"David Goodis is the mystery man of hardboiled fiction."--Geoffrey O'Brien In Street of No Return, we meet the pathetic figure of Whitey. Once upon a time Whitey was a crooner with a million-dollar voice and a standing invitation from any woman who heard him use it. Until he had the bad luck to fall for Celia. And then nothing would ever be the same. In Street of No Return, David Goodis works the magic that made him one of the most distinctive voices in hard-boiled fiction, creating a claustrophobic universe in which wounded men and women collide with cataclysmic force.

Andy and Tamika are watching their neighbor's house while they are away, but when strange and troubling things start happening inside the house, the police do not believe the children. Reprint.

In the fifth volume of the popular series of historical mysteries, a ragged stranger and the prospect of losing her family's fortune lead Flavia Gemina and her friends, Jonathan, Lupus, and Nubia to a seaside villa. There, they discover a shipwreck and sunken treasure--and that someone else is after the treasure, too. As they solve the riddle of the wreck, the four friends also stumble across the terrible mystery of Lupus's past.

On September 23, 1926, and Austrian experimental biologist named Dr. Paul Kammerer blew his brains out on a footpath in the Austrian mountains. His suicide was the climax of a great evolutionary controversy which his experiments had aroused. The battle was between the followers of Lamarck, who maintained that acquired characteristics could be inherited, and the neo-Darwinists, who upheld the theory of chance mutations preserved by natural selection. Dr. Kammerer's experiments with various amphibians, including salamanders and the midwife toad (Alytes obstetricans), lent much weight to the Lamarckian argument and drew upon him the full fury of the orthodox neo-Darwinists. Arthur Koestler had known about Dr. Kammerer's work when he himself was a student in Vienna, and he has always been interested in this tragic story. He gives a fascinating description of the venomous atmosphere in which the battle was fought and of the lengths to which apparently respectable scholars would go to discredit their opponents. Heading the attack on Kammerer was a British scientist, William Bateson, who hinted that the Viennese's experiments were fakes, but who failed to examine the evidence, including the so-called nuptial pads of Kammerer's last remaining specimen of the midwife toad. It was a young American scientist who delivered the coup de grace; on a visit to Vienna, he discovered that the discoloration of the nuptial pads was due not to natural causes but to the injection Indian ink. When his findings were published, Kammerer shot himself. Mr. Koestler, whose recent writings, in books such as The Act of Creation and The Ghost in the Machine, have been in part concerned with evolutionary theory, decided to investigate this old mystery. When he started on his researches, he expected to relate the tragedy of a man who had betrayed his calling, for Kammerer's suicide was accepted as a confession of guilt and his work was discredited from that day to this. Instead, as Mr. Koestler read the contemporary papers, corresponded with Kammerer's daughter, Bateson's son, and the surviving scientists who attended Kammerer's lecture in Cambridge, he found himself writing a vindication of a man who in all probability was himself betrayed. The story that emerges is, on one level, fascinating piece of scientific detection; on another, it is a moving and human narrative about a much abused, brilliant and lovable figure. Though no Lamarckian himself, Mr. Koestler ends the book with an appeal to biologists to repeat Kammerer's experiments with an open mind in order to verify or refute them. If Kammerer's claims were posthumously confirmed our outlook on evolution would be significantly changed. A superb intellectual thriller whose implications still reverberate today, The Case of the Midwife Toad is an entirely new kind of book for Mr. Koestler, and perhaps only he could have written it, for it required expert knowledge and familiarity with the academic world of science, combined with the creativity and imaginative insight of an outstanding novelist.

A story about a small town's surface appearance and the truths submerged below from the New York Times bestselling author of The Rules of Magic . People tend to stay in their place in the town of Haddan. The students at the prestigious prep school don't mix with locals; even within the school, hierarchy rules as freshman and faculty members find out where they fit in and what is expected from them. But there are minor collisions happening everywhere: An awkward boy, the son of a teacher, is flirting with a pretty classmate, the daughter of a convenience-store cashier. A photographer in plastic flip-flops and an overflowing backpack is about to marry a staid, ambitious historian. And when a body is found in the river behind the school, a local policeman named Abey Grey will walk into this enclosed world and upset it entirely...

