Upon the razor-thin edge between love and violence lives a pair of brothers, their bonds frayed by betrayals and guilt, their loyalty to each other their last salvation.Raised to pick a pocket before he could walk, Terry Rand cut free from his family after his older brother, Collie, went on a senseless killing spree that left eight dead. Five years later, only days before his scheduled execution, Collie contacts Terry and asks him to return home. Collie claims he wasn’t responsible for one of the murders—and insists that the real killer is still on the loose.Dogged by his own demons, Terry is swept back into the schemes and scams of his family: His father, Pinsch, a retired cat burglar, brokenhearted because of his two sons. His card-sharp uncles, Mal and Grey, who’ve incurred the anger of the local mob. His grandfather, Shep, whose mind is failing but whose fingers can still slip out a wallet  from across the room. His teenage sister, Dale, who’s flirting dangerously with the lure of the family business. And Kimmie, the woman Terry abandoned, who’s now raising a child with Terry’s former best friend.  Terry pieces together the day his brother turned rabid, delving into a blood history that reveals the Rand family tree is rotten to the roots, and the secrets his ancestors buried are now coming furious and vengeful to the surface.A meditation on how love can confine a person just as easily as it can free him, juxtaposing shocking violence and sly humor, The Last Kind Words is the brilliantly inventive family saga that only a singular talent like Tom Piccirilli could conjure.

    She has no other family which she is aware of, and in order to survive she leaves her home and lives on the streets. She meets interesting characters and gets into amusing predicaments all in the name of survival, such as jumping trains, being chased through the woods by a crazy man with a loaded shotgun and witnessing an unspeakable crime. After a few months on the streets she runs into another group of kids, Einstein is the oldest and a leader in the group, and they form a family of sorts. For survival and money they lean towards a life a crime which inevitably breaks up their family and sends Cleo and Einstein spiraling into their own adventure. Eventually they settle into a “normal” life however their pasts can’t be hushed forever …

    And then one night there came a knock at the door of a quiet lodging house in the Marylebone Road. . . . This novel, based on the Jack the Ripper murders, was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock.

    In her hunt for evidence, Sue begins to mistrust everyone close to her daughter and she’s forced to look further, into the depths of her own past.There is a lot that Sue doesn’t know about Charlotte’s life. But then there’s a lot that Charlotte doesn’t know about Sue’s …

    Hoyle is about to learn that his photographs were not without consequences, and whether he survives the night will depend on what exactly he witnessed through his camera's unflinching eye. This short story was first published in Robert Randisi's "Greatest Hits" anthology in November, 2005. It subsequently appeared in "Best British Mysteries" and was short-listed for the CWA Short Story Dagger.

    Brown wants is a nice cup of tea and a peaceful evening with his cat on his knee. He’s too old for love and adventure. Or so he thinks. This morning when Harold Brown woke up, it seemed like a normal day. Why would a 50-year old man feel anything about a circus coming to the quiet town of Limberlost? But BonBon Circus has brought a Bengal tiger, and Harold’s never seen a tiger before. When he decides to disrupt his routine to visit the circus, it sets in motion a few other changes, all leading up to one thrilling day. Will Mr. Brown’s life ever be the same again?

    Only two little girls know where he is but they’re too scared to tell. Time is running out for the policeman. Will the girls get help before it’s too late? Piggy Monk Square is a dark yet frequently very funny novel set in 1970's Liverpool. The action takes place in the volatile period before the Toxteth riots burned much of the inner city down. A BRITISH THRILLER This unusual yet very readable British thriller describes a world tainted with deep mistrust and hostility between the local people and the police force. This harsh world is viewed through the eyes of a nine-year-old girl, Rebecca. Rebecca’s world is changing. Her parents are fighting. Her teachers are cruel. She doesn’t know what to do and turns to her best friend Debbie more and more. But Debbie’s life is just as tough. With a father who is always dodging the police, and a mother who works her to the bone, Debbie is no Cinderella. The world these girls inhabit is no fairy tale, it is confusing and can be brutally violent. A TERRIFYING SECRET No wonder the girls mix reality with fantasy - it’s how they survive, especially when it comes to coping with what will soon become their terrifying secret. A secret that will infuse their childhood with fear and change their lives forever. The nightmare begins when Rebecca and Debbie are playing in the cellar of a derelict house. A policeman catches them there and warns them not to return to this dangerous old building. But they are both determined little girls with nowhere else to play, so they come back, again and again. Unfortunately for them so does the policeman. The policeman tries to chase the girls away, but he falls down a ladder and goes ‘asleep.’ The girls try to wake him but can’t. They want to get help but at the same time they know they shouldn’t have been playing in that cellar. They have learned not to trust the police and are so afraid of getting into trouble that they leave the injured policeman alone. NOWHERE TO TURN Wishful thinking makes the girls hope that he will get up and go of his own accord and that everything will be okay again. But when they return and find him still there, conscious but unable to move they find another way to help him. A way that doesn’t involve adults. But, their interpretation of ‘helping’ the dying policeman has terrible consequences for them all.

