The only clues Barney could follow on this desperate manhunt, were the smell of murder, and the silent message in a dying man’s eyes.

Before you can thrive you have to survive.

When cocaine hit Washington, D.C., in the mid-1980s, the city became nearly unlivable. Gun-carrying kids turned entire neighborhoods into war zones. Zombies walked the sidewalks on week-long binges. Many police officers and public officials, flush with drug money, looked away. Set amidst this chaos and danger, The Sweet Forever captures an unforgettable fight for survival as two men confront the most soul-chilling violence ever to visit the city.

Marcus Clay is proud of his small chain of record stores, and proudest of his new store, right in the old neighborhood — now the epicenter of the drug trade. But a black man can’t get a break, even on his home turf, when the whole town is going crazy. Even his best friend, Dimitri Karras, who manages the store, is coming to work with his jaw wired tight from his newly acquired cocaine habit.

A bad situation turns lethal when a car crashes in front of the store and Marcus sees someone grab a bag out of the backseat and run. The local drug lord wants what’s in that bag — and will do whatever it takes to prove that he is the law in this neighborhood. Nobody, certainly not a small-time businessman, is going to stand in his way.

In searing confrontations, Marcus and Dimitri must defy the darkness close to home — fighting for their lives, their livelihoods, for the very soul of the city. Opening up the shadowy territory where private sin connects with larger, deadlier evils, George Pelecanos weaves familiar details from the recent past into a thriller of compelling menace and power. With characters as real as your own flesh and a relentless, dazzlingly original story, The Sweet Forever is a classic thriller from one of the most inspired writers at work today.

Frank Gruber’s amateur and usually unwilling sleuths — Johnny Fletcher, book salesman extraordinary, and Sam Cragg, his side kick — have a knack of getting into trouble. This is the third time and the trouble is even more desperate than in the hair raising days of THE FRENCH KEY and THE LAUGHING FOX.Thrown into jail for vagrancy in a little Minnesota town, Johnny and Sam wake up to find that one of their cell mates has been murdered in the night. That was bad enough, but the murdered boy was Tom Quisenberry, heir to the Quisenberry clock fortune. In the confusion, Johnny and Sam wasted no time breaking jail because they knew they would be charged with the murder.They did the only thing they could do; they started out to solve the murder to clear themselves. Working their way east, they went to the fantastic Quisenberry estate outside New York City, home of the remarkable Quisenberry family and of the Quisenberry collection of thousands of valuable clocks. They followed the erratic wanderings of the Talking Clock, the incredibly valuable item stolen from the collection. Johnny hoped that the answer to all their troubles would be found in what the Talking Clock said.

Talmage Powell (1920–2000) was one of the all-time great mystery writers of the pulp magazines (and later the digest mystery magazines). He claimed to have written more than 500 short stories, and we have no reason to doubt him — we are working on a bibliography of his work and have documented 373 magazine stories so far... and who knows how many are out there under pseudonyms or buried in obscure magazines? He wrote his first novel, The Smasher, in 1959. He went on to pen 11 more novels under his own name, 4 as “Ellery Queen,” and 2 novelizations of the hit TV series Mission: Impossible. Clearly, though short stories were his first love.

Talmage Powell (1920–2000) was one of the all-time great mystery writers of the pulps (and later the digest mystery magazines). He claimed to have written more than 500 short stories (and I have no reason to doubt him — I am working on a bibliography of his work, and so far I can document 373 magazine stories... and who knows how many are out there under pseudonyms or buried in obscure magazines!)

Inspector Salvatore Montalbano wakes from strange dreams to find a gruesomely bludgeoned horse carcass in front of his seaside home. When his men came to investigate, the carcass has disappeared, leaving only a trail in the sand. Then his home is ransacked and the inspector is certain that the crimes are linked. As he negotiates both the glittering underworld of horseracing and the Mafia's connection to it, Montalbano is aided by his illiterate housekeeper, Adelina, and a Proustian memory of linguate fritte.Longtime fans and new readers alike will be charmed by Montalbano's blend of unorthodox methods, melancholy self-reflection, and love of good food.

The world’s most successful smuggler, Kek Huuygens, returns in this tale of blackmail, white flesh (slightly compromised), and money, money, money, by the author of the popular Captain José Da Silva novels.

What kind of suitcase is worth $10,000 plus expenses to the messenger who carries it from Buenos Aires to Barcelona — sans customs inspection? Kek Huuygens was a professional, and he wasn’t about to pick up the bait until he knew a little more about the oily Señor Sanchez, who offered him the job.

But while he was checking on Sanchez, the little man was working on his own form of travel insurance — underwritten by blackmail and deftly designed to play Huuygens right into his hands. When challenged, the amused Huuygens decided to play the game with Sanchez’s pack of second-rate con men. But he underestimated the opposition — and the persuasiveness of a lady in distress.

There was only one man Kek Huuygens didn’t recognize at the bar of New York’s exclusive Quinleven Gambling Club. But when the man invited him for a drink. Huuygens suddenly realized he was facing Victor Girard, a criminal with an international reputation. Girard desperately covets a very rare and valuable carving kept under tight security on a Caribbean island, and he bets Huuygens $50,000 that he can’t get it past the U.S. Customs.

Huuygens takes the bet: but the professional thief Girard has retained bungles the job. and to win. Huuygens not only must carry out an “impossible” robbery, but devise a devilishly ingenious plan that will get the treasure past the inspectors who have been alerted to its disappearance. A tale of mounting tension climaxed by an astonishing surprise that confirms the author’s talent at creating “touch and go adventure that works out brilliantly.” — Bestsellers.