Hard Crime

Matthew Scudder gets hired by a fellow bar patron to prove his innocence. Salesman Tommy Tillary is a 45-year-old philanderer with a Manhattan girlfriend and a Brooklyn wife. So when Tommy becomes a suspect in the murder of his wife, it's up to Matt to find the real killer.

Gifted with an uncanny sense about people, psychologist Miri Fox works as an on-and-off profiler for the police. So when they think they've finally nailed the "Wedding Killer", she agrees to check him out, using her gift to discover the truth. But the suspect, Quentin Black, isn't anything like Miri expects. He claims to be hunting the killer, too. When he confronts her about the nature of her peculiar "insight", Miri gets pulled into Black's bizarre world and embroiled in a game of cat and mouse with a deadly killer - who might just be Black himself.

Marlowe is back...and he's married to a rich, beautiful society lady who wants him to settle down in the posh desert community of Poodle Springs. Marlowe may have married rich, but old habits die hard: he's hired to recover a gambling debt and soon finds himself in a case involving bigamy, pornography and murder. The first four chapters of this final Marlowe mystery were written by noir master Raymond Chandler at the end of his life. Robert B. Parker was chosen by Chandler's estate to complete his last work.

The forty-year-old crucifixion of a prominent labor leader named Jack Flynn remains an unsolved atrocity that has never been forgotten in New Iberia, Louisiana. When Flynn's daughter Megan, a photojournalist drawn to controversial subjects, returns to the site of her father's murder, it quickly becomes clear that her family's bloodstained past will not stay buried. Megan gives her old friend Dave Robicheaux a tip about a small-time criminal named Cool Breeze Broussard, scarcely suspecting that the seemingly innocuous case will lead Robicheaux and his partner into the midst of deadly conspiracy. Combining brilliant prose, crackling suspense, and an exquisite sense of character and place, Sunset Limited is a wrenching tale of historic violence and soiled redemption that reveals America's finest novelist at his masterful best.

Deadly Edge bids a brutal adieu to the 1960s as Parker robs a rock concert, and the heist goes south. Soon Parker finds himself - and his woman, Claire - menaced by a pair of sadistic, drug-crazed hippies. Parker has a score to settle while Claire’s armed with her first rifle - and they’re both ready to usher in the end of the Age of Aquarius.

DCI Matilda Darke has returned to work after a nine-month absence. A shadow of her former self, she is tasked with reopening a cold case: the terrifyingly brutal murders of Miranda and Stefan Harkness. The only witness was their 11-year-old son, Jonathan, who was too deeply traumatised to speak a word. Then a dead body is discovered, and the investigation leads back to Matilda's case. Suddenly the past and present converge, and it seems a killer may have come back for more....

Twenty years ago, a barmaid in a harbor town fell for a young sailor who turned pirate to make his fortune. But what truly became of Black Edward Tew remains a mystery, one that has just fallen into the lap of freelance sword jockey Eddie LaCrosse. For years, Eddie has kept his office above Angelina’s tavern, so when Angelina herself asks him to find out what happened to the dashing pirate who stole her heart years ago, he can hardly say no—even though the trail is two decades old. Some say Black Edward and his ship, The Bloody Angel, went to bottom of the sea, taking with it a king’s ransom in treasure.

The most original crime novel in years - British ‘Golden Age’ sleuth meets American hard-boiled crime! It’s the summer of 1920: Kit Aston travels to San Francisco for his cousin’s marriage to the mysterious Dain Collins. When a private investigator tailing Dain Collins is killed, Kit Aston, his fiancée Mary and Aunt Agatha team up with Pinkerton detective, Dashiell Hammett, in a case involving murder, kidnap and the theft of a certain legendary bird from Malta. The latest Kit Aston mystery is a delightful reimagining of some of Dashiell Hammett’s greatest novels: the Maltese ...

Swan Peak finds Detective Robicheaux far from his New Iberia roots, attempting to relax in the untouched wilderness of rural Montana. He, his wife, and his buddy Clete Purcell have retreated to stay at an old friend's ranch, hoping to spend their days fishing and enjoying their distance from the harsh, gritty landscape of Louisiana post-Katrina.

