Down and Dirty Pictures chronicles the rise of independent filmmakers and of the twin engines - the Sundance Film Festival and Miramax Films - that have powered them. Peter Biskind profiles the people who took the independent movement from obscurity to the Oscars, most notably Sundance founder Robert Redford and Harvey Weinstein, who with his brother, Bob, made Miramax an indie powerhouse.

Movie fans and spiritual seekers, unite! In Cinema Nirvana, veteran meditation teacher and film critic Dean Sluyter illuminates the hidden enlightenment teachings of Casablanca, Jaws, The Graduate, The Godfather, Memento, Easy Rider, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Big Sleep, Fistful of Dollars, and half a dozen more classic films, revealing spiritual wisdom in everything from 007's secret weapons to the colors of the Seven Dwarfs' eyes. So grab your popcorn, sit back, and prepare to have your mind opened. Cinema Nirvana is a funny but wise, practical but wildly entertaining guide to finding enlightenment...one movie at a time.

Daniel McEvoy has a problem. Well, really, he has several, but for this Irish ex-pat bouncer at a seedy, small-time casino, the fact that his girlfriend was just murdered in the parking lot is uppermost in his mind. That is until lots of people around him start dying, and not of natural causes. Suddenly, Daniel’s got half the New Jersey mob, dirty cops, and his man-crazy upstairs neighbor after him, and he still doesn't know what's going on.

Few novels have had as profound an impact on American culture as On the Road. Pulsating with the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac’s classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be “beat” and has inspired generations of writers, musicians, artists, poets, and seekers who cite their discovery of the book as the event that “set them free”.

Atlanta, 1974: It's Kate Murphy's first day on the job, and the Atlanta Police Department is seething after the murder of an officer. Before the day has barely begun, she already suspects she's not cut out to be a cop. Her male uniform is too big, she can't handle a gun, and she's rapidly learning that the APD is hardly a place that welcomes women. Worse still, in the ensuing manhunt she'll be partnered with Maggie Lawson, a cop with her own ax to grind.

When Caitlin Sommers finds herself alone in a deserted parking lot with blood on her clothes and no memory of the past few months, it seems like one of the nightmares that have tormented her for years...but it's all too real. Desperate to learn the truth about where she's been and what has happened to her but terrified of what she may find, Caitlin embarks on a search for answers.

Getting shot in the chest as a rookie ATF agent, bartering for machine guns, throttling down the highway at 100 miles per hour, and responding to a full-scale, bloody riot between the Hells Angels and their rivals, the Mongols - these are just a few of the high-adrenaline experiences Jay Dobyns recounts in this action-packed, hard to imagine, but true story of how he infiltrated the legendary Hells Angels.

With novels like Mystic River and Shutter Island, Dennis Lehane has dramatically altered the landscape of the crime thriller—while boldly overstepping the boundaries that have long separated mystery from literature. Now two of his sensational early novels have been combined in a single volume—two gritty and mesmerizing masterworks of suspense featuring the private eye duo of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro.

Casey Duncan is a homicide detective with a secret: When she was in college, she killed a man. She was never caught, but he was the grandson of a mobster, and she knows that someday this crime will catch up to her. Casey's best friend, Diana, is on the run from a violent, abusive ex-husband. When Diana's husband finds her, and Casey herself is attacked shortly after, Casey knows it's time for the two of them to disappear again. Diana has heard of a town made for people like her, a town that takes in people on the run who want to shed their old lives.

Vietnam vet and former pro football player Wyatt Storme is bow-hunting in Missouri when he stumbles upon a hidden field of marijuana, and is attacked by a vicious dog and shot at by a sniper. He reports violent incident confidentially to the local Sheriff, who is murdered the next day. Storme believes there's a connection and starts asking questions, unraveling a deadly conspiracy of corruption, drug-trafficking and organized crime.

He's a self-described beach bum who won his houseboat in a card game. He's also a knight errant who's wary of credit cards, retirement benefits, political parties, mortgages, and television. He only works when his cash runs out, and his rule is simple: he'll help you find whatever was taken from you, as long as he can keep half.

After Emery Hazard loses his job as a detective in Saint Louis, he heads back to his hometown - and to the local police force there. Home, though, brings no happy memories. Hazard's new partner, John-Henry Somerset, had been one of the worst tormentors, and Hazard still wonders what Somerset's role was in the death of Jeff Langham, Hazard's first boyfriend. When a severely burned body is discovered, Hazard finds himself drawn deeper into the case than he expects. Determining the identity of the dead man proves impossible, and solving the murder grows more and more unlikely.

Dodgers is the story of a young man named East who works for an LA drug gang, sent by his uncle along with some other teenage boys - including East's hotheaded younger brother - to kill a witness connected to a major case, who is hiding out in Wisconsin. The journey takes East out of a city he's never left and into an America that is entirely alien to him, and over the course of his journey the book brings in elements from a diverse array of genres, ranging from crime fiction to road narrative to coming-of-age novel.

Two years after a terrifying night of pain destroyed his normal teenage existence, Aaron Downing still clings to the hope that one day, he will be a fully functional human being. But his life remains a constant string of nightmares, flashbacks, and fear. When, in his very first semester of college, he’s assigned Spencer Thomas as a partner for his programming project, Aaron decides that maybe “normal” is overrated. If he could just learn to control his fear, that could be enough for him to find his footing again.

