If you're Toussaint Moore, a private investigator from New York City, and a Negro, framed in your own city for a white man's murder, you are going to find it tricky sledding in a small Ohio town, close to the Kentucky border. But the small town was where Moore felt he had to be, to try to find proof for the police that he was innocent of the killing. Moore's problems had started in New York, when the publicity woman from a television show called You-Detective! came to ask him to shadow a man. The idea of the show was that the viewers were given information about a wanted man, and the first viewer to find the man and report him to the police won a reward. In short, it was a combination adventure and give-away show. Ed Lacy has written his most unusual story-a very exciting one, and one which handles with exceptional insight a Negro's experiences in a large northern city and a small, bordering-on-the-South town.

Paul Dogolov, divorced Vietnam War hero and novelist, teaches a writing class in a maximum security prison. Convinced that one of his students, serving a life sentence for brutal murder, is innocent, he sets out to find the real killer. The search leads him to a remote, dust-blasted California desert town and a scorpion's nest of bizarre and vicious characters. The result is a tale of intrigue, corruption, and savage humor, in which Dogolov, through his encounter with the horrific, yet wildly comic, Fat Lady of the title, learns about terror, degradation, and ultimately, love in a funhouse-mirror world where illusion is reality, reality, a chimera. "David Scott Milton is certainly one of the most talented, uncompromising prose writers of his generation, and The Fat Lady Sings is perhaps his best and also most appealing novel." — Peter Bogdanovich

An unidentifiable body is found in an Indianapolis park, deliberately arranged so that police know it's not just a random crime. Former cop Frank Behr, now a P.I. with no cases, no money and no options, finds himself chasing down the disappearance of a wayward young woman who's been missing for months in a futile attempt to collect a reward. With assistance from his few remaining contacts on the force, Behr follows the tenuous thread of his case into the world of small-time prostitution-and discovers a possible connection to the body in the park. When another murder victim turns up, it's clear there's a serial killer at work, but this predator seems to be invisible, camouflaged by his perfectly normal-looking life. Behr's relentless quest for the missing girl and his parallel pursuit of the killer become entangled with the official police investigation. Ultimately, Behr's obsession with the truth will lead him into the darkest places, and force him to make an unavoidable and devastating decision.

"Celebrating 50 years of Hard Case Crime! Okay, not really. But what if, instead of having been founded 50 books ago, Hard Case Crime had been founded 50 years ago, by a rascal out to make a quick buck off the popularity of pulp fiction? Such a fellow might make a few enemies -- especially after publishing a supposed non-fiction account of a heist at a Mob-run nightclub, actually penned by an 18-year-old showgirl with dreams of writing for The New Yorker. With both the cops and the crooks after them, our heroes are about to learn that reading and writing pulp novels is a lot more fun than living them..." --

Between writing her bestselling novels, Caroline Lawrence has penned several short stories, covering incidents alluded to in the novels, but not dramatised at length. This book brings together all the mini-mysteries to date to provide even more coverage of events in the lives of our four detectives during the dangerous, exciting reign of Emperor Titus.

Eliza Altairsky-Lointaine is the toast of Moscow society, a beautiful actress in an infamous theatre troupe.Her love life is as colourful as the parts she plays. She is the estranged wife of a descendant of Genghis Khan. And her ex-husband has threatened to kill anyone who courts her.He appears to be making good on his promise.Fandorin is contacted by concerned friend - the widowed wife of Chekhov - who asks him to investigate an alarming incident involving Eliza. But when he watches Eliza on stage for the first time, he falls desperately in love . . . Can he solve the case - and win over Eliza - without attracting the attentions of the murderer he is trying to find?

After UCLA coed Abigail Hunter disappears without a trace from a Caribbean cruise ship on which she and her parents and older brother are vacationing during spring break, her father, millionaire shipping magnate George Hunter, desperate for news of his daughter, hires Dan Grail, a Beverly Hills private eye to investigate her disappearance and offers a huge reward if he is successful in bringing her home successfully. Hoping to get a lead as to her whereabouts, Grail books passage on the same cruise ship from which the girl disappeared. His efforts are unsuccessful at first, but he does pick up some strong clues during the voyage. After some harrowing near-death experiences, he winds up in New York City, where he sees a girl who looks suspiciously like Abbey on a porn site on his computer. Her working name is Tulip. This gives him the idea that she might be in Amsterdam, Holland, which is notorious for its wide-open red light district and pornographic film industry. Eventually he tracks Abbey down, but finding her and rescuing her from the porn studio where she is being held captive nearly leads to his own demise.