From New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley, Detective Easy Rawlins’ latest client sends him down a warren of memory and nostalgia―blinding him to reason and risk. January 1970 finds Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, LA’s premier Black detective, at 50 years of age despite all expectations. He has a loving family, a beautiful home, and a thriving investigation agency. All is right with the world ... and then Amethystine Stoller, his own personal Helen of Troy, arrives. Her ex-husband is missing. A simple enough case. But even as Easy takes his first step in the investigation he trips. He falls into the memory of things past. Little things, like loss, love, a world war, and a hunger that has eaten at him since he was a Black boy on his own on the streets of Fifth Ward, Houston, Texas. The missing ex, a young white man named Curt Fields, is found dead. Easy’s only real friend in the LAPD, Melvin Suggs, has gone into hiding rather than allow his femme fatale wife to go to the gas chamber. And that’s only the beginning. Easy finds himself pressed into a reckoning. All of his success cannot succor his heart. The 1970’s have ushered in new expectations of men and women, Black and White, and Easy has to make a choice that will almost certainly hasten a permanent descent, one that might sunder his soul. Shamus Award Finalist for Best Hardcover PI Novel

Insightful, candid, and utterly entertaining, Steven Bochco's memoir TRUTH IS A TOTAL DEFENSE: My Fifty Years in Television is an in-studio view of the inception of the second Golden Age of television, delivered by the man who helped create it. Bochco reveals the mad genius, vision, mayhem, and brilliance behind his groundbreaking, widely popular hits (and near misses). Sparing no one, including himself, he shares insider anecdotes from his triumphs-"Hill Street Blues," "L.A. Law," "Doogie Howser, M.D.," and "NYPD Blue"-and turbulent times in broadcast TV. He started reading and synopsizing scripts, plays, and books for Sam Goldwyn, Jr. Moving through his 10-Emmy Award career (so far), to his hot, homicide detective show "Murder in the First" now on TNT, the prolific and successful TV writer and producer describes generous, tough, and conniving mentors and moguls. He shares the how-tos and better-nots of working with highly talented writers, directors, actors, and remembrances of building remarkable television and a memorable life. His remembrances include: Albert Einstein once wangling an invitation to one of his dad's Sunday musical soirees; being nominated for an Emmy for the first "Columbo" he wrote, directed by some young director on the lot named Steven Spielberg; Bruce Paltrow (father of Gwyneth and Jake) teaching him how to have fun at work; Brandon Tartikoff calling to say, "I'm moving 'L.A. Law' to a better time slot. You're replacing 'Hill Street'"; "NYPD Blue" co-creator David Milch asking for an advance because he'd lost $1 million betting on football games that day; Stephen J. Cannell turning down a cop show pilot at ABC, telling their head of development that "Hill Street Blues" was the best cop show ever made, and he didn't want to compete with it; fighting ABC to hire Neil Patrick Harris for "Doogie Howser, M.D."; and keeping friends and family close during his 70-day in-hospital cancer treatment with witty, heartfelt emails signed-as time went on-Cancer Boy, Remission and Retention Boy, Transplant Boy (Soon to be Transplanted Boy), and (The newly reconstructed) Steven. Writers, as he says, write. He also describes the creative arc of building his shows, including several script excerpts, the finances and finagling of modern television production, and more. Combining discerning and from-the-hip thoughts on the business of television writing and production, tales from the wild side, and personal lessons from his life-threatening and altering battle with a rare form of leukemia, Steven Bochco delivers a revealing, wryly humorous page turner. Praise for TRUTH IS A TOTAL DEFENSE: My Fifty Years in Television "An inside look at television from the man who transformed it. The origins of today's golden age of television dramas can be traced to one man: Steven Bochco. This juicy and fascinating account tells you how he did it. A must read." -David E. Kelley, Emmy Award winner and prolific creator of TV hits "Picket Fences," "Chicago Hope," "The Practice," "Ally McBeal," "Boston Public," and "Boston Legal" "Steven Bochco's Truth Is A Total Defense: My Fifty Years in Television is a great in-the-room chronicle of the modern television industry, told by a man who's created some of the most influential and popular shows of the last forty years. I highly recommend it." -Neil Patrick Harris, Emmy and Tony Award-winning actor "It's raucous, it's witty, and very savvy on the business of television. It's master storyteller Steven Bochco telling the story of his life and his life's work-creating groundbreaking TV shows. Fascinating and funny. Read it." -Danny DeVito, Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor, director, and producer

The Public Eye takes place in a swanky London accountancy office, where uptight Charles is confronted by Julian, an eccentric private detective hired by Charles to investigate Belinda, his young wife, whom he suspects of infidelity.

