A ruthless old acquaintance. Will C.T. Ferguson's first case be his last? Three weeks in a brutal prison—that was hacker C.T. Ferguson's punishment for helping Americans and dissidents evade the Chinese government. Deported home, C.T. uses his digital skills as a private investigator.Suspecting her husband is cheating on her, Alice hires C.T. to investigate. He soon learns that Alice has her own problems, namely a ruthless adversary squeezing her for money. Even the suspicious death of her husband can't buy Alice a break.C.T. stays on the case because he hates seeing innocent people pushed around. His persistence lands him on the ruthless adversary's hit list. If C.T. can't figure out what happened, both he and Alice will face deadly consequences.

    Trying not to miss his girlfriend (away studying in Mexico), the nameless writer steadily crafts his literary effort--until strange things begin happening around him.Starting with a series of peculiar phone calls, the writer then finds clumps of seaweed on his doorstep. But as the incidents escalate, his friends fall victim to a series of mysterious "accidents"--some of them fatal. Aided by Elmo Crumley, a savvy, street-smart detective, and a reclusive actress of yesteryear with an intense hunger for life, the wordsmith sets out to find the connection between the bizarre events, and in doing so, uncovers the truth about his own creative abilities.

    Our narrator must piece together the history of his blighted existence and discover the agents of its cruel end. What he doesn’t expect is that digging for the truth will demand plenty of lying.

    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.

    Watson are on their first trip across the Atlantic—to nineteenth-century America! From the bustling neighborhoods of New York City and Boston to sinister locales like Salt Lake City and fog-shrouded cities like San Francisco, the beloved British sleuth faces the most cunning criminals America has to offer, while meeting some of her most famous figures along the way, such as Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Houdini.A groundbreaking anthology, Sherlock Holmes in America features original short stories by award-winning American writers, each in the extraordinary tradition of Conan Doyle, and each with a unique American twist that is sure to satisfy and exhilarate both Sherlock Holmes purists and those who wished Holmes could nab the nefarious closer to home. There is:“The Adventure of the Missing Three Quarters” by Jon L. Breen“The Adventure of the Coughing Dentist” by Loren D. Estleman“The Case of Colonial Warburton’s Madness” by Lyndsay Faye“The Minister’s Missing Daughter” by Victoria Thompson“The Adventure of the White City” by Bill CriderAnd more!This is a must-read for any mystery fan and for those who have followed Holmes' illustrious career over the waterfall and back again.

    If you like all your characters living at the end of a story, this may not be the book for you." -- from the introduction by Scott TurowBest-selling author Scott Turow takes the helm for the tenth edition of this annual, featuring twenty-one of the past year's most distinguished tales of mystery, crime, and suspense.Elmore Leonard tells the tale of a young woman who's fled home with a convicted bank robber. Walter Mosley describes an over-the-hill private detective and his new client, a woman named Karma. C. J. Box explores the fate of two Czech immigrants stranded by the side of the road in Yellowstone Park. Ed McBain begins his story on role-playing with the line "'Why don't we kill somebody?' she suggested." Wendy Hornsby tells of a wild motorcycle chase through the canyons outside Las Vegas. Laura Lippman describes the "Crack Cocaine Diet." And James Lee Burke writes of a young boy who may have been a close friend of Bugsy Siegel.As Scott Turow notes in his introduction, these stories are "about crime -- its commission, its aftermath, its anxieties, its effect on character." The Best American Mystery Stories 2006 is a powerful collection for all readers who enjoy fiction that deals with the extremes of human passion and its dark consequences.

    The hardscrabble streets of Oakland offer crime aplenty...Thompson and Muller have taken such pains to choose stories highlighting Oakland's diversity and history that the result is a volume rich in local culture as well as crime."-- Kirkus Reviews "The legendarily tough California city of Oakland finally gets an entry in the Akashic noir series."-- Publishers Weekly Brand-new stories by: Nick Petrulakis, Kim Addonizio, Keenan Norris, Keri Miki-Lani Schroeder, Katie Gilmartin, Dorothy Lazard, Harry Louis Williams II, Carolyn Alexander, Phil Canalin, Judy Juanita, Jamie DeWolf, Nayomi Munaweera, Mahmud Rahman, Tom McElravey, Joe Loya, and Eddie Muller.In the wake of San Francisco Noir, Los Angeles Noir, and Orange County Noir—all popular volumes in the Akashic Noir Series—comes the latest California installment, Oakland Noir. Masterfully curated by Jerry Thompson and Eddie Muller (the "Czar of Noir"), this volume will shock, titillate, provoke, and entertain. The diverse cast of talented contributors will not disappoint.From the introduction:Jerry Thompson: Discovering the wang-dang-doodle jams of the Pointer Sisters shifted my entire focus. Stunning black women were scatting and bebopping all the way into my soul. I think what we’ve put together in Oakland Noir is a volume where this city is a character in every story. He’s a slick brother strutting over a bacon-grease bass line and tambourine duet. She’s a white chick with a bucket of hot muffins heading to farmer and flea markets, to sell crafts and get hooked up with some fine kat with dreadlocks and a criminal record. And it’s in the faces of young fearless muthafuckers pounding keyboards and snapping fingers, lips, Snapchats, and Facebook timelines. It’s the core of not only Black Lives Matter but all lives matter. We are the children of fantasy and of the funk . . .Eddie Muller: These days, writers and readers aren’t denying the darker parts of our existence as much as they used to, especially in crime fiction. Some writers just do it for fun, because it’s become the fashionable way to get published. You know, “gritty violence” and all that bullshit. The genuine darkness in noir stories comes from two places—the cruelty of the world’s innate indifference, and the cruelty that people foster within themselves. If you’re not seriously dealing with one, the other, or both, then you’re not really writing noir.

