In this short story from the thrilling anthology FaceOff, bestselling authors Lee Child and Joseph Finder – along with their popular series characters Jack Reacher and Nick Heller – team up for the first time ever.

When Jack Reacher sits down to watch a baseball game at a Boston bar, he has no way of knowing what kind of trouble is about to walk in the door – and not just because he’s a Yankees fan in a Red Sox town.

In this action-packed short story, Reacher and a new acquaintance – Sox fan Nick Heller – find themselves drawn into a much less friendly rivalry when the guy sitting between them at the bar turns out to be a marked man.

For more exciting pairs, check out all eleven short stories in FaceOff!

Somewhere in western New York there's a remote mountaintop in the moonlight, its dark forests and moon-dappled meadows populated only by corpses, and if ex-PI Joe Kurtz doesn't unravel the secret of that place in five days, he'll be one of them.Everyone seems to want a piece of Kurtz and most succeed in getting one. Unknown assailants gun down Kurtz and his female parole officer, giving Kurtz the headache of a lifetime but putting pretty Peg O'Toole on life support. While working his own case through a haze of concussion migraine, Kurtz has to deal with Toma Gonzaga, the gay don who owes Kurtz a blood debt, and Angelina Farino Ferrara, the female don who is after Kurtz's body — or maybe just his head.And while someone is murdering all the heroin addicts in Buffalo and hauling away the bodies, a serial killer called the Artful Dodger hatches his twisted plan.In Kurtz's corner is police detective Rigby King, a beautiful woman who was his lover when they were both rebellious teenagers in Father Baker's Orphanage. Rigby also has designs on Joe Kurtz, but whether they're aimed at bedding or abetting him, helping him stay alive, or simply putting him away for life, Kurtz will have to discover the hard way.

There's a bitter wind brewing in Buffalo, New York and it's blowing in more than just snow. "Little Skag" Farino, the last don of the local crime family, wants Kurtz dead and is sending in platoons of hit men, starting with the Attica Three Stooges and working up through more competent killers. Little Skag's beautiful sister, Angelina Farino Ferrara, is back from seven years in Sicily and has her own deadly agenda for Kurtz.If that isn't enough, Kurtz is approached by a dying concert violinist who wants his daughter's killer found. Rejecting the case at first, he is soon on the trail of a man who's not just the murderer of one child, but a cold-blooded serial killer who is a master of alternate identities and has the power to send a hundred men after Kurtz. As the bodies pile up like cords of wood, HARD FREEZE hits town with the power of a whiteout blizzard and builds to a truly chilling climax. This is a crime novel where trigger fingers freeze to blue steel.

What are the ingredients of a hard-boiled detective story? “Savagery, style, sophistication, sleuthing, and sex,” said Ellery Queen. Often a desperate blond, a jealous husband, and, of course, a tough-but-tender P.I. the likes of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. Perhaps Raymond Chandler summed it up best in his description of Dashiell Hammett’s style: “Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it... He put these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes.”

Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind, with over half of the stories never published before in book form. Included are thirty-six sublimely suspenseful stories that chronicle the evolution of this quintessentially American art form, from its earliest beginnings during the golden age of the legendary pulp magazine Black Mask in the 1920s, to the arrival of the tough digest Manhunt in the 1950s, and finally leading up to present-day hard-boiled stories by such writers as James Ellroy. Here are eight decades worth of the best writing about betrayal, murder, and mayhem: from Hammett’s 1925 tour de force “The Scorched Face,” in which the disappearance of two sisters leads Hammett’s never-named detective, the Continental Op, straight into a web of sexual blackmail amidst the West Coast elite, to Ed Gorman’s 1992 “The Long Silence After,” a gripping and powerful rendezvous involving a middle class insurance executive, a Chicago streetwalker, and a loaded .38. Other delectable contributions include “Brush Fire” by James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raymond Chandler’s “I’ll Be Waiting,” where, for once, the femme fatale is not blond but a redhead, a Ross Macdonald mystery starring Macdonald’s most famous creator, the cryptic Lew Archer, and “The Screen Test of Mike Hammer” by the one and only Mickey Spillane. The hard-boiled cult has more in common with the legendary lawmen of the Wild West than with the gentleman and lady sleuths of traditional drawing room mysteries, and this direct line of descent is on brilliant display in two of the most subtle and tautly written stories in the collection, Elmore Leonard’s “3:10 to Yuma” and John D. MacDonald’s “Nor Iron Bars.” Other contributors include Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain), Jim Thompson, Helen Nielsen, Margaret Maron, Andrew Vachss, Faye Kellerman, and Lawrence Block.

Compellingly and compulsively readable, Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is a page-turner no mystery lover will want to be without. Containing many notable rarities, it celebrates a genre that has profoundly shaped not only American literature and film, but how we see our heroes and ourselves.

