By turns hilarious and alarming, "American Mischief" is an ambitious attempt to define the disorders of American culture. Originally published in 1970, the novel takes on sexual anarchy, political madness, the collapse of monogamy, and above all the high cost of extreme behavior. These aspects of American culture are richly illustrated by the novel's two protagonists: Professor Bernard Kovell, a supreme and comical narcissist who dotes on lofty analogies while performing very low acts, and Lenny Pincus, a young radical fishing for more trouble than he can handle.

In this spellbinding new novel, bestselling author Alan Gold re-creates one of the most notorious stories of the Bible. Seductive, passionate and surprising, Jezebel's story is like no other.For the past three thousand years, Jezebel has been portrayed as the ultimate seducer, a murderess who stole and lied and cheated, the woman who fought against the prophet Elijah.But was this mysterious young woman really promiscuous and evil? Or is there another side to the story , another Jezebel who has, until now, remained hidden?This Jezebel is a young Phoenician princess who journeys to Israel to become Queen, and who fights against the power of the Temple on behalf of all the women of the land. This Jezebel is a free-spirited young woman raised to be loved and admired by men, a Queen who wants to free her people from the constraints of a religion dominated by priests. This Jezebel is the woman against whom Israel's greatest prophet, Elijah, fights for the very soul of the nation.

"Roger Levy, the protagonist of Alan Furst's fast-moving and funny suspense novel, is an enterprising young man in business for himself. In fact, his is a kind of modern American success story, although it just happens that his business is dealing dope around the various colleges and universities in Pennsylvania. So when he is stopped, his van searched and his "merchandise" discovered by the Pennsylvania police, he has no choice but to appear to cooperate when offered his freedom in exchange for complicity in an apparent CIA murder scheme. Back home in New York the chase is on, and it is only with the help of his lawyer, his street sense and a lot of his own hard-earned cash that Levy is finally able to identify and evade the enemy, uncover the unlikely source of the plot and come away with enough capital to fulfill his own version of the American dream--to retire and live above his own Chinese restaurant, its kitchen available to him twenty-four hours a day. Set in the last days of the sixties, Your Day in the Barrel is at once a fond spoof of the suspense genre and a fiercely contemporary thriller told in the truly original voice of a young writer making his highly auspicious debut." -- Book jacket flap.

Clarinetist Ike Morphy, his dog Herbie Mann, and a pair of pigeons who roost on his air conditioner are about to be evicted from their apartment on West 106th Street, also known as Duke Ellington Boulevard. Ike has never had a lease, just a handshake agreement with the recently deceased landlord; and now that landlord’s son stands to make a killing on apartment 2B. Centering on the fate of one apartment before, during, and after the height of New York’s real estate boom, Ellington Boulevard ’s characters include the Tenant and His Dog; the Landlord, a recovered alcoholic and womanizer who has newly found Judaism and a wife half his age; the Broker, an out-of-work actor whose new profession finally allows him to afford theater tickets he has no time to use; the Broker’s New Boyfriend, a second-rate actor who composes a musical about the sale of 2B ( “Is there no one I can lien on if this boom goes bust?” ). There’s also the Buyer, a trusting young editor at a dying cultural magazine, who falls in love with the Tenant; the Buyer’s Husband, a disaffected graduate student taken to writing bawdy faux-academic papers; and the Buyer’s Husband’s Girlfriend, a children’s book writer with a tragic past. With the humor and poignancy that made Langer’s first novel, Crossing California, a favorite book of the year among critics across the country, Ellington Boulevard is an ode to New York. It’s the story of why people come to a city they can’t afford, take jobs they despise, sacrifice love, find love, and eventually become the people they never thought they’d be—for better and for worse.

A son is set the task of concealing his father's death; a drowned child is callously handled by rescuers; a lonely schoolteacher is shot by a hunter; a boy witnesses his mother's act of infidelity; a car explosion kills a foreign schoolgirl; and the middle-aged author of these tales depicts his own consciousness. In a perceptive work about a writer of stories, acclaimed author E.L. Doctorow opens to the reader the creative imagination of a writer.

A stand-up comedian wonders who she can trust when she anonymously receives the same token clue, a small white book, that has been found at each scene of a serial murder case.

In the 1980s, former New York City police commissioner and mayor Isaac Sidel becomes president of the United States after the former president resigns due to corruption, but Sidel must evade assassins sent by a shady cabal of Swiss bankers.

