He’s a drunken ex-cop who lives in his shabby office, hangs out at strip clubs, and has only one real friend—Frank Sinatra. But he’s one of the best private investigators in St. Louis. So when an inept crew robs a credit union, only Valentine can figure out who made off with the millions.Sometimes solving a crime takes a hard guy who’s not afraid to work outside the law, and Valentine scrambles through the underbelly of St. Louis looking for answers. With every law he breaks, every drink he takes, and every Oxycontin he snorts, Valentine lurches closer to finding the truth. Or floating facedown in the Missouri River.Brutally funny, wild, this no-holds-barred crime novel reads like Elmore Leonard on meth. Crazy and addictive, you’ll want more.

    [It] will satisfy those with a hankering for a taste of the dark side."-- Publishers Weekly "A book full of cries in the dark, heavy drinking in the thin gray light of winter, and other dark poses. In other words, the stories sneak in the back screen door of those summer cottages after Labor Day, after all the tourists have gone home and Cape Codders of the authors' imagination drop their masks and their guards. It's a fun read, a little like tracing the shoreline of a not-quite-familiar coast."-- Boston Globe "David L. Ulin has put together a malicious collection of short stories that will stay with you long after you return home safe."-- The Cult: The Official Chuck Palahniuk Website Includes brand-new stories by Paul Tremblay, Seth Greenland, Ben Greenman, Fred G. Leebron, David L. Ulin, Dana Cameron, Kaylie Jones, and others.Los Angeles Times book critic David L. Ulin has been vacationing in Cape Cod every summer since he was a boy. He knows the terrain inside and out; enough to identify the squalid underbelly of this allegedly idyllic location. His editing prowess is a perfect match for this fine volume.David L. Ulin is book critic of the Los Angeles Times. From 2005 to 2010, he was the paper's book editor. He is the author of The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, and is the editor of Another City: Writing from Los Angeles and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a 2002 California Book Award. He has written for the Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.

    1353. Struggling to save his patients from the plague, and avoiding the even greater danger of his wife's temper, Isaac discovers that pestilence isn't the city's only killer. A nun dies in the public baths. Then it is revealed that she is not a nun at all, but an attendant to the queen in nun's disguise. The Bishop of Girona calls upon Isaac to help determine the strange circumstance of her death--and the purpose of her deception. But Isaac soon finds himself and his family caught in a tightening web of royal intrigue designed to destroy the Spanish monarchy--and whoever else gets in the way... * First in an all new medieval mystery series * Fans of The Name of the Rose will love it * Fantastic advance praise from acclaimed authors Bruce Alexander and Candace Robb

    Suzette, the crepe maker, sells her delicacies in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. As she goes from place to place, readers are treated to a variety of Parisian scenes and a series of customers inspired by figures in famous French paintings. Wellington's mixed-media collages, combining photographs with her signature bright and simple shapes, are dazzling. A crepe recipe is included. As delicious as Suzette's crepes, this book will captivate children--and their parents--who will want to make the trip to Paris themselves.

    Using the structure of a traditional kaiseki meal, the authors Debbi Michiko Florence and Jamie Michalak detail Niki's hunger for success in thirteen bites -- from wonton wrappers she used to make pizza as a kid to yuzu-tomatillo sauce in her own upscale Los Angeles Michelin-starred restaurant, n/naka.To anyone who tells her a woman can't be a master chef, Niki lets her food do the talking. And oh, does it talk.

    In HAMMERTOWN, poet Peter Culley re-imagines his home town of Nanaimo, British Columbia, not as it is, but as it might be imagined in the mind of a Parisian who had rarely left his city. This is Culley's fifth book of poetry.