Romance, Contemporary: Private investigator Jeff Haley doesn't believe in love, especially when it involves a wacky blonde blackjack dealer named Casey Madison. But when scandalous photos from Jeff's latest case fall into -- then out of -- Casey's hands, Jeff and Casey embark on a tri-state chase for the photos...and love.

Judith Lassiter has a handsome architect husband who dotes on her, no financial worries, and a beautiful house. But when she begins to change the course of her life--and takes a lover--she soon feels that murder may be the essential next step.

Hired by the accounting firm of Plumbeck and Ergenweiler to investigate the disappearance of the partners's shared mistress, San Francisco investigator Aaron Asherfeld finds himself embroiled in a sexual harassment suit and a drug dealer's pursuits.

A stunning and epic finale to the series, pitting Fandorin against both Ninjas and terrorists on the Trans-Siberian Express! The first of the interlinked plotlines is set in Russia during the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Fandorin is charged with protecting the Trans-Siberian Railway from Japanese sabotage in a pacy adventure filled with double agents and ticking bombs. Then we travel back to the Japan of the late 1870s. This is the story of Fandorin's arrival and life in Yokohama, his first meeting with Masa and the martial arts education that came in so handy later. He investigates the death of a Russian ship-captain, fights for a woman, exposes double-agents in the Japanese police, fights against, and then with the ninjas, and becomes embroiled in a shocking finale that interweaves the two stories and ties up the series as a whole.

After a stranger named Sebastian drops dead in front of him while waiting to buy a stamp, Luke Wakefield discovers a macabre letter leading to a bizarre correspondence and murder

A diabolically versatile serial killer is targeting talk show hosts for extinction. The industry is in panic, their revenues threatened, their very existence under attack, not only from the killer, but from certain sectors of society who, in some ways, side with the killer's grievances. To him talk show hosts are the sleazy practitioners of the art of destroying people's lives before a television audience. As New York City police detectives Charlie Marchetti, nighttime alcoholic, and his partner Angela Buonfiglio set out as lead investigators assigned to catch the assassin his tally of victims keeps steadily rising. The pressures on them from above to solve the case intensify. Then, in his twisted contempt for Marchetti, the killer begins writing letters to the detective--his way of upping the stakes in his insatiable thirst for gamesmanship, knowing that Charlie will never figure out the meanings behind his messages. The killer is too clever for any mere civil servant detective. Or is he? Charlie and Angela find out the hard way as they come face to face with a murderer determined to add them to his list of victims.

From the Introduction by Ed Gorman: If there's one thing Dick Lupoff understands (with perverse glee) it's the sorry state of the human condition. In this collection you'll find a wide variety of humans whose conditions leave much to be desired. A pit bull owner who's just as nasty as his dog A thief who believes his father-in-law was a real Nazi A dead-end boxer who has come back in a boxing movie A detective named Caligula Foxx who might be Nero Wolfe in drag A crooked corporal whose payoff is death Not only are the storylines original, the writing is indelibly stamped with Dick's vision and voice. Dick's writing talents really can't be defined by the usual means. Yes, he writes science fiction. Yes, he writes fantasy. Yes, he writes mystery. But what he really writes are Lupoffs. Long, short, hilarious, whimsical, dark, mysterious-they're all Lupoffs. Richard A. Lupoff is the author of many books including the popular Lindsey-and-Plum mysteries. The next of these, The Emerald Cat Killer, will be published by St. Martin's Press in October, 2010. His most recent collection of mysteries is Quintet: The Cases of Chase and Delacroix, published by Crippen & Landru.

Jazz-loving New York police detective Noah Green, trying to find a killer on New York's Lower East side, finds himself trying, at the same time, to ward off the depredations of the Internal Affairs Division

Vera Caspary, the famed author of Laura , gives us another gripping crime drama, told through shifting points of view. John Ansell, young and idealistic editor of Truth and Crime magazine, wants to breathe new life into the stale and formulaic publication. Instead of rehashing a story that's already been proven popular elsewhere, he finds a fresh one: the murder of Warren G. Wilson, famed figurehead of a correspondence course. The murder itself isn't too remarkable--just a bullet in the back--but the victim is another case, as it becomes apparent that despite having a household name, nothing is known about him. Perhaps even more peculiar is how Ansell's boss absolutely refuses to run the story and, soon thereafter, Ansell is poisoned. Caspary masterfully allows the truth to slowly untangle in this incredibly woven mystery, finally available as an ebook.