    To solve the murder, she must investigate the nearby Amish community with the help of a man who was shunned years ago. Lamb to the Slaughter is a story about the intertwining lives of three unlikely people in an Indiana Amish Community and the devastating results when a rebellious teenage girl is found shot to death in a corn field during the harvest. Serenity Adams is the newly elected young sheriff in the country town of Blood Rock and besides dealing with the threatening behavior of her predecessor, she now has a dead Amish girl on her plate. At first glance, the case seems obvious. The poor girl was probably accidentally shot during hunting season, but when the elders of the Amish community and even the girl’s parents react with uncaring subdued behavior, Serenity becomes suspicious. As she delves deeper into the secretive community that she grew up beside, she discovers a gruesome crime from the past that may very well be related to the Amish girl’s shooting. Serenity enlists the help of the handsome bad-boy building contractor, Daniel Bachman, who left the Amish when he was nineteen and has his own dark reasons to help the spunky sheriff solve the crime that the family and friends who shunned him are trying desperately to cover up. Serenity’s persistence leads her to a stunning discovery that not only threatens to destroy her blossoming romance with Daniel, but may even take her life in the end.

    SECRETS AND LIES Eighteen months after being wrongly accused of her murder, Dan Searle returns to rebuild his life and forget. A MYSTERIOUS PAST But others won't let him forget. He is quickly drawn back into the case and a dark and violent mystery; one that involved another girl years before. OPEN YOUR EYES As the lies begin to unravel, Dan uncovers startling truths about the farm and its past. With dangerous people trying to keep their secrets safe, he must save those he loves - before time runs out…

    Luke had been dead for just three days.Rose Wilks' life is shattered when her newborn baby Joel is admitted to intensive care. Emma Hatcher has all that Rose lacks. Beauty. A loving husband. A healthy son. Until tragedy strikes and Rose is the only suspect.Now, having spent nearly five years in prison in Ipswich, Rose is just weeks away from freedom. Her probation officer Cate must decide whether Rose is remorseful for her crime, or whether she remains a threat to society. As Cate is drawn in, she begins to doubt her own judgement.Where is the line between love and obsession, can justice be served and, if so... by what means?

    Set in the world of Brooklyn gangsters and juvenile delinquents, Portrait of a Young Man Drowning reveals a character caught in a whirlpool of street crime and Oedipal passion, driven by circumstances beyond his control into acts of self-destruction and twisted sexuality.

    Hotshot twenty-something Talba Wallis knew exactly how to answer it. And thus was born the dynamic duo of New Orleans private detectives, one cynical, sixty-five-year-old Luddite white dude with street smarts, and one young, bright-eyed, Twenty-First century African-American female poet, performance artist, mistress of disguise, and computer jock extraordinaire. Think Queen Latifah and Danny DeVito.In Louisiana Hotshot, their job is to hunt down a sociopath and pedophile who’s molested the fourteen-year-old daughter of their client, hangs out on the ragged edges of the rap and recording industries, and has more powerful allies than a Cabinet member.But both detectives have unfinished business from the past—in Eddie’s case, something he deeply regrets; in Talba’s, a personal mystery, one so frightening no one will help her investigate. But she knows she won’t sleep till she solves it—and the truth will change her forever.

    But he’s about to embark on a story that will change his life forever.In the Punjab region, Dr Simone Jasnin listens to an abused woman’s harrowing story just before she dies. Afra’s tale of sadistic cruelty is an all too common one in the region, but Dr Jasnin is determined not to let Afra’s story die with her—and she goes to Buchanan for help exposing the injustice.Seven years later, members of a prominent Pakistani family are being brutally murdered, one by one. The only clues are the hand-carved wooden bangles left at the scene of each crime. As the list of suspects grows and authorities come up short, Buchanan realizes the solution to the deadly riddle might be closer to home than he ever thought possible. It’s a story that could make his name… but at what cost?Owen Mullen is a best-selling author of psychological and gangland thrillers. His fast-paced, twist-aplenty stories are perfect for all fans of Lee Child, Ian Rankin and Harlan Coben.

    An illicit love affair with the potential to wreck lives. In his grandly inventive last novel, John Gregory Dunne orchestrated these elements into a symphony of American violence, chicanery, and sadness.In the aftermath of Edgar Parlance’s killing, the small prairie town of Regent becomes a destination for everyone from a sociopathic teenaged supermodel to an enigmatic attorney with secret familial links to the worlds of Hollywood and organized crime. Out of their manifold convergences, their jockeying for power, publicity or love, Nothing Lost creates a drama of magnificent scope and acidity.

    The seven stories of In the Penny Arcade blend both the real and the fantastic in a seductive mix that illuminates the full range of Steven Millhauser's gifts, from 'August Eschenburg', the story of a clockmaker's son whose extraordinary talent for creating animated figures is lost on a world whose taste for the perverse and crude supersedes that of the refined and beautiful, to 'Cathay', a kingdom whose wonders include landscape paintings executed on the bodies of court ladies.