Jack Faith, world-renowned superstar entertainer, would stoop to anything—even murder—to prevent an unauthorized biography about him and his adulterous romantic escapades with countless beautiful Hollywood starlets (sometimes underaged) from being published. How he gets caught by his own nefarious schemes and exposed as the charlatan he is, is the story of not only his life, but at the same time gives the reader an inside peek at what the real Hollywood is like.

So I'm a Heel It's just a lucky break the way Ed Hawkins gets a look at that police blotter that tips him off on the arrest-and-release of his rich neighbor, Otto Weylin, for molesting a minor. Nobody ever gave Hawkins a break, and he doesn't intend to give Weylin a break either. He figures that Weylin is good for ten grand to keep this little bit of information out of the papers, and maybe he's right. But why all of a sudden is his 10-year-old son becoming so friendly with Weylin? What is the secret that Weylin's sex-starved wife keeps hinting at? The blackmail scheme is rapidly backfiring and Hawkins can't trust anyone, even his own wife--and now his own boy has gone missing Flint Flint took a bullet in the lung during that last job, a hole that just won't seem to plug itself. But hired killers don't get to retire, and Flint is called out to Colorado for one more job. A rancher named Mr. Good wants his competition removed, and he's got a pretty plan how to get away with it. So Flint rides out and meets the local sheriff, a man so fat he spends all his time in his office--should be easy to work around. He meets his victim, Thomason, a poor but honest man, who naively hires him on the spot. And then he meets Thomason's wife, Cora, who seems....very friendly--but is she all that she seems? And can Mr. Good really be trusted? This is supposed to be Flint's last job, but it's funny how a simple plan can soon get so complicated. The Big Out Brick Palmer, catcher for the Blues, gets a call after the game. His kid brother Johnny is in trouble again. Johnny is the brilliant one, the one who's going to be a doctor, but he's forged Brick's name on a $10,000 Syndicate debt. So Brick does what he has to do, he pays off the Syndicate punk, then busts his nose. Randy York of the Herald sees the payoff and reveals the meeting in his column the next day. Unable to rat out his brother, Brick is thrown out of the league. All he can do is play for one of the outlaw leagues. So he and wife Cathy move to Montreal and try to start over. But they're all out to get him--the fans and players for selling out, the Umps for dirtying the game. They're all out for blood. But for the Syndicate punk it's personal--he plans to make it murder.

The sweeping new saga of strong heroines and family secrets from the bestselling author of The Paris Model. While searching for her lost sister, art historian Wren Summers takes on the glittering world of New York's auction houses. A missing girl, a hidden masterpiece, and the search for the truth 1965: After escaping from anti-war turmoil and the suffocating weight of family expectations, a beautiful young couple embrace a life free of materialism and tradition by a sapphire lake in Italy. But the past does not always let go so easily ... 1987: When talented art historian Wren Summers lands her dream job at the Sydney Art Museum, it seems she can finally leave her wildly unconventional background behind - until a treacherous act threatens everything she has strived for. The revelation of a monstrous family secret sees Wren head to New York, compelled to find the missing girl who holds the key to this shocking mystery - and to make a fresh start in the glittering realm of international art auctions. As she struggles to fulfil her quest, can she navigate this new, high-stakes world of swirling temptation, romance and deceit, danger and betrayal, while staying true to what she knows is right? Praise for Alexandra Joel: 'A mesmerising storyteller' The Australian 'Exceptional research and great storytelling ... She has that rare flair for drawing the reader into sumptuous worlds from glamorous bygone eras' Better Reading

These four stories illustrate the wide range of Zweig’s subject matter dating from quite early in his career as a writer of fiction (The Governess, rooted in a world of strict Edwardian morality), to late (Did He Do It?, almost an English detective story set near Bath, where Zweig lived in exile). In addition The Miracles of Life, set in 16th-century Antwerp during the time of Protestant iconoclasm, and Downfall of a Heart both address the theme of anti-Semitism. Pushkin Collection editions feature a spare, elegant series style and superior, durable components. The Collection is typeset in Monotype Baskerville, litho-printed on Munken Premium White Paper and notch-bound by the independently owned printer TJ International in Padstow. The covers, with French flaps, are printed on Colorplan Pristine White Paper. Both paper and cover board are acid-free and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified.

