На Рождество дарить краденое нельзя.

Полицейский Кинан влюблён,но у него нет подарка для любимой девушки. В канун Рождества,когда все магазины уже закрыты,он находит невероятный способ раздобыть золотой браслет.

Двое космических старателей нашли в поясе астероидов умопомрачительную жилу. Не успели они открыть жилу, как один из них погиб, а за час до смерти заполнил формуляр о возвращении пенсионного фонда. И опять-таки по случайному совпадению его труп исчез, так что никто не в силах проверить случившееся.

Агенту земного страхового фонда придется проверить эту серию чудесных совпадений на достоверность…

Кругленькая сумма — семьсот тысяч долларов. Наличными! Но осуществить золотую надежду не так-то просто. Денежки захоронены в... гробу, гроб зарыт в тайнике, а тайник, увы, на дне водохранилища. Тяжело приходится в охоте за «дорогим утопленником» неудачливому грабителю Джону Дортмундеру и его бывшему сокамернику. А тут еще выясняется, что не только этим «ловцам удачи» известно о сокровище...

Теперь сам Творец, ставит мастера грабежа в безвыходное положение, чтобы Дортмундер помог Его верным...

В своих приключенческих романах Дональд Э. Уэстлейк переворачивает криминальный мир с ног на голову. В классических авантюрных криминальных романах Дональда Э. Уэстлейка все плохое становится хорошим, а Господь помогает всем, кто хоть как-то связан с Джоном Дортмундером в конкретный момент. На это раз Уэстлейк описывает одну из афер, которые по большей части временные и безрезультатные. Его главный герой не верит в успех этой аферы и не хочет в ней принимать участие. Но из-за шантажа, который продолжается уже долгое время…. Что смешного?

А все из-за хитрых действий бывшего копа по фамилии Эппик, который усердно пытается втянуть Дортмундера в свою игру, а тот все сопротивляется. Не имея альтернативы, он собирает свою верную команду и они начинают опасную охоту за сокровищами – давно утерянными золотыми и усыпанные драгоценными камнями шахматы, которые когда-то были подарком для последнего царя из рода Романовых, и которые, к сожалению, затерялись где-то в России, когда его правление закончилось. Как только Дортмундер находит первую пешку, он тут же сталкивается с непреодолимыми разногласиями. Похищенная часть из драгоценной коллекции спутала все его планы, которые он только мог выстроить. Успех операции под большим вопросом, но Джон Дортмундер не был бы самим собой, если бы не был таким настойчивым, и парочка гамбитов или других фигур могут запросто выстроиться в победную партию.

Given its extraordinary span, its international scope, and its variant styles and groundbreaking stylists, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a singular achievement. A bestselling master of suspense himself Jeffery Deaver had the enviable task of selecting from the thousands of stories written over the past one hundred years those which best represented the classic form, as well as the justly celebrated authors whose ironic twists and stunning payoffs left a lasting, vivid, and unnerving impression. The result is a triumph.

In this ambitious anthology you’ll revel in the sardonic, overtly amoral plotting of Patricia Highsmith. You’ll rediscover the strangely poignant and surprising turns of Stanley Ellin, and the profoundly underrated Margaret Millar, a genius who mixed savage social satire with brooding horror. You’ll be treated to Stephen King at his chilling best. You’ll find yourself on the violent urban streets of Ross Macdonald and Mickey Spillane, and seeped in the ominous regional flavor of Sharyn McCrumb and Tony Hillerman. You’ll marvel at the cunning webs spun by Lawrence Block, Ruth Rendell, Anthony Boucher, and Sara Paretsky, all of whom defy expectations as they reinvent the genre. And you’ll understand the awesome reputations of those authors who set the standard, such as the legendary Harlan Ellison, Fredric Brown, the master of the twist ending, and James M. Cain, uncannily skilled at knowing what went on between men and women behind closed doors. (The darker the room the better.)

Delivering everything from the one-two punch of the detective story to the ingeniously precise trappings of the police procedural, from the disquieting corners of the criminal mind to sheer dread-inducing horror, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a rich anthology of this popular literary genre, a stunning tribute to the art of storytelling, and to the men and women who have done it best.

