There was nothing distinctive about her except the hat — the shape and color of a pumpkin, with a cockerel feather curving up from the center. And that is all Scott Henderson could remember when his life depended on it. He had met her in a bar when he was grimly trying to recover from the aftermath of a quarrel with his wife He took her to dinner, then to the theatre. It was understood that personalities should not enter into their conversation. Thus when he returned late to his apartment to find his wife strangled with one of his own neckties and the police waiting to hear his story, he could not tell them the name of the only person who could prove his innocence. Worse than that, as the police retraced his steps on the fateful night, bartender, taxi driven waiter and ticket-taker all swore that Henderson had been alone. Horrified at the thought that he had taken leave of his senses, Scott Henderson was arrested for murder.

Tough, exciting and rapid-fire, the solution to the story is even more ingenious than the puzzle itself. The result is one of the most satisfying pieces of mystery fiction since the early Van Dines and Hammetts.

DEALING... PRODUCING... ALL IN A DAY’S WORK FOR A DRUGLORD. OR IN HOLLYWOOD.Ruined and on the lam, former drug kingpin Max Fisher stumbles upon the biggest discovery of his crooked life: a designer drug called PIMP that could put him back on top. Meanwhile, a certain femme fatale from his past is pursuing a comeback dream of her own, setting herself up in Hollywood as producer of a series based on her and Max’s life story. But even in La-La Land, happy endings are hard to come by, especially with both the cops and your enemies in the drug trade coming after you...

The madman clung to the side of the hill, hidden by darkness and trees. Staring over his left shoulder he could see the lights in pairs crossing the bottom of the night, round whites when coming aslant, red dots when going. Only the circling red light atop the state police car did not move on, across the valley floor and out of sight. The ambulance had gone now, and the traffic jam had been broken up, but the state police car did not move on.Down below him, past the trees, he could see the headlights going by. He was waiting for the state police car with the circling red light to go on, to go away with the rest of the lights, and then he could move. But the state police car didn’t go away.And now more red lights came, borne on the stream of headlights. The madman reared up, almost losing his balance and rolling down the hill, and stared in hatred at the revolving red lights. Three more of them, all stopping by the first. Dimly amid the lights he could see men moving, and then a different kind of light appeared. A small nailhole of light in the darkness. Flashlights. Men with flashlights crossed the road down there and started up the hill, spreading out, opening like a fan. He lost sight of them all in the trees, and saw there a flicker of light, and there. And there.They were coming after him.The madman put his head down on the ground, his burning forehead against the cool dampness of the turf. Despair washed over him. Just after dinner he’d broken out, and before midnight he was to be caught again. They would make him scream for this, the shock every day, death and rebirth every day, going down and away to spasmodic shrieks and coming back to twitches and deafness and the cold blue eyes of Doctor Chax. (There was no Doctor Chax; all the doctors were Doctor Chax: all the doctors had the cold blue eyes and the warm brown voices, and told him while they tortured him that the torture was for his own good; he had made up the name, Doctor Chax. It was all of them.)He would not go back to Doctor Chax. He would not.He got away. He had the surface plausibility of the completely mad and a glittering intelligence. Also, he had no compunction about destroying anybody who stood in his way.PITY HIM AFTERWARDS is a terrifying tour de force of suspense.

She is a Broadway dancer, exquisite and mercurial. He is a dedicated psychiatrist, happily married to a beautiful woman, the father of two lovely children vacationing with their mother on Martha’s Vineyard. “Good morning, sir”, she said, as she passed David Chapman on a sunny June day in Central Park. Moments later, she was locked in mortal combat with a mugger, and David came to her rescue...

They tell each other some truths, but only some. They know each other’s mysteries, but only some. They slip into a realm of sensual deception and imminent danger...

For who is Kate Duggan really, the woman who makes sexual fantasies come true? And who is David Chapman, the doctor who spends his day with other people’s neuroses, guilt, and lies? Now, in the heat of a New York City summer, they will learn everything — when a stalker turns their mad lust into a murderous affair.

James M. Cain, acclaimed as one of the modern masters of mystery, has once again woven a forceful tale that challenges people’s basic morality with temptations they are powerless to resist.

Davey Howell is content in his rural Ohio solitude; the static broadcasts of the country radio stations are his only steady contact with the “outside” world. But then a hijacker plummets into his life, along with $100,000 cash ransom and a beautiful stewardess as hostage. Suddenly, Davey’s sense of “the good life” faces its toughest challenge — with the hijacker dead, who would know if the money were lost or stolen?

