Book picks similar to
So What Happens to Me? by James Hadley Chase
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fiction
novels
thrillers
Framed (A Novella of Suspense)
James Scott Bell - 2018
He's out of jail and staying clean. When a car restoration job shows up, it's right in Jonathan's wheelhouse. This could be the first step in his dream of opening his own auto-body shop.A dream that is shattered when the job turns deadly.For Kris Boland, acting is what brought her to L.A. But when she rebuffs the sexual invitation of a top producer, her career begins to head south. Then her friend is arrested for a murder she is sure he did not commit. It's got to be a frame.Or does it?Somehow, Jonathan and Kris find each other in the deadly swirl, becoming the only hope each has of setting things straight before an innocent man is convicted ... or before a killer stops them both.
Dig Two Graves
Kim Powers - 2015
After a hushed-up scandal over his Olympics win and the death of his wife in a car accident five years ago, Ethan wants nothing more than to forget his past. Skip is not only the light of Ethan's life--she is his life. Then, Skip is kidnapped. A series of bizarre ransom demands start coming in that stretch Ethan's athletic prowess to its limits, and he realizes with growing horror that they are modern versions of the Twelve Labors of Hercules, demanded in tricky, rhyming clues by someone who seems to have followed every step of Ethan's career.
Choke on Your Lies
Anthony Neil Smith
Smith presents his homage to one of his favorite detectives, Nero Wolfe, but written for the "internet porn" generation.Octavia VanderPlatts is wealthy, powerful, and "comfortable with her weight"--or to hear her say it, a "rich fat b****." Her IQ is at the genius level, and she uses it to manipulate and frighten anyone who tries to get in her way. She controls an empire built on discrimination lawsuits won against some of the nation's top companies. On top of that, Octavia doesn't care one wink what people think of her. So when she offers her old friend poetry professor Mick Thooft some help in his impending divorce, he smells an ulterior motive. Maybe because Frances didn't invite Octavia to the wedding for fear of her clearing the buffet. Not only does Octavia want to help, but she's got evidence--plenty of scandalous photos. That's not Mick's style, so he turns her down flat...until he discovers that Fran's trying to take their home based on a near-perfect forgery of his signature. After that he and Octavia charge forward, but soon find they're in deeper than they realized--robot pens, swinger clubs, and a blackmail scheme that holds an entire college faculty hostage. Just when Mick and Octavia are on the cusp of victory, it all goes terribly wrong. Mick is framed for murder and someone targets Octavia's immense wealth and secret backyard greenhouse full of exotic marijuana. With no one on their side except Octavia's butler Jennings, her new personal chef Harriet, and their "Amazon Warrior" lawyer Pamela, Octavia and Mick must find a way to turn the tables before they end up broke, humiliated, and in prison.
Soho Black
Christopher Fowler - 1998
London’s creative square mile, a bedlam of business and backstabbing, where dreams are manufactured and office workers get off their faces. A place where being a celebrity means treating every day as your last.Movie executive Richard Tyler is strung out, stressed up and sinking fast. He owes money to film-freak thugs, thanks to debts stacked up by his card-charging girlfriend, who has been shagging his belligerent boss, who has just fired him.Could things get any worse?During one particularly hypertense evening, Richard drops dead in the middle of a fashionable Soho bar. What happens next mortifies his friends and horrifies his enemies, as Richard’s lifestyle of power-lunches and parties changes overnight into a fast-track trip into career hell…
Viva La Madness
J.J. Connolly - 2011
From the London underworld, Viva la Madness moves to international crime with trans-Atlantic drug deals, money laundering, and high-tech electronic fraud, portrayed with the same uncanny believability. The anonymous hero of Layer Cake is pulled back into the drug game before he can escape to a sunny retirement. In a dazzling combination of London low-life, Caribbean high-life, and Venezuelan drug cartels toting machine-guns in Mayfair, our hero's voice and mission are authentic, thrilling, and whiplash-inducing in equal shares.
The Long and Faraway Gone
Lou Berney - 2015
Six movie-theater employees were killed in an armed robbery, while one inexplicably survived. Then, a teenage girl vanished from the annual State Fair. Neither crime was ever solved.Twenty-five years later, the reverberations of those unsolved cases quietly echo through survivors’ lives. A private investigator in Vegas, Wyatt’s latest inquiry takes him back to a past he’s tried to escape—and drags him deeper into the harrowing mystery of the movie house robbery that left six of his friends dead. Like Wyatt, Julianna struggles with the past—with the day her beautiful older sister Genevieve disappeared. When Julianna discovers that one of the original suspects has resurfaced, she’ll stop at nothing to find answers.As fate brings these damaged souls together, their obsessive quests spark sexual currents neither can resist. But will their shared passion and obsession heal them, or push them closer to the edge? Even if they find the truth, will it help them understand what happened, that long and faraway gone summer? Will it set them free—or ultimately destroy them?
