Spenser dies — and lives to tell the tale — in Robert B. Parker’s stunning new bestseller.

“Spenser proves himself once more a modern-day knight in shining armor,” cheered Publishers Weekly of Robert B. Parker’s most recent New York Times bestseller, Chance. And, said The New York Times Book Review, “Parker’s stouthearted hero proves that he is still as tough and manly as they come, and more principled than ever." With Small Vices, Parker adds another masterpiece to the private-eye canon, a novel that is both galvanizing action-suspense and a complex meditation on morality and mortality, as Spenser’s very future hangs in the balance.

Ellis Alves is a bad kid from the ’hood with a long, long record, but did he really murder Melissa Henderson, a white coed from ritzy Pemberton College? Alves’s former lawyers think he was framed, and they hire Spenser to uncover the truth. As he and longtime associate Hawk race front the back streets of Boston to Manhattan’s most elegant avenues, Spenser gets a postgraduate course in the seamy side of life — an ethical no-man’s-land where twisted cops and spoiled rich kids with peculiar private proclivities are just the tip of the iceberg.

The stakes abruptly shift from corruption to catastrophe when a master assassin’s bullets take Spenser down. He survives the attack — barely — but must play dead to the world, while recovering his strength hiding in secret. Only then can he see justice done — and let the shooter know that it’s payback time.

Wonderfully wry and powerfully affecting, Small Vices is a splendid showcase for Robert B. Parker’s prodigious talents.

Called upon by the Hammond Museum and renowned art scholar Dr. Ashton Prince, Spenser accepts his latest case: to provide protection during a ransom exchange — money for a stolen painting.

The case becomes personal when Spenser fails to protect his client and is unable to recover the valuable painting. Convinced that Ashton Prince played a bigger role than just ransom delivery boy, Spenser enters into a daring game of cat-and-mouse with the thieves. But this is a game he might not come out of alive...

Completed the year before the author passed away, Painted Ladies is Spenser and Robert B. Parker at their electrifying best.

THE LAST SPENSER NOVEL COMPLETED BY ROBERT B. PARKER

With Sixkill, the thirty-ninth novel in the venerable, bestselling Spenser series, the Boston P.I. meets Zebulon Sixkill, a young man whose lack of discipline is more than made up for by his quick way with a gun. Though this is the last Spenser novel Parker completed, readers will rejoice to find the tough-but-tender gumshoe at his roguish, crime-stopping best.

On location in Boston, bad-boy actor Jumbo Nelson is accused of the rape and murder of a young woman. From the start the case seems fishy, so the Boston PD calls on Spenser to investigate. The situation doesn't look good for Jumbo, whose appetites for food, booze, and sex are as outsized as his name. He was the studio's biggest star, but he's become their biggest liability.

In the course of the investigation, Spenser encounters Jumbo's bodyguard: a young, former football-playing Native American named Zebulon Sixkill. Sixkill acts tough, but Spenser sees something more within the young man. Despite the odd circumstances, the two forge an unlikely alliance, with Spenser serving as mentor for Sixkill. As the case grows darker and secrets about both Jumbo and the dead girl come to light, it's Spenser — with Sixkill at his side — who must put things right.