RAINBOW’S END bears all the trademarks that have made James Cain one of our most influential writers. The money: $100,000 is more than Davey dreamed of making in his entire lifetime. The woman: the worldly stewardess is like none Davey has ever known. The momentum: Cain is the master, whirling hours into instants and back again. And finally, the man alone: Cain isolates Davey, leaving him to make his own decisions within this hoard of temptation. This is the dramatic force of James M. Cain, named by Camus as “the greatest American writer.”

Robert B. Parker’s iconic and irresistible PI Sunny Randall is back, and the stakes are higher than ever as she races to protect her ex-husband — and his Mafia family — from the vengeful plan of a mysterious rival.

Sunny Randall is “on” again with Richie, the ex-husband she never stopped loving and never seemed to be able to let go, despite her discomfort with his Mafia connections. When Richie is shot and nearly killed, Sunny is dragged into the thick of his family’s business as she searches for answers and tries to stave off a mob war. But as the bullets start flying in Boston’s mean streets, Sunny finds herself targeted by the deranged mastermind of the plot against the Burke family, whose motive may be far more personal than she could have anticipated...

DRAW ONE—

That’s waitress lingo. Means a cup of coffee. It’s a part of a language that Carrie Selden had spoken for a long time.

Carrie was a hash-slinger. Lots of big business men ate at Karb’s just to watch her trim figure moving by their tables. Grant Harris was one of them — he watched, waited and was married by Carrie. The millionaire and the waitress. It was a newspaper field-day.

In spite of everything she was called, Carrie felt she had to set the record straight. This is her candid story — the intimate details of the life of Carrie Selden Harris, who asks you to pass judgment on her only after you’ve read her story.

Psichologinis detektyvas apie seserų ryšį. Apleistame Haid Parko tualete randamas Beatrisės sesers Tesės lavonas. Policija pareiškia, kad mergina nusižudė, tačiau Beatrisė, neabejodama, kad sesuo nužudyta, o policija suklydo, pradeda savarankiškai ieškoti įkalčių... Beatrisė pasiryžusi nenuleisti rankų, tačiau niekas į jos tyrimą nežiūri rimtai. Niekas, išskyrus sesers žudiką...

Mike Beecher was afraid of too many things to be dangerous any more. He had stayed for two years in the Spanish village because problems could be passed off with a shrug, another drink. To the ruthless conspirators, however, Mike’s skills made him a useful pawn, a practical one because he was expendable. By the time Mike found out how he had been betrayed, he had lost his chance to retreat to safety.

This absorbing suspense story is written on two levels.There is the life-and-death drama of a man fighting minute by minute for survival in the trackless wastes of the African desert, trying to outwit the law and the lawless, knowing that if he is caught a girl will be destroyed with him. Seven Lies South is also a novel of character: a penetrating study of a drifter who at last has to stop running and come face to face with himself.

A street detective turned cyber-investigatorFollowing a disastrous divorce, former New Jersey detective Mickey Gibson is now employed by global investigation company ProEye to track down some of the extremely wealthy who seem bent on not paying their debts. Mickey misses police work, but it made no room for her new role as the sole carer of her two young children.A woman of mysteryWhen Mickey is asked by Arlene Robinson, a colleague from ProEye, to inventory an old mansion owned by Rutger Novak, a notorious former arms dealer, she discovers a long-decomposed body in a secret room. Apparently, Novak has cheated ProEye clients out of millions in the past and now they want to nail him.As the police investigation begins, they discover that there is no Arlene Robinson working for ProEye. Nor does the mansion with a body belong to Novak. The dead man is a local, wealthy recluse with a mysterious past. Mickey is in trouble for being duped, but ‘Arlene’ is very clever and seems able to convince anyone of anything.A dangerous game A sinister and compelling cat-and-mouse contest begins between Mickey and the women with a secret agenda — who has no name, and seemingly no morals and no empathy, and who harbours one big secret.But will the shocking revelation of her true identity be too later to save her and Mickey?

A beautiful Hollywood movie star, her glamor girl sister, and a handsome sheriff who has an eye for a pretty woman, provide the explosive triangle around which James M. Cane has built this latest story of violence and desire. The first appear in print of this exciting and provocative novel is literary treat you will not want to miss and in only the usual two or three dollars, it is priced to the range of everyone.