    The story is a dark comedy about a suicidal young man named John Campbell who, after a failed suicide attempt, heads to Virginia to visit an aunt he hasn’t seen in ten years. But his rental car runs out of gas deep in the mountains. When he decides to walk in the middle of the night, he winds up in a town that is isolated from the rest of the world—Strangeville. Unable to leave, he meets an assortment of loveable oddball characters—the beautiful Delilah, Klemm Johnson, Clarissa Puddworthy, Biff Flannigan, Jeboriah Varmint, Cleetus McChoparooski, and others.

    The local investigation stalls, so the case is referred to Captain Benny Griessel and his colorful partner Vaughn Cupido of the Hawks--the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations. The woman proves to be Alicia Lewis, an expert in old Dutch Masters paintings specializing in the recovery of valuable lost art. Discovering the two men she had contacted before coming to South Africa reveals what she was seeking--a rare painting by Carel Fabritius, Rembrandt's finest student, not seen since it disappeared from Delft in 1654. But how Lewis died, why, and at whose hand shocks even the two veteran detectives. The Woman in the Blue Cloak is a compact jewel of a thriller, filled with Deon Meyer's earthy dialogue, clever plotting, and the memorable characters that have peopled all of Deon Meyer's award-winning novels.

    In these eight stories, the master burglar indulges his passion for cricket and crime: stealing jewels from a country house, outwitting the law, pilfering from the nouveau riche, and, of course, bowling like a demon-all with the assistance of his plucky sidekick, Bunny. Encouraged by his brother-in-law, Arthur Conan Doyle, to write a series about a public school villain, and influenced by his own experiences at Uppingham, E. W. Hornung created a unique form of crime story, where, in stealing as in sport, it is playing the game that counts, and there is always honor among thieves.

    This is Koontz's spellbinding collection of takes interconnected by the strange highways of human experience: adventures, terrors, failures and triumphs.

    Stahl, himself a recovering addict with long-term sobriety, has assembled an impressive array of writers to create this 'encyclopedia of bad behavior.' Indeed, these tales of chasing the dragon, with corollaries often violent and savage, will satisfy devotees of noir fiction and outsider art alike."-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)“Editor Stahl (Permanent Midnight) has put forth a gritty, naked collection of short stories on the bleak life of heroin addicts. These tales by such edgy literary writers as Gary Phillips, Lydia Lunch, and Nathan Larson give different voices . . . that keep the stories fresh and above comparison.”-- Library Journal “Like its two predecessors, devoted to cocaine and speed, The Heroin Chronicles confirms how drugs are . . . the basis of some of the most unforgettable fiction you’ll ever read.”-- Bookgasm "For all the bleakness, suffering, and crime seeping from the pores of this anthology, Stahl welds together a creative whole from disparate voices. Because illegal drugs, especially heroin, are so damaging, it is refreshing to read an anthology focusing on drugs that neither moralizes or condescends to the reader. These stories reflect upon the human damage, one individual at a time."-- CCLaP: Chicago Center for Literature and Photography "The Heroin Chronicles conveys the sentiment that a life of heroin addiction is a human comedy, but it will usually end in dark or, even worse, banal tragedy."-- MysteryPeople "The Heroin Chronicles, the third entry in the [Akashic Drug Chronicles] series, is the finest so far -- a collection of short fiction that puts this series on the same must-read category as the Noir Series…The Heroin Chronicles is full of stories about suffering, survival, overdoses, hepatitis C, poverty, self-loathing, humiliation, danger, death, degradation, guns, and self-destruction. They’re all told with unflinching sincerity by authors who have either been there or extremely close to it. If you’re familiar with the Drug Chronicles, you know saying this is the best one yet is saying a lot. If you’re not familiar with the series, this is the definitely the book to start with."-- Verbicide Magazine Inspired by the ongoing international success of the city-based Akashic Noir Series (Brooklyn Noir, Boston Noir, Paris Noir, etc.), last year Akashic created the new Drug Chronicles series. On the heels of The Speed Chronicles (Sherman Alexie, William T. Vollmann, Megan Abbott, James Franco, Beth Lisick, etc.) and The Cocaine Chronicles (Lee Child, Laura Lippman, etc.) comes The Heroin Chronicles, a volume sure to frighten and delight. The literary styles are varied, as are the moral quandaries herein.Heroin has long been understood as the most "literary" of narcotics, and this collection will, for better and worse, have tremendous pop cultural appeal.Featuring brand-new stories by: Eric Bogosian, Lydia Lunch, Jerry Stahl, Nathan Larson, Ava Stander, Antonia Crane, Gary Phillips, Jervey Tervalon, John Albert, Michael Albo, Sophia Langdon, Tony O'Neill, and L.Z. Hansen.Jerry Stahl is the author of six books, including the memoir Permanent Midnight (made into a movie with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson) and the novels I, Fatty and Pain Killers. Formerly the culture columnist for Details, Stahl's fiction and journalism have appeared in Esquire, The New York Times, and The Believer, among other places. He has worked extensively in film and television and, most recently, wrote Hemingway & Gellhorn, starring Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman, for HBO.

