They say that a man needs a woman to go to hell with. Cassidy had two. One was Mildred, the wife who kept him chained with ties of fear and jealousy and paralyzing sexual need. The other was Doris, a frail angel with a 100-proof halo and a bottle instead of a harp. With those two, Cassidy found that the ride to hell could be twice as fast. Cassidy's Girl has all the traits that made its author a virtuoso of the hard-boiled: a fiercely compelling ploy; characters who self-destruct in spectacularly unpredictable ways; and an insider's knowledge of all the routes to the bottom.

Walter Mosley, "one of crime fiction's brightest stars" (People), returns to mysteries at last-with a dazzling new thriller set in the deadly back alleys of 1950s L.A.... Bookshop owner Paris Minton is minding his own business when a brief encounter with a beautiful stranger gets him beaten, shot at, robbed, and then burned out of store and home. Paris needs help but his secret weapon-brave, reckless WWII hero Fearless Jones-is in jail. Vowing to dish out some heavy justice, Paris plots to get Jones back on the street. But when these two men come together, they'll find themselves trapped in a bewildering vortex of sex, money, and murder-and a dicey endgame that's littered with dangerous players...

An Almost Perfect Ending is book two in The Torch Singer trilogy, Robert Westbrook's epic Hollywood Thriller series. "'An Almost Perfect Ending' ranks alongside the best Hollywood noir. It takes the reader on a journey which leads relentlessly towards a final, fatal conclusion." Daily Mail Book Two, An Almost Perfect Ending opens with sultry heroine Sonya Saint-Amant at the height of her career-a glittering, triumphant appearance at Ciro's, the clubhouse for the stars in 1950s Hollywood where everyone wants to claim her as their friend. But in 1954, popular music is undergoing a revolution in which all but the biggest stars will be cast aside. With her looks and popularity fading, Sonya believes she has come up with the perfect plan to save her career . . . if only she can maneuver a tricky path through the many dangers that beset her, a vortex of politics, sex, blackmail, and murder . . . "Pacy and unstoppable, the second book in the "The Torch Singer" series takes over where the first left off, grabbing your wrist, tugging you along, refusing to let go." Evening Standard "'The Torch Singer' exposes the fragility of fame. The higher the edifice the greater the risk that some element of deep-set animal emotion or human baseness will bring everything crashing down . . . and watching it happen is not just compulsive-it's addictive and unmissable." Event Magazine "Robert Westbrook is a born storyteller and a bit of a magician." Ally Sheedy Ambition, blackmail, murder . . . THE TORCH SINGER is an unforgettable journey through the shadowlands of fame.

The best kind of mystery, the kind that never stops haunting you. Entertainment Weekly A work of melancholic beauty . . . Sincere, shattering, magnificent. L Express In the stillness of his Paris apartment, Jean Daragane has built a life of total solitude. Then a surprising phone call shatters the silence of an unusually hot September, and the threatening voice on the other end of the line leaves Daragane wary but irresistibly curious. Almost at once, he finds himself entangled with a shady gambler and a beautiful, fragile young woman, who draw Daragane into the mystery of a decades-old murder. The investigation will force him to confront the memory of a trauma he had all but buried. This masterly novel penetrates the deepest enigmas of identity and compels us to ask whether we ever know who we truly are. Moody . . . Lyrical . . . A pleasure. Kirkus Reviews A writer unlike any other and a worthy recipient of the Nobel. Wall Street Journal Patrick Modiano is the author of more than twenty novels, including several bestsellers. He has won the Prix Goncourt, the Grand Prix National des Lettres, and many other honors. In 2014 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. He lives in Paris. "

Conflict in the City is a fast-paced, lively, "can't wait to keep reading" novel in the tradition of Donald Westlake's Parker novels by wayof Roddy Doyle's The Commitments.Mixing and blending the genres of detective noir and music, Conflict in the City takes place in greater Los Angeles, home to both classic and modern fictional L.A. detectives like Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe and Michael Connolly's Harry Bosch. Los Angeles is also the center of the music universe, where the Doors, Van Halen, and N.W.A., among so many others, got their starts.It's in this world that we find Johnny "Whoops" Watson and Billy Bates, young guitarists/singers and their band, Conflict, playing clubs in modern LA, where the days of rock's zenith and ascendance in the 1960s and 1970s has faded but the hopes and dreams of aspiring musicians haven't. Conflict is struggling and chaos ensues when someone linked closely to the band is killed. Billy and Johnny become swept up in the mystery, ill-prepared as they are to confront it. The novel is the first in a series.

"Sanford is a supreme master at squeezing the last drop of terror and excitement out of a sordid, savage situation. The story sweeps along with an ugly force that will send sensitive souls in search of smelling salts." Pittsburgh Post-GazetteA trio of vicious World War One veterans descend on the farm in the Adirondack mountains where one of them grew up and his father now lives alone. They embark on happily wreaking drunken havoc at the old man's place and in the nearby town. But when a naive, mail-order bride arrives, she ignites a tinderbox of resentment, lust, and betrayal among the men that explodes in brutal depravity, bloody violence and shocking death.This hard-boiled, literary masterpiece, back in print for the first time in sixty years, includes a new introduction by Jack Mearns, author of John Sanford: An Annotated BibliographyPreviously published as The Hard Guys and filmed as the 1971 motion picture My Old Man's Place."Sanford, not to be confused with contemporary thriller writer John Sandford, was a writer of hard edged noirs that bristle with tension and the threat of violence, when that is unleashed it's brutal and shocking. A stark portrait of humanity at its lowest ebb and a menacing atmosphere pervades the novel. This is ice cold, easily as brutal as the best passages of Cain or Hemingway." Crimetime UK"Sanford's The Old Man's Place is a carefully designed character study bursting with tension and intrigue. I found myself so emotionally invested in these characters and their raw, primal instincts. Nothing short of extraordinary. It's darkly wonderful and honest, well ahead of its time considering the 1935 publication date. Sanford possesses a rare skillset that rivals some of the best noir authors of all-time." Paperback Warrior