One Grave Too Many


Beverly Connor - 2004
    Now, she ratchets up the suspense with a brand new series featuring one of today's most cunning and complex sleuths: forensic anthropologist Diane Fallon. Her new job as director of the RiverTrail Museum of Natural History in Georgia takes Diane out of the game-until a former love and a murdered family bring her back in.

The Big Clock


Kenneth Fearing - 1946
    in the heyday of Henry Luce. One day, before heading home to his wife in the suburbs, Stroud has a drink with Pauline, the beautiful girlfriend of his boss, Earl Janoth. Things happen. The next day Stroud escorts Pauline home, leaving her off at the corner just as Janoth returns from a trip. The day after that, Pauline is found murdered in her apartment.Janoth knows there was one witness to his entry into Pauline’s apartment on the night of the murder; he knows that man must have been the man Pauline was with before he got back; but he doesn’t know who he was. Janoth badly wants to get his hands on that man, and he picks one of his most trusted employees to track him down: George Stroud, who else?How does a man escape from himself? No book has ever dramatized that question to more perfect effect than The Big Clock, a masterpiece of American noir.

The Wrong Case


James Crumley - 1975
    He's up to his third drink of the morning when an attractive young woman walks into his office and asks him to find her brother. He takes on what seems a routine missing-person case in hopes of getting to know her better, but finds himself involved in what is most definitely the wrong case. Everyone is a victim, one way or another, of a crime that took place long before the novel begins.

Beat the Reaper


Josh Bazell - 2009
    Peter Brown is an intern at Manhattan's worst hospital, with a talent for medicine, a shift from hell, and a past he'd prefer to keep hidden. Whether it's a blocked circumflex artery or a plan to land a massive malpractice suit, he knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.Pietro "Bearclaw" Brnwna is a hitman for the mob, with a genius for violence, a well-earned fear of sharks, and an overly close relationship with the Federal Witness Relocation Program. More likely to leave a trail of dead gangsters than a molecule of evidence, he's the last person you want to see in your hospital room.Nicholas LoBrutto, aka Eddy Squillante, is Dr. Brown's new patient, with three months to live and a very strange idea: that Peter Brown and Pietro Brnwa might-just might-be the same person ...Now, with the mob, the government, and death itself descending on the hospital, Peter has to buy time and do whatever it takes to keep his patients, himself, and his last shot at redemption alive. To get through the next eight hours-and somehow beat the reaper.Spattered in adrenaline-fueled action and bone-saw-sharp dialogue, BEAT THE REAPER is a debut thriller so utterly original you won't be able to guess what happens next, and so shockingly entertaining you won't be able to put it down.

The Dawn Patrol


Don Winslow - 2008
    The author of The Winter of Frankie Machine is back with a razor-sharp novel as cool as its California surfer heroes, and as heart-stopping as a wave none of them sees coming.

He Died With His Eyes Open


Derek Raymond - 1984
    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.

The Vengeful Virgin


Gil Brewer - 1958
    But that's the life she was trapped in - until she met Jack.Now Shirley and Jack have a plan to put the old man out of his misery and walk away with a suitcase full of cash. But there's nothing like money to come between lovers – money, and other women...

Gone South


Robert R. McCammon - 1992
    It is an act he cannot excuse--a mistake that will change his life forever. Now Dan is on the run, heading south toward the Louisiana bayous. On his trail are police officers and bounty hunters, including the most memorable and bizarre team ever paired in modern fiction: Pelvis Eisley, an Elvis impersonator of the worst kind, and Flint Murtaugh, a fastidious, ruthluss loner and freak-show refugee who carries the body of his unformed twin brother on his side.As Dan heads down into the swampland in search of his own salvation, he meets a young woman who is on a similar journey. Like Dan, Arden Halliday bears a great burden--a disfiguring purple birthmark that blankets half her face. Wounded by the stares, by the pity and revulsion, she is making her way into the bayous to search of the Bright Girl--a legendary faith healer who will rid her of her birthmark and her suffering. Though on separate missions, Arden and Dan come to respect each other's quest for freedom, for a touch of simple kindness in a world grown cruel. Thrown together by circumstance, bound by a loyalty stranger than love, they set off on a journey of relentless suspense and impassioned discovery...an odyssey over dark, twisting road and waterways into the beautiful and mysterious depths of the human heart.

Bust


Ken Bruen - 2006
    When you hire someone to kill your wife, don’t hire a psychopath.2. Drano is not the best tool for getting rid of a dead body.3. Those locks on hotel room doors? Not very secure.4. A curly blond wig isn’t much of a disguise.5. Secrets can kill.

Fatale


Jean-Patrick Manchette - 1977
    Now she’s set her eyes on a backwater burg—where, while posing as an innocent (albeit drop-dead gorgeous) newcomer to town, she means to sniff out old grudges and engineer new opportunities, deftly playing different people and different interests against each other the better, as always, to make a killing. But then something snaps: the master manipulator falls prey to a pure and wayward passion.Aimée has become the avenging angel of her own nihilism, exacting the destruction of a whole society of destroyers. An unholy original, Jean-Patrick Manchette transformed the modern detective novel into a weapon of gleeful satire and anarchic fun. In Fatale he mixes equal measures of farce, mayhem, and madness to prepare a rare literary cocktail that packs a devastating punch.

The Hot Rock


Donald E. Westlake - 1970
    Here, the released convict and his ride pal Kelp plot to steal the $500,000 Balaboma Emerald. The former British colony has recently become independent and split. The Akinzi have the stone, the Talabwo want it back, and their UN rep will pay for retrieval.

The Last Kind Words


Tom Piccirilli - 2012
    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.

Naked Came the Manatee


Carl HiaasenTananarive Due - 1997
    A story of suspense written serially by thirteen Florida writers--including Dave Barry, Carl Hiaasen, and Elmore Leonard--features such strange occurances as a riot in Coconut Grove and an appearance by Fidel Castro.

The Simple Art of Murder


Raymond Chandler - 1944
    Contains Chandler's essay on the art of detective stories and a collection of 8 classic Chandler mysteries.

The Blue Nowhere


Jeffery Deaver - 2001
    To stop him, the authorities free imprisoned former hacker Wyatt Gillette to aid the investigation. Teamed with old-school homicide detective Frank Bishop, Gillette must combine their disparate talents to catch a brilliant and merciless killer.