantly recognisable and believable, yet set widely apart. From a deprived London housing estate to the trenches of the First World War, from the claustrophobic confines of a late-night back room poker game to a rundown jazz joint in Manhattan, the writers address just what it means to be a man. The characters who inhabit these stories strive to determine what is right, what will give them dignity, what will earn them self-respect. Some succeed, some fail: little is perfect. Gathered together in this anthology are some of the very best names in contemporary crime writing, introduced and edited by John Harvey