Located by a computer in the bowels of a major university where it had collected dust for over half a century, this missing manuscript by the biographer of Sherlock Holmes reveals for the first time a hitherto unknown episode in the life of the Great Detective. Holmes, master sleuth, was also an accomplished violinist. Following his discharge from therapy with Sigmund Freud (see The Seven-Per-Cent Solution), we now learn that he journeyed to Paris and there found employment as a pit musician at the Paris Opera. The year is 1891, Paris is the capital of the western world, and its opera house is full of surprises. First and by no means least is the sudden reappearance of the great love of Holmes's life, an accomplished singer from Hoboken, New Jersey. Second is the series of seemingly bizarre accidents--each more sinister than the last--allegedly arranged by the "Opera Ghost, " an opponent who goes by many names and is more than equal to Holmes. Alone in a strange and spectacular city, with none of his normal resources, Holmes is commissioned to protect a vulnerable young soprano, whose beautiful voice obsesses a creature no one believes is real, but whose jealousy is lethal. In this dazzling, long-awaited sequel to The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, the detective pits wits against a musical maniac, and we are treated to an adventure unlike any other in the archives of Sherlock Holmes.

On October 30, 1975, fifteen-year-old Martha Moxley headed home from Halloween Eve antics with her Greenwich, Connecticut, neighbors Tommy and Michael Skakel. She never made it. Her brutal murder with a golf club in her own backyard made national headlines. But for years no one was arrested, despite troubling clues pointing to the Skakels, a rich and powerful family related to the Kennedys. After the police department's first unsuccessful attempts to catch the killer, the case lay dormant, and the culprit remained free. Enter Leonard Levitt. In 1982, the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time newspapers asked investigative reporter Levitt to look into the murder and the undying rumors of a cover-up. Levitt soon uncovered groundbreaking information about how the police had bungled the investigation, and he learned that Tommy and Michael had lied about their activities on the night of the murder. But Levitt's articles about his findings -- and the haunting questions they raised -- almost never saw the light of day. For years, Levitt's superiors mysteriously refused to publish the stories. Convinced that the Moxley family deserved the peace and closure they had so long been denied, Levitt fought desperately to keep his discoveries alive. Finally, after Levitt's first article appeared, the case was reopened. Enter Frank Garr. As the newly appointed investigator on the Moxley case, the seasoned Greenwich detective doggedly pursued unexplored leads and became increasingly convinced that for over a decade, his colleagues had been pursuing the wrong suspects. At first mistrustful of one another, as reporters and detectives often are, Levitt and Garr became friends, encouraging each other in their quest for the truth as the obstacles against them piled up. In 2002, more than twenty-five years after Moxley's death, a shocked world watched as Michael Skakel was convicted of the murder, thanks largely to the evidence Garr alone had marshaled against him. Now, for the first time, Leonard Levitt tells the amazing true story of Garr's fight to solve the case and of how their friendship with each other, and with Martha Moxley's mother, Dorthy, sustained them over the years. A riveting, suspenseful drama that unfolds like a mystery novel, this incredible memoir also reveals how a police officer and a reporter refused to give up, and how they helped justice to prevail, against all odds.

Winner of the World Fantasy Award Tenth Anniversary Edition, with a new introduction and three extra stories. It's a rainy day when the woman approaches Joe. He is a private detective and she is looking for someone, as these things often go. Her quarry is the obscure author of a series of pulp novels featuring one Osama bin Laden: Vigilante. Joe's quest will take him across the world in search of the writer. And every step of the way - from the backwaters of Laos to Paris and London - he is plagued, by assailants he cannot name, by questions he cannot hope to answer and by ghostly entities he cannot seem to shake. Joe knows how the story should end, but even he is not ready for the truths he will find in New York and atop a quiet hill above Kabul, nor for the choice he will have to make there...

