Sensacyjna

For generations, privileged young men have attended St. Oswald's Grammar School for Boys, groomed for success by the likes of Roy Straitley, the eccentric Classics teacher who has been a fixture there for more than thirty years. This year, however, the wind of unwelcome change is blowing, and Straitley is finally, reluctantly, contemplating retirement. As the new term gets under way, a number of incidents befall students and faculty alike, beginning as small annoyances but soon escalating in both number and consequence. St. Oswald's is unraveling, and only Straitley stands in the way of...

Enough Rope, a collection of superb stories, establishes the extraordinary skill, power, and versatility of contemporary Grand Master Lawrence Block.

Block's beloved series characters are on hand, including ex-cop Matt Scudder, bookselling burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, and the disarming duo of Chip Harrison and Leo Haig. Here, too, are Keller, the wistful hit man, and the natty attorney Martin Ehrengraf. Keeping them company are dozens of other refugees from Block's dazzling imagination, all caught up in more ingenious plots than you can shake a blunt instrument at.

Half...

When Alex Powell stops into a Los Angeles bookstore on a rainy spring night, she's planning to write a column on the author who is reading and signing books there. But what she gets instead is a firsthand look at the murder of a controversial African American writer. James Simpson Lee Hastings's death sends seismic shock waves through Los Angeles's black and white elite, and reveals how some of the city's well-to-do are connected in ways they'd rather leave unmentioned. But trying to unravel those connections might mean that the next time Alex's name shows up in her paper, it won't be as a...

On a dismal evening in the previous century, an unnamed writer in Venice, California, answers a furious pounding at his beachfront bungalow door and again admits Constance Rattigan into his life. An aging, once-glamorous Hollywood star, Constance is running in fear from something she dares not acknowledge -- and vanishes as suddenly as she appeared, leaving the narrator two macabre books: twin listings of the Tinseltown dead and soon to be dead, with Constance's name included among them. And so begins an odyssey as dark as it is wondrous, as the writer sets off in a broken-down jalopy with...

Retirement has never sat well with former Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn. Now the ghosts of a still-unsolved case are returning to haunt him, reawakened by a photograph in a magazine spread of a one-of-a-kind Navajo rug, a priceless work of woven art that was supposedly destroyed in a suspicious fire many years earlier. The rug, commemorating one of the darkest and most terrible chapters in American history, was always said to be cursed, and now the friend who brought it to Leaphorn's attention has mysteriously gone missing.

With newly wedded officers Jim Chee and...

Sell Low, Die Hard

Former champion Olympic fencer-turned-sleazy real estate developer Donald Fox isn't making any friends on Martha's Vineyard this gray and chilly March. He's using unscrupulous methods and legal ambiguities to force homeowners to sell their valuable land at rock bottom prices. He's even approached fisherman/sometime-sleuth J. W. Jackson and his wife Zee, not realizing that the retired Boston cop is anything but an easy mark. So when Donald's brother Paul is shot by an unseen assailant on a Vineyard street, J. W. can't help wondering if the wrong Fox...

The beautiful, serene village of Molena Point, California is the type of place where people go to get away from the harsher realities of life--which is what attracted classic film star Patty Rose to buy the village inn, and settle down to enjoy her golden years. But as the town gathers to celebrate and honor the beautiful, aging actress with a festival of her old films, Patty is brutally murdered--to the horror and shock of this peaceful burg.

A gentle tortoiseshell cat, Kit, has been enjoying a retreat to the animal-loving actress's inn, where she's spending time with her feline...

"Wilma's in danger

You think I'm going to sit here polishing my claws?"

When she first hears the news that convict Cage Jones has escaped from prison, Dulcie's fur stands on end. She knows he's after her human companion, Wilma, whom he blames for his stint in jail. She tries to enlist the help of her friend Joe Grey, but the tomcat's got his paws full investigating two local murders. It's only when Wilma disappears after an afternoon shopping trip--and Cage is found lurking at her house--that Joe realizes the two crimes might be more connected than he thought. Paw in hand with...

Buckle your seat belts.Number one New York Times bestselling author Janet Evanovich is moving into the fast lane with Metro Girl, a thrilling, high-octane misadventure with high stakes, hot nights, cold-blooded murder, sunken treasure, a woman with a chassis built for speed, and one very good, very sexy NASCAR driver who's along for the ride.

-Wild- Bill Barnaby's dropped off the face of the earth and big sister Alex heads for Miami, Bill's last known sighting, on a harrowing hunt to save her brother ... and maybe the world. Truth is, Alex has been bailing her brother...

It's the last race of the season, and the wheels are smoking and the temperature is rising at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Alexandra Barnaby is NASCAR driver Sam Hooker's raceday spotter, his eye-in-the-sky, telling Hooker when to pass and when to get off the gas. From her vantage point high above the grandstand, she's also seeing things going on in the infield that will change her life. Things that will lead to a stolen racecar hauler, a kidnapped Saint Bernard, and a bizarre murder.

From Miami, Florida, to Concord, North Carolina, and back to Miami, this is everything you always...

The drinks are on Sunshine State historian/spree killer Serge A. Storms, who's decided it's high time he got married. So he's motoring down to the Florida Keys -- the ultimate end of the line -- in search of Ms. Right . . .

and finding his doped-up basket case bud Coleman along the way. But for Serge, "getting hitched" doesn't necessarily mean "settling down" -- not when South Florida is crawling with slimeballs, swindlers, unrepentant jerks, and annoying