SHANGHAI FLAME Alex Cloud knows he's being followed. He only has a short period of time to find Flame and bring her back to the ship in order to leave Shanghai alive. China has turned Red, and an American newspaperman's life has turned worthless. Dodging from one risky situation to the next, Cloud runs into Haigmann, a canny middle-man who seems to think Cloud has something of value. Eventually Cloud finds Flame, but she wants nothing to do with him. Undaunted, he's sworn to get her out of Shanghai, but now finds himself carrying a lethal pack of cards with a microfilm of names glued into them. Now they're both on the run, trying to stay one step ahead of the spies and thieves who want that film--ready and willing to kill anyone to get it. COUNTERSPY EXPRESS "Don't get ... mixed up with a woman. My mistake..." The dying words of Jim Cabot's European contact ring in his ears as finds himself being trailed by one woman and tempted by another. His mission is to locate Borsilov, a defected Russian scientist. His predecessor, Max Becker, died trying. And already Cabot has been knocked senseless and his life threatened by two gunmen as he tries to track down the missing scientist. Behind the threats is an Italian Red named Major Racasoli. Pitted against them all is an English opportunist, Sydney Jardine, who wants to sell Borsilov to the highest bidder. But those dying words of warning mean nothing to Cabot now, because he has met Pia--and all bets are off.

LOOK BEHIND YOU, LADY What a pickup line! Bruce Flemish is getting ready for his magic act at the Hotel China Seas in Macao when the girl sits down next to him at the bar and offers her room number. But this casual meeting is anything but. Donna Van Deerlin is looking for a hero. Her father was killed trying to get information to Hong Kong about a local opium ring. Donna has her father's notes in code. But getting them out of Macao will take courage. Bruce is sure she must have the wrong guy--he's just an itinerant magician. But before long Donna is working her magic on him, and Bruce is trying to stay one step ahead of a gang of murderers who want to get their hands on the notes as well. THE VENETIAN BLONDE Skelly stumbles into Venice with a gangster on his tail and his card dealing confidence blown to hell. He feels washed up. That's when he runs into Viola, a young blonde in a black swimsuit sitting at the end of the bar. He can't shake her. And he needs to, because Skelly is in town to hit up his old friend Rinny Jim for some quick cash. Instead he finds Rinny's beautiful wife Maggie, and a very sweet deal--a million-dollar con to bring a rich dame's nephew back from the dead. Now he's got two women after him, and all that sweet green tempting him to one last score. Skelly's problems have only begun.

Review "...This (is) a warning to anyone who thinks that anything less than total civil rights for everyone would be ...acceptable..." -- - Mark Shepherd, Author of BLACKROSE Product Description Mickey Derringer is having a hell of a year. A year filled with loss, crushing disappointment, personal tragedy, physical trauma, mental anguish, and constant change. It's also a year of personal triumphs, growth, love and enlightenment. All while she's trying to catch the worst serial killer the city has ever known. A murderer whose modus operandi reopens old wounds and rekindles her worst nightmares. About the Author Selina Rosen has sold several stories to Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, two of which were reprinted in anthologies. She has also sold stories to the Iguana Informer, Cosmic Debris, Distant Journeys, Such A Pretty Face, Personal Demons, and a few other magazines and anthologies. Two of her novels, Queen of Denial and Chains of Freedom, were published in 1999 and 2001 by Meisha Merlin Publishing. Meisha Merlin will be publishing Chains of Destruction in May of 2002, Recycled (the sequel to Queen of Denial) in 2003, and Chains of Deliverance (the third and final book in the Chains trilogy) in 2004. She also has several novels, novellas and stories in anthologies that are available through Yard Dog Press, and Yard Dog will be publishing another one of her novels, Hammer Town, in 2002. Ms. Rosen says, "If you're reading this, then you've already bought one of my books. Come to my website and let me know how you like it, or just talk - I really like to talk!!"

A valuable cache of stolen comic books originally brought insurance investigator Hobart Lindsey and police officer Marvia Plum together. Their tumultuous relationship endured for seven years, then ended as Plum abandoned her career to return to the arms of an old flame, while Lindsey's duties carried him thousands of miles away. Now, after many years apart, the two are thrown together again by a series of crimes, beginning with the murder of an author of lurid private-eye paperback novels and the theft of his computer, containing his last unpublished book...

Pander wore dark glasses and fancy suspenders and he moved into the San Pietro rackets like a sandblaster gone berserk. Fell, the boss, was mysteriously away, and Pander grabbed the chance to bury his hands in the heavy money. Then Fell came back. At his side was Cripp, the human adding machine with the beautiful face and the twisted leg. With them came murder... wholesale.

