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The Best American Mystery Stories 1997


Robert B. ParkerMelodie Johnson Howe - 1997
    The controversial follow-up to Into the Bear Pit, this title pulls no punches in discussing the substantial fall-out from the publication of James' first book, the verbal spat with Nick Faldo that led Faldo waging a campaign to have his European Tour colleague removed from the Tournament Committee, and Mark's eventual resignation as Ryder Cup assistant.

On a Red Horse


Monica Corwin - 2015
    a red horse…Answering to self-absorbed warmongers in a trite internet call center, Scarlet is certain she would rather face the battlefields. However, it doesn’t escape her notice that War is all she was ever known. Horseman of the Apocalypse doesn't exactly build a well-rounded resume. Lonely and longing for the husband she was forced to leave behind, Scarlet painfully admits that life isn’t worth living… not without him…From Hell to the Golden Throne, Tyr, god of justice, has hunted his wife across the realms. Unprepared to find her working as a phone operator, Tyr is curtain of only one thing, Scarlet is no longer the woman he fell in love with and he is determined to bring that woman back to him… even if it takes the rest of eternity. But when a prophecy as old as the Horseman themselves begins to turn, Scarlet and her kin realize they must bear the defensive. Bound by her responsibly to guard the four seals that will unleash the Apocalypse, Scarlet struggles to overcome her mistakes, allow herself to love again, and return her seal to its rightful place… or risk a chain reaction that will force the Horsemen to take up their mantles and destroy the new lives they've worked so hard to build.Can Scarlet learn how to enjoy living again with Tyr beside her? Or will she succumb to her mistakes and take the horseman down with her?On a Red Horse is an exciting first in a series from talented author Monica Corwin, if you like the work of Larissa Ione, Karen Marie Moning and Kresley Cole you will love the first book to the Revelations series!

Anything can be Dangerous


Matt Hults - 2011
    The stories include:Anything can be Dangerous ~ the simple things in life can kill.Through the Valley of Death ~ a dark vampire story that will make you remember fear. The Finger ~ zombie literature has never been so extraordinary.Feeding Frenzy ~ lunchtime in a place called Hell. Husk ~ this is what people are saying about Husk:“Matt Hults delivers a crackling, creepy tale. A fast-paced read with a generous body count, ‘Husk’ will make your skin crawl.”—Scott Nicholson, Bestselling author of They Hunger“Remember the first time you read Joe Lansdale’s The Drive-In, or Freezer Burn? Remember how exhilarated you felt as you tore through the pages as Lansdale kept knocking your jaw to the floor with his endless inventiveness, unexpected belly-laughs, and those even more unexpected moments of terror and pathos? Miss that feeling of being completely at the mercy of a writer’s imagination and boundless energy for his subject? Fret no more, friends—you now have Matt Hults’s Husk. This sucker is the real thing, an in-your-face, rollicking, scary, funny, and unexpectedly poignant potpourri of a horror story, an unabashed and unapologetic throwback to the early pulps infused with a vindictive modern-day sensibility that will have your head spinning and your mouth hanging open. It doesn’t get any more fun than this.”—Gary A. Braunbeck, winner of the Bram Stoker Award and International Horror Guild Award, author of Coffin County and Destinations Unknown“Suspenseful and gruesome, with just the right leavening of hopefulness and nod-wink humor.”—Dr. Kim Paffenroth, Bram Stoker Award Winner for Dying to Live.“Husk is wild, bloody, scary, action-packed, and entertaining as hell. Matt Hults seems to be having a blast telling his tale, and I had a blast going along for the ride. Great fun!”—Jeff Strand, Bram Stoker Nominated Author of PRESSURE"'Husk' is a chilling and relentless tale that will make you want to check your closets, lock your windows and keep an eye in your review mirror...but don't think that'll save you!"––Fran Friel, Bram Stoker Nominated Author of Mama's Boy“Husk is violent, intense and terrifying. The characters are as real as you and I, and every triumph is rapturous while every death is harrowing. Matt Hults proves himself as a master of the genre with his striking debut novel. It will leave you feeling skinned alive and dying for more.”—Joel A. Sutherland, Bram Stoker Nominated Author of Frozen Blood“I have come across some pretty mind-blowing demons on paper, on the big screen, and especially in my mind. But the ‘Husk’ Matt Hults created in this his first novel breaks all my thresholds for fear, and believe me I have built some pretty sound barriers in my time.”—Giovanna Lagana, author of With Black & White Comes the Grey

I'll Get You for This


James Hadley Chase - 1946
    Chester Cain, gunman and gambler, finds his vacation at Paradise Springs rudely interrupted by the City Administrator, who uses a luscious woman to trap Cain into a murder frame-up.From then on the action, punctuated by gunfire, moves like an express train, as Cain ploughs his way through violence and adventure to bring this fast-moving thriller to an explosive climax.

