When Jack Foley, a career bank robber, surfaces after tunneling out of a medium-security penitentiary in Florida, he comes face to face with Karen Sisco, a beautiful federal marshal. Though the barrel of her shotgun is pointed right at his face, she doesn't shoot, and Foley's accomplice, Buddy, overpowers her and puts her in the trunk of a car. Foley gets in with her and the car takes off, the escapee seemingly home free. In the cramped darkness of the trunk, the criminal and marshal find they have much in common and by the time the car reaches its destination, the two have become infatuated with each other. After Karen manages to escape, she and Foley try to reconnect outside the confining roles of kidnapper and victim.

Nobody writes novels like Elmore Leonard, with his crackling dialogue, breathless pacing, and hilarious hard-luck, unfailingly human characters. In his sizzling new novel, the New York Times best selling author crosses continents to tell an adrenaline-charged story of crime and retribution-where double crosses become triple crosses, revenge is where you find it, and absolution is just around the corner.Father Terry Dunn hears a lot of strange confessions. After all, he's the only priest for miles in the lingering aftermath of the worst massacre Rwanda has ever seen. And Fr. Terry, who has forty- seven bodies in his church that need burying, has just heard one confession too many. After exacting from them a chilling penance, Fr. Terry has to get out of Africa-pronto.Now Terry is coming home to Detroit, where a five-year-old tax-fraud indictment is hanging over him. Is Terry Dunn really a priest? He certainly doesn't act like one. A fugitive felon on two continents, Terry is being pursued by a cigarette-smuggling cohort, who rolled over on Terry to save jail time-yet still demands his share of the money. But Debbie Dewey has other plans for Terry. She's just been sprung from a three-year fall at Saw- grass Correctional for aggravated assault…and is now trying to make it as a stand-up comic. Debbie and Terry hit it off beautifully. They have the same sense of humor and similar goals:Both of them want to raise a whole lot of cash. Terry, for the children of Rwanda; Debbie, to score off a guy who owes her sixty-seven thousand dollars. It's Debbie who keeps prying, until she learns the bizarre truth about Terry; Debbie who sells him on going in together for a much bigger payoff than either could manage alone. That is unless the priest is working a con of his own.With an unforgettable cast of oddballs and schemers-including a mob boss on trial, an unlikely assassin called Mutt, an ex-con con artist who dreams of doing stand-up, and a priest who may not be a priest- Pagan Babies is Elmore Leonard at his double-dealing best. In the hands of this master, the stakes are always life and death. Crime fiction doesn't get any better.ELMORE LEONARD is the author of thirty-six novels, including such bestsellers as Be Cool, Cuba Libre, Out of Sight, Riding the Rap, Pronto, Rum Punch, Maximum Bob, Get Shorty, and numerous screenplays. He and his wife, Christine, live in a suburb of Detroit.Visit the Elmore Leonard website at www.elmoreleonard.com.

Un buen día, los apostadores empezarían a preguntarse ¿Qué se habrá hecho de Harry Arno?, y se darían cuenta de que no sabían nada de él."Desaparecería, empezaría una nueva vida. Basta de presión. Basta de trabajar para gente a la que no respetaba. Una copita de vez en cuando. Tal vez incluso un cigarrillo al atardecer, contemplando la puesta de sol en la bahía. Joyce estaría con él. Bueno, a lo mejor. Como si no hubiera bastantes mujeres en el lugar al que se dirijía. Tal vez sería mejor que partiera él primero y se instalara. Luego, si le apetecía, ya la llamaría. Estaba esperando. Tenía dos pasaportes con nombres distintos por si acaso. Todo estaba claro; ningún problema.Hasta aquella tarde en que Buck Torres le dijo que estaba metido en un buen follón".

This seventh installment of the premier mystery anthology boasts pulse-quickening stories from all reaches of the genre, selected by the world-renowned mystery writer Michael Connelly. His choices include a Prohibition-era tale of a scorned lover’s revenge, a Sherlock Holmes inspired mystery solved by an actor playing the famous detective onstage, stories of a woman’s near-fatal search for self-discovery, a bar owner’s gutsy attempt to outwit the mob, and a showdown between double-crossing detectives, and a tale of murder by psychology. This year’s edition features mystery favorites as well as talented up-and-comers, for a diverse collection sure to thrill all readers.

“What you’ll find in this volume are stories that demonstrate a mastery of plotting; stories that compel you to keep turning the pages because of plot and because of setting; stories that wield suspense like a sword; stories of people getting their comeuppance; stories that utilize superb point of view; stories that plumb one particular and unfortunate attribute of a character,” promises guest editor Elizabeth George in her introduction. The Best American Mystery Stories 2016 is a feast of both literary crime and hard-boiled detection, featuring a seemingly innocent murderer, a drug dealer in love, a drunken prank gone terribly wrong, and plenty of other surprising twists and turns.

In his introduction to the The Best American Noir of the Century, James Ellroy writes, 'noir is the most scrutinized offshoot of the hard-boiled school of fiction. It's the long drop off the short pier and the wrong man and the wrong woman in perfect misalliance. It's the nightmare of flawed souls with big dreams and the precise how and why of the all-time sure thing that goes bad.' Offering the best examples of literary sure things gone bad, this collection ensures that nowhere else can readers find a darker, more thorough distillation of American noir fiction.James Ellroy and Otto Penzler, series editor of the annual The Best American Mystery Stories, mined one hundred years of writing - 1910-2010 - to find this treasure trove of thirty-nine stories. From noir's twenties-era infancy come gems like James M. Cain's 'Pastorale,' and its post-war heyday boasts giants like Mickey Spillane and Evan Hunter. Packing an undeniable punch, diverse contemporary incarnations include Elmore Leonard, Patricia Highsmith, Joyce Carol Oates, Dennis Lehane, and William Gay, with many page-turners appearing in the last decade.

High diver Dennis Lenahan is about to perform his regular stunt of diving into a small water tank from the roof of the Tishomingo Lodge in Mississippi when, way below, he sees a guy getting killed. Dennis has stumbled into one hell of a scene – unfortunate enough to be present when the cool dudes from Detroit are trying to muscle in on the local activities of the Dixie Mafia. And he's still around when it all comes to a shoot-out at the annual reconstruction of the Civil War Battle of Tishomingo – only this time they're playing with real guns… Elmore Leonard's great new bestseller combines, as always, high comedy with high action, and some of the best dialogue ever given to characters in a novel.