It's a nightmare no parent should ever endure. Especially Alice Glendenning, a South Florida real estate agent who hasn't managed to sell a single home — or collect any insurance money — after her husband's fatal boating accident. Her daughter and son's kidnappers demand $250,000, the exact amount she's supposed to receive from the insurance company. To complicate matters, her housekeeper has contacted the police — a glaring error in judgment that puts a spotlight on the crime, the children's lives at risk… and Alice in jeopardy.

Here is an irresistibly charming tale, beautifully packaged in a small, illustrated and slipcased gift book. All’s quiet at the 87th Precinct on Christmas Eve... until Steve Carella’s fellow detectives appear with a kid who’s stolen a sheep, a robber with a bagful of gold, two guys fighting over a sack of frankincense, and a young couple who give birth to a baby boy at midnight!

“And All Through the House” was first published in Playboy in December, 1984.

When the affable owner of a checkered-tablecloth restaurant in Little Italy is cut down by the bullets of a pair of ski-masked thugs, Fifth Precinct Police Detective Reardon has his hands too full to give a damn about some odd things going on uptown. For instance, why does a noted Madison Avenue art lover suddenly decide to sell his entire collection in an effort to raise a cool million? And why was a well-known Arab oil magnate assassinated?

Almost too late, Reardon sees the connection between the deaths of a multi-millionaire and a smalltime restaurateur, and the fluctuations in the international markets for crude oil, fine art, and precious metals. And now that he knows the truth, just how long has he got to live?

ANOTHER PART OF THE CITY is a brilliant, hard-hitting foray into Manhattan’s tangled web of twisting downtown streets and crooked uptown lives.

Eighty-six-year-old George Lasser was the superintendent of a building in the 87th Precinct until just recently. Unfortunately his tenure ended in the building’s basement with a sharp, heavy blade of an ax in his head… There are no witnesses, no suspects, and no clues. The wife and son? They’re both a little off-kilter, but they have alibis. Just when Carella and Hawes are about to put the case on the shelf, the killer strikes again. Now the detectives are hot on the trail of a man crazy enough to murder with an ax. One of the 87th Precinct series’ finest installments, Ax is a sharp, intense crime thriller that is classic Ed McBain. The New York Times hails it as “the best of today’s police stories—lively, inventive, convincing, suspenseful, and wholly satisfactory.

A killer is out for blood, and it’s up to Detective Steve Carella to bring him in ― but a shocking surprise awaits when a survivor fingers the suspect in a lineup.

Benjamin Thorpe is married, a father, a successful Los Angeles architect — and a man obsessed. Alone in New York City on business, he spends the empty hours of the night in a compulsive search for female companionship. His dizzying descent leads to an early morning confrontation in a mid-town brothel, and a subsequent searing self-revelation.

Matthew Hope spots her on Saturday, exquisitely beautiful, strolling topless on the beach. On Monday, she shows up in his law office, beaten and bruised, ready to file for divorce. By Tuesday, she is dead — and her big, ugly husband is arrested for murder. But Matthew believes he is innocent; now, he has to prove it.

DESCRIPTION: From some of the greatest literary minds of our time comes a collection of stories about dangerous women.

With an unprecedented lineup of authors, Mysterious Press proudly presents an extraordinary collection of short stories. Lorenzo Carcaterra, Michael Connelly, John Connolly, Jeffery Deaver, Nelson DeMille, J.A. Jance, Andrew Klavan, Elmore Leonard, Laura Lippman, Ed McBain, Jay McInerney, Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates, Anne Perry, Ian Rankin, S.J. Rozan, and Thomas H. Cook combine their talents in a collection which is certain to find a large audience eager to read stories by some of the most distinguished names in the genre.

She was a living doll — until she was slashed to death. Detective Steve Carella wants Bert Kling on the case, even though Kling is making enemies of everyone. Then finally even Carella has had it with Kling, and suddenly the detective is missing and suspected dead. The men from the 87th Precinct go full tilt to find the truth. But they really need to find is a little doll — the little doll with all the answers.

Ed McBain, author of the best-selling 87th Precinct novels, now takes you Downtown in a bold, new departure of a novel that will make you laugh, cry, and tingle with the special brand of electrifying suspense that only McBain knows how to generate.

