To research a new detective story, Charles Applegate takes a post in a progressive school of misfits, set deep in the English countryside. The game turns serious when a fellow teacher is murdered and a weird variety of criminals seem convinced that Charles has something they want.

This memoir, a young poet's tragicomic account of crossed loves and rebellions as he grows from boy to man under the vigilant eyes of the state in the Soviet Union between the 1950s and 1970s, can be approached as a bildungsroman. It is set in Tallinn, Riga and Moscow (with episodes in Uzbekistan, Moldavia, and the Ukraine) and, apart from this author's own story, deals with the experiences of young people of that period, their friendships and attempts to form erotic/romantic attachments, as well as their search for national--Baltic, Jewish, Russian--identity while being watched and sometimes interrogated by the secret police. It also includes some reconstruction of the author's family history: expulsion from Spain, the Magician of Prague, the renowned historian Simon Dubnov. The volume progresses from the demonstration of two seven-year-old boys' against Stalin and Lenin, in Tallinn, in the mid-1950s to a dramatic and doomed love affair with a woman married to an army colonel who attempts to shoot the author as the latter is about to make his final exit from the country, with the KGB on his tail, in the early 1970s. While raising a number of important historical and contemporary issues, the memoir is also an involving narrative, a visually descriptive story, varied and engrossing, involving philosophical, theological, and detective elements; popular and literary culture; countries and languages; high seriousness and undercutting irony.

Reflections and rumblings on human nature and the law from one of Australia's longest serving criminal defence barristers, once nicknamed 'The Smiling Funnelweb', Chester Porter QC. Chester Porter's life in the law began in 1948, when at the age of 21 he was the youngest lawyer to be admitted to the Bar. He took silk in 1974 and quickly became known as Sydney's best defence lawyer, shunning the courtroom theatricals favoured by many of his rivals.'Young Chester' was the man others would go to if they were in strife. Chester's most famous cases included successfully defending the 'once only's' such as Detective Sgt Roger Rogerson on bribery charges, and Judge John Foord who was accused of attempting to pervert the course of justice. He was counsel assisting the Northern Territory Commissions of Inquiry into the convictions of Lindy and Michael Chamberlain. After clocking up scores of legendary victories, some of Macquarie Street's more larrikin lawyers produced a limited edition t- shirt with 'Chester Porter Walks on Water'- a slogan that sums up an illustrious career that spanned more than 50 years. This is not merely a reflection of human nature at its worst but also an overview of how the law has changed and developed over the years. From the McDermott Royal Commission to the reform of forensic evidence and the future of the law in Australia, this is the long-awaited memoir from one of Australia's most respected QC's.

"When Masha Mironova alights in Moscow at the turn of the century, with a modest inheritance and a determination to shed her provincial Siberian upbringing, she becomes Columbine: reckless and daring-and with the dramatic outfits to prove it. In her quest for danger and passion, Columbine soon discovers the Lovers of Death-a small gathering of poets who conduct séances to determine death's next chosen lover. Once named at a séance, the chosen one must await three signs from death before taking their own life. The resulting string of suicides has taken Moscow by storm, becoming fodder for sensational media coverage and widespread hysteria. As the group's numbers steadily dwindle, a mysterious newcomer appears. Immediately recognizable to the reader as the inimitable Fandorin, the newest member begins to sow doubt and discord from within, in order to ward Moscow's youth away from the lure of suicide and expose the sinister deception at the group's core. But will the gentleman detective be able to stop Columbine from taking action when she receives her three unmistakable signs? She Lover of Death is a fantastically entertaining murder mystery, where the murderer's weapons of choice are trickery and psychological manipulation"--

Veteran broadcaster 'Radio Red' Bob Bjorner is the last of the red-hot lefties working at radio station KRED in Berkeley. His paranoia makes him lock his studio against intruders while he's on the air - but his precaution doesn't save him from a horrible death that leaves him slumped at the microphone just before his three o'clock daily broadcast. Homicide detective Marvia Plum scrambles to the station to investigate. Who amongst the broadcasters, engineers, and administrators present at the station was the murderer - and why?

