Amos Decker's life changed forever - twice. The first time was on the gridiron. A big, towering athlete, he was the only person from his hometown of Burlington ever to go pro. But his career ended before it had a chance to begin. On his very first play, a violent helmet-to-helmet collision knocked him off the field for good and left him with an improbable side effect - he can never forget anything.

Containing over 47 stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train - a bullet couldn't pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes.

After a covert mission became personal, the only way elite counterterrorism operative, Alexander King, could keep his loved ones safe, and the eyes of Washington's enemies blind to his existence, was to disappear. A year after his family buried a body they thought was his, King saves a young woman from a car bomb in London, and that's when his work in the shadows becomes complicated. Because she's not who he thinks she is, and the web that King is pulled into is tangled with enemies that reach the highest levels of the United States government.

Ex-St. Paul cop Rushmore McKenzie has more time, and more money, than he knows what to do with. In fact, when he’s willing to admit it to himself (and he usually isn’t), Mac is downright bored. Until he decides to do a favor for a friend facing a family tragedy: Nine-year-old Stacy Carlson has been diagnosed with leukemia, and the only one with the matching bone marrow that can save her is her older sister, Jamie. Trouble is, Jamie ran away from home years ago.

It’s tough working nights with the NYPD. The crime rate is high, the hours are terrible, and forget about a personal life. So, when Officer O’Reilly and her K-9 Rolf switch over to the day shift, things look up. She’s even able to find time for a new boyfriend. But when the theft of a priceless painting from the Queens Museum leaves a fellow police officer dead, Erin and her four-legged partner find themselves dealing with dangerous criminals, sleazy art dealers, and obstructive detectives in a race to capture the killers...and just maybe bring closure to a 75-year-old crime.

New York City, 1946. No one knows his real name, but when the job is too dirty, too dangerous, they call Kissyman. Once an elite Nazi SS commando, an honorable soldier, a taker of lives. When he was assigned to Dachau and saw what he was actually fighting for, he went AWOL and ran as far away as he could - to America. He still makes his living with a gun, but he no longer kills for his country. Now, he kills for cash.

The Thin Man introduces Nick and Nora Charles, New York's coolest crime-solving couple. Nick retired from detecting after his wife inherited a tidy sum, but six years later a pretty blonde spies him at a speakeasy and asks for his help finding her father, an eccentric inventor who was once Nick's client. Nick can no more resist the case than a morning cocktail or a good fight, and soon he and Nora are caught in a complicated web of confused identities.

The rich history of Pulp stories are pure Americana. Written like a script from Film Noir movie, you are to be transported to a time in the 30's, 40's or 50's, where the liquor flowed freely and there was always a Crosley radio playing in some room off in the distance. Pulp Noir is more about a small slice or life...and usually a dark one.... Pour yourself a nice warm drink, dim the lights...conjure up in your consciousness; Femme Fatales, handguns, seedy bars, bad luck, thieves, scoundrels, a pack of Pall Mall's, low lighting, and definitely everything in glorious black and white.

Throughout the annals of fiction, there have been many celebrated detective teams: Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Nick and Nora Charles. Hercule Poirot and Arthur Hastings. Thomas and Charlotte Pitt. That last pair is the creation of beloved mystery writer Anne Perry, who, as the editor of Odd Partners and in conjunction with Mystery Writers of America, has enlisted some of today’s best mystery writers to craft all-new stories about unlikely duos who join forces - sometimes unwillingly - to solve beguiling whodunits.

A troll in a pinstriped suit walks into a bar. He's looking for Alex Southerland, private investigator and summoner of elementals. A gorgeous dame is going to come to Southerland with a case, and the troll tells him that he is going to turn the case down - or else! But Southerland doesn't respond well to threats. Besides, he needs the dough! Framed for a murder he didn't commit, Southerland weaves his way from seedy neighborhoods to the dazzling lights of downtown - and from one savage beating to the next - to clear his name and uncover a shocking secret.

Warner spent his days like almost anyone else. He got up, went to work, answered phone calls in a call center, went home, spent time with his daughter, and went to sleep. Only to repeat the pattern over and over and over. Life was as mundane as anyone could ever fear it to be. Today was the day that all that would change. On this day, his daughter Maya would be nearly fatally injured, plunging Warner into a world of paranormal creatures, monsters, and magic he’d never known existed. The only consolation is that he discovers he’s not quite human, either.

February 1939. Europe teeters on the brink of war. In a Hell’s Kitchen bar, Charles Mossman is reeling from the loss of his job and the demise of his marriage. His estranged wife and their six-year-old daughter, Emma, now live in a quiet brownstone in a German-speaking New York City neighborhood where support for Hitler is common. Charles, just out of prison, struggles to put his life back together, while across the hall from his family, a kindly Swiss couple have taken a liking to Emma. But Charles begins to suspect that they might not be who they say they are.

Shane Ryan knows all about pain and suffering. A retired Marine gunnery sergeant, Shane has seen the worst humanity has to offer. He survived his ordeal, but his soul has been tainted by the darkness, leaving him with a permanent connection to the world of the supernatural. Shane sees the spirits of the dead. He hears their whispered cries of pain. And it’s a gift he plans to put to good use, when he travels to Detroit to investigate the death of one woman who saw through all the darkness in his heart. A woman who became his lover, many years ago.

When former Russian SVR Captain Anastasia “Anya” Burinkova defected to the United States, the life she imagined was far from the one she discovered. As the freedom she’s longed for turns to little more than imprisonment, her deadly skill set, forged and honed behind the Iron Curtain, is the only key that can possibly unshackle her. A late-night vigilante mission under the veil of darkness turns from vendetta to entrapment in an instant. What should’ve been a mission to right decades-old injustices becomes a deadly encounter with federal agents.

Sean Tennant and Molly Winter are living quietly and cautiously in Houston when a troubled, obsessive stranger shatters the safety they have carefully constructed for themselves. Sean is at a shopping mall when Henry Alan Keen pulls out a gun at a store and begins shooting everyone in sight. A former soldier, Sean rushes toward Keen and ends the slaughter with two well-placed shots - becoming a hero with his face plastered across the news. But Sean's newfound notoriety exposes him to the wrath of two men he thought he had left safely in his past.