Andrew Vachss' pre-Flood novel A Bomb Built in Hell was written in 1973. It was rejected by every publisher, one of whom described it as a "political horror story," others of whom berated it for its "lack of realism," including such things as Chinese youth gangs and the fall of Haiti. And the very idea of someone entering a high school with the intent of destroying every living person inside was just too ... ludicrous. Readers of Vachss' Burke series will immediately recognize Wesley, the main character of A Bomb Built in Hell. This is his story.

When Burke, a career criminal and man for hire, agrees to act as the middleman in an exchange of money for a kidnapped child, things go horribly wrong when his partner is killed and Burke himself is left wounded, his appearance radically altered, as he embarks on a a dangerous quest for revenge against those responsible.

In Vachss's acclaimed first novel, we are introduced to Burke, the avenging angel of abused children. Burke's client is a woman named Flood, who has the face of an angel, the body of a high-priced stripper, and the skills of a professional executioner. She wants Burke to find a monster – so she can kill him with her bare hands. In this cauterizing thriller, Andrew Vachss's renegade private eye teams up with a lethally gifted vigilante to follow a child's murderer through the catacombs of New York, where every alley is a setup for a mugging and every tenement has something rotten in the basement. Fearfully knowing, buzzing with narrative tension, and written in prose as forceful as a hollow-point bullet, Flood is Burke at his deadliest – and Vachss at the peak of his form.

"Vachss is a contemporary master." – Atlanta Journal Constitution"His writing has the power of a rogue elephant." – Cleveland Plain-Dealer"A confection from Hell- a poison pill laced with acid and wrapped in razor-edged concertina wire." – Courier-Post (Philadelphia)"Jolting…eerily seductive." – Washington Times"Each [Burke book] is as savage as Celine. And there it is, a three sentence throwaway paragraph, as pure as Euclid. I'm a sucker for such Elegance." – Newsday"It's wonderful. The words do leap off the page. The principal character is an original. The style is as clean as a haiku." – Washington Post"Andrew Vachss is unique among modern writers; no one else comes close to the raw power and intellectual ambiguity that he manifests so elegantly, so coldly." – Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MI)***Now a paid assassin, Burke is on a collision course with a man named Train, who runs a "safehouse" for kids. But when Burke learns that his suspicions about Train are right (the safehouse keeps kids in harm's way), he becomes his own gun-for-hire.

Rockstar Games has partnered with Mulholland Books to publish a collection of short fiction expanding the world of the newest groundbreaking achievement in storytelling: the interactive crime thriller L.A. Noire.1940s Hollywood, murder, deception and mystery take center stage as readers reintroduce themselves to characters seen in L.A. Noire. Explore the lives of actresses desperate for the Hollywood spotlight; heroes turned defeated men; and classic Noir villains. Readers will come across not only familiar faces, but familiar cases from the game that take on a new spin to tell the tales of emotionally torn protagonists, depraved schemers and their ill-fated victims.With original short fiction by Megan Abbott, Lawrence Block, Joe Lansdale, Joyce Carol Oates, Francine Prose, Jonathan Santlofer, Duane Swierczynski and Andrew Vachss, L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories breathes new life into a time-honored American tradition, in an exciting anthology that will appeal to fans of suspense and gamers everywhere.

From Publishers WeeklyIn his first novel, Flood, attorney-turned-novelist Vachss introduced Burke, the ex-con investigator who's not averse to working either side of the law. The book captured the brutal atmosphere of New York 's underbelly. This modern-day Robin Hood returns to that seamy world, complete with a merry band that includes a mute Mongolian strongman, a weird genius who lives in a junkyard, a transvestite prostitute and an intimidating dog named Pansy. Hired by a strangely alluring Mafia princess calling herself Strega ("witch" in loose translation), Burke must find a certain photograph of a child forced into a sex act. Plunged into the world of kiddie porn, he wreaks havoc on the perverts, pimps and pedophiles he despises, the true "bad guys" in his view of things. Despite its action and fast pace, the book is less compelling than the author's first, lapsing into a sort of predictability and short on the pulsing energy a thriller must sustain. 50,000 first printing.

Andrew Vachss returns with a mesmerizing novel about a hard-core thief who's about to embark on a job that will alter his life forever.Sugar is that rarest of commodities: an old-school professional thief, as tough and loyal as a pit bull, packing 255 pounds of muscle. When he's picked out of a photo array in a vicious rape case, the cops find his apartment empty. A stakeout catches Sugar when he returns… carrying a loaded pistol. The sex-crime cops get nothing from their interrogation, but a streetwise detective figures out why Sugar offers no alibi: at the time of the rape, a holiday-weekend break-in job was being pulled at a jewelry store. The DA offers Sugar two options: give up his partners in the jewelry heist and walk, or plead to the rape he didn't commit – and he'll toss in the gun charge. For Sugar, that's not two options; he takes the weight.When Sugar finishes his time, his money is waiting for him, held by Solly, the mastermind behind the jewelry heist. But Solly tells Sugar that one of the heist crew was actually sent by another planner – and that planner has just died. In Sugar's world, all loose threads must be cut. He suspects that there's more to this job than what Solly is telling him. But nothing he suspects or imagines can prepare him for what he finds…

Electrifying, compelling, and, ultimately, terrifying, Two Trains Running is a galvanizing evocation of that moment in our history when the violent forces that would determine America's future were just beginning to roil below the surface.Once a devastated mill town, by 1959 Locke City has established itself as a thriving center of vice tourism. The city is controlled by boss Royal Beaumont, who took it by force many years ago and has held it against all comers since. Now his domain is being threatened by an invading crime syndicate. But in a town where crime and politics are virtually indivisible, there are other players awaiting their turn onstage. Emmett Till's lynching has inflamed a nascent black revolutionary movement. A neo-Nazi organization is preparing for race war. Juvenile gangs are locked in a death struggle over useless pieces of "turf." And some shadowy group is supplying them all with weapons. With an IRA unit and a Mafia family also vying for local supremacy, it's no surprise that the whole town is under FBI surveillance. But that agency is being watched, too.Beaumont ups the ante by importing a hired killer, Walter Dett, a master tactician whose trademark is wholesale destruction. But there are a number of wild cards in this game, including Jimmy Procter, an investigative reporter whose tools include stealth, favor-trading, and blackmail, and Sherman Layne, the one clean Locke City cop, whose informants range from an obsessed "watcher" who patrols the edge of the forest where cars park for only one reason, to the madam of the country's most expensive bordello. But Layne is guarding a secret of his own, one that could destroy more than his career. Even the most innocent are drawn into the ultimate-stakes game, like Tussy, the beautiful waitress whose mystically deep connection with Walker Dett might inadvertently ignite the whole combustible mix.In a stunning departure from his usual territory, Andrew Vachss gives us a masterful novel that is also an epic story of postwar America. Not since Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest has there been as searing a portrait of corruption in a small town. This is Vachss's most ambitious, innovative, and explosive work yet.