A high-caliber police procedural mystery from the acclaimed author Warren Adler, well-known for his iconic novel turned international box-office hit The War of the Roses . Adam Burns, Washington Post columnist and controversial presidential critic, is dead. With no clear circumstances, speculation, gossip, and rumor flood the media-was it an accident, suicide, or murder? Conspiracy theories run amok, accusing none other than the President of the United States. Was Adam Burns the target of a government hit squad? Did someone decide to silence his diatribes once and for all? Fiona Fitzgerald, an unlikely hero in Washington D.C.'s blue-collar, predominantly male police force, is entrusted with unraveling Burns' death. Born into the elite social circles of the nation's capital and with privileged access to what lurks behind the pristine façade of the political establishment, Fiona is determined to expose the chicanery buried under primrose bushes and concealed within the ceaseless Washington Masquerade. Days roar by-pressure mounts-clues mislead-intuition betrays. Can Fiona clear the President's name? Is one woman enough to stop a nation out for blood? Washington Masquerade is the 8th book in the Fiona Fitzgerald Mystery series.

Detective Fiona Fitzgerald’s privileged upbringing in the nation’s capital and her intimate knowledge of its inner workings come in handy when Fran Miller, a top lobbyist and legal expert, turns up dead on Independence Day. It looks like suicide, but when the clues lead back to Mark Chancellor, the husband of Fiona’s best friend, things get complicated. Chancellor runs a complex, global conglomerate, and along with his Russian partner, is involved in the pharmaceutical and defense industries. Chancellor is at the top of his game, well-connected in Washington and known to believe that money is the planet’s most powerful weapon. But uncovered secrets reveal that terrorist affiliates may have something more powerful: biological weapons. While the high-stakes players behind the scenes are trying to avoid a potential worldwide catastrophe, the race to find an antidote is complicated by deception and corruption, and now maybe by death. Rumors swirl about the dead lobbyist: a mysterious lover, millions of dollars hidden in small-town Virginia, and what looks like a recent vaccination on her upper right arm. But did someone target Fran? After all, she knew more about biological and chemical weapons than almost anyone. Was she caught up in the convoluted web of international biological warfare? Coincidence, luck, and a little passion give Fiona a labyrinth of leads to follow. But sometimes the simple truth is harder to see.

HE HAS... West Crosse is a genius at creating spaces uniquely fitting the people who will inhabit them. The catch: he works under a shroud of secrecy, charges his clients a fortune, and then sometimes, in the most skillful and horrifying ways, he kills them... A MOST INTELLIGENT DESIGN.... West has the best of reasons. He's designing lives as well as homes, obliterating everything that is ugly, accidental, or ill-conceived. And with each meticulous murder he commits, he's getting better--leaving behind carved bodies that make a bone chilling statement of their own... FOR MURDER. Forensic psychiatrist Frank Clevenger is hunting an outrageous serial killer whose victims seem to have only wealth in common. With his own life in shambles and the murderer two steps ahead of him, Clevenger can't know that the next killing ground will be the White House, where an innocent life just needs the perfect touch... "The pages turn faster than you can say 'taut psychological thriller'." -- Entertainment Weekly "Deeply compelling." -- Booklist Visit Keith Ablow's Web site at: www.keithablow.com

Book by Breslin, Jimmy, Schaap, Dick

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.