Downtown you’ll meet Michael Barnes, a lone out-of-town businessman in New York City on Christmas Eve with a couple of hours to kill before his plane leaves. It promises to be a sweet interlude when he meets a lovely blonde in a bar. But first his identification and all his money are stolen, and next his rental car — only to resurface on the other side of town with an unexpected passenger: a corpse.

Here are every readers brightest, glittering fantasies and blackest nightmares about the Big Apple: big-shot movie producers, muggers with the instincts of Vietnamese guerrillas, cops who arrest the victims, mobsters who embrace you, thugs who tie you up, beautiful women who take you into their limousines, beautiful women who try to drive their stiletto heels through your skull, warehouses full of furs, jewels, and other valuables, smoky gambling dens in Chinatown, ritzy penthouse apartments, miserable dives...

Michael Barnes has only twenty-four hours to survive the wildest ride in his life.

A sunny, quiet, perfectly ordinary school day in autumn turns suddenly dark when sixteen-year-old Rebecca Patton runs down and kills a pedestrian during a driving lesson. It all happens so quickly, so inexplicably, like an accident. The victim — a woman carrying a red handbag — had been stepping off the curb at the corner of Grove and Third. Then she was lying in the street, in critical condition.

When police detective Katie Logan arrives at the station house, she finds a distraught but cooperative Rebecca. Her driving instructor, Andrew Newell, is totally disoriented, however. He appears to be drunk. Or on drugs. Certainly, his apparent incompetence warrants his arrest in what has now become a case of negligent homicide.

The situation in this adroitly told tale by a master at the top of his form grows far more sinister, though, when Logan learns that the victim’s handbag has been recovered. It identifies the dead woman as Andrew Newell’s wife.

Stan Gifford is the ultimate comedian. A pro through and through, when Stan’s act dies, so does he—in front of forty million viewers from coast to coast, including the 87th Precinct’s Steve Carella. But what seemed to be death by natural causes quickly turns into a case of murder, and Carella must unravel the motivations behind the comedian’s final act. Meanwhile, Cindy Forrest has been working to put herself through college since the sniper who held the city hostage three years ago murdered her father. But now she’s in the crosshairs, and the only thing standing between her and a killer is Detective Bert Kling of the 87th Precinct.

It’s Christmastime and Detective Carella gets assigned three murders — including a bestselling author of ghost stories — and is soon after ghosts, mediums, and a crazed killer.

Patrolman Richard Genero couldn’t see clearly in the driving rain. The man — or perhaps the tall woman — standing at the bus stop was dressed entirely in black. Black raincoat, black slacks, black shoes, black umbrella which hid the head and hair. A bus pulled to the curb, spreading a canopy of water. The door snapped open. The person — man or woman — boarded the bus and the rain-streaked doors closed, hiding the black-shrouded figure from view. The bus pulled away from the curb, spreading another canopy of water which soaked Genero’s trouser legs.

“Hey!” he yelled after the bus. “You forgot your bag!”

Genera picked up the bag — a small, blue overnight bag issued by an airline. He unzipped the bag and reached into it. Then he gripped the bus-stop sign for support.

The bag held... a severed human hand.

The police lab gave both bag and hand a thorough examination and discovered next to nothing. Steve Carella, Cotton Hawes, Meyer Meyer and the other 87th Precinct detectives had a murderer to find, and they had to begin without even knowing who the victim was.

The Missing Persons Bureau files supplied two leads, both of which led nowhere.

Everything that looked even faintly like a clue was checked and double-checked and they all led to the same place — a dead end.

Then, when the break finally came and several clues turned up at once, they neatly contradicted each other. It was the toughest case the 87th Precinct detectives had ever faced.

Goldilocks... The Other Woman

Goldilocks-stealing into someone else’s house, with no particular interest in the chairs or the porridge, but with more than a passing fascination with Poppa Bear’s bed.

On the steamy west coast of Florida, in the quiet of their home, a woman and her two little girls have been brutally murdered. None of the alibis add up. The one person who couldn’t possibly have a motive for the crime is the only one confessing to it, and he insists on Matthew Hope for his defense. Now Matt finds himself tangled in the unravelling threads of three heartless killings in which every half-sister, stepson, and first wife could have had a hand.

Somebody’s lying.

Maybe everybody.