Includes a bit of humour, no bad language or gratuitous violence. (Cover image: The Glasgow School of Art, 167 Renfrew St)

    A stabbing . A cloaked figure. A hit and run. On a blustery Autumn night, a middle-aged man leaves Newcastle’s Chinatown to go to his car. Later he is found dead at Blackfriars Gate. There appears to be no obvious reason for his murder, unless he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then a middle-aged woman is killed in a hit and run on a quiet country road, early in the morning, in north Northumberland. Detective Chief Inspector Alex Shaftoe, a history and archaeology buff, is considering retirement as she walks into Chinatown to resolve a gang fight. But soon the grizzly murder at Blackfriars Gate which adjoins Chinatown is discovered. As the stakes are raised, can she join the dots in a thirty-year old past which connects these events, before there is another death. Set in Newcastle upon Tyne and the wild beauty of Northumberland, this is a fast-paced British detective mystery. A whodunnit with a hint of mid-life romance and humour. The twists and turns and suspense will keep you guessing until the end.

    

    Eighty miles from the Mexican border. The last week of September. It’s sizzling by noon.Detective Sarah Burke is a homicide cop with a lot on her plate. Her boss has a grudge against her, her sister is just out of rehab, her ex-husband is taking her for all she’s worth in the divorce, and her new man is keeping secrets from her.One sweltering early Arizona morning, Sarah is called out to a body in a parking lot. The dead man has the hands of a street fighter, but he’s wearing expensive clothes and looks too clean cut. What did he do to get himself stabbed to death?Sarah gets home to see her ten-year-old niece on the news. Denny was left in the car while her mom went to the grocery store for beer. The carjacker didn’t see the little girl asleep in the back.Detective Sarah Burke must race against time to stop a killer — and a kidnapper.WHEN THE PEOPLE SHE LOVES ARE IN DANGER, SHE’LL STOP AT NOTHING TO PROTECT THEM.

    Lucille Aitkin was the kind of woman who encouraged men to run around after her and most men were more than happy to do so - so why did she suddenly want to learn to drive rather than being chauffer-driven in style? And why was Chester Scott's Cadillac covered with bloodstains on the wrong side? And at the same time, why was patrol officer O'Brien run over on a deserted beach road when he should have been on duty on the highway? It seems that somebody knows how these events are connected, and whoever it is seems intent on blackmail.

    This collection includes thirteen lean and mean stories from the fingertips of Garnett Elliott, Glenn Gray, John Hornor Jacobs, Patricia Abbott, Thomas Pluck, Brad Green, Ron Earl Phillips, Kent Gowran, Amy Grech, Benoit Lelievre, Kieran Shea, David Cranmer, and Wayne D. Dundee and a boiled down look at hardboiled fiction in an introduction by Ron Scheer. Edited by David Cranmer and Scott D. Parker.

    Three appalling crimes leave all of Paris aghast: the Marquise de Langruen is hacked to death, the Princess Sonia is robbed, and Lord Beltham is found dead, stuffed into a trunk. Inspector Juve knows that all the clues point to one suspect: the master of disguise, Fantômas. Juve cleverly pursues him in speeding trains, down dark alleys, through glittering Parisian salons, obsessed with bringing the demon mastermind to justice. As thrilling to read now as it was when first published in 1915, Fantômas is not a puzzle but an intoxicant” (The Village Voice).

    At the job she encounters two men who take an interest in her, a handsome young schemer who makes her blood race and a wealthy but unwell older man who rewards her for her attentions with a $50,000 tip and an unconventional offer of marriage...

    But he’s also got a mistress.  And when Jake’s mistress is found strangled to death with his necktie, it’s up to him to prove he didn’t do it. But how can he, when all the evidence says he did? Jake races to reveal the secret conspiracy against him.  But with every step, the noose is tightening, and all of Jake’s resourcefulness may not be enough to save him?

    Sughrue, a Montana investigator who kills time by working at a topless bar. Hired to track down a derelict author, he ends up on the trail of a girl missing in Haight-Ashbury for a decade. The tense hunt becomes obsessive as Sughrue takes a haunting journey through the underbelly of America's sleaziest nightmares.

    But is Bedelia too good to be true? A mysterious new neighbor turns out to be a detective on the trail of a “kitten with claws of steel”—a picture-perfect wife with a string of dead husbands in her wake.Caspary builds this tale to a peak of psychological suspense as her characters are trapped together by a blizzard. The true Bedelia, the woman who chose murder over a life on the street, reveals how she turns male fantasies of superiority into a deadly con.Femmes Fatales restores to print the best of women’s writing in the classic pulp genres of the mid-20th century. From mystery to hard-boiled noir to taboo lesbian romance, these rediscovered queens of pulp offer subversive perspectives on a turbulent era. Enjoy the series: Bedelia; The Blackbirder; Bunny Lake Is Missing; By Cecile; The G-String Murders; The Girls in 3-B; In a Lonely Place; Laura; Mother Finds a Body; Now, Voyager; Skyscraper; Stranger on Lesbos; Women's Barracks.

    The Dutch uncle in the book is an actual Dutchman whose cocaine and untimely demise set a small swarm of crooks and cops in motion. Harry Healy is the sort-of hero, a likable, small-time criminal, just out of jail, who has a hard time making good decisions. But he's just one player in a memorably quirky cast that includes a dim ex-jock snorting his way through his inheritance; a ditzy babe whose constant nakedness is annoying everyone; a short, chunky detective who struggles with his sensitivity training; and the braces-wearing Latina colleague he might just be made for. Pavia, coauthor of The Other Hollywood, an "oral history" of the porn industry, redraws the hard-boiled boundaries of the Hard Case Crime line a bit to include this offbeat diversion in the style of Leonard, Carl Hiaasen, and Charles Willeford's Hoke Moseley books

    But Kyle refuses to talk to Jenny about it.What did she see? What did she hear?It’s up to Jenny to find the answers she needs. But the closer she comes to the truth, the deeper she falls into the same dark hole as her daughter.Can she save them both before it’s too late?***Welcome to Liar’s Island, a stand-alone series of interconnected, novella-length domestic thrillers set in the picture-perfect community of Liars Island. Here, nothing is quite as it seems.On this island, families and friendships are more than meets the eye...secrets, deceptions, and jealousies threaten to ruin everything these influential people have built. But it isn’t only the rich that live here...and power comes in all shapes and sizes. Everyone here is a liar...just how far would you go to get what you want?

    With his guard down, he doesn’t think twice when he hears a knock on the door. The next day, he finds himself in the hospital, badly bruised and with his jaw wired shut. He thinks back over ten years of cases wondering who would want to beat him into unconsciousness, steal his gun and badge, and most importantly, make off with his prized dentures. But the pieces never quite add up to revenge, and the few clues he has keep connecting to a dimwitted hooker, and her ex-con boyfriend and the bizarre murder of a Hare Krishna pimp.Chronically depressed, constantly strapped for money, always willing to bend the rules a bit, Hoke Moseley is hardly what you think of as the perfect cop, but he is one of the the greatest detective creations of all time.

    I'd been all but dead these 15 years, turned into a household pet by a wife and kids.But now the girl whom I'd known by the code name Tina had walked back into my life -- and 15 years of settled, complacent living slipped away. I was back in that time when our world had been savage and alive, when I had been a lethal young animal trained to kill in cold blood -- and she had been my partner.And I knew that I was ready to follow her again to the depths of that private hell we had shared.