A dazzling triumph from the bestselling author of 'The War of the Roses' - a sweeping and ambitious novel spanning across two eras and the city at the center of it all. A mother's deathbed confession. A son's life spins out of control. And now Osiris has one mission; to find his long lost sister, Isis. Osiris embarks upon a journey to his ancestral home in Egypt. The winding streets of the City of the Dead conceal many dangers. His mother's enemies are everywhere and will not hesitate to kill to keep their secrets hidden. Cryptic clues left by his mother slowly begin to unravel, and with it, a trail of cold bodies in Osiris' wake. But he is not the only one searching for Isis. And this predator is not looking for a happy reunion but something much more sinister. This bitter and incredibly deadly enemy is hot on Osiris' scent; he's hunter that triggers a heart-stopping chase with utterly fatal consequences. Follow Osiris in this edge-of-your-seat roller-coaster ride of daring maneuvers and nerve-wracking action as they try to find Isis before they both end up in just another Egyptian tomb. Readers thrilled about this edge of your seat novel: "Mother Nile is an utterly engrossing story." - Goodreads Reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Mr. Adler’s writing is remarkable; his use of language erudite and energized." - Goodreads Reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Mr. Adler is a masterful storyteller..." - Goodreads Reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "This story is so skillfully drawn to pull us in from the start and keep us captive till the very end." - Goodreads Reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "What a lovely gift inside a nitty-gritty novel that cannot be easily classified.. It is as tender as as it is cruel." - Goodreads Reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "The story line itself makes the book worthwhile, but the detailed look at life in the recent past makes the book exceptional." - Goodreads Reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"No Room at the Morgue came out after Jean-Patrick Manchette had transformed French crime fiction with such brilliantly plotted, politically charged, unrelentingly violent tales as Nada and The Mad and the Bad. Here, inspired by his love of Dashiell Hammett, Manchette introduces Eugene Tarpon, private eye, a sometime cop who has set up shop after being kicked off the force for accidentally killing a political demonstrator. Months have passed, and Tarpon desultorily tries to keep in shape while drinking all the time. No one has shown up at the door of his office in the midst of the market district of Les Halles. Then the bell rings and a beautiful woman bursts in, her hands dripping blood. It's Memphis Charles, her roommate's throat has been cut, and Memphis can't go to the police because they'll only suspect her. Can Tarpon help? Well, somehow he can't help trying. Soon bodies mount, and the craziness only grows"--

When the daughter of prominent human rights activist, Sarah Raab, is kidnapped by what may be a terrorist organization, her life is put into turmoil. Told not to seek out the police, she turns to a former high-level CIA operative, Carl Helman: an anti-terrorist expert she has only recently met. She must battle with her conscience and her strongly held beliefs while working with a man who embodies everything she despises. When she discovers that a member of her own inner circle could be involved, Sarah must make the horrific choice of allowing Helman to use his "advanced interrogation techniques" on them or risk losing her daughter. How could this happen? Why would a terrorist group target her family? And how far against her own values is Sarah willing to go when the threat of loss becomes devastatingly personal?

From the carcass of a Washington, D.C. car bomb explosion, the CIA launches an investigation into the mysterious events leading to the assassination of Chilean dissident and infamous casanova, Eduardo Allesandro Palmero. As CIA investigator Alfred Dobbs rummages through the evidence, Palmero's mysterious life, from heir to the Chilean oligarchy to a fist-raising Marxist and trickster in disguise, comes to light. But what Dobbs soon discovers soars beyond his wildest imagination. At the height of international terrorism, Eduardo fights his war with an unlikely weapon-seduction. From Marie DeFarge to Frederika Millspaugh to Penny Anne McCarthy, Eduardo orders his sex-craving subjects into battle, tearing them from a life of tranquility and into the passionate caress of a man who will stop at nothing for a cause, his cause. Soon enough, Marie, Frederika and Anne are making headline news as part of a South American terror squad. But when Eduardo's carpet of lies begins to unravel, thread by thread, and his obsession-inducing sexual offensive comes to a slow and subtle halt, his very fate is at stake. Will the feared Chilean Intelligence Agency finally get him? Will lust intoxicate the minds of three women descending beyond reason? Or will the conned women become the conwomen?

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.

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.

Two families . . . One bloodline . . . and a city named Jerusalem When Bilal, a radicalised Palestinian youth, is shot during a botched terrorist attack, his life is saved by a young Jewish surgeon, Yael Cohen. But when Yael makes the startling discovery that her DNA is identical with Bilal's, they become caught up in a high-stakes conspiracy - a disturbing plot that will blow the region to pieces and stun the world with its audacity. But unknown to Bilal and Yael, theirs is the last and bloody chapter in a story that crosses millennia. Century after century, two ancient families - bloodline ancestors of Yael and Bilal - defied the corrupt power of kings and conquerors, and their struggles forged a fiercely proud people and an enduring hope for peace. But through war and atrocity, kinships were shattered, forcing dynasties apart and allowing evil to gain a foothold. And in modern Israel, confronted with exposure, those sinister forces will do anything to take control of the Holy Land and silence Yael and Bilal, who must run for their lives. Through imprisonment, assassination attempts and political machinations, they must ultimately confront the truth of who they are. But is blood enough?

