A one-time detective and a master of deft understatement, Hammett virtually invented the hard-boiled crime novel. In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade, a private eye with his own solitary code of ethics, tangles with a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. The Thin Man introduces Hammett's wittiest creations, Nick and Nora Charles, who solve homicides in between wisecracks and martinis. And in Red Harvest, Hammett's anonymous tough-guy detective, the Continental Op, takes on the entire town of Poisonville in a deadly war against corruption."Dashiell Hammett is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer."—Boston Globe”Hammett was spare, hard-boiled, but he did over and over what only the best writers can ever do. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.”—Raymond Chandler”Hammett’s prose was clean and entirely unique. His characters were as sharply and economically defined as any in American fiction.”—The New York Times”As a novelist of realistic intrigue, Hammett was unsurpassed in his own or any time.”—Ross Macdonald”Dashiell Hammett’s dialogues can be compared only with the best in Hemingway.”—André Gide”Hammett is one of the best contemporary American writers.”—Gertrude Stein

    Instead, Rumpole settles for the beaded bubbles of Chateau Pommeroy's ordinary claret, and his role extraordinaire as Defender of the Faith: "Never Plead Guilty.""Mortimer has created one of the legendary fictional detectives . . . a barrister [who's] as much a detective as Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot." -- The Boston Sunday Globe"Wonderfully amusing . . . full of pithy writing . . . witty and opinionated." -- The Wall Street Journal

    These new adventures are the only ones to be specially authorised by Dame Jean Conan Doyle, celebrating the centennial of Holmes' first appearance in print.Greeted with unanimous acclaim, the traditionally crafted stories feature dazzling encounters with Holmes rising to new challenges and revealing new feats of brilliant, deductive logic ... culminating in a mental duel of frightening intensity with the master criminal Moriarty. And Watson - God bless him - has his share of the spotlight too.

    Presumed Innocent brings to life our worst nightmare: that of an ordinary citizen facing conviction for the most terrible of all crimes. It's the stunning portrayal of one man's all-too-human, all-consuming fatal attraction for a passionate woman who is not his wife, and the story of how his obsession puts everything he loves and values on trial—including his own life. It's a book that lays bare a shocking world of betrayal and murder, as well as the hidden depths of the human heart. And it will hold you and haunt you ... long after you have reached its shattering conclusion.

    Readers will discover anew the charms of the impulsive Mandie Shaw as she faces the ups and downs of first losing her father and then finding her long-lost family in Mandie and the Secret Tunnel. Many more mysteries follow for Mandie and her friends in Mandie and the Cherokee Legend, Mandie and the Ghost Bandits, Mandie and the Forbidden Attic, and Mandie and the Trunk's Secret.

    Nor did he expect his latest wife to be brutally murdered. All the clues suggest the killer comes from close to home - but after five marriages and nine children, that still leaves the field wide open. When he finds his own life in danger, Pembroke entrusts his safety to his estranged son, Ian, an amateur jockey; and through him discovers a compulsive new outlet for his financial expertise. Soon he's playing the international bloodstock market for incredible stakes. Not the safest bet for a man on the run from avaricious relatives. Particularly when one of them got a bomb...

    Reprint.

     Fifteen years ago, Rafferty saved Vivian Mollison from a crazed junkie who tried to blow her head off. A lot has changed since then. Rafferty’s no longer a cop, and Vivian’s now twenty-five, studying sociology at SMU, with a father who made a fortune in computers. So when Rafferty gets summoned to the Mollison estate and told to chase down the five outlaw bikers who kidnapped Vivian and put her into a drug-induced twilight zone, it’s mixed emotions. The payday will be big, but he’ll have to earn every penny of it. The bikers aren’t likely to come quietly and who knows how many people could get hurt in the crossfire. But behind all that fun and excitement, there’s still a girl who needs his help. Rafferty saved Vivian once. Can he do it again? If you’re a fan of Spenser, Mike Hammer or Matt Scudder, then this hardboiled pulp thriller, from Shamus Award Winner W. Glenn Duncan, will keep you reading late into the dark night. RAFFERTY'S RULES is a hardboiled P.I. mystery in the tradition of the best pulp thrillers. Rafferty’s a Dallas P.I. and an ex-cop who spent enough time on the streets to understand how things work. And when they don’t, Rafferty’s the guy you’ll want on your side. He may quote Latin occasionally, smoke too much and be a cynical sonofabitch, but when it all hits the fan and you need someone you can trust, you’ll be glad you called Rafferty. Originally published by Ballantine, this 30th Anniversary release of RAFFERTY'S RULES marks the first time that W. Glenn Duncan’s work has been available in digital format. We doubt that Rafferty would quietly accept the ongoing march of technology that provides this opportunity, but even a grizzled P.I. has to grow up sometime. This hardboiled PI series will continue with the first new Rafferty story in nearly three decades. FALSE GODS, written by W. Glenn Duncan Jr. (son of the original author) sees Rafferty looking for a missing girl, up to his ass in religious fundamentalists and needing all the help he can get from his old pals Cowboy and Mimi—and a few new ones—to make sure he gets out alive.

    Thirty Seven Short Stories Plus a Complete NovelIncludes The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

    novel... It's 1977 and veteran L.A.P.D. cop Calico Jack Walker and his rookie partner, Tina Tamiko, are planning to make Calico's last shift on the job something special - but plans, as they do, come apart because Walker and Tamiko are good cops no matter what the cost . . . even if they're L.A. cops, in uniform, in their patrol car, on duty, and way out of their jurisdiction on the Las Vegas Strip...When a major crime is going down, good cops never hesitate...

