Detective Frank Behr finds himself neck deep in white collar crime and facing off with cold-blooded killers more terrifying than anything he's faced before. Bernard "Bernie Cool" Kolodnik is a hard-driving business mogul in the process of making a move into big-time Indiana politics, and it's Frank Behr's job to protect him. When a gunman takes a shot at Kolodnik, Frank does what he does best: saves Kolodnik's life. So why then was he taken off the detail? And why are the usually adept Indianapolis cops making no headway? To discover the truth, Behr navigates a labyrinthine landscape of hardened former Feds, crooked real estate developers, casino magnates, and power seekers feeding on the edge of a dangerous and deadly political scheme.

From the national bestselling author of Murder Plays House . For private-eye-cum-supermom Juliet Applebaum, business is booming. But there are pros and cons to every assignment. And the con in her latest job is her client, an inmate at Dartmore Prison. She's enlisted Juliet to locate the son she surrendered--as well as the foster parents who've disappeared with him. But this case takes a deadly detour when the desperate young mother is fatally stabbed--allegedly by another inmate. Prison officials dismiss the murder as just one more fatality in lockdown. But Juliet has her doubts. Now she's determined to make the woman's last wish come true, even if it means tracking little Noah--and the killer--through the dark maze of a widespread conspiracy. "A master of smart, snappy repartee." -- Kirkus Reviews "[A] unique, highly likable sleuth." --Judith Kelman "A brassy, funny, quick-witted protagonist."-- Houston Chronicle

Stark is an endangered species. He's the last Jewish private detective in the south Bronx and his days may be numbered. It's the summer of 1965: the Yankees are making another pennant run, the war in Vietnam is heating up, hemlines are rising and the old neighborhood is changing. These days it's easier to stumble on a mugging than to find a good bagel. Stark is not a tough guy. In the trade, he's what's known as a peeper. His business is adultery and his weapon is a camera with a long lens not a snub-nose revolver. But Stark's life is beginning to unravel. His wife left him, his secretary hates him, his mother wants to mother him, he can't shake his shrink's voice from his head and he's got a strange pain in his chest. Then things go from bad to worse. He witnesses a shocking murder and suddenly Stark goes from being the hunter to the hunted, as he races through a decaying world of bookies, transvestites, loan sharks, slum lords and thugs for hire. "Stark in the Bronx" is the dazzling first novel by acclaimed historian Saul Landau. A kind of comic noir, Landau's atmospheric novel is both thrilling and hilarious: imagine the "Maltese Falcon" narrated by Woody Allen.Praise for Saul Landau and Stark: "Saul Landau, like the narrator of 'The Great Gatsby, marvels at how the rich so joyously make messes secure in the knowledge that others will clean up. But what if, one day, they don't?" -- Gore Vidal"You'll believe him, laugh with him, weep and get off your ass." -- John Berger, author "Ways of Seeing"

Times have certainly changed for Moses Wine since the days of his first case in “The Big Fix”—he’s gone from cheap detective to respected private investigator in just twenty-five years. Add in a beautiful girlfriend and a lucrative business with a roster of corporate clients, and he should be feeling on top of the world. But he’s not. In fact, he feels as though he’s lost touch with his roots, now “living the kind or bourgeois live I once reviled,”’ as he notes. Moses Wine of the sixties has been pushed aside by the lure of vacations at Lake Tahoe, expensive meals, and unlimited access to courtside seats at Los Angeles Lakers games. Now the shadow of Wine’s radical days has come back to haunt him. His college-age son, Simon, a radical environmentalist, has been accused of killing a logger in Northern California. Allying himself with his hostile ex-wife, Wine heads off to find the real killer whether it’s Simon or not! Laced with Roger L. Simon’s mordant wit, California politics and not-so-casual sex, The Lost Coast is vintage Wine at its best. Ever restless, ROGER L. SIMON has spent his life moving between books and movies, gaining distinction in both. In books, he is best known for the seven Moses Wine detective novels, which have won prizes in the U.S. and Great Britain and been published in over a dozen languages. In film, most prominent among his six produced screenplays—including his adaptation of The Big Fix—is Enemies, A Love Story, for which Simon was nominated for an Academy Award.