April 1945 - the last act of the war... The Allied stranglehold on Berlin is tightening by the day, as the escape corridor to the Bavarian Alps and the Swiss border is narrowing. In the maze of ruins that Berlin has become, a man of appalling ingenuity, with a ruthless sense of self-preservation, contrives his escape. He is the secret policeman Ernst Sch�ller. In his shabby, shiny suit with its sagging pockets, he is not immediately recognizable as someone of importance, but as the Reich Special Investigator he has long been checking up on the highest in the land, and there is nothing he doesn't know. Using his position of knowledge, he begins to bargain for his life with the Allies. The man with whom the bargain must be made is Allen Welsh Dulles, chief of the O.S.S. in Switzerland and President Roosevelt's personal representative. With chilling pragmatism, he sees that the longer the German surrender is delayed the deeper the Communist penetration of Europe will be. In order to stop Tito's seizure of Trieste, he is ready to talk to the devil himself. Sch�ller and Dulles, both professionals and practical men, arrive at an arrangement of expediency in Berne. 'A first-class political thriller, at once literate, provocative and exciting' - The Sunday Telegraph 'Blends fact and fiction in such a way that you really can't see the join. The final irony is profound indeed.' - Sunday Times 'Very convincing' - The Guardian Providing an accurate reconstruction of real life events, The Day Before Sunrise is a masterly piece of story-telling, recreating in minute detail the terrible last days of the Third Reich. Thomas Wiseman was born in Vienna in 1931 and came to England at the age of seven. He was a columnist on the Evening Standard from 1953 until 1961, when he became film critic for the Sunday Express. Later he wrote a weekly column for the Guardian. He wrote his first novel, Czar , in France after giving up full-time journalism. His novel The Romantic Englishwoman was recently filmed by Joseph Losey, and his study of Vienna under the Nazis received critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic.

Once an accomplished plastic surgeon, Trevor Lucas started using his scalpel to do very bad things... Locked in a Boston psychiatric hospital, Lucas is holding the ward hostage-and performing grisly "operations" on his prisoners... Lucas, calling for forensic psychiatrist Frank Clevenger, is willing to strike a deal... What Lucas knows about Clevenger could ruin the psychiatrist. What Clevenger can find out about Lucas could save the hostages. And he's got 24 hours to do it... As Clevenger feverishly delves into Lucas' past, what he discovers is chilling, disturbing, and all too familiar. For Clevenger can't help but wonder if his proximity to killers and madmen in coincidence, or something much more complex: Projection.

Meet Edinburgh Detective Inspector Liz Kavanaugh, head of the Innovative Crimes Investigation Unit, otherwise known as the Rule 34 Squad. They monitor the Internet for potential criminal activity, analyzing trends in the extreme fringes of explicit content. And occasionally, even more disturbing patterns arise… Three ex-cons have been murdered in Germany, Italy, and Scotland. The only things they had in common were arrests for spamming—and a taste for unorthodox entertainment. As the first officer on the scene of the most recent death, Liz finds herself sucked into an international investigation that isn’t so much asking who the killer is, but what—and if she doesn't find the answer soon, the homicides could go viral.