    The brief was deceptively simple - each story must be set in Edinburgh and feature a crime. The results range from hard-boiled police procedural to historical whodunit and from the wildly comic to the spookily supernatural.

    Eight year old John watches his beloved West Ham win the cup, whilst at the same time, Kenny tumbles out the front door of the house opposite, blood all over his face.Fourteen years later, both boys' childhoods ripped apart in the broken streets of London's East End, John and Kenny find themselves frontin up local gangster, Ronnie Swordfish.John's got a lifetime of hurt to put right - for him and for Kenny.But with John layin on the ground half unconscious and Ronnie with a sword to Kenny's head, whatever way you look at it, it don't look good . . .ABIDE WITH ME is the story of two boys forced to walk blind into the darkness of their shattered lives . . .. . . and their struggle to emerge as men.

    Williams (The Wire) and James Purefoy (Altered Carbon).Hap Collins looks like a good ’ol boy, but his lefty politics don’t match. His buddy, Vietnam veteran Leonard Pine, is even more complicated: black, conservative, gay . . . and an occasional arsonist. With Hap and Leonard on the job, small-time crooks all on the way on up to the Dixie Mafia are extremely nervous.Everyone's favorite ass-kicking Texan duo are further immortalized in this expanded collection of tall tales, slick nonfiction, and four full-length novellas.Foreword for The Big Book of Hap and LeonardJoe R. Lansdale can be a pain in the ass. That’s why this book exists.Hap and Leonard collected all of the not-so-dynamic duo’s previously published shorter adventures (circa 2016) plus the original story “Not Our Kind,” basically everything that’s not a novel, in one handsome volume. This being the 21st century and all, an ebook edition was required. And therein lies the problem.Seems Joe had promised the digital rights to the novellas “Hyenas,” “Dead Aim,” and the short story “The Boy Who Became Invisible” to another publisher than Tachyon. So we could wait until 2018 for the ebook, when the rights reverted, or figure out something else. We opted for the latter.The ebook Hap and Leonard Ride Again contained all of the material present in Hap and Leonard except for the trio of stories mentioned above. Since the remaining material scarcely made for a book, we added the original short story “The Oak and the Pond,” the Marvin Hanson novella “A Bone Dead Sadness,” Joe’s comic script adaptation of “The Boy Who Became Invisible,” my interview with Joe, and an original remembrance about the creation of Hap and Leonard by Bill Crider, who sadly died while we were putting together The Big Book of Hap and Leonard.When Joe offered us the rights to “Hyenas,” “Dead Aim,” and “The Boy Who Became Invisible,” we decided it was best to combine the two editions into this one super—dare I say big—book you hold in your virtual hands.Sometimes a pain in the ass leads to gold. Not sure if this qualifies as such but if not, it’s damn close.Rick Klaw, editorAustin, TexasFebruary 23, 2018Table of ContentsForeword for The Big Book of Hap and Leonard by Rick KlawAn Appreciation of Joe R. Lansdale by Michael KorytaJoe R. Lansdale, Hap and Leonard, and Me by Bill CriderHyenasVeil’s Visit (co-written by Andrew Vachss)Death by ChiliDead AimA Bone Dead SadnessThe Boy Who Became Invisible (story)The Boy Who Became Invisible (comic book script)Not Our Kind (original e-book publication)The Oak and the Pond (original e-book publication)Bent TwigJoe R. Lansdale Interviews Hap Collins and Leonard PineInterview with Joe R. LansdaleThe Care and Feeding and Raising Up of Hap and Leonard