"A modern English comedy of morals and manners, about a highborn family of outrageous characters, in a story that proves revenge can be sweet. In the months leading up to the Brexit referendum, Ayesha, the beautiful, young secret daughter of the late Enyon Trelawney, has married the much older thuggish banker Tomlinson Sleet with whom she has a young daughter, Stella. Ayesha is busy restoring the once run-down Trelawney Castle in Cornwall, which Sleet has bought, to its former glory, as well as studying art at the Courtauld in London. The elderly Countess Clarissa-still ensconced on the property--the host of a camp television show, is about to head into a disastrous marriage. Lady Jane has separated from the hopeless Trelawney heir Kitto, who is crazier than ever, and found an enlightened woman to keep her company abroad. Sleet is becoming increasingly difficult, distracted by the seductive and ruthless bitcoin goddess Zamora, but Kitto's sister Blaze and her husband, Joshua, will support Ayesha's clever plan as she discovers shocking secrets, takes action, and brings the family together."--

Threptus the former beggar boy has teamed up with Floridius, a soothsayer and seller of sacred chickens. Together they earn a living helping people solve problems and mysteries. In this third book of the series, it is the time of Saturnalia - when all the rules are turned upside down and chaos ensues. Threptus is enjoying the mayhem but the thunder omens are disturbing. Can Threptus help his friend matchmake and avoid the disaster threatened by the thunder omen?

Floridius, freelance soothsayer, is afraid that he has lost his talent for seeing the future. Threptus wants to find some titbits of information that his mentor can use to convince people he still has the gift, but will a poisoned honey cake lead to disaster along the way? (Back cover).

"Star Trek" 's Captain Kirk is back, with another fast-paced adventure for the future's greatest private detective, Jake Cardigan. Best known for his role as Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship "Enterprise," William Shatner has created a whole new career for himself as a suspense novelist--and his bestselling Tek series has been hailed by "The Wall Street Journal" for novels "as tough and scrappy as Captain Kirk." Walt Bascom is head of the Cosmos Detective Agency, and therefore is Jake Cardigan's boss. As Tek Kill opens, Walt is having a bad morning: five police officers broke into his house, threw him out of bed, and arrested him for murder. The video security system at the home of wealthy entrepreneur Dwight Grossman clearly shows Bascom shooting Grossman in the back. And telephone records show that Grossman had been making threatening phone calls to a former girlfriend--a woman now involved with Bascom. Despite what looks like an open-and-shut case against Bascom, Jake and his partner Sid Gomez must find a way to clear the boss's good name--and find the real killer. They have allies: Jake's son, Dan, is friendly with Grossman's sister, Susan. And Susan Grossman has been having flashes of telepathy, including visions of her brother's murder that does not feature Walt Bascom. She's frightened, but she's prepared to testify in court about what she believes. Unfortunately, Susan Grossman is a user of the deadly drug Tek. The choice facing the police is obvious: they can believe what they see with their own eyes on videotape, or they can believe a known drug user who claims to have telepathic visions. Jake and Sid can see that they have a lot of work ahead if they're going toget the boss out of jail and back to the office. And the person who went to such trouble to make Walt Bascom look like a murderer is hardly likely to sit back and let them do their jobs without making an effort to put them off the trail--a deadly effort.

Connoisseurs of fictional murder and intrigue will rejoice in Shooting Script and Other Mysteries by William Link and Richard Levinson. Spanning the years 1954 to 1966, this collection shows the young writers exploring terrain that would later make them world famous as co-creators of a certain raincoat-clad LAPD detective and a mystery novelist from Cabot Cove, Maine. These compelling stories range from a small town in Colorado to a military base in Germany; from the hot, flat roads of Nevada to the steel-and-glass canyons of New York City. Never before collected in one volume, they share a common denominator: suspense of the most delicious variety. Shooting Script is edited by Edgar Award-winning playwright Joseph Goodrich and features a foreword by Tom Straw, author of the New York Times best-selling Richard Castle novels.

"Stein attains a new level of achievement that demonstrates his ability to write as well as, and perhaps better than, most of the novelists he publishes... It's the sort of book you hate to stop reading." -- John Barkham Reviews "If you bury yourself in a Sol Stein book while walking, you will walk into a wall." -- The New York Times "Brilliantly conceived, highly recommended." --United Press International

Working from the 1960s on, the French writer, artist and illustrator Roland Topor (1938-97) was an all-round maverick known for his paintings and drawings as much as for his novels (such as The Tenant , filmed by Roman Polanski), plays and short stories, all dominated by a sense of irrational, everyday menace. He was also a filmmaker, actor (appearing as Renfield in Herzog's Nosferatu ) and the cofounder, with Arrabal and Jodorowsky, of the Panic performance art movement. The tone of Topor's fiction and art could be interpreted as humorous, but it's a humor pushed deep into discomfort, almost to the point of total horror. From the collision of these factors, rooted in the author's experiences and his irrepressible personality, come works increasingly seen as unique in European art and writing of the late 20th century. Head-to-Toe Portrait of Suzanne tells of an isolated, misanthropic narrator and his encounter with the beautiful Suzanne, an old flame from his past. It is at once a fable, a love story of enormous tenderness and a tale of increasingly unpleasant events that culminate in horror and atrocity. With its distinct blend of sympathetic cynicism and grotesquerie, Head-to-Toe Portrait of Suzanne --Topor's first work to be translated into English in half a century--offers an ideal introduction to the work and worldview of an artist currently undergoing a major reassessment and rediscovery in his home country and beyond.