    When twelve-year-old Shannon is kidnapped by a psychopath, her new friend, Katie, finds her life in danger when she unknowingly becomes the kidnapper's only witness.

    A quiet and seemingly submissive wife, Ellen can't even write a check without him. All she wants is to get him and her son back—no questions asked. The search for Ellen's errant husband leads Elvis into the seamier side of Hollywood. He soon learns that Mort Lang is a down-on-his-luck talent agent who associates with a schlocky movie producer, and the last place he was spotted was at a party thrown by a famous and very well-connected ex-Matador. But no one has seen him since—including his B-movie girlfriend.At the same time the police find Mort in his parked car with four gunshots in his chest —and no kid in sight—Ellen disappears. Now nothing is what it seems, and the heat is on. It's up to Elvis Cole and his partner Joe Pike to find the connection between sleazy Hollywood players and an ex-Matador.

    Adventures of Sherlock HolmesMemoirs of Sherlock HolmesThe return of Sherlock HolmesThe hound of the BaskervillesA study in scarletThe sign of the fourThe adventure of Wisteria LodgeThe adventure of the Bruce-Partington plans.

    

    Four Lord peter mysteries: Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death, The Five Red Herrings, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

    She's an investigative reporter with more enemies than friends - and her friends are very shady.She's on the trail of a stunning story at Pleasure Island. And she doesn't mind using her pick pocket talents or a well-aimed champagne cork or even a pair of 38's (boobs not guns) to get her story.She's tenacious, sarcastic and an ex-con.Meet Roman Cantrell - ex-army ranger who couldn't stop fighting, he went off the grid doing Black Ops but came back to the US to start an international security firm.He keeps popping into Nikki's life at the most inconvenient times.And he knows too much about her past.He also knows she's not capable of good behavior.Is Roman looking for the person Nikki's ...kidnapped? Or is he looking for a more intimate connection. One thing for sure - They're both heading into murderously Dangerous Places

    Class 3 of Hampstead Primary School takes a school trip to Paris and lands right into the middle of a mystery.

    But when the spinster dies suddenly, her best friend kicks up an unseemly fuss, loud enough to attract the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby. And when Barnaby and his eager-beaver deputy start poking around, they uncover a swamp of ugly scandals and long-suppressed resentments seething below the picture-postcard prettiness.

    When Miss Mallard, the famous ducktective, is invited to Alaska to see the start of the famous dog sled race, her skills are challenged by the dognapping of a prize husky.

    Fascinating reading and an indispensable resource for Perry Mason fans. 80 black-and-white photographs.

    Then her best friend Jackie brings her handsome fianc?, Simon Doyle, to visit and asks Linnett to give him a job. Now Linnett and Simon are on their honeymoon, a cruise up the Nile. When Linnett is killed, Jackie is the obvious suspect, but she couldn't have done it. It seems like an insolvable crime, until the famous detective Hercule Poirot starts to investigate.Towards Zero (Superintendent Battle, Bk 5)A crime expert plays with the rules of murder mystery, only to write himself out of the story. Mr. Treves, a famous criminologist, loves murder mysteries -- except for the fact that they all begin with murder. But his desire to move the fatal moment to the end just might be the death of him.After The Funeral (Hercule Poirot, Bk 30) (aka: Funerals Are Fatal)When Cora is savagely murdered with a hatchet, the extraordinary remark she made the previous day at her brother Richard's funeral suddenly takes on a chilling significance. At the reading of Richard's will, Cora was clearly heard to say: "It's been hushed up very nicely, hasn't it? But he was murdered, wasn't he?" In desperation, the family solicitor turns to Hercule Poirot to unravel the mystery.

    Cadet Barstow would wake then, and the gray shape would be there, the llights of its eyes shining on them with infinite sadness. Barstow sthought he was going crazy. One morning, visited again by the dream and its spectral attendants, he disappeared.When faculty psychologists Sam Bondurant and Liam FitzDonnell are consulted in Barstow case, their job is to keep the episode quiet--at least until the Army-Navy game--and to find some reasonable explanation for whatever is really going on in that room. Sam and Liam are friends who rarely see eye to eye, but together they're fit for the task--Sam withhis rationalism and faith in sophisticated equipment, Liam with his own painful grasp of the demons to which the mind is vulnerable. Their investigation is wilolfully joined by Sam's scholarly and fanciful wife, Maggie, who gradually uncovers evidence of not one ghost but several, bound together in the warp of time to a fatal fire in 1830.What none of these protagonists realizes is the awesome power of the supernatural--the power to clutch at the living from the other side of death. Shades ofGray offers the reader many satisfactions: a colorful and amusing portrait of West Point and the people who spend their lives there, a resonant psychological theme, stylish and intelligent writing. But most of all, Timothy O'Neill's novel makes the power of the supernatural real...and terrifying.

    When Joe's girlfriend is killed in the blast of a terrorist bomb, Frank and Joe Hardy pursue a ruthless terrorist leader, the infamous Al-Rousasa, who has targeted a presidential candidate for assassination.

    

    First in a series featuring this lesbian private eye.

    diverting military funds to a secret place for an unknown reason. Someone who looks, talks and acts like everyone else. But there are those in high positions of trust and power who do not want the truth exposed--and are prepared to block the investigation, whatever the cost, because what is really happening is bigger and far more terrible than anyone has yet dared to imagine. (Audiobook)

    The Zoomers investigate the appearance of a ghostly car that has been haunting the Bumper Brothers' parking garage and ruining their business.

    Rose and Grace, sisters who live in early 1920s Manhattan with their wealthy father, seek romance, but must meet his strict standards for a suitor.