TRICK I-- The first thing to vanish is a worthless doorstop. Then in the twinkling of an eye, goes its rich and eldely owner. and, for the grand finale, both reappear--each as dead as the other. TRICK II--From the House of Darkness issues more bafflement. In total darkness and from a distance of twelve feet, four bullets are pumped within an inch of each other into a spectator's back. A feat utterly impossible to perform--yet brazenly and undeniably done. TRICK III-- The piece de resistance. This time it's an entire house, a real house, a solid house which Ellery Queen had been in only the day before...vanished from the face of the earth. And in its place, one of the most incredible conundrums ever to face the master crime solver. * The Lamp of God (Detective Story, October 1935 as House of Haunts) * ...The Treasure Hunt (Detective Story, 1935) * ...The Hollow Dragon (Redbook, December 1936) * ...The House of Darkness (The American Magazine, February 1935) * ...The Bleeding Portrait (original "The Gramatan Mystery" * Man Bites Dog (Blue Book, June, 1939) * Long Shot (Blue Book, September 1939) * Mind Over Matter (Blue Book, October 1939) * The Trojan Horse (Blue Book, December 1939)

Drury Lane, a retired Shakespearean actor and amateur detective, investigates the poisonings of two members of the eccentric Hatter family

It's Christmas week in New York, and the frozen body of Cletus Berry, Hobart Lindsey's partner, has been found in a back alley alongside that of a known criminal. Was there a connection between the two men? This wouldn't normally be Lindsey's case, but when a man's partner is killed, he must do something about it. Now separated from Marvia Plum, Lindsey is on his own, and the body count is set to rise unless he can solve the mystery of the Silver Chariot...

When a chartered helicopter plunges into the icy waters of Lake Tahoe, killing its millionaire passenger, what seems a routine claim against a life insurance policy turns into a complex mystery for investigator Hobart Lindsey and his policewoman girlfriend Marvia Plum - for the multimillion-dollar policy is to go to an unnamed model who posed for the cover of an ephemeral mystery paperback in 1951. Lindsey's own life is in danger as he tries to find the now-aged model (if she's still alive!), on a trail full of murder and deception...

MURDER ME FOR NICKELS Walter Lippit makes music all over town. He owns the juke boxes that play the tunes that keeps the bars and the diners hopping. Jack St. Louis works for Lippit, smoothing the customers and keeping the nickels coming. But then along comes Benotti and the Chicago syndicate to louse up the operation. It's everything Jack can do to stay one step ahead. One step ahead of Benotti's gang, Lippet--and Lippit's willing wife Patty, who wants to be a singer and is convinced that Jack can make that happen too. And maybe he can. It's all in a week's work. BENNY MUSCLES IN Benny Tapkow has worked as crime boss Pendleton's chauffeur for seven years, but he's itching to get ahead. He feels like he deserves a piece of the action, but Pendleton won't budge. So Benny strikes a deal with Big Al Alverato to kidnap Pendleton's daughter Pat to get him in with the rival gang. But the snatch doesn't come off as planned, and now Benny is stuck with Pat, a hellion with a temper and plenty of mood swings. Pendleton's men are after him and he has to dope her just to keep her in line. The last thing he figured on was falling in love.

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?

Abigail Goodman is the forty-one-year-old married mother of two grown children who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant. After much soul-searching, she opts to terminate the pregnancy. One month later, Abigail is arrested under a law that makes abortion a capital offense. Now she is fighting - not for her right to choose, but for her life.

Christmas in New York. The city's legendary Ramsey's Department Store is suffering its worst season in years. General manager Barnaby Tischler knows it's because their rival, Weatherly's superstore, is scaring off the store's customers--with bomb threats! But when Ramsey's Santa-for-hire is found in a utility closet shot through the heart, Tischler's only hope lies in his old buddy, Mayor Ed Koch.