The flood of vigorous emotions, of love so deadly that it slays, packs “Sinful Woman” from start to smashing finish. You can’t lay it down once the striking Sylvia Shoreham, vivid movie star, hits the Reno gambling halls for a show-down with Baron Adlerkkreutz, her hot-blooded, woman-killer husband. You’ll be gripped by Sheriff Lucas as his mad desire for Sylvia runs head-on into his oath to uphold law and order; you’ll be caught by the Hollywood conniving of Dimmy Spiro, Sylvia’s producer, and by the colorful impact of Cain’s with other boldly drawn characters. And throughout the whole book you’ll be held at fever pitch by the deadly puzzle of Sylvia’s sister Hazel, whose knockout beauty underlines every scene with the tension of a fast-ticking bomb.

A mysterious evil had destroyed all he loved. Now he had nothing to risk but his life.

Best remembered for his sensational bestselling novels of the 1930s, James M. Cain may well be one of the most important, yet still misunderstood, of American authors. Among other writers and for certain critics, his reputation and singularity are unquestioned, resting on an extraordinary force of style and view of the human condition that have influenced a host of modern authors. Cain’s unique voice — hard-edged, caustically ironic, and impeccably controlled — was in fact forged through an extensive journalistic training and remains best exemplified in the compressed power of his short fiction.Here then, timed with a major revival of interest in Cain’s work, is the first book to collect the best of his shorter work — selected short stories and sketches together with one of his finest serials, the novella published at different times under the titles “Money and the Woman” and “The Embezzler.” As taut and brilliant in its way as Cain’s most famous serial, Double Indemnity, this ingenious example of Cain’s “love rack” fiction has been out of print for many years, but reads as immediately today as when first written more than three decades ago. Equally fascinating, especially when seen within Roy Hoopes’s tracings of the development of Cain’s work, are the entertaining sketches and dialogues Cain originally wrote for journalistic publication — beautiful models of efficiency and concision stamped with Cain’s characteristic irony. We are given ten of his best, out of hundreds he wrote for the New York World and H. L. Mencken’s American Mercury. Together with nine of his finest short stories — including those three Cain classics, “Pastorale,” “The Baby in the Icebox,” and “Dead Man” — this volume comprises both an ideal introduction to the work of this remarkable American author and a mandatory book for all James M. Cain fans.

Best remembered for his sensational bestselling novels of the 1930s, James M. Cain may well be one of the most important, yet still misunderstood, of American authors. Among other writers and for certain critics, his reputation and singularity are unquestioned, resting on an extraordinary force of style and view of the human condition that have influenced a host of modern authors. Cain’s unique voice — hard-edged, caustically ironic, and impeccably controlled — was in fact forged through an extensive journalistic training and remains best exemplified in the compressed power of his short fiction.Here then, timed with a major revival of interest in Cain’s work, is the first book to collect the best of his shorter work — selected short stories and sketches together with one of his finest serials, the novella published at different times under the titles “Money and the Woman” and “The Embezzler.” As taut and brilliant in its way as Cain’s most famous serial, Double Indemnity, this ingenious example of Cain’s “love rack” fiction has been out of print for many years, but reads as immediately today as when first written more than three decades ago. Equally fascinating, especially when seen within Roy Hoopes’s tracings of the development of Cain’s work, are the entertaining sketches and dialogues Cain originally wrote for journalistic publication — beautiful models of efficiency and concision stamped with Cain’s characteristic irony. We are given ten of his best, out of hundreds he wrote for the New York World and H. L. Mencken’s American Mercury. Together with nine of his finest short stories — including those three Cain classics, “Pastorale,” “The Baby in the Icebox,” and “Dead Man” — this volume comprises both an ideal introduction to the work of this remarkable American author and a mandatory book for all James M. Cain fans.

Murder was in the air. A cop had killed himself, and every crook in town knew that would be sure to bring on THE BIG HEAT.

Why did they fear a dead man? Dave Bannion, homicide sergeant, fought for the answer to that question. He got it... Then the big heat came.

The dead man was a police clerk who shot himself for no obvious reason. That was Bannion’s first judgment, until a girl named Lucy presented a quite different picture of the dead man from the one he had shown to the world — and to his fastidious, glacial wife.

Bannion’s chief, Lieutenant Wilks, wanted the case closed and speculation ended — quickly and tightly. So did Max Stone and Lagana who held the city in a sinister, underworld grip. Why did they fear a dead man?

In this story of grim excitement, pathos and dramatic surprise, one of our foremost mystery writers presents the outstanding murder novel of the season.