Lovers is pure Krantz, an intoxicating dance of love lost, stolen, and found among women and men who lure each other with potent combinations of money, talent, ambition, and passion. Chief among them is irresistible Gigi Orsini, the high-spirited, merry, adventurous creature who grew up into enchanting womanhood in Scruples Two . Now Gigi is working as a copywriter in a new Los Angeles advertising agency, with her creative "teammate," David Melville, a brilliant young art director who joins her in seeking new accounts. The agency is headed by dashing Archie Rourke, humorous Byron Bernheim and the severely difficult beauty, Victoria Frost, daughter of the famed Millicent Frost Caldwell who, with her husband Angus Caldwell, owns one of New York's largest advertising agencies. Ben Winthrop, a proper Bostonian and an enormously successful mall builder, attempts to capture Gigi's quicksilver affections, although his fierce contenders for the same prize include both David Melville and the dominating film director, Zach Nevsky. Meanwhile, Billy Winthrop Ikehorn Orsini Elliott, the unforgettably impulsive heroine of Scruples , and her new husband, the great charmer, Spider Elliott, are busy with their own fascinating lives, as are Gigi's father, canny film producer Vito Orsini, and her best friend, the ravishing Sasha Nevsky, none of whom can be forgotten from Scruples and Scruples Two . Lovers completes all the stories set in motion in the first two novels, yet it stands entirely on its own as a slice of life in the exciting years of 1983 and 1984.

"In Bitter Bronx, one of our most gifted and original novelists depicts a world before and after modern urban renewal destroyed the gritty sanctity of a land made famous by Ruth, Gehrig, and Joltin' Joe. Bitter Bronx is suffused with the texture and nostalgia of a lost time and place, combining a keen eye for detail with Jerome Charyn's lived experience. These stories are informed by a childhood growing up near that middle-class mecca, the Grand Concourse; falling in love with three voluptuous librarians at a public library in the Lower Depths of the South Bronx; and eating at Mafia-owned restaurants along Arthur Avenue's restaurant row, amid a "land of deprivation…where fathers trundled home…with a monumental sadness on their shoulders." In "Lorelei," a lonely hearts grifter returns home and finds his childhood sweetheart still living in the same apartment house on the Concourse; in "Archy and Mehitabel" a high school romance blossoms around a newspaper comic strip; in "Major Leaguer" a former New York Yankee confronts both a gang of drug dealers and the wreckage that Robert Moses wrought in his old neighborhood; and in three interconnected stories―"Silk & Silk," "Little Sister," and "Marla"―Marla Silk, a successful Manhattan attorney, discovers her father's past in the Bronx and a mysterious younger sister who was hidden from her, kept in a fancy rest home near the Botanical Garden. In these stories and others, the past and present tumble together in Charyn's singular and distinctly "New York prose, street-smart, sly, and full of lurches" (John Leonard, New York Times)".--Dust jacket.

"In the third in the "spellbinding" (Seanan McGuire) series from the author of the Calliope Reaper-Jones novels, magic has been loosed upon the world--and the consequences could destroy all of humanity, magical and non-magical alike... Lyse MacAllister used to be like everyone else--blissfully ignorant of magic, of the dire battles being fought in shadows and secrecy. But that was before her great-aunt Eleanora died, leaving her in control of the Echo Park coven; before she found herself in the middle of the witches' clash with the anti-magic zealots known as The Flood; before her blood sisters lost their faith in her. As The Flood begins turning humans across the globe against the witches, Lyse must find a way to regain the trust of her former magical family and once again unify them. Because the final battle between good and evil is looming--and if the witches don't stand together, all of humankind could be lost.."--

In Menachem's Seed , Carl Djerassi , world-renowned scientist and inventor of the birth-control pill, brings us a new novel that explores the human--and passionate--side of science. Melanie Laidlaw and Menachem Dvir meet at a series of international conferences where jet-setting scientists come together to discuss the global implications of their discoveries. Melanie runs a foundation that awards grants for innovations in reproductive technology; Menachem is an infertile nuclear engineer and a married man. Naturally, they fall in love. What follows is a story of sexual steam, stolen seed, and religious conversion--a very modern romance that hinges on a cutting-edge scientific breakthrough. As Melanie and Menachem discover, what science makes possible, only two hearts can make right.

"With a triangulation of lovers and spouses, young children and careers struggling to get off the ground, in Celia and Paul we encounter two people in that pocket of life when the fight to figure out who we are and what we want burns brightest. A meditation on the limits of what we can and cannot have, set in a city--New York--that would have us think that we can have it all"--