This updated Agatha Christie compendium offers synopses of all Christie's novels, plays and short stories, without revealing whodunit. It also features: a portrait of Agatha Christie by Julian Symons; Christie's own comments on her work; articles on themes in her work such as a guide to Agatha's toxic agents, gossip and intuition as detective tools and the subtleties of the all-encompassing dress codes that governed her characters; articles on films, plus an updated filmography and new-video listing; a behind-the-scenes look at "Agatha" the movie; a mystery map showing locations of stories; a Christie crossword; and coverage of her romantic writing under the pen name Mary Westmacott.--From publisher description.

From a renowned investigative reporter, the true story behind a horrifying Internet abuse epidemic - and the heroes who are out to stop it. The Internet has helped make child abuse terrifyingly common - it is the new face of crime in the 21st century. There are tens, probably hundreds of thousands of children whose sexual abuse has been electronically recorded and distributed on the Internet. As Julian Sher reveals, the men perpetrating these crimes include lawyers, priests, doctors and politicians. They pick their victims from the streets of Bangkok to Boy Scout troops in England, while the police - from a crack image analyst with the Toronto police to an FBI agent who poses as a thirteen-year-old girl online - work desperately to nab the predators. One Child at a Time goes behind the headlines to show how law officers are fighting back against this tide of abuse, from daring rescues in homes to the seizures of millions of dollars in the offshore bank accounts of the porn merchants. In riveting detail, Julian Sher shows how clue by clue, and image by image, investigators are using cutting edge tools, turning the technology of the Internet against the perpetrators as they race to find and rescue the victims - children who otherwise have no voice. This important book explores the ramifications of a worldwide struggle, from the need for updated legal powers to the unexpected effects the Internet has had on our social fabric. It also includes a full list of resources for concerned parents. Though sometimes harrowing, One Child at a Time is alsoinspiring - and never less than absolutely relevant. In their efforts to rescue the child victims of one of today's most pervasive and insidious crimes, police must be creative, dogged and go well beyond the borders drawn on any map. . . Canadian cop Paul Gillespie changed the way that police around the world tackle Internet porn. He decided that if the system was broken, he was going to send an email to Bill Gates and ask for help. Gates not only answered, but Microsoft ended up kicking in millions of dollars, working with Gillespie's team to develop the Child Exploitation Tracking System, a searchable database to track and investigate Web predators and their victims. It soon spread across Canada, and then to the UK, Australia and the U.S. Older men pretend to be young and caring, luring lonely young girls in chat rooms. But when they show up to meet their victim, they discover the FBI is waiting to arrest them. Emily Vacher, one of the FBI's top Internet undercover operatives, specializes in trapping the predators at their own game of deception. The photos of the child's abuse were everywhere on the Net, but no one knew who or where she was. In a frantic 36-hour hunt, using CSI-type sleuthing to find clues in the pictures, Canadian, American and European police rescued a girl from North Carolina. Jim Gamble, one of the most senior police officers in the UK, has spearheaded the creation of a Virtual Global Taskforce to patrol the web 24/7. It was time for a sheriff to tame the wild, wild Web, Gamble decided. Now children have a redreport abuse button on chat room software and browsers they can click any time they feel threatened. It is time for the children's stories-too often hidden in the dark corners of the Web-to be told. Their torment has been etched in their memories-and the memories of the police officers dedicated to rescuing them. It is what scars them. But it is also what spurs them on. Because they know behind every picture or video lies a little, frightened child. Detective Sergeant Paul Gillespie of the Toronto Police's Exploited Child Unit can't shake the lingering echoes of some of the worst videos he has seen of shackled children: Sometimes, he says, you can hear the children cry. --from One Child at a Time

It's not under the bed, or on the chair, or beneath the couch, or behind the curtains. It's GONE! What do you do when your favorite toy disappears, and you can't find it where you left it? What if your family is NO help at all? A determined little detective heads up the search, and discovers more than she ever expected! 00-01 Young Reader's Choice Award Program Masterlist

High quality reprint of "the Reign of the Super-man," the very first "superman" story by Gerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Not a comic book, but a short novel in the style of the pulps, it tells the story of Bill Dunn, a down-of-his-luck man who acquires superpowers through a radical experiment. The story has all the main elements of the superman myth: a bald super-villain, an unknown element coming from space that mutates human beings, telescopic-vision, aliens, and an indomitable quest for absolute power. It was originally published on Science Fiction - The Advance Guard of Future Civilization #3 (Jan. 1933), one of the very first fanzine to be created, which Siegel and Shuster developed with a typewriter and mimeographic machine for printing. Also collected for the first time: "Goober the Mighty", Siegel's Tarzan parody, Stiletto Vance the vain detective, and other raw gems the creators of Superman developed for the Torch, the High School newspaper they worked for.