Gus Murphy thought he had the world all figured out. A retired Suffolk County cop, he had everything a man could want: a great marriage, two kids, a nice house, and the rest of his life ahead of him. But when tragedy strikes, his life is thrown into complete disarray. In the course of a single deadly moment, his family is blown apart, and Gus is transformed from a man who believes he understands everything into a man who understands nothing.

In the more shadowy corners of the world, frequented by angels and demons and everything in between, Laytham Ballard is a legend. It's said he raised the dead at the age of 10, stole the Philosopher's Stone in Vegas back in 1999, and survived the bloodsucking kiss of the Mosquito Queen. Wise in the hidden ways of the night, he's also a cynical bastard who stopped thinking of himself as the good guy a long time ago.

Getting shot in the chest as a rookie ATF agent, bartering for machine guns, throttling down the highway at 100 miles per hour, and responding to a full-scale, bloody riot between the Hells Angels and their rivals, the Mongols - these are just a few of the high-adrenaline experiences Jay Dobyns recounts in this action-packed, hard to imagine, but true story of how he infiltrated the legendary Hells Angels.

With novels like Mystic River and Shutter Island, Dennis Lehane has dramatically altered the landscape of the crime thriller—while boldly overstepping the boundaries that have long separated mystery from literature. Now two of his sensational early novels have been combined in a single volume—two gritty and mesmerizing masterworks of suspense featuring the private eye duo of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro.

Sam Hunter is a bit of an animal. He's a former Twin Cities cop who lost his badge because of excessive force. Abusive husbands, child molesters, and other lowlifes wound up looking like they'd been mauled by a dog...or a wolf. Now Sam's a low-rent PI in Philadelphia. He takes the kinds of cases no one wants. His clients are usually on the fringes of society. The kind who are prey for all manner of predators - human and otherwise.

It is an obsession that has haunted Nick Malick for seven years - to avenge the murder of his young son. In his gut Malick knows who did it. But the psychopath is in prison for another crime, scheduled to be released in a year. All Malick has to do is wait...and survive.

Detective Peter Decker of the LAPD is stunned when he gets the report. Someone has shattered the sanctuary of a remote yeshiva community in the California hills with an unimaginable crime. One of the women was brutally raped as she returned from the mikvah, the bathhouse where the cleansing ritual is performed.

In this hot and steamy mystery, Tennyson is an actor struggling to hang on to his career and redeem his sex-for-pay history, which estranged him from his family, especially his father, a decorated LAPD captain who raised Tennyson to call him "Sir". Now, in the wake of his father's sudden stroke, Tennyson has to save himself from taking the fall for a murder. In the process, he discovers his hidden talents - the hard way.

An attack in the dark. The loss of a love. Waking up hung over in a ditch. These are the things that make a hero, especially if that hero is Quincy Harker, immortal wizard, snarky bastard, and general badass. Histories collects two short stories and one short novella giving a peek behind the curtain at the man, the myth, the legend that is Quincy Harker, as well as the origin story of one of his most popular cohorts, Jo Henry.

Atlanta, 1974: It's Kate Murphy's first day on the job, and the Atlanta Police Department is seething after the murder of an officer. Before the day has barely begun, she already suspects she's not cut out to be a cop. Her male uniform is too big, she can't handle a gun, and she's rapidly learning that the APD is hardly a place that welcomes women. Worse still, in the ensuing manhunt she'll be partnered with Maggie Lawson, a cop with her own ax to grind.

Michael McGill is a burned-out private detective who suddenly becomes enlisted by an army of presidential goons to retrieve the Constitution of the United States, but not the one we all know about. This would be the real Constitution (the one with invisible amendments), created by some of the Founding Fathers as a fall back for their great experiment.

In his new life as a bartender at the Little Shamrock, Dismas Hardy is just hoping for a little peace. He's left both the police force and his law career behind. Unfortunately it's not as easy to leave behind the memory of a shattering personal loss - but for the time being, he can always take the edge off with a stiff drink and a round of darts.

It's the middle of a sweltering late-summer heat wave in Los Angeles. In the nearby mountains, a seasonal wildfire burns out of control. If not for this fire, authorities might never have discovered wreckage of an Alfa Romeo convertible - or the body of the car's driver - in the dense underbrush at the bottom of Topanga Canyon. But when firefighters happen across the crash site while battling the nearby blaze, it's only a matter of time and basic forensics before the apparent accident is upgraded to homicide.

A routine investigation into corruption at a North Californian airport sets in motion shocking events that lead hard man Jim Bishop and world-weary ex-cop boss Scott Weiss into the center of a massive criminal conspiracy. The trail of blood that ensues brings them dangerously closer to Weiss's old nemesis, an expert gun-for-hire known only as Shadowman and to a plan set to climax with an act of audacious violence and a murder that would be impossible for any killer but one....

Lieutenant Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels is having a bad week. Her live-in boyfriend has left her for his personal trainer, chronic insomnia has caused her to max out her credit cards with late-night home shopping purchases, and a frightening killer who calls himself "The Gingerbread Man" is dumping mutilated bodies in her district.

Sometimes you don't mean to become another person. Sometimes the choice is made for you, and pretending is the only thing that keeps you going. When Alexis Romera is taken and her kidnappers find her fake ID in her purse, she must become Sophia in order to keep her family safe. Revealing her real identity to the man she's sold to would be easy enough, but can she trust him? Hell-bent on avenging the murder of his uncle, Rebel doesn't seem all that interested in playing things safe.