Bailey investigates the woman in an attempt to stop the extortion, and as the story unfolds, there are many twists and turns. Following The Double Take, Huggins turned his attention to creating memorable TV shows such as “Maverick,” “The Fugitive,” “City of Angels,” and “The Rockford Files.” Huggins passed away in 2002 at age 87.

    In this classic noir novel, a private eye from St. Louis, who likes his steak rare, his liquor hard, and his women fallen, arrives at the small town of Paulton to protect his wealthy client's daughter from a suspicious religious cult. Throughout the span of the case, he confronts Paulton's mob boss, avenges his partner's death, and falls for a classic femme fatale named Princess.

    Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.Featuring brand-new stories by: Tommy Moore, Jessica Breheny, Naomi Hirahara, Calvin McMillin, Liza Monroy, Elizabeth McKenzie, Jill Wolfson, Ariel Gore, Jon Bailiff, Maceo Montoya, Micah Perks, Seana Graham, Vinnie Hansen, Peggy Townsend, Margaret Elysia Garcia, Lou Mathews, Lee Quarnstrom, Dillon Kaiser, Beth Lisick, and Wallace Baine.From the introduction by Susie Bright:Every town has its noir-ville. It’s easy to find in Santa Cruz. We live in what’s called “paradise,” where you can wake up in a pool of blood with the first pink rays of the sunrise peeking out over our mountain range. The dewy mist lifts from the bay. Don’t hate us because we’re beautiful—we were made that way, like Venus rising off the foam with a brick in her hand. We can’t help it if you fall for it every time . . .“If I lived in a place like this,” visitors often say, “I’d wake up with a smile every day.”Oh, we do, thank you for that. There’s no beauty like a merciless beauty—and like every crepuscular predator, it thrives at dawn and dusk. You’re just the innocent we’ve been waiting for, with your big paper cone of sugar-shark cotton, whipped out of pure nothing. We have just the ride for you, the longest tunnel ever. Santa Cruz is everything you ever dreamed, and everything you ever screamed, in one long drop you’ll never forget.

    When Ray Kelly woke up in the hospital, it was a month later, he was missing an eye, and his father was dead. Then things started to get bad.From the mind of the incomparable Donald E. Westlake - Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster and Academy Award nominee for the screenplay of The Grifters - comes a devastating story of betrayal and revenge, an exploration of the limits of family loyalty and how far a man will go when everything he loves is taken from him.

    I Should Have Stayed Home tells the story of two jobless roommates and movie extras. After Mona gains notoriety for cursing a judge during a friend?s trial, she and Ralph are introduces to Hollywood society. Ralph battles with his own corruption and loss of principle, while Mona serves as his conscience, warning him against himself and the temptations of success.

    Michael Tree sees a conspiracy. For Ms. Tree digging into it could mean digging her own grave - and digging up her own murdered husband's.

    Growing up in the Atlantic City mob has left its mark on Anthony Russo. He wants to go legit, but sometimes the lawful world can prove to be just as dirty. And someone elses murder may be the only way to prevent his own.

    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.

    Betrayed by the woman he loved and double-crossed by his partner in crime, Parker makes his way cross-country with only one thought burning in his mind - to coldly exact his revenge and reclaim what was taken from him! Richard (Donald Westlake) Stark's groundbreaking Parker books are adapted for the first time as a series of graphic novels by Darwyn Cooke. The initial graphic novel brings to life the first Parker book, The Hunter, which introduces readers to the dangerous anti-hero's cold and calculated world of criminals, thugs, and grifters.

    While Chicago cabbie Eddie Miles drives the city streets at midnight, two killers--one targeting prostitutes, the other cab drivers--are out plying their trade.

    But then the killer cat escapes into the heart of a large South American city and soon a woman is found torn to death. As the police search for the deadly jaguar, one man looks deeper--for a creature more terrible than any jungle beast...

    Set amid a seedy urban wasteland of crooks, killers and con-artists, the various members of the gang are steadily undone by personal obsessions, double-crossing and cruel fate.First published in 1949, W.R. Burnett's hardboiled classic was made into the definitive heist movie by John Huston in 1950, starring Sterling Hayden, Sam Jaffe and Marilyn Monroe. Its screenplay, co-written by Huston was nominated for an Oscar.A master and pioneer of the gangster genre, W.R. Burnett is the author of over thirty novels - including Little Caesar and High Sierra - and sixty screenplays. He was twice nominated for Academy Awards.

    But what he found wasn’t solitude and peace—it was temptation. Because Maggie Barlow, the wife of the man putting him up, had something irresistible about her. Something that could drive a man to kill...

    Frank Bill delivers what is both a wake-up call and a gut punch. Welcome to heartland America circa right about now, when the union jobs and family farms that kept the white on the picket fences have given way to meth labs, backwoods gunrunners, and bare-knuckle brawling.Bill's people are pressed to the brink--and beyond. There is Scoot McCutchen, whose beloved wife falls terminally ill, leaving him with nothing to live for--which doesn't quite explain why he brutally murders her and her doctor and flees, or why, after years of running, he decides to turn himself in. In the title story, a man who has devolved from breeding hounds for hunting to training them for dog-fighting crosses paths with a Salvadoran gangbanger tasked with taking over the rural drug trade, but who mostly wants to grow old in peace. As Crimes in Sourthern Indiana unfolds, we witness the unspeakable, yet are compelled to find sympathy for the depraved.Bill's southern Indiana is haunted with the deep, authentic sense of place that recalls the best of Southern fiction, but the interconnected stories bristle with the urban energy of a Chuck Palahniuk or a latter-day Nelson Algren and rush with the slam-bang plotting of pulp-noir crime writing a la Jim Thompson. Bill's prose is gritty yet literary, shocking, and impossible to put down. A dark evocation of the survivalist spirit of the working class, this is a brilliant debut by an important new voice.

    Betrayed by his employer and left for dead, Kovac decides to lie low in Tokyo.His plan? Revenge...But when a young woman asks him to protect her from the yakuza, Kovac feels duty-bound to help. She’s a victim of abuse, and long experience tells him if he doesn’t step in tonight she’ll be a corpse before dawn.As Kovac works to uncover the truth of his last job, he finds himself drawn into a conspiracy which goes well beyond the yakuza to a new and terrifying multinational cartel. One that will stop at nothing to control the global drug trade.The kingpins are certain they’ve covered all bases. They're well-funded and utterly ruthless. But they’ve failed to account for one man – John Kovac.SHADOW KILL is the first in a fast-paced, unflinching thriller series that won't in any way shortchange you on action. Perfect for fans of Lee Child, Mark Greaney and Mark Dawson.