This collection of short fiction, selected by the author, spans a writing career of more than 40 years and illuminates the heart and soul of the antihero. A lone castaway on a desert island commits a murder for which he is the sole suspect. A genealogist learns just how far rotten apples fall from the family tree. A con man, impersonating a minister, finds religion. A tabloid journalist must solve a murder to complete his story on the death of a major television star, who happens to be a dog. A self-made widower discovers how hard it is to get rid of a wife, especially when she’s dead.

Supporting one and a half families is not the ideal situation for a man who makes his living as a writer... unless he comes up with a book so certain to be a bestseller that he doesn’t have to worry about money ever again. (Or maybe Mary will find a fella of her own who can start contributing to the support.)

So Tom’s surefire bestseller, The Christmas Book is begun, and Tom’s troubles begin. His editor quits, Ginger doesn’t want to get married, Mary won’t give him a divorce, his new editor announces she’s pregnant (and quits), the woman in an iron lung enters his life, and a third editor begins work on the book. Then things really get complicated.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S HOW-TO-DO-IT BOOK

Including:

• How to solve your marital problems

—(poison)

• How to dress properly when admitting to first degree murder

—(black tie)

• How to take off a few pounds fast

—(a knife)

• How to ruin a perfect friendship

—(a homemade bomb)

And many, many other helpful hints from such specialists as:

EVAN HUNTER, JOHN CORTEZ, RAY BRADBURY, RICHARD STARK, RICHARD MATHESON, HELEN NIELSON, DONALD WESTLAKE, RICHARD DEMING, JACK RITCHIE, JONATHAN CRAIG, C. B. GILFORD, JAY STREET, ROBERT ARTHUR, FLETCHER FLORA, CHARLES EINSTEIN

Branson, Missouri, is the home of Country Music, USA. Its main drag is lined with theaters housing such luminaries as Roy Clark, Loretta Lynn, and Merle Haggard — but you’d better get there early because the late show’s at eight. Branson is one big long traffic jam of R.V.’s, station wagons, pick-up trucks, NRA decals, tour buses and blue-haired grandmothers.

Now Branson just got a little bit more crowded Because the murder trial of country and western star Ray Jones is about to begin, and the media has come loaded for bear. The press presence ranges from the Weekly Galaxy, the most unethical news rag in the universe, to New York City’s Trend: The Magazine for the Way We Live This Instant. In the middle of the melee stands Ray Jones himself, an inscrutable good ol’ boy who croons like an angel but just may be as guilty as sin — of the rape and murder of a 31-year-old theater cashier.

Sara Jaslyn, of Trend, isn’t sure about Ray. The sardonic Jack Ingersoll, her editor and lover, is sure of this much: this time he’s going to do an- exposé that will nail the Weekly Galaxy to the wall. A phalanx of reporters and editors from the Galaxy are breaking every rule, and a few laws, to get the inside story on Ray Jones’s trial. Meanwhile, the IRS is there, too. They want all of Ray Jones’s money, no matter what the jury decides.

Set to the beat of America’s down-home music, as raucous as a smoke-filled hanky-tonk, as funny as grown men in snakeskin boots, BABY, WOULD I LIE? is a murder mystery, a courtroom thriller, a caper novel, and a classic Westlake gem.

The worlds of Donald E. Westlake are filled with scrambling underachievers. With such books as Bank Shot, Help I Am Being Held Prisoner, Cops and Robbers, and Jimmy the Kid, he has shown us heroes whose comic desperation derives from their unfortunate habit of breaking laws.

Now, in Brothers Keepers, the Westlake eye is turned on a whole other world: the serenity of a monastery, the calmness of a young monk named Brother Benedict, a world of placid repose.

But Donald Westlake seems to hate repose. Into this pond of peace in a chaotic desert, he at once drops two rocks — real estate developers are about to tear the monastery down, and Brother Benedict falls in love with the landlord’s daughter.

