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?

Set during the summer heatwave of 1953, 'England Expects' finds Mirabelle and Vesta investigating the seemingly unrelated murders of a racing journalist and a cleaning woman. Their searches lead them through Brighton Pavilion's crumbling passageways to the quad of a Cambridge college and finally into the shady underworld of Brighton freemasonry. And, while not on the murder trail, Vesta has to make some difficult decisions about her personal life.

“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...

"Friday, October 31, 9:37 p.m., 100 block of South Martel. A vandal threw a pumpkin through the front window of a house and several eggs at the front door." "The police report read like just another Halloween prank - a nasty, petty act. But the attack is one in a recent spate of increasingly violent vandalisms targeting residents who have paid millions of dollars for their dream homes in the ritziest enclaves of Los Angeles." "Residents are already seething, hotly divided about the growing number of Historical Architectural Restoration and Preservation (HARP) boards that prevent homeowners from remodeling their expensive real estate, forcing them to preserve the traditional integrity of neighborhoods where Hollywood legends once lived. So impassioned are pro- and anti-HARP forces that Crime Sheet columnist Molly Blume suspects that members from both sides of the debate may be perpetrating the vandalism that claims new victims almost daily." "But the arson that destroys a house on Fuller Street doesn't fit the pattern. This beautiful property belongs to Margaret Reston and her husband, Hank; and the sick old man who dies when it burns is Margaret's father. Margaret herself has disappeared. She was last seen working in her garden five months ago - and although traces of her blood were found in her car, the police have no idea what has happened to the missing woman." "This intrigue all makes good copy for hard-hitting newshound Molly. Almost in love again with the high-school sweetheart who dumped her and is now a rabbi, Molly can't stop thinking about Margaret and Hank Reston and the old man whose life was tragically, though accidently, cut short. But was it an accident? What has happened to Margaret Reston? Where does malice end and evil begin?"--BOOK JACKET.

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.

Ben the tramp, the awkward Cockney with no home and no surname, turns detective again - and runs straight into trouble. Ben encounters a dead man on a London bridge and is promptly rescued from the same fate by a posh lady in a limousine. But like most posh ladies of Ben's acquaintance, this one isn't what she seems. Seeking escape from a gang of international conspirators, Ben is whisked off to the mountains of Scotland to thwart the schemes of a poisonous organisation and finds himself in very unfamiliar territory. With its startling prelude, Detective Ben is a glorious adventure, told with the unsurpassed mixture of humour and creepy thrills that made J. Jefferson Farjeon famous and Ben the tramp one of the best-loved characters of the Golden Age.

Israeli policeman Michael Ohayon must once again solve a murder that has taken place within a complex, closed society: the kibbutz. Told repeatedly that "one who hasn't lived on a kibbutz can't possibly understand life there," Ohayon becomes increasingly determined to penetrate the spirit of this world

Stolen jewels, black markets, hired guns, crossed lovers, unregistered addresses, people gone missing, shadowy figures disappearing in crowds, newspaper stories uncomfortably close and getting closer . . . this ominous novel is Patrick Modiano's most noirish work to date. Set in Nice--a departure from the author's more familiar Paris--this novel evokes the bright sun and dark shadow of the Riviera. Modiano's trademark ability to create a haunting atmosphere is here on full display: readers descend precipitously into a world of mystery, uneasiness, inevitability. A young couple in hiding keeps close watch over a notorious diamond necklace known as the Southern Cross. Its provenance is murky, its whereabouts known only to our hero and heroine, who find themselves trapped by its potential value--and its ultimate cost. Deftly Modiano reaches further and further into the past, revealing the secret histories of the two even as the pressurized present threatens to overwhelm them.

A love story, a mystery, and a memory guide, Past Forgetting shows a writer's determination to re-create her life.Jill Robinson, novelist and author of Bed/Time/Story, wakes from a coma to discover she's lost her memory and just about any sense of who she was.And is. She likes the look of the man standing next to her bed, but doesn't recognize that he's her husband, Stuart. What matters is that she feels safe around him. As she searches the house for her children, she is reminded that her son and daughter are both grown with families of their own--how well did she ever know them? Can You make up for a past you don't really remember? It is Stuart who begins to fill in the details for Jill, including the fact that she's a well-known writer, although when she meets with her doctors, they say she may never write again. Against all odds, Jill Robinson retrieved her unique writing voice, and in this engaging memoir shows how she does it. She takes us with her on her exploration of'tlie connections between memory and creativity, celebrity and anonymity, and loss and discovery. From her first tentative steps outside her house on Wimpole Street to London's sleek West End. From a trip to Oxford to discuss memory with a professor to her amazing voyage to Los Angeles on an assignment for Vanity fair which takes her back to the sixties world of Hockney, Polanski, and Hopper, Jill forges new paths to memory. In Past Forgetting, Jill Robinson rediscovers friendships she doesn't know she had: Robert Redford tells her stories about her childhood; at John Lahr's London literary teas, she's reintroduced to the writer's world, and Cary Grant offers her memories of her father, Dore Schary. And being with Barbra Streisand reminds her of a time she doesn't quite remember: when her father was running MGM. In her urgent voyage to redefine herself, Jill asks all the questions you've ever asked on the nature of memory. Is recollection shadowed by emotion? Is memory an act of reinvention? Do people reinvent rather than recollect? In Past Forgetting you'll find the answers and you'll meet a writer you won't want to forget.