Joe Kurtz has been wronged one too many times. So when he takes out the drugdealing thug who killed his girlfriend, the exPI gets to cool his heels for 11 years in Attica. It's there that he meets "Little Skag" Farino, the son of an aging Buffalo, New York, mob boss. In exchange for protecting the kid's manhood against any unwanted jailhouse affection, Kurtz gets an audience with Little Skag's father upon his release from prison.Semiretired Don Byron Farino is still clinging to what dwindling power he holds on the New York organized crime scene. He enlists Kurtz's help to track down the Family's missing accountanta man with too much knowledge of Family business to have on the loose. But someone doesn't want the accountant found. As the story twists and turns and the body count rises, Kurtz no longer knows whom he can trust. Everyone seems to be after something, from the mob boss's sultry yet dangerous daughter, to a hit man named The Dane, an albino killer who is good with a knife, and a dwarf who is armed to the teeth and hellbent on revenge.Bestselling author Dan Simmons expertly builds the tension as he springs one surprise after another, all the while daring the reader to take a ride with Kurtz through the cold, windy streets of Buffalo where one wrong move could mean a bellyfull of lead.

Keller’s a hit man. For years now he’s had places to go and people to kill.But enough is enough. He’s got money in the bank and just one last job standing between him and retirement. So he carries it out with his usual professionalism, and he heads home, and guess what?One more job. Paid in advance, so what’s he going to do? Give the money back? In Des Moines, Keller stalks his designated target and waits for the client to give him the go-ahead. And one fine morning he’s picking out stamps for his collection (Sweden 1–5, the official reprints) at a shop in Urbandale when somebody guns down the charismatic governor of Ohio.Back at his motel, Keller’s watching TV when they show the killer’s face. And there’s something all too familiar about that face…Keller calls his associate Dot in White Plains, but there is no answer. He’s stranded halfway across the country, every cop in America’s just seen his picture, his ID and credit cards are no longer good, and he just spent almost all of his cash on the stamps.Now what?

Ken Corning, fighting young lawyer, tries to earn an honest living in a city of graft.

What would you do if you were a DEAD RINGER for a DICTATOR?

If you were small-time grifter Walter Harsh, recovering in a hospital with a broken arm, you’d listen to a proposition that could net you a cool $50,000 for impersonating the South American strongman you resemble. You’d pay attention when the dictator’s sultry mistress started putting the moves on you. And in the dead of night, when no one was watching, you might just hatch a plot to get it all for yourself: the money, the girl, and the stash of stolen loot she’s conspiring to spirit out of the country…

From Publishers Weekly

Smalltime con artist Walter Harsh is lured into international intrigue in this old-fashioned pulp thriller from the creator of Doc Savage. A mysterious man known only as Mr. Brother recruits Harsh and his girlfriend and sidekick, Vera Sue Crosby, into a complex scam involving a South American strongman's beautiful former mistress, a corrupt physician and an Arab financial mastermind. As the plotters await political chaos and the Peron-like dictator's flight from his country, Harsh prepares to impersonate the dictator as part of an embezzlement plot beyond his wildest imaginings. Originally written in 1956, Dent's story suffers from both an unlikely identical strangers premise and the casual sexism of its era, but the elaborate twists of the caper effectively draw the reader into a hard-boiled, violent and authentically gritty tale in the best pulp style.

Gerald Hanna is rudely jolted out of his humdrum existence as an insurance actuary—with a longstanding librarian fiancee—when a dying man with a big boodle in gems lands in his car. Disposing of the body, Hanna keeps the jewels and manages to get the best of both the cops and the robbers who are on his tail… Progressively tricky and tense.

In Uganda in 1977, a particular trainload of coffee, mostly belonging to dictator Idi Amin, is worth six million dollars. As a group of scoundrels and international financiers hijack the train, the double and triple crosses pile up and the comic tension escalates in a brawling brew of buffoons, bumblers, beans and boxcars.* * *This 1981 Westlake gem is back in print. A mile-long freight train steams through the heart of Idi Amin’s mad, tortured, magical, and corrupt Uganda, loaded down with kahawa (Swahili for coffee). What Amin doesn't know, what his most beautiful spy has not been able to wring out of her latest victim, and what the world’s coffee markets may be unable to swallow, is that the train and six million dollars worth of coffee are about to disappear into the hands of a conflicted, colorful, swashbuckling band of mercenaries and moneymakers.“Kahawa is such a splendid huggermugger that if you don't like it, there's something wrong with you…. No reader that I will ever want to meet should dare complain.”— The New York Times

The guns, the punks, the whores were dying too fast. A wise guy was speeding up the underworld’s death rate with a .38 Special.

Lt. Joe Scanlon manhunts the tawdry dives and deadly alleys of the slum jungle... his cover, a gorgeous lady cop who plays sex-bait... his target, a one-shot assassin who’s killing off the killers.

