His thirsty, home-made knives and his savage, warped soul made men hate — and fear!

Here are those two old favorites, Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg, in their usual strategic position, up to their necks in the soup. The boys are back at that beloved caravanseric, the Forty-fifth Street Hotel, and appear likely to stay there for some time since Mr. Peabody, the manager, is lurking in the corridor with the French key.Then things take a turn for the better — not for the lovely across the airshaft who skims master phonograph record into their window before being throttled — but for Johnny and Sam themselves. They get Sam’s pants out of hock (luckily) and they’re off. Now you see them and now you don’t. But when the eye is quick enough to follow their activities, you’ll find them kiting checks, pawing wrist watches, getting beat up, busting in where they’re not wanted, and driving Mr. Peabody — among many, many others — crazy.We don’t know how they — and Mr. Gruber — do it, but they are actually, if incredibly, faster, furiouser, and funnier titan ever.

A woman has been kidnapped. Now Jonathan Stride must decide if her husband wants her back... dead or alive.

After nearly dying of a gunshot wound, Jonathan Stride has been on leave from the Duluth Police for more than a year. When his partner, Maggie Bei, gets called about a suspicious abduction involving a local lawyer, she tells Stride it’s time for him to come back.

Attorney Gavin Webster says he paid $100,000 in ransom money to the men who kidnapped his wife. Now they’ve disappeared with the cash, and she’s still missing. Gavin claims to be desperate to find her — but Stride discovers that the lawyer had plenty of motive to be the mastermind behind the crime.

Even as Stride digs for the truth about Gavin Webster and his wife, he must also deal with a crisis in his own marriage.

His wife, Serena, is struggling after the death of her mother, the abusive woman she hadn’t seen in twenty-five years. When she loses control at a crime scene and draws her gun on a fellow cop, Serena finds herself kicked off the Webster case. Alone at her desk, she begins hunting through old police files and starts to ask questions about a mother’s death that was written off as suicide. That death haunts Serena like an echo of her own childhood — but her obsession with it takes a terrible toll.

As Serena shuts him out of her despair, and his own investigation grows increasingly tangled, Stride wonders whether going back to his detective work was the right decision. But all he can do is keep moving forward. Because Stride fears the Webster kidnapping may be only one part of a horrific murder conspiracy.

And it’s not over yet.

All are familiar with the well-known plot of the man who commits murder and then attempts to make the crime appear to be suicide.

In There’s Always a Price Tag, James Hadley Chase turns this old plot inside out and gives us a new and electrifying reverse of the coin: the man who attempts to make a suicide appear to be murder, in order to lay his hands on the victim’s insurance money.

Here is a thriller that will quicken your heart-beats. It is by far the most ingenious story that this “Master of the art of deception” has yet given us.

HOW CAN A MAN WHO’S ALREADY DEAD BE WANTED FOR MURDER?Three years ago, sports agent Myron Bolitar gave a eulogy at the funeral of his client, renowned basketball coach Greg Downing. Myron and Greg had history: initially as deeply personal rivals, and later as unexpected business associates. Myron made peace and moved on — until now, when two federal agents walked into his office, demanding to know where Greg Downing is.According to the agents, Greg is still alive — and has been placed at the scene of a double homicide, making him their main suspect. Shocked, Myron needs answers.Myron and his longtime friend and colleague Win set out to find the truth, but the more they discover about Greg, the more dangerous their world becomes. Secrets, lies, and a murderous conspiracy that stretches back into the past churn at the heart of Harlan Coben’s blistering new novel.

New Year’s Eve 1941, war has been declared and the Japanese internment is in full swing. Los Angeles is gripped by war fever and racial hatred. Sergeant Dudley Smith of the Los Angeles Police Department is now U.S. Army Captain Smith and a budding war profiteer. He’s shacked up with Claire De Haven in Baja, Mexico, and spends his time sniffing out Fifth Column elements and hunting down a missing Japanese naval attaché. Hideo Ashida is cashing LAPD paychecks and working in the crime lab, but he knows he can’t avoid internment forever. Newly arrived U.S. Navy Lieutenant Joan Conville winds up in jail accused of vehicular homicide, but Captain William H. Parker squashes the charges and puts her on Ashida’s team. Elmer Jackson, who is assigned to the alien squad and to bodyguard Ashida, begins to develop an obsession with Kay Lake, the unconsummated object of Captain Parker’s desire.

Now, Conville and Ashida become obsessed with finding the identity of a body discovered in a mudslide. It’s a murder victim linked to an unsolved gold heist from ’31, and they want the gold. And things really heat up when two detectives are found murdered in a notorious dope fiend hang-out.