A Family Daughter


Maile Meloy - 2006
    Now Meloy returns with a novel even more dazzling and unexpected than her first. A Family Daughter is a brilliantly entertaining, powerfully moving novel about families, love, and the desire to reimagine one’s own history.It’s 1979, and seven-year-old Abby, the youngest member of the close-knit Santerre family, is trapped indoors with the chicken pox during a heat wave. The events set in motion that summer will span decades and continents, as the Santerres become entangled with an aging French playboy, a young Eastern European prostitute, a spoiled heiress, and her ailing jet-set mother. With elegant precision, Meloy takes us through the world of this changeable family, its values and taboos, its heartbreak and bitterness and fierce devotion.A rich, full novel about passion and desire, fear and betrayal, A Family Daughter illuminates both the joys and complications of contemporary life and the relationship between truth and fiction. For everyone who has yet to meet the Santerres, unmatched pleasure awaits.

The First Protectors


Victor Godinez - 2018
    Bruno, USA Today –bestselling author).   The last thing Ben Shepherd wanted was another war. But sometimes the universe won’t take no for an answer.   His body and spirit mangled by a lifetime of combat, Shepherd, a retired Navy SEAL, has retreated to the desolate desert of New Mexico to heal his wounds and dodge his demons. All he wants now is peace and quiet.   Both are shattered one starry night, when an alien ship crashes nearby. Out of the vessel crawls the last, dying member of a conquered civilization. It’s been shot down by an extraterrestrial enemy, the vanguard of a ravenous force hunting for a new homeland. With its last gasp, the wounded alien injects Shepherd with a high-tech serum that gives him near superhuman powers.   Now, with a new body but a soul as fractured as ever, Shepherd becomes the reluctant leader of the human resistance against the coming invasion. With enemies on all sides, the man who couldn’t bear the guilt of seeing one more friend die in battle now finds himself charged with protecting the entire planet.

Inadmissible


Elsayed - 2014
    in pursuit of the American dream, and how one mistake landed him behind bars along with some of America’s most notorious offenders. Against innumerable odds, he manages to survive prison and later earns his PhD from the world's number one university—Caltech—becoming an accomplished scientist, writer, and motivational speaker. It’s the true tale of one man’s redemption and triumph, lived through believing in himself and believing in the good hearts of the people who stuck by him.

Secret Dead Men


Duane Swierczynski - 2005
    But the usual suspects are all in his head. "Believe in nothing, believe in Hell, believe in the Brain Hotel... Secret Dead Men is the most inventive, uplifting, hilarious, moving novel since Catcher in the Rye" -- Ken Bruen Del Farmer isn't your ordinary hardboiled private eye. Instead of collecting fingerprints or clues, he collects souls of the recently dead. His latest dead guy, Brad Larsen, might just be the key to destroying Farmer's longtime nemesis, The Association. Of course, Farmer is sadly mistaken. Larsen isn't offering up the goods. An FBI agent unstuck in time is toying with him. A mysterious couple keeps trying to kill him. Another job-a mundane babysitting gig that pays the bills-is threatening to steer him way off course into a violent hell of sexual deceit, fractured identities and cheap apartment toilets.

The Dead Saint


Marilyn Brown Oden - 2010
    When a medal the player wore--a medal Lynn had promised to return to the man's family--disappears, Lynn is thrust into a suspenseful and fast-moving journey through four assassinations, an attempt on her life, conflicts with a mysterious and ancient society, and a behind-the-scenes conspiracy that reaches all the way to the White House. The turbulent, unstoppable intrigue challenges Lynn mentally, physically, and spiritually as she engages in a desperate battle with an opponent who is just as determined to kill as Lynn is to stop him even though she has no idea where--or who--he will strike next.

