In "Why I Shacked Up With Martha" a distracted DC executive pierces the gray blur of his glass box on Dupont Circle with illicit, painfully superficial notes passed to his beautiful, liberated coworker. In "Marguerite Howe," a businessman from Texas at a cocktail party in New Haven accosts his hostess, blindly convinced that she is the woman of his college day-dreams at the University of Virginia. And, in Nebraska, a defeated legal aid attorney escapes the cold wind of failure and a near suicidal woman in the deep warmth of "Fiona's Rooms."Other characters, still within the radius of central Illinois, tread through the familiar scenery of the past, measuring with landmarks of memory the distance, and yet the circularity, time has wrought in their lives. In the title story, Martin Wolf--overcome with tears during the morning commute and craving connection and the cleansing rituals of his Catholic youth--learns from the words of a parish priest, crackling through the lines of a pay phone as cars screech by on Roosevelt Road, that silence has become self-indulgent. And in "Infield," Carl Landen savors the well-ordered tableau of the Pony League diamond where he played shortstop and where his son now plays that position. Recalling the ache in the shoulder after an overhand throw, seeing in his mind the figure of his father intruding at the edge of the field, he relaxes the pain of generations, the soreness that comes from knowing a town too well.A well-known theme of Philip Deaver's stories is "what happened to men after what happened to women." The stories in Silent Retreats trace the tentative journeys of men as they redefine who they are in a changed world while still coping with memory and desire in the old ways. Above all, these stories chronicle a search for absolution--for the elusive freedom lurking among the very syllables of the word.

    Then released as "Tony Rome"(1967) by the author based on the film script. It seemed a routine little job.... Just return a high-flying heiress to her worried papa. But some of a man's worst messes start out as routine little jobs. This one really hits the pedal, with a body on the floor of Tony's office, the head smashed by a bullet. The bait to catch the filler: a daisy-shaped, gold-and-diamond pin that couldn't bring enough to be worth anybody's trouble. Or worth murdering for...Author's full name: Marvin H. Albert

    He lived a life of such deep despair and terror that he could do nothing with its experiences but put them between the covers of some of the century's finest novels of suspense. Born the child of a broken marriage in 1903, Woolrich spent his childhood in revolutionary Mexico, coming to New York in his teens. While still a student at Columbia, he sold the first of several mainstream novels, which led critics to compare him with F. Scott Fitzgerald. During the 1930s and '40s, when he was acclaimed as the preeminent author of American suspense fiction, Woolrich lived with his mother in an apartment-hotel near Harlem. After her death in 1957, Woolrich became a self-imposed prisoner in a series of lonely hotel rooms until his death in 1968. Few attended his funeral, and his million-dollar fortune was left to Columbia University to establish a scholarship fund. Though he perceived himself as a failure, Woolrich's work was a critical and financial success. His novels, such as 'The Bride Wore Black,' 'Phantom Lady,' and 'Deadline at Dawn,' inspired the French roman noir and film noir. His novella 'Rear Window' became one of Alfred Hitchcock's most acclaimed films. In this authoritative study, Edgar Award-winner Francis M. Nevins, Jr., explores the doom-haunted life and world of America's master of suspense.

    Alter, Michael Avallone, Timothy Banse, Jon Breen, W.R. Cox, John Coyne, Wayne Dundee, Loren Estleman, Fletcher Flora, Brian Garfield, W.C. Gault, Barry Gifford, Joe Hensley, John Lutz, Steve Mertz, Arthur Moore, Bill Pronzini, Ray Puechner, Robert Randisi, Daniel Ransom, Harry Whittington, Will Wyckoff.