"A writer's notebook becomes the key that unlocks memories of a love formed and lost in 1960s Paris. In the aftermath of Algeria's war of independence, Paris was a city rife with suspicion and barely suppressed violence. Amid this tension, Jean, a young writer adrift, met and fell for Dannie, an enigmatic woman fleeing a troubled past. A half century later, with his old black notebook as a guide, he retraces this fateful period in his life, recounting how, through Dannie, he became mixed up with a group of unsavory characters connected by a shadowy crime. Soon Jean, too, was a person of interest to the detective pursuing their case--a detective who would prove instrumental in revealing Dannie's darkest secret. The Black Notebook bears all the hallmarks of this Nobel Prize-winning literary master's unsettling and intensely atmospheric style, rendered in English by acclaimed translator Mark Polizzotti. Once again, Modiano invites us into his unique world, a Paris infused with melancholy, uncertain danger, and the fading echoes of lost love"--

A haunting novel that probes the enigmas of time and memory, by Nobel Prize-winning author Patrick Modiano "Polizzotti's crisp and evocative translation keeps the reader hooked."-- Publishers Weekly In his acclaimed semi-autobiographical novella Suspended Sentences , Patrick Modiano recounted a dramatic season in his childhood, of the home he shared with sinister surrogate parents, the mysterious events that took place there, and an infamous heist that was never solved. In Scene of the Crime , Modiano conjures the aftermath of those years. A decade has passed, and Jean Bosmans, now in his early twenties, becomes aware of a set of disturbing coincidences involving an elusive woman, his childhood home, and a host of disquieting characters who seem inordinately interested in his past, for reasons he can't fathom. As he journeys into the echoes of memory, past and present become increasingly intertwined, forming a web spanning half a century. With the taut suspense of a detective novel, this book slowly peels away layers of time and forgetfulness to reveal the haunting, threatening, ultimately tragic legacies of what we think we know about our lives.

In August 1948, 545 passengers boarded an overcrowded, clapped-out vessel in Marseilles to face an uncertain future in Australia and New Zealand. they came from displaced persons camps in Germany, death camps in Poland, labour camps in Hungary, gulags in Siberia and stony Aegean islands. there were those who had been hunted by the Nazis and those who had welcomed them; those who had followed the Communists and those who had fled from them. the epic voyage lasted almost three months and was marked by conflict and controversy until it seemed as though this hellship had absorbed the traumas of its passengers. As the conditions on board deteriorated, tension and violence simmered above and below decks. But romances and seductions also flourished, and lifelong bonds were formed. Diane Armstrong set sail on the Derna with her parents when she was nine years old. Like a detective searching for clues, she has located over a hundred of the passengers. through their recollections and memorabilia, as well as archival documents, she has recreated the voyage and traced what became of their hopes and dreams. the result is the unique portrayal of a migrant ship and its passengers.

From the bestselling author of Prague comes a witty, inventive, brilliantly constructed novel about an Egyptologist obsessed with finding the tomb of an apocryphal king. This darkly comic labyrinth of a story opens on the desert plains of Egypt in 1922, then winds its way from the slums of Australia to the ballrooms of Boston, by way of Oxford, the battlefields of the First World War, and a royal court in turmoil. Just as Howard Carter unveils the tomb of Tutankhamun, making the most dazzling find in the history of archaeology, Oxford-educated Egyptologist Ralph Trilipush is digging himself into trouble, having staked his professional reputation and his fiancŽe's fortune on a scrap of hieroglyphic pornography. Meanwhile, a relentless Australian detective sets off on the case of his career, spanning the globe in search of a murderer. And another murderer. And possibly another murderer. The confluence of these seemingly separate stories results in an explosive ending, at once inevitable and utterly unpredictable. Arthur Phillips leads this expedition to its unforgettable climax with all the wit and narrative bravado that made Prague one of the most critically acclaimed novels of 2002. Exploring issues of class, greed, ambition, and the very human hunger for eternal life, this staggering second novel gives a glimpse of Phillips's range and maturity, and is sure to earn him further acclaim as one of the most exciting authors of his generation.

"A propulsive debut political thriller set in the aftermath of a global nuclear weapons crisis -- from the acclaimed filmmaker of The Fugitive and an award-winning journalist A plot to disrupt a global peace summit in Chicago collides with a civil rights case breakthrough at a mysterious archaeological site "Andrew Davis is a cinematic master, and Jeff Biggers is a brilliant scribe of wild places. Together, they have created a thriller that will keep you up all night." --Luis Urrea, NY Times bestselling author of Good Night, Irene. Chicago detective Randall Jenkins has not been back home to the historic Civil Rights hotspot of Cairo, Illinois since the disappearance of his mother, a well-known journalist, several decades ago. That all changes the day Dr. Molly Moore, an ambitious young archaeologist in the national spotlight for her groundbreaking high-tech discoveries, uncovers a set of strange bones at a huge 12,000-year-old site at a highway construction project. With retired military general and contractor William Alexander breathing down her neck to cover up the dig, Molly and Randall soon find themselves in the middle of a wild military conspiracy. The detective and archaeologist's entwined family mysteries suddenly thrust them into the central position as the only people who can ensure the safety of the ongoing Chicago global peace summit. They must take on the rogue general who views any disarmament agreement as a clear and present danger to the United States. The fate of global peace and the lives of Molly and Randall hang in the balance"--

