"Dan Morley is an aspiring novelist who is well liked by everybody, but most of all by women. But nobody knows that he struggles with a dark and forbidden urge, an irresistible impulse to kill. And when the lust for murder comes over him and he twists his scarf around his victim's neck, there is no escape.... Robert Bloch's first novel The Scarf (1947), a noir psychological thriller, is a clear precursor to his most famous serial killer novel, Psycho (1959). This edition, the first in many years, includes a new introduction by Garyn G. Roberts." --

"Alcatraz. The prison fortress off the coast of San Francisco. No man had gotten out alive before his time was up, until a 20-year-old petty thief named Willie Moore broke out. Recaptured, then thrown into a pitch-black hellhole for three agonizing years, Willie is driven to near-madness by a sadistic warden, and finally, to a brutal killing. Now, up on first-degree murder charges, he must wrestle with his nightmares and forge an alliance with Henry Davidson, the embattled lawyer who will risk losing his career and the woman he loves in a desperate bid to save Willie from the gas chamber. Together, Willie and Henry will dare the most impossible act of all: get Willie off on a savage crime that the system drove him to commit--and put Alcatraz itself on trial."--Page 4 of cover.

This novella, originally published ten years ago in South Africa, is an almost allegorical story of a fugitive wandering an unnamed landscape who meets up with a minister, murders him, and assumes his identity. The stark prose reflects the bleak countryside and sense of hopelessness that pervades the book and the dusty village where the man now resides. A rock quarry outside the village serves as a metaphor for moral and spiritual emptiness. It's also a pun, as the man becomes the prey of the local policeman who at first suspects and then relentlessly pursues him.

Michael Tolkin has garnered acclaim for his classic dark comedies The Player and Among the Dead. His most ambitious novel yet, Under Radar is a tale of guilt and redemption that is "provocative...so unexpected, so full of startling insights, that it sems to be blazing a fresh trail" (John Hartl, The Oregonian). While vacationing in Jamaica, Tom Levy witnesses a man goading his four-year-old daughter into an act so vulgar that Tom vows he must pay for it with his life. The next day, when they come to grips atop the Dunn's River Falls, Tom kills the man in cold blood. Condemned to prison, Tom faces a world unlike any be has ever known, among the most brutal and hardened men of Jamaica. Does an elusive story hold the key their salvation, and Tom's own? And once Tom has told it, can he find a way to reenter the hearts of those he has left behind? As gripping as it is wrought with layers of meaning, Under Radar "places parables within parables, exploring the essence of evil and the possibility of redemption....Tolkin has shown himself no stranger to the psyche's stranger recesses, though the results here are more unsettling than ever" (Don McLeese, Msnbc.com).

"Murder by poison alarmed, enthralled, and in many ways encapsulated the Victorian age. Linda Stratmann's dark and splendid social history reveals the nineteenth century as a gruesome battleground where poisoners went head-to-head with authorities who strove to detect poisons, control their availability, and bring the guilty to justice. She corrects many misconceptions about particular poisons and documents how the evolution of issues such as marital rights and the legal protection of children impacted poisonings. Combining archival research with a novelist's eye, Stratmann charts the era's inexorable rise of poison cases both shocking and sad"--