The Mysteries Of Shetland
Ann Cleeves - 2013
Starting with the CWA awarding winning Raven Black, this special ebook also contains the second and third novels in the Shetland series, White Nights and Red Bones.Raven Black: It is a cold January morning and Shetland lies buried beneath a deep layer of snow. Trudging home, Fran Hunter’s eye is drawn to a vivid splash of colour on the white ground, ravens circling above. It is the strangled body of her teenage neighbour Catherine Ross. As Fran opens her mouth to scream, the ravens continue their deadly dance . . . The locals on the quiet island stubbornly focus their gaze on one man – loner and simpleton Magnus Tait. But when police insist on opening out the investigation a veil of suspicion and fear is thrown over the entire community. For the first time in years, Catherine’s neighbours nervously lock their doors, whilst a killer lives on in their midst.
The Big Book of Hap and Leonard
Joe R. Lansdale - 2018
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
Bonded in Blood
Mike Bennett - 2013
He develops a particular fondness for La Reina de Corazones - or rather, its landlady, Michelle. David does not approve, and neither does Lydia, for she and the Black Circle have plans for Underwood that definitely do not include Michelle – plans that involve Underwood granting them the vampiric gift of eternal life. And if Underwood won't grant that gift by choice, they'll take it by force.Bonded in Blood, the second of the Underwood and Flinch Chronicles, continues events started in Resurrection. It also reveals how, in the early 18th Century, Underwood became a vampire and how he and the Flinch family became forever Bonded in Blood.Winner of the Polidori Award for Best Vampire Novel 2010 and 2011.Finalist in the 2010 Parsec Awards and Winner in 2012.
The Wyatt Butterfly: Two Barrels of Classic Wyatt
Garry Disher - 2010
Cool and efficient as always, Wyatt bypasses the alarm system, snatches the cash and eludes the cops. But can he make it safely back to his bolthole in Hobart?Port Vila Blues is Wyatt's fifth heist, this time leading him to a reckoning far from home. The Fallout finds Wyatt on a boat with policewoman Liz Redding and a fortune in stolen gems. He escapes, triggering a manhunt, but who exactly is hunting him? In this sixth Wyatt novel, Wyatt joins forces with his nephew to pull off one of his trickiest robberies-and his most dangerous task yet.'Disher's writing is as lean and relentless as his hero. No one does dryly poetic evocations of paranoia and human folly more seductively.' Australian
Fools Die
Mario Puzo - 1978
Played out in the underground worlds of high-stakes gambling, publishing, and the film industry, this epic thriller follows two brothers, Merlyn and Arite, as they delve into the dangerous underbelly of American life. From Las Vegas to New York to Hollywood, there is one thing that remains constant: organized crime and the law are simply two sides of the same coin...
The Colorado Kid
Stephen King - 2005
There's no identification on the body. Only the dogged work of a pair of local newspapermen and a graduate student in forensics turns up any clues. But that's just the beginning of the mystery. Because the more they learn about the man and the baffling circumstances of his death, the less they understand. Was it an impossible crime? Or something stranger still...? No one but Stephen King could tell this story about the darkness at the heart of the unknown and our compulsion to investigate the unexplained. With echoes of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon and the work of Graham Greene, one of the world's great storytellers presents a surprising tale that explores the nature of mystery itself...
Runway Zero-Eight
Arthur Hailey - 1958
At least five passengers are sick. Both pilots are unconscious and in serious condition. My name is George Spenser. I am a passenger on this airplane. Correction: I was a passenger. I am now the pilot. What happened? Who was the new pilot? Would anyone reach the ground alive?
Artifice
Patrick Gooch - 2018
But an unscrupulous trader in works of art knows their true worth; and exploits the situation, involving Cleverden in his shady activities. A major heist is planned by the trader, which first necessitates the theft of many of Turner`s paintings. These are held to ransom in exchange for priceless artifacts displayed in the British Museum. Once again, Alan Cleverden is unwittingly swept up in this unlawful venture. One word to the authorities, he would most certainly serve time. A pawn in a highly-charged affair, the odds are against him as he tries to free himself from the trader`s clutches; ensure the safety of the Turners; and return to their original owners the paintings acquired by his grandfather during the Second World War. A fast-paced thriller, Artifice is a must read for those who appreciate fine art, and are drawn to mysteries that hold you spellbound to the very last page. Patrick Gooch has enjoyed an interesting and varied career. He studied History of Art, and went on to lecture at the Central School of Art and Design in London. Patrick worked in marketing, travelling throughout Europe and Central and South America. It was while travelling that he began writing. Married with two sons, he lives close to the Ashdown Forest in East Sussex. “Absorbing and convincing heist thriller” Kevin McManus, author of 'New Blood'.
The Butcher's Boy
Thomas Perry - 1982
Back in print by popular demand, this spectacular debut, from a writer of “infernal ingenuity” (The New York Times Book Review), includes a new Introduction by bestselling author Michael Connelly.Murder has always been easy for the Butcher’s Boy—it’s what he was raised to do. But when he kills the senior senator from Colorado and arrives in Las Vegas to pick up his fee, he learns that he has become a liability to his shadowy employers. His actions attract the attention of police specialists who watch the world of organized crime, but though everyone knows that something big is going on, only Elizabeth Waring, a bright young analyst in the Justice Department, works her way closer to the truth, and to the frightening man behind it.