Short Crime Thriller

Set in a variety of Southern landscapes, these startling stories excavate the ambiguous terrain of the human heart. Pizzolatto finds beauty in loneliness as his characters attempt to bridge the gulfs between themselves and others, past and present, and sometimes the even wider chasms that separate them from their true selves.

From the 1965 east-coast blackout to depression-era Nebraska; from the trash-piled streets of Manhattan to rural-South Carolina; here are stories of innocent criminals, guilty bystanders, mob hit men, dead farm girls, and small-town cops. Justice is brutal. Long dead secrets won't stay in the grave. And just about everybody has something real to fear. New tales of crime and suspense join Prosch fan favorites to keep you turning pages well past midnight.

From the introduction by David L. Ulin: "For me, Cape Cod is a repository of memory: forty summers in the same house will do that to you. But it is also a landscape of hidden tensions, which rise up when we least anticipate. In part, this has to do with social aspiration, which is one of the things that brought my family, like many others, to the Cape. In part, it has to do with social division, which has been a factor since at least the end of the nineteenth century, when then summer trade began."

Vitus Adamson has a second chance at life now that he's no longer a zombie. But after killing his brother, Jamie, Vitus lands in prison on murder charges. Jamie's death exposes secret government projects so deep in the black they cannot be seen - without Vitus, that is. Sprung from jail, the government hires Vitus to clean up Jamie's messes, but tracking down his brother's homemade monsters gone rogue is easier said than done. The first of them is a convicted killer assumed to be safely behind bars.

When a wealthy politician’s twelve-year-old son disappears, the family’s driver witnesses the aftermath. A field investigator for the World Health Organization travels the globe giving presentations about a biomedical enzyme that will lead to the extinction of the human race. And Father Augusto Saenz, the Jesuit priest and forensic anthropologist from Smaller and Smaller Circles, returns to investigate the murder of a woman whose secretive life holds the key to her death.

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by the magazine.

Five thrilling tales of mystery, mayhem, and murder from an exceptional quintet of Edgar, CWA Dagger, and National Book Award winners.

"Readers of Brooklyn Noir will recall that its contents were labeled by neighborhood - Bay Ridge, Canarsie, Greenpoint, etc. We have chosen the same principle here, and the book's contents do a good job of covering the island, from C.J. Sullivan's Inwood and Charles Ardai's Upper East Side, to Justin Scott's Chelsea and Carol Lea Benjamin's Greenwich Village."

Behind the stage lights and word-perfect soliloquies, sinister secrets are lurking in the wings. The mysteries in this collection reveal the dark side to theatre and performing arts: a world of backstage dealings, where unscrupulous actors risk everything to land a starring role, costumed figures lead to mistaken identities, and on-stage deaths begin to look a little too convincing. This expertly curated thespian anthology features 14 stories from giants of the classic crime genre.

Nobody plays accordion like Dick Contino. His skilled fingers can find beauty in even the schmaltziest Borscht Belt favorites, and with his matinee-idol looks he could be a real star. Right now, though, he’s slumming it as the headliner in a Grade Z teenybopper picture called Daddy-O. He’s too good for this movie, and finishing it is going to take him to a very dark place. Daddy-O and Dick Contino are both real, their stories dredged out of the past by James Ellroy, a master of historical crime fiction. In Dick Contino's Blues he takes us to B-List Hollywood in 1957 - a time when movies were cheerful and dirty secrets lurked just off camera.

Family meant everything to Ayden Stratton. It always had even when he didn’t always allow it to show. Because of that, he understood the fury in Tobias Blaise’s eyes when they learned that his sister had been dragged out the backdoor of her restaurant despite every effort to stop her from being kidnapped. Fury didn’t begin to describe what he saw in his brother’s face. Cassidy Blaise might be Tobias’s sister, but she was Benjamin’s entire world. Tobias Blaise never expected to find any woman he wanted to spend his life with, let alone one who looked at him the way Ellis did, ...

Follow the greatest of the greatest detective in the world in Agatha Christie’s short-story collection Poirot Investigates. Featuring 11 adventures around the world, this collection show’s Christie’s famous character Hercule Poirot at his best as he travels and unravels mysteries of all sorts.

Twenty classic authors from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction are brought together in the latest “Bodies from the Library” anthology series of previously unpublished and uncollected stories of crime and suspense.

Tasha After my father was killed, Mark came into my life. Now, I can't imagine life without him. But when the man responsible for my father's murder escapes, I'm determined to take matters into my own hands. Mark I love Tasha more than life itself. After the loss of my wife and child three years ago, no one understands vengeance more than I do. But Tasha is determined to step into a whole new world that she has only gotten a taste of. However, can she handle the repercussions after she pulls the trigger? Once you take a life, something inside you changes. But no one will take my Tasha from ...

Walking home from a dance on a foggy autumn night in rural New York, Marly Shaw sees a flash of approaching headlights. A pickup truck stops, and two men get out. One of them is her stepfather. She runs. They follow. Minutes later, gunshots ring out. Two men are dead, and one terrified girl is running-for the rest of her life.

Complete with fascinating biographies by Tony Medawar of all the featured authors, this latest volume in the annual Bodies from the Library series once again brings into the daylight the forgotten, the lost and the unknown, and is an indispensable collection for any bookshelf.

A collection of four critically acclaimed, gripping short novels that explore the darkness lurking within ordinary lives. Black Canyon Twelve-year-old Brian Garrett embarks on a weekend camping trip in Colorado’s Black Canyon of the Gunnison, hoping to reconnect with his distant parents. But when his father suffers a brutal accident deep in the chasm, survival takes a sinister turn. Over the next twenty-four hours, Brian will face a horrifying truth about his father—and himself. Rewind A man wakes in a decaying apartment, hooked to a mysterious machine, a dead body in the next room—...

In "Christmas Even", the case of a burglar killed in mid-heist leads Bosch to retrace a link to his past. In "Father's Day", Bosch investigates a young boy's seemingly accidental death and confronts his own fears as a father. In "Angle of Investigation", Bosch delves into one of the first homicides he ever worked, back as a uniformed rookie patrolman, a case that was left unsolved for decades.

Some of the best-known and most influential pieces of crime fiction have been from African American writers. Be it Walter Mosley's great Detective Easy Rawlins, or the mean streets of Harlem at the hands of Chester Himes, the stories and characters in this anthology have shaped the mystery genre with their own unique viewpoints and styles. Contributors to the collection include Robert Greer, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Cary Phillips, Frankie Bailey, and Richard Wright.

Over the years, Ian Rankin has amassed an incredible portfolio of short stories. Published in crime magazines, composed for events, broadcast on radio, they all share the best qualities of his phenomenally popular Rebus novels. Brought together for the first time, and including brand-new material, this is the ultimate Rebus short-story collection and a must-have book for crime lovers and for Ian's millions of fans alike. No Rankin aficionado can go without it.