Insurance mathematician Henri Koskinen has just restored order in his life, as well as in the adventure park he now owns, when a man from the past appears—and turns everything upside down again. More problems arise when the park's equipment supplier is taken over by a shady trio: Why won't Suomen Leikki Ltd sell the new Moose Jump to Henri when he needs it for the park's main attraction? At the same time, Henri's relationship with the artist Laura Helanto is reaching a breaking point.

The badly decomposing body of a woman is found in a farmer’s field and shows signs of bondage and torture. A ring on her finger leads to an ID and confirms a young officer’s suspicion. She’s one of several women who have been reported missing from the Prince William County area of Virginia. Trent Stenson with the Dumfries Police Department is uncovering a trend, but before he can reach out to the FBI, they show up at his door.

Repairman Jack, F. Paul Wilson’s vigilante hero first seen in the New York Times best seller The Tomb, returns in a thriller that thrusts Jack back into the weird, supernatural world that he thrives in. Looking for clues to the mysterious disappearance of leading conspiracy theorist Melanie Ehler, Jack attends a convention of bizarre and avid conspiracy theorists. It’s a place where aliens are real, the government is out to get you, and the world is hurtling toward an inevitable war of good versus evil incarnate. Jack finds that nobody can be trusted - and that few people are what they seem.

Grieving widow or black widow? The day Joan Medford buried her husband was a fateful one - because before the day was out she'd meet the two men who would change her life forever. Forced to take a job waitressing to support herself and her child, Joan finds herself caught between the handsome young schemer whose touch she comes to crave and the wealthy older man whose touch repels her…but who otherwise would make a tempting husband number two. It's a classic Cain triangle - brutal and sexual and stark - that can only end in death. But for whom, the guilty…or the innocent?

After eight years spent locked up, Max has gotten very good at being a prisoner. He knows the guards, the inmates, and how to survive. But the parole board has decided that he has sufficiently reformed, and it’s time for him to say goodbye. When Max reaches the outside world, he finds that freedom doesn’t make anything easier.

What — or who — could turn a gifted little boy into a murderous thing that calls itself "Satan’s Child"? In search of an answer, a man named Burke travels from a festering welfare hotel to a neat frame house where a voodoo priestess presides over a congregation of assassins. For this vigilante and unlicensed private eye has made it his business to defend the small victims whom the law has failed — even a child who has been made into a killer.

Naples, Italy, during four fateful days in the fall of 1943. The only ones left in the bombed-out city are the abandoned children whose only goal is to survive another day. No one could imagine that they would become fearless fighters and the unlikeliest heroes of World War II.

The Sternwood family, immortalized in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, is in trouble again. Lovely Vivian's psychotic sister, Carmen, has disappeared from the sanitarium, and Vivian herself has once again fallen into the clutches of the shady underworld character Eddie Mars. Enter Philip Marlowe, the original tough-but-tender private eye, resurrected by Robert B. Parker, creator of his own phenomenally popular Spenser mystery series. He saved the Sternwoods once before. The question is: Can he do it again?

Texas attorney and former Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland has many secrets. Among them is Vernon Smother's son, Lucas, a now-teenaged boy about whom few know the truth: Lucas is really Billy Bob's illegitimate son. When Lucas is arrested for murder, Billy Bob must confront the past and serve as the boy's criminal attorney. As a result, he incurs enemies that are far more dangerous than any he faced as a Texas Ranger.

Commissario Guido Brunetti's career is under threat when his professional and personal lives unexpectedly intersect. In the chill of the Venetian dawn, a sudden act of vandalism shatters the quiet of the deserted city, and Brunetti is shocked to find that the culprit waiting to be apprehended at the scene is a member of his own family. Meanwhile, he is also under pressure from his superiors to solve a daring robbery with connections to a suspicious accidental death. Could the two crimes be connected? And will Brunetti be able to prove his family's innocence before it's too late?

A powerful industrialist, Ruggiero Miletti, is kidnapped. Inspector Zen is transferred to Perugia to take over the case - but finds that there are many obstacles in his way. The local authorities see him as an interloper, and the victim’s family, one of the most powerful in Italy, seem content to let Miletti languish in the hands of his abductors. Zen has crossed swords with the establishment before - and lost. Can he succeed this time?