Even in a monastery, scrambling zanies can still be found. With a supporting cast of brown-robed monks including former burglars, a one-time lawyer, a retired boxer, an army drop-out, and a dozen more assorted quirky individuals, Brother Benedict struggles to save the monastery and his soul, and to keep his hands off the beautiful Eileen Flattery Bone.

In the Search for the Missing Lease, the Discovery of the Arsonist, the Christmas in Puerto Rico, and the Grand Finale at the New Year’s Eve Party, Donald E. Westlake has written his most divine comedy.

In 1977, one of the world’s finest crime novelists turned his pen to suspense of a very different sort — and the results have never been published, until now.

Fans of mystery fiction have often pondered whether it would be possible to write a suspense novel without any crime at all, and in CALL ME A CAB the masterful Donald E. Westlake answered the question in his inimitable style. You won’t find any crime in these pages — but what you will find is a wonderful suspense story, about a New York City taxi driver hired to drive a beautiful woman all the way across America, from Manhattan to Los Angeles, where the biggest decision of her life is waiting to be made. It’s Westlake at his witty, thought-provoking best, and it proves that a page-turner doesn’t need to have a bomb set to go off at the end of it in order to keep sparks flying every step of the way.

A castle is about to be dismantled and flown to Paris where it will be reassembled for an international exhibit of architectural styles. But a deposed South American dictator has hidden his entire fortune of cash, stocks, and jewelry inside twelve stones of the castle. Lida Perez, a sexy and fiery revolutionary who wants to get her hands on the loot to further her political cause, enlists the aid of British master-criminal Eustace Dench to mastermind the heist. And once again Donald Westlake perpetrates a criminally funny tale of international intrigue and hijinks.

Following last year’s hilariously funny Dancing Aztecs, the prolific Donald E. Westlake now produces a pair of miniatures — two brief strokes of genius for the price of one — which is certainly ENOUGH for anybody.

“A Travesty,” follows the twists and turns in the career of movie critic-cum-murderer Carey Thorpe, as he flails and connives his way through a plot so devious that it finally sums up the entire genre of the Mystery Story once and for all. Carey successively becomes the Detective’s Sidekick, the Least Obvious Suspect, the Amateur Detective, the Innocent Accused, several other detective story standbys, and ultimately the Murderer Himself.

What happens to Carey when he accidentally kills his girlfriend (she shouldn’t have annoyed him) is as quick and twisty as a roller-coaster ride, an endlessly intricate Murder Mystery with a true Surprise at the finish. A fast and funny story, with enough cleverness and invention for two books, it is here only half the story of ENOUGH.

Completing the abundance of ENOUGH is a total change of pace, “Ordo,” the sardonic brooding character study of Ordo Tupikos, a man dealing with an astonishment out of his own past. What would you do if you discovered the plain Jane you’d married (and divorced) sixteen years ago was now, under another name, Hollywood’s reigning movie star sex queen? What Ordo does, and what is done to him reach a level of power seldom found in comedy.

A study in contrasts, ENOUGH displays a pair of totally different story styles from the same fertile brain. If you’ve never had ENOUGH, you have it now.

Academy Award nominee Donald Westlake (The Grifters) returns with a never-before-published thriller based on his story for a James Bond movie that never got made with an afterword by Bond producer Jeff Kleeman.

A formerly rich businessman thrown out of Hong Kong when the Chinese took over from the British decides to fix his dire financial problems and take revenge on the Chinese by tunneling under Hong Kong’s bank vaults and stealing all their gold, then using a doomsday device to set off a “soliton wave” that will turn the ground to sludge, causing the whole city to collapse. Only the engineer on his staff who designed the soliton wave technology (intending it for good purposes, to help with construction projects) can stop him, working together with a beautiful young environmental activist who gets caught up in one of the soliton tests and nearly killed.

From the deck of a yacht near the Great Barrier Reef to Australia and Singapore and finally Hong Kong itself, it’s a deadly game of cat-and-mouse as our heroes first struggle to escape the villain’s clutches and then thwart his insanely destructive plan.