Two Englishmen have met suspicious ends in Veniceone by gunshot, the other by drowning. That much is certain but nothing else is. Murder? Suicide? Accident? Another mystery is the anonymous notes sent to residents of a quiet English village, spreading the scandalous though false word of an affair between Derek Crowley and Gerda Porson. She is the wife of Crowley's business partner, the unspeakable Charles Porson, a tireless macho who adores handguns and the spanking-and-bondage ritual meted out by his bored, disgusted wife, who is in love only with his money. Was the drug-laced Bloody Mary intended for Porson? How to explain Derek's wife's penchant for masculine clothing? Who loaded the supposedly blank pistol in an amateur theatrical production? Long afterward, Jason Durling's brilliant deductive sleuthing will resolve the murders left unsolved by trhe Italian police and ignored by Scotland Yard; but he will come to great grief in his turn. Again Symons meets his own high standards: this tale is quickwitted, civilized, highly intelligent, sharply observed, complicated without being cluttered, and always in the firm control of a dextrous and accomplished storyteller.

Frank Kalinyak, disgraced ex-cop, returns to Pittsburgh, Pa., "Iron City", his hometown, from Tucson where he has been living a desperate existence since the death of his young daughter. He has been summoned home by Bobby Mack, an Assistant D.A., to find out who murdered an old high school friend. Kalinyak is swept into a whirlpool of bizarre killings, religious fanaticism, church duplicity, hustlers, cops, junkies, old friends gone bad. Amid the fractured landscape of Iron City, rusting mills, rotting industry, he struggles to find sense in his life. Ultimately he must ask: who is he and can he survive? "David Scott Milton can write like an angel... a writer hell bent on fulfilling the legacy of John Steinbeck, carrying on the tradition of James Jones and exploring his own heights." -- Alabama Journal "It was my misfortune to have missed 'The Quarterback', and thus be unaware of this fine, unflinching writer. He does not prettify, embroider, ornament of otherwise offend against the utter dignity of his hard, enduring characters; out of their meanness, and misery, he has made a story which I envy, in prose as clean and businesslike as a switchblade. Make sure everybody hears about this book; it's not about a gambler and a broad and a fighter at all-it's about the human condition, and it's beautiful." -- George V. Higgins, author of The "Friends of Eddie Coyle"

Blood on the Desert Anthony Wheeler didn't want the job. When Major Pitt called him into the London office, Wheeler was trying to track down his old mentor, Fairchild. It had been Fairchild who had pulled him into the business. Not everyone is cut out to be a spy--Wheeler excelled at it. And Pitt would simply not accept his refusal. Now he is off to Kaden in North Africa, where three Arab chieftains who had been feuding for years are suddenly acting very friendly. Wheeler's mission--find out why. The last person he expects to run into is Fairchild. It is good to see his old friend--so why did it all feel so wrong? A House in Naples Charley had a sweet set-up in Naples. He and his partner Joe Lenken run a tight blackmarket operation. But tonight there is trouble and Charley is shot--and worse, he is recognized. Fleeing the police, he has to get his hands on a passport fast. Luck is with him in the form of a dead American drunk. All Charley has to do is get rid of the body. Weighting the body, he lowers it into the Tiber, his body wracked with pain from the bullet wound. But his luck runs out--he is seen! She is standing on the bridge overhead. But instead of crying "murder" she helps him up the bank and takes him away to tend his wounds. But is she Charley's guardian angel--or the sweet angel of death?

KILL THE BOSS GOOD-BY Tom Fell, the boss, is gone, and Pander has temporarily taken over the rackets in town. He's got some ideas of his own how the bookies should be operating. The business needs some fresh blood. Then Fell is back, back from his rest at Desert Farm where Dr. Emilson has been treating him for manic depression; back with Cripp, his right-hand man. Fell knows he's been gone too long, that Pander has stepped in and made some changes. Pander thinks he's got the big bosses behind him, but what he doesn't know is that Fell may be manic, but he knows what he wants--power. And nobody is going to stop him from taking it. MISSION FOR VENGEANCE Eight years ago they were running guns, then something went wrong and they were all running for their lives. Farret spent some time in a South American prison but now he's back and out to even the score. One of the four betrayed him, and Farret knows you got to keep the score even on these things. John Miner owns a ranch and is engaged to Getterman's daughter, Jane. He's the first to find out about Farret. But Farret isn't interested in Miner yet. First he's got to settle with Lena; and after that, Metz. And if it isn't Metz who set him up, Getterman is next. But sooner or later, it all comes down to Miner. Miner brought him into the group--and his is the biggest score to settle of them all.