For widow Hattie Clements, a job at a local school should be ideal. Hattie can handle the problems that occur - but then the accidents start: Her determination to get to the truth, threatens to expose a terrible secret that has already scarred too many lives.

International intrigue, professional rivalry, the criminal underworld of nineteenth-century Moscow, and an irresistible femme fatale: if Erast Fandorin was hoping for a quiet homecoming, he is about to be disappointed.Erast Fandorin returns to Moscow after an absence of six years, only to find himself instantly embroiled in court politics and scandal. His old friend General Sobolev - the famous 'Russian Achilles' - has been found dead in a hotel room, and Fandorin suspects foul play.Using his now-famous powers of detection - powers that belie his twenty-six years - Fandorin embarks on an investigation, during which the political and the personal may become dangerously blurred. With the assistance of some formidable martial arts skills, acquired whilst Fandorin was in Japan, our eccentric and ingenious hero must endeavour to discover not so much whodunit, as why ...

In a huge Hawaiian mansion by the sea live Jack Wolfe, ruthless millionaire, and his knockout wife, ex-hooker Nora. Weary of their marriage, Nora seduces dim-bulb aging surfer Chad to kill her husband. But then it seems as if Jack wants Chad to kill him--or rather, he wants it to look like he was killed so he can avoid legal prosecution and begin a new life. So he offers Chad a better deal. Then it gets complicated: who are allies and who are conspirators is not known. It's all observed by Hawaiian Jewish detective Dani Kahana--also in love with Nora. This complicated tale ends explosively with a hilarious and unexpected close. Martin's Press.

"RED SEA-RED SQUARE-RED THREAD is a work of passages taken, written, painted, and sung. It offers a genealogy of liberty through a micrology of wit. It follows a very long history of a very short anecdote. Commissioned to depict the biblical passage through the Red Sea, a painter covered over a surface with red paint, explaining thereafter that the Israelites had already crossed over and that the Egyptians were drowned. Clearly, not all you see is all you get. Who was the painter and who the first teller of the tale? Designed as a philosophical detective story, the book follows the extraordinarily many thinkers and artists who have used the Red Sea anecdote to make so much more than a merely anecdotal point. Leading the large cast are the philosophers, Arthur Danto and Søren Kierkegaard, the poet and playwright, Henri Murger, the opera composer, Giacomo Puccini, and the painter and print-maker, William Hogarth. Strange companions perhaps, until their use of the anecdote is shown as working its extraordinary passage through so many cosmopolitan cities of art and capital. What about the anecdote brings Danto's philosophy of art into conversation with Kierkegaard's stages on life's way, with Murger and Puccini's la vie de bohème, and with Hogarth's modern moral pictures? The book explores narratives of emancipation in philosophy, theology, politics, and the arts. What has the passage of the Israelites to do with the Egyptians who, by many gypsy names, came to be branded as bohemians when arriving in France from the German lands of Bohemia? What have Moses and monotheism to do with the history of monism and the monochrome? And what sort of thread connects a sea to a square when each is so purposefully named red?"--

A novel of airport intrigue. She was young. She was beautiful. And in more danger than she knew. Rebel Martin worked out of National Airport in Washington DC as a stewardess for Coastal Airlines. She lived in the high rent section of Alexandria, VA courtesy of one friend. She had a wardrobe that would make a movie star envious, courtesy of another. And she played the field, in the sky and on the ground. There was Pilot Jim Lindsay, who had a wife and two children. He wanted to marry Rebel. So did young Robert Denham, a handsome ramp agent who didn't make enough to keep Rebel in cosmetics. One man involved with Rebel who didn't want to marry her was Frak Gilcannon, Coastal's executive vice president....Captain McDermott, recently reassigned from Coastal's Chicago office to Washington as a check pilot on the Boeing 727, had formerly been a homicide detective. Now, reluctantly, he finds himself back on the homicide trail seeking the person who'd strangled Rebel. And he finds his answer in two places. In the sky. And on the ground