Back Talk


Saxon Bennett - 2006
    She is looking for something or someone to rekindle the spark in her life. Hilton Withers is the lesbian lesbian daughter of a senator & heiress to a pickle company fortune. She hates her father & pickles. Anne & Hilton become fast friends.

Boston Blackie


Jack Boyle - 1919
    He ensures that the worst villains get what’s coming to them while the honorable ones stay out on the street—where, like Blackie, they do more good than harm. In this classic collection of adventures, with his dependable wife and getaway driver, Mary, by his side, Blackie gets into and out of a dizzying array of tight spots. He escapes from prison, saves a friend from the gallows, and pulls off the gold bullion heist of a lifetime. Later adapted into serials, movies, and TV shows, Boston Blackie’s exploits are some of the most thrilling in all of crime fiction. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

Raymond Chandler: A Biography


Tom Hiney - 1997
    Using recently uncovered archival materials including personal papers and correspondence, biographer Thomas Hiney vividly evokes Chandler's early years in Nebraska, his education in England and on the corrupt streets of Los Angeles, and his later years as a novelist and screenwriter in the heyday of the Hollywood studio system. Along the way, he provides illuminating insights into the writer's inspirations and work - as well as accounts of Chandler's battles with alcohol addiction and his friendships with Howard Hawks, "Lucky" Luciano, S. J. Perelman, and Alfred Hitchcock. This book is also the first to fully detail the significance and complexities of his thirty-year marriage to Cissy, a woman seventeen years his senior. Raymond Chandler is personal portrait of an author as extraordinary as the fiction he created - a body of work that has sold more than five million copies, been translated into twenty-five languages, and inspired countless imitators. "A discerning portrait of the creator of Philip Marlowe, the archetypal American private eye." - Newsweek

First, There Is a River


Kathy Steffen - 2007
    As she learns about herself and the possibility of happiness, her vengeful husband follows close behind.

The Princess of Sparta


Aria Cunningham - 2014
    Her humble story began as a Princess of Sparta; honorable, loyal, with promise to become a powerful queen. Her lauded beauty was more curse than blessing, inciting lust and jealousy in the greedy kings who would make her their prize. Given in marriage to Menelaus of Mycenae, an abusive husband who neither wants nor needs her, she clings to a prophecy made to her about a great destiny, and even greater love.That destiny awaits her in Paris, a noble prince of Troy, whose reputation for fairness and fortitude precedes him as an Ambassador. Unjustly cursed at birth by a dark omen claiming he will cause the destruction of Troy, Paris is a haunted figure. This omen overshadows his good deeds, making him an object of ridicule amongst the Trojan nobility, and compelling his own mother to try to kill him as a babe. He is a man who has never known love.Until the day the Fates intervene and Paris travels to Mycenae as an Ambassador of Troy. He meets Helen, and the two souls linked by common destiny and purpose are reunited. Their love becomes legend, provoking the greatest war of ancient history, shaking the foundations of the world, and paving the way for the rise of Greece and Rome.

The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime


Michael H. Stone - 2019
    Michael Stone's groundbreaking 22-level Gradations of Evil Scale, a hierarchy of evil behavior first introduced in the book The Anatomy of Evil, Stone and Dr. Gary Brucato, a fellow violence and serious psychopathology expert, here provide even more detail, using dozens of cases to exemplify the categories along the continuum. The New Evil also presents compelling evidence that, since a cultural tipping-point in the 1960s, certain types of violent crime have emerged that in earlier decades never or very rarely occurred. The authors examine the biological and psychiatric factors behind serial killing, serial rape, torture, mass and spree murders, and other severe forms of violence. They persuasively argue that, in at least some cases, a collapse of moral faculties contributes to the commission of such heinous crimes, such that "evil" should be considered not only a valid area of inquiry, but, in our current cultural climate, an imperative one. They consider the effects of new technologies and sociological, cultural, and historical factors since the 1960s that may have set the stage for "the new evil." Further, they explain how personality, psychosis, and other qualities can meaningfully contribute to particular crimes, making for many different motives.Relying on their extensive clinical experience, and examination of writings and artwork by infamous serial killers, these experts offer many insights into the logic that drives horrible criminal behavior, and they discuss the hope that in the future such violence may be prevented.