“Moses Wine is a force to reckon with and to read with pleasure.” —Dick Lochte, Los Angeles Times Book Review “A fun detective novel you just don’t get enough of anymore...there is a certain style reminiscent of those 1950s Mickey Spillane novels when men were men and private investigators were ‘private dicks’...definitely recommended reading.” —West Coast Review of Books With a new introduction by Roger L. Simon A guided tour of the People’s Republic, Aunt Sonya had said: U.S.-China Friendship Study Tour Number Five, arranged by the China Friendship Society, an organization in which she was involved. Why not get away from it all? Moses Wine figured. At least it would get him away from personal injury cases, murder investigations, and the insistent feeling that boredom and alienation were about to become his constant companions in his middle age. But China has a way of springing surprises, and soon California's hippest ex-radical detective is chasing down the priceless Han Dynasty Peking Duck, falling for a gorgeous dragon lady in a Mao suit—and fighting for his life across a vast, mysterious land he barely knows...

Caring and compassionate, LAPD homicide detective Jessica Drake isn't about to write off the death of an elderly man found dead in a secluded area of Rancho Park as simply a heart attack. The nonresident guest at an old age home was in vigorous health, with plenty of friends...and suddenly he's mysteriously dead. Jessie suspects foul playIn search of what caused the old gentleman's death, Jessie combs the records of local retirement homes and prods the memories of the residents. She discovers that the victim was the only person in his family to come out of the concentration camps alive--and his demise is just one of a number of mysterious deaths among camp survivors. The possible connection to the Holocaust is a particularly heart-wrenching irony to Jessie, who has just recently learned of her own link to the historic atrocity. Now she's just determined to follow a twisted trail of decades-old deceit to catch a killer...and spare the survivors of the death camps from the treachery of a modern-day maniac.Caring and compassionate, LAPD homicide detective Jessica Drake isn't about to write off the death of an elderly man found dead in a secluded area of Rancho Park as simply a heart attack. The nonresident guest at an old age home was in vigorous health, with plenty of friends...and suddenly he's mysteriously dead. Jessie suspects foul play. In search of what caused the old gentleman's death, Jessie combs the records of local retirement homes and prods the memories of the residents. She discovers that the victim was the only person in his family to come out of the concentration camps alive--and his demise is just one of a number of mysterious deaths among camp survivors. The possibleconnection to the Holocaust is a particularly heart-wrenching irony to Jessie, who has just recently learned of her own link to the historic atrocity. Now she's determined to follow a twisted trail of decades-old deceit to catch a killer...and spare the survivors of the death camps from the treachery of a modern-day maniac.Caring and compassionate, LAPD homicide detective Jessica Drake isn't about to write off the death of an elderly man found dead in a secluded area of Rancho Park as simply a heart attack. The nonresident guest at an old age home was in vigorous health, with plenty of friends...and suddenly he's mysteriously dead. Jessie suspects foul play. In search of what caused the old gentleman's death, Jessie combs the records of local retirement homes and prods the memories of the residents. She discovers that the victim was the only person in his family to come out of the concentration camps alive--and his demise is just one of a number of mysterious deaths among camp survivors. The possible connection to the Holocaust is a particularly heart-wrenching irony to Jessie, who has just recently learned of her own link to the historic atrocity. Now she's determined to follow a twisted trail of decades-old deceit to catch a killer...and spare the survivors of the death camps from the treachery of a modern-day maniac.

Jack Cooper is an unhappy man-mind, body, and spirit. He has lost his longstanding job to the economy, his mother to illness, and his wife to her secret lover. All in the blink of an eye. Beaten, broken and crippled by tragedy, Jack withdraws into total isolation, narrowing his life down to the simplest routines to block out the pain. His day begins with a strenuous workout at the Bethesda Health Club, his oasis. There, his mind and body can be free. His day ends in his tiny apartment, where he escapes from reality with his books until he can lose himself in sleep. Rinse and repeat. That is until he meets the enigmatic Mike Parrish. Parrish has no official identification. He was stolen from the hospital as a newborn and passed around from household to household. To the government and the world at large, he does not exist. He is an anonymous drifter but also the first person who breaks through Cooper's emotional confinement. Cooper finds solace in his friendship with Parrish, a man who understands his plight and is sympathetic to his pain. But then Parrish suddenly disappears, leaving Cooper to search for a virtually invisible man. As he looks for clues as intangible as ghosts and chases down leads as fleeting as shadows, his search leads him back to the one place he called his refuge: the Bethesda Health Club. How much can be taken from a man before he has nothing to lose?