When you’ve already got blood on your hands, what’s a little more?Turner needs to start a new life and that means he needs cash… fast. So the twenty thousand he’s offered for a job sounds pretty good, even if it means killing Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. And he’s not alone. There are four other men—killers, idealists, mercenaries—all with the same target. Can they band together to overthrow Castro and get Turner his chance at a new life?This ebook features an illustrated biography of Lawrence Block, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from his personal collection, and a new afterword written by the author.

A Jack Reacher Novel – #1

Early one morning Jack jumps off a bus in the middle of nowhere and walks 14 miles down an empty country road. The minute he reaches the town of Margrave he is thrown into jail. As the only stranger in town, a local murder is blamed on him. However, it soon becomes clear that he is not the killer.

Winston was a town where, as in a mobile, everything balanced precariously. It looked all right to visitors, and even to most of the people who lived there. Children got to school safely, and there wasn’t much union trouble, and the streets were fairly clean and well paved. A few people knew better about Winston — because they ran the town.KILLING TIME is the story of what happened when a couple of outsiders tried to interfere with those few people. The VIPs you’ll meet in the book are briefly described herewith.TIM SMITH — the only private eye in town — who maintained this status with a “little black book”JORDAN REED — the business big-wig who was mayor of Winston in everything but nameDAN WANAMAKER — who had the name of MayorHARCUM — the boy who was voted least likely to succeed — so of course became Police ChiefJACK WYCZA — the councilman who believed in nepotism — when he needed itRON LASCOW — the town’s sharpest young lawyer or youngest sharp lawyerSHERRI — a girl who played both sides of the game once too oftenPAUL MASETTI — who came to town with the peculiar project of buying a manJOEY CASALE — the grocer with a family he could turn into an army — and didOf Donald Westlake’s first novel, The Mercenaries, one reviewer wrote: “Mr. Westlake’s clipped, breezy, bitter picture of a college man who found crime paid and was stimulating, too, marks him as a newcomer most certainly arrived.”“Clipped, breezy, bitter” could certainly be used about killing time. To this add: rough, tough, and fast as a bullet.

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.

When handsome, hard-boiled Ed Barlow, a Florida reporter, got the tip-off on an insidious gang of criminals that preyed on a certain kind of woman, he knew he was in for a gun-barrel full of excitement — and he liked it.

Against a background of high-society debutantes and cafe society playgirls, Ed played his dangerous game until he had a certain gorgeous woman where he wanted her — and learned she was playing a seductive game of her own, with the underworld for her boss and himself for her victim!

What happened when Ed fell hard for beautiful Cherry Malone, a hard-to-get gang-girl who kept her bag of surprises hidden until the chips were down, makes LADIES OF CHANCE a fast paced story of syndicated sin and sudden death. From luxurious gambling dens to the exotic island hideaway of the underworld’s Mystery Woman, this novel moves with a series of dramatic explosions to a final surprise that will leave you breathless!

#1 bestselling author Stephen King returns with a brand-new novel about the secrets we keep buried and the cost of unearthing them.

SOMETIMES GROWING UP

MEANS FACING YOUR DEMONS

The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine—as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave.

LATER is Stephen King at his finest, a terrifying and touching story of innocence lost and the trials that test our sense of right and wrong. With echoes of King’s classic novel It, LATER is a powerful, haunting, unforgettable exploration of what it takes to stand up to evil in all the faces it wears.Review

“There’s classic King here for fans… a thrilling whodunit.”—Associated Press

“King’s writing in LATER is as clean, direct and evocative as it’s ever been… the crime-driven plot is propulsive [and] some of the lines just take your breath away… you’re in the hands of a master storyteller.”—Washington Post

“Crave chills and thrills but don’t have time for a King epic? This will do the job before bedtime. Not that you’ll sleep.”—Kirkus

“Gory and unnerving, this twisty chiller has sufficient sins and revelations to keep readers pursuing the action to its breathless conclusion. King fans are in for a treat.”—Publishers Weekly

“An entertaining and breezy read, with the stellar storytelling that has justly made King a literary legend.”—AARP Magazine

“King’s tics and tricks are all in bloom: folksy dialogue, cockeyed worldview, rising tension, pure evil, etc.”—Philadelphia Inquirer

“A satisfying tale about facing demons—both those we can see and those that lurk in the darkness.”—Foreword Reviews

“A powerful testament to [King’s] storytelling prowess.”—Bookbub

“Sharply developed characters, steady incorporation of supernatural elements, and building suspense, make for [a] great read.”—Borg.comAbout the Author

Stephen King has written dozens of bestselling books including The Shining, The Stand, and The Green Mile. Film adaptations of his work include “Misery” and “Stand By Me”. In 2003, King received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2007 he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.