"An extravaganza . . . fertile invention and forceful style . . . Mr. Kersh's many admirers will undoubtedly devour this highly flavoured hotch-potch with avidity." - Julian Maclaren-Ross, Sunday Times "[F]irst-rate Kersh, richly peopled with the odd bit roles he sketches so well and written with style and individuality." - Anthony Boucher, New York Herald Tribune "Sometimes funny, sometimes nightmarish, always first-class entertainment." - Basil Davenport, New York Times Journalist George Oaks and his friend Albert Kemp, a mystery novelist, are on their way to meet their friend, the celebrated philosopher Dr. Monacelli. But when a clerical mix-up leads to their meeting the American gangster Monty Cello instead, Oaks and Kemp quickly find themselves caught up in a bizarre and dangerous plot involving a murdered reporter, a missing scientist, and a group of powerful madmen with a plan to destroy the world as we know it. It's a race against time as Oaks and Kemp must infiltrate the villains' stronghold and save humanity before it's too late! Equal parts hard-boiled crime novel and apocalyptic science fiction tale, The Great Wash (1953) is one of the most exciting novels by Gerald Kersh (1911-1968), who is best known for his classics Night and the City (1938) and Fowlers End (1957). Fowlers End and four volumes of Kersh's strange and brilliant short fiction are also available from Valancourt.

"After narrowly escaping with his life at the hands of a murderous Hollywood pimp, detective Happy Doll, bullet-ridden but healing, has landed on a remote Mexican beach. In a humble shack and with his dog for company, Doll settles into a peaceful idyll of Buddhist study. But then trouble, as it always does, comes to paradise. Doll is the witness to a murder for which he is framed, and now, with an expired passport and the Mexican authorities on his tail, he must sneak across the border back to L.A. by any means necessary, with the goal of bringing the true murderer to justice. But it's not just trouble that expels Doll from paradise! His dark past reaches for him, like a hand from the grave, old enemies want him dead, including the Jalisco Cartel, and Doll, a reluctant instrument of mayhem, yearns to end this cycle of violence and tip the karmic scales in his favor. But how can he do this without getting blood on his hands? Karma Doll marks the third installment in a madcap, bloody, and impossibly fun series, bringing us back in the good company of Happy Doll: a beloved, introverted anti-hero who has taken more hits to the head than a linebacker, yet still always manages to come out on top." -- Amazon.

At first it was just a lark--bribing the stewards to steal food, bribing the conductors to steal blankets, raiding the club car, becoming a trainful of drunks. But then--then they began stealing morphine, and after that they began swapping mates, and after that... Finally the lights went out. And a modern-day miracle of streamlined engineering was turned into a cage of evil, human beings become beasts, and for three days the meaning of civilization was forgotten, and carnality ruled!

In this next thrilling story from Alan Gold and Mike Jones, we meet Shalman, a freedom-fighter turned peacenik and archaeologist, and his young beautiful wife, Judit, a refugee from the horrors of Stalin's USSR. As the Second World War draws to a close, and the world begins to learn the truth about Hitler's genocide, the foundation of the State of Israel as a permanent home for what's left of the Jewish people becomes increasingly urgent. In Palestine, Arab and Jewish forces fight each other and the British for supremacy and the right to own the land, causing a nightmare environment of hatred and suspicion. But a deeply buried global conspiracy, which has its origin in Stalin's Russia, seeks to undermine Israel's future as an independent nation. A plot to fashion the fledgling nation as a puppet of the Soviet Union rests upon a handful of committed Jewish Communists, led secretly by Judit. But is she a heartless assassin, a disciple of the evils of Beria and the Kremlin, or a committed fusion of Zionist and Communist? And in the darkest recesses of ancient history, we meet Shalman's ancestors, themselves descendants of the builders of Solomon's Temple. As the family escapes the nightmare of the Roman occupation of Jerusalem, it witnesses the glories of the Islamic renaissance in Baghdad and the rampages of the Crusaders through the region. Another exciting instalment in this story of the births of nations and of the strength of their people.

He was a tall, cleanly attractive young man, the kind you'd like to have for a neighbor. Press the wrong button and he'd mow you down with the ruthlessness of a Sherman tank. His name was Daniel Port. He was a gangster, the brain and spirit behind the machine that milked the dirty pennies from the city. Now Port wanted out. He had a bellyful of corruption, a one-way ticket to New York, and a dark, shining girl to go along with it. The problem was to get there alive, because the one way out for Daniel Port was over his own freshly dug grave...