Los Angeles, 1950. Red crosscurrents: the Commie Scare and a string of brutal mutilation killings. Movieland leftists on a collision course with a grand jury investigating team. A young homicide detective obsessed with capturing a murderer of unparalleled viciousness — even though the price may be horrific self-revelation. Gangsters and cops and fixers and Hollywood grotesques in a noir novel of epic scope and depth.

The Big Nowhere is the story of three men caught up in a massive web of ambition, perversion, and deceit. Danny Upshaw is a Sheriff’s deputy stuck with a bunch of snuffs nobody cares about; they’re his chance to make his name as a cop — and to sate his darkest curiosities. Mal Considine is D.A.’s Bureau brass, climbing on the Red Scare bandwagon to advance his career and to gain custody of his adopted son, a child he saved from the horror of postwar Europe. Buzz Meeks — bagman, ex-Narco goon and pimp for Howard Hughes — is fighting Communism for the money. All three men have purchased tickets to a nightmare.

The Big Nowhere is dark, brutal, tender and powerful; it is a remarkably vivid portrait of a remarkable time and place. With his best-selling The Black Dahlia, James Ellroy established himself as the modern master of noir fiction; The Big Nowhere establishes him as a major American novelist.

The Black Dahlia is a police novel on an epic scale; a classic period piece that provides a startling conclusion to America’s most infamous unsolved murder mystery. Already hailed as a masterpiece, it establishes James Ellroy as this country’s most powerful living writer of noir fiction.

On January 15, 1947, the torture-ravished body of a beautiful young woman is found in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia, and her murder sparks the greatest manhunt in California history.

Caught up in the investigation are Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard: Warrants Squad cops, friends, and adversaries in love with the same woman. But both are obsessed with the Dahlia — driven by dark needs to know everything about her life, to capture her killer, to possess the woman even in death. Their quest will take them on a hellish journey through the underbelly of postwar Hollywood, to the core of the dead girl’s twisted life, past the extremes of their own psyches — into a region of total madness.

With the no-punches-held style that has become the trademark of a James Ellroy novel, this brilliant and savagely original author launches the reader on a roller-coaster ride through the violent world of the ’40s L.A. cop.

Murder at Sloppy Joe’s sends a hunted and heartbroken man twisting and turning down the black path of fear. Human life is something you can take away, but not give back, Scotty remembered as he thought about his embrace with death. The body had simply slipped to the floor, and now he was charged with a murder he didn’t commit. His only proof of innocence destroyed, his only sanctuary a swarthy outcast in a black garret, Scotty had little to live for. Swift and terrible revenge and a search for a photograph negative haunted his mind. With never a moment’s rest, never a sob of relief, the build-up, the atmosphere of terror, and the frantic effort to escape bind the reader closer and closer to tortured Scotty. A stealth of night cloaks this unusual study of fear.

De Maupassant once wrote: “There is nothing more beautiful and honorable than killing.”The Bride Wore Black offers grim and absorbing proof of that idea.Four men are murdered. Each time a woman they have never known comes into their lives. She appears briefly — she strikes — and disappears. There is never a trace of her left — not a fingerprint, not a clue.Four men are murdered. Four men whose lives do not touch, for whose deaths there is no conceivable reason. The police say, “Homicidal Maniac.” And yet — twice the woman risks her life to save another’s.Four men are murdered. And slowly, very slowly, the picture of the woman grows clearer to the police.She is beautiful, for only a beautiful woman would have worn the filmy black veil found clutched in the hand of the first man who dies.She is clever, for only a clever woman could have escaped from the hotel bedroom of her second victim.She is ruthless, for only a ruthless woman could have used a child’s toy to kill that child’s father.She is strong, for only a strong woman could have used such a weapon for her fourth murder.Four men are murdered.Then comes the fifth. And with it a denouement as breathtakingly exciting as a parachute jump and as extraordinary as the woman herself.The Bride Wore Black is a macabre and brilliant tour de force of crime fiction. It employs none of the usual tricks, yet the reader is enthralled. There are no suspects, no clues, yet the reader is tensely aware of mystery. There is only the woman, her victims, and the relentless drama of her life — a pale shadow that comes gradually into focus and is seen at last in brilliant outline.

A house of secrets...

As a massive storm batters the Scottish coast, Gordon Smith’s home is falling into the sea. The trouble is: that’s where he’s been hiding the bodies.

A killer on the run...

It’s too dangerous to go near the place, so there’s no way of knowing how many people he’s murdered. Or how many more he’ll kill before he’s caught.

An investigator with nothing to lose...

As more horrors are discovered, ex-detective Ash Henderson is done playing nice. He’s got a killer to catch, and God help anyone who gets in his way.