The gripping and elegiac stories of eight lost books, and the mysterious circumstances behind their disappearances. They exist as a rumour or a fading memory. They vanished from history leaving scarcely a trace, lost to fire, censorship, theft, war or deliberate destruction, yet those who seek them are convinced they will find them. This is the story of one man's quest for eight mysterious lost books. Taking us from Florence to Regency London, the Russian Steppe to British Columbia, Giorgio van Straten unearths stories of infamy and tragedy, glimmers of hope and bitter twists of fate. There are, among others, the rediscovered masterpiece that he read but failed to save from destruction; the Hemingway novel that vanished in a suitcase at the Gare du Lyon; the memoirs of Lord Byron, burnt to avoid a scandal; the Magnum Opus of Bruno Schulz, disappeared along with its author in wartime Poland; the mythical Sylvia Plath novel that may one day become reality. As gripping as a detective novel, as moving as an elegy, this is the tale of a love affair with the impossible, of the things that slip away from us but which, sometimes, live again in the stories we tell.

"In 1887, an Egyptian woman made an astonishing discovery among the ruins of the heretic king Akhenaten's capital city, a site now known as Amarna. She found a cache of cuneiform tablets, nearly four hundred in all, that included correspondence between the pharaohs and the mightiest powers of the day, such as the Hittites, Babylonians, and Assyrians. Love, War, and Diplomacy tells the story of the Amarna Letters and the dramatic world of the Bronze Age they revealed. Blending scholarly expertise with painstaking detective work, Eric Cline describes the spectacular discovery, the fierce competition among dealers and museums to acquire the tablets, and the race by British and German scholars to translate them. Dating to the middle of the fourteenth century BCE and the time of Tutankhamun's immediate predecessors, Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaten, the Amarna Letters are the only royal archive from New Kingdom Egypt known to exist. In them, we learn of royal marriages, diplomatic negotiations, gift-giving, intrigue, and declarations of brotherly love between powerful rulers as well as demands made by the petty kings in Canaan who owed allegiance to Egypt's pharaohs. A monumental achievement, Love, War, and Diplomacy transports readers to the glorious age of the Amarna Letters and the colonial era that brought them to light and reveals how the politics, posturing, and international intrigues of the ancient Near East are not so unlike today's." -- Provided by publisher.

Society is lashing out at its superheroes. Anti-powers groups are rising up with a series of gruesome murders against the city's most powerful capes. With Walker retired, Detective Pilgrim teams up with a new partner to investigate this murderous superhero backlash and the people behind it. This completely redesigned, reformatted and reworked volume is perfect for both new readers and old! COLLECTING: Powers (2000) 21-24

When Johnny Naples entrusts Tim Diamond with a valuable package, he's making a big mistake. For Tim is probably the worst detective in the entire world. Next day, Johnny's dead. Tim gets the blame, his wise-cracking younger brother Nick gets the package - and every crook in town is out to get them!

A haunting and emotionally satisfying novel from a much-loved and critically acclaimed author, which weaves fairy tale and gritty realism together to dazzlingly effect. 'The Story Sisters' charts the lives of three sisters - Elv, Claire and Meg. Each has a fate she must meet alone: one on a country road, one in the streets of Paris, and one in the corridors of her own imagination. Inhabiting their world are a charismatic man who cannot tell the truth, a neighbor who is not who he appears to be, a clumsy boy in Paris who falls in love and stays there, a detective who finds his heart's desire, and a demon who will not let go. What does a mother do when one of her children goes astray? How does she save one daughter without sacrificing the others? How deep can love go, and how far can it take you? At once a coming-of-age tale, a family saga, and a love story of erotic longing, 'The Story Sisters' sifts through the miraculous and the mundane as the girls become women and their choices haunt them, change them and, finally, redeem them.