Masters of the Maze by Avram Davidson is a science fiction novel that explores the concept of a mysterious, interdimensional maze used to protect Earth from alien invaders. The story follows the protagonist, Jung Mariner, as he navigates the maze, encountering strange beings and dangers along the way. The novel combines elements of mystery, adventure, and speculative fiction, with Davidson's trademark wit and rich, imaginative world-building.

"Wine is the latest in an unbroken line of popular private eyes?molded by Dashiell Hammett in the ?20s, psychoanalyzed by Ross Macdonald in the ?50s and ?60s and now dragged kicking and screaming by Simon to face a new decade's cultural crunch . . . Here, obviously, is a mystery writer to reckon with. And a private eye Los Angeles can be proud to call its very own." Los Angeles Times Book Review A year has passed since Moses Wine solved his first major case in The Big Fix, and with it has come a certain amount of celebrity: articles about him and interviews with him have appeared in Newsweek and Esquire. He's even made the cover of Rolling Stone. None of that, however, means squat to guerilla journalist Dr. Gunther Thomas, who shows up at Moses? front door with a challenge: to clear bestselling author Jock Hecht of the murder of ABC anchorwoman Deborah Frank; Thomas, meanwhile, will document the investigation for Rolling Stone. But then the proverbial monkey wrench is thrown into the works when Hecht dies. Of course, there are always a few people Moses rubs the wrong way?like an old gangster named Meyer Greenglass, who seems to be pulling a lot of strings from his prison cell on Terminal Island. Not to mention a group of angry Cuban exiles who constantly trail the private eye on his search for clues. And what in the world is the Sexual Liberation League, and what connection does it have with Hecht's last book?a study of sexual mores in America? Waist-deep in questions that seem to have no answers, Moses must find a way to solve the unsolvable without further weakening the frail relationship he has with his two sons . . . or being portrayed as a jerk in a nationalmagazine.

"An ex-Soviet professor plays amateur detective in this post Cold War romp by New York Times bestselling spy master Robert Littell. Lemuel Falk, a theoretical "chaoticist," has been denied permission to leave Russia for the last twenty-three years, likely because he knows a few state secrets. Even he is surprised-and wary-when his twenty-fourth request is approved, and he is offered a position as visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Chaos-Related Studies in upstate New York. But as soon as Professor Falk arrives in America, he is plunged into a new kind of chaos-including a high-stakes academic catfight, an affair with a much-younger hairdresser, and cascading offers from domestic spies looking to capitalize on his knowledge-and soon finds himself playing amateur detective at the behest of local police. While he helps hunt for a dangerous serial killer, he grapples with ghosts from his own past in Russia. In this wholly original novel, Littell explores chaos theory, questions of faith, ad the ironies of contemporary America"-- Provided by publisher.

Moses Wine's plans to get closer to his sons and to find love and freedom are delayed by a double murder case involving a guerilla journalist, an old Jewish gangster, Cuban exiles, and the mysterious Sexual Liberation League

Chronicles his conversion to Catholicism, and his subsequent gradual loss of faith.

Brighton, 1956: When Mirabelle's on-off boyfriend, Superintendent Alan McGregor, is taken off a gruesome murder case, she steps in to unravel the tangle of poisoned gin, prostitutes and high-stakes gambling that surrounds the death. It isn't long before McGregor's integrity is called into question, and Mirabelle finds herself doubting him. So when a wartime hero's body turns up on the Sussex Downs, she is glad that he is caught up in a mystery of his own as Brighton's establishment close ranks. Mirabelle is in a dangerous situation, though, and she doesn't have McGregor watching her back on this one. And when the dead man on the Downs turns out to have been a member of a deadly thrill-seekers club, related to the earlier murder, Mirabelle is determined to uncover the truth...

"Tuesday, February 17. 11: 40 a.m., Corner of Vermont Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. A robber approached the victim from behind and put a knife to her stomach. . . . " Stabbings, even fatal ones, are not uncommon in Los Angeles. But the stabbing death of Aggie Lasher-a vibrant young woman dedicated to helping others and, it seemed, deeply loved by everyone who knew her-was especially tragic. For almost six years she has been obsessed by the mystery of her best friend's murder: If she had been with Aggie, would the killer have chosen another victim? Will the killer ever be caught? When Molly's LAPD pal Detective Andy Connors shows her a locket found on the body of a dead man, suddenly the case seems solved. Molly had given that locket to Aggie. Still coiled inside it is the red-thread good-luck charm that Molly had brought back years ago from Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem, a thread with the reputed mystical power to protect its wearer. The presumed murderer-a good-looking aspiring actor named Randy Creeley-was found dead of an overdose in his shabby Hollywood apartment. But Molly has unanswered questions. And though she should be focused on her wedding, only weeks away, she is driven to find out more-about Creeley; about his nervous sister, Trina; about his missing girlfriend, Doreen. About Aggie, who, it turns out, didn't tell her best friend everything. The more Molly discovers, the more she wonders: Was Aggie's life snuffed out so an addict could shoot up? Or has Creeley been framed? What if Aggie was deliberately murdered by someone else, someone who is ready to kill again to ensure that his motives stay buried with Aggie and Randy Creeley? Molly's search for the truthsends her scurrying for answers in an L.A. tourists seldom see. But closure is elusive, and seeking it can exact a stiff price-sometimes even a life. Rochelle Krich's third Molly Blume mystery is irresistible: an inexorably compelling chiller.

Presents a legal novel dealing with the parent-child relationship.