WAR OF THE DONS The Guarda brothers run capo Messina's territory. Pepe, the oldest, is the muscle. Nuncio, the younger brother, is the accountant. And Marco, he's the wolf. Restless, hungry, he's through taking orders. It's his idea to get rid of Messina and take over. But to do that, the hit has got to look like an accident, or they risk the wrath of Messina's boss, Don Angelo. So Marco hires a twitchy drug addict with a penchant for danger, a guy who knows how to turn Messina's simple hospital visit into a fatality. It's all going so well, so smoothly. Then Don Angelo steps in to take control, and the Guarda brothers really go to war. BLACK MAFIA Cutter used to be part of the movement, but got busted for knocking over a bank. He did his time, now he's out. But things have changed. His former mentor is now a teacher, and wants nothing to do with him. It's all Cutter can do to stay one step ahead of the Man. And now some white guys are coming into the Belt to stir up trouble, busting the local action and making it look like a Perrini job. But Perrini is quite happy with the status quo. Sure he skims the Belt, but he's not looking for trouble. Trouble finds him anyway in the form of Don Santino's nephew, Angelo, who's got a hidden agenda all his own. And that's when Cutter figures it's time to make his move.

Charley's Rope was about frayed out. The caribinieri were after him, he had a bullet in his hip and no goddamn passport. Charley needed a passport bad. He needed that intricate piece of paper--signed, sealed, and innocent looking--the way only a G.I. in italy could need one. A G.I. deserter with a sweet fortune in blackmail lire and the carabinieri lusting to lay hands on him...

"Set in New York's Lower East Side in the 1970's, when it was fast becoming the heart of the cultural underground, jazz club owner Pablo Waitz, takes us on a journey in search of his partner's killer. If The Tin Angel offers a murder to be solved, a world of crime to be explored, it also offers a search for other truths. For both in murder and in life, Pablo discovers that the past can be as dangerous as the present. The drug/jazz world of New York's East Village has seldom been rendered more honestly or graphically than in this fine first mystery."- Publishers Weekly

Wieder Gut Machung-making good again-reparations. In London, James Raison, a lawyer, was preparing to take a quick trip to Munich in the interest of his client, Mrs. Wolff, and the estate of her late father, Helmut Bamberger. Bamberger had been a very wealthy and very complex man who had, apparently, died in a Nazi concentration camp. In Tel Aviv, Dr. Grunwald, an elderly lawyer who had been crippled by the Nazis, was planning to go to Munich, too, as the representative of a Jewish organization intensely interested in the fate of Bamberger's fortune. In pre-holocaust Germany, Grunwald had represented Bamberger and had helped him get the bulk of his money safely into a Swiss bank. In Munich, the German lawyer in charge of the Bamberger case, Heinz Haffner (who took pride in not actually having been a Nazi, though his sister still was one), was preparing to meet with his colleagues to discuss some puzzling new elements in the case. Haffner had problems of his own. So did the English and the Israeli lawyers. And even when one means to concentrate on the business at hand, one's mind sometimes strays. Even with three good lawyers at work, the Bamberger question became frustrating, mystifying, and, at last, explosive --

"She's beautiful," writes Irish-American art historian Patricia Dolan in the first of the journal entries that form The Music Lesson. "I look at my face in the mirror and it seems far away, less real than hers." The woman she describes is the subject of the stolen Vermeer of the novel's title. Patricia is alone with this exquisite painting in a remote Irish cottage by the sea. How she arrived in such an unlikely circumstance is one part of the story Patricia tells us: about her father, a policeman who raised her to believe deeply in the cause of a united Ireland; the art history career that has sustained her since the numbing loss of her daughter; and the arrival of Mickey O'Driscoll, her dangerously charming, young Irish cousin, which has led to her involvement in this high-stakes crime. How her sublime vigil becomes a tale of loss, regret, and transformation is the rest of her story. The silent woman in the priceless painting becomes, for Patricia, a tabula rasa, a presence that at different moments seems to judge, to approve, or to offer wisdom. As Patricia immerses herself in the turbulent passions of her Irish heritage and ponders her aesthetic fidelity to the serene and understated pleasures of Dutch art, she discovers, in her silent communion, a growing awareness of all that has been hidden beneath the surface of her own life. And she discovers that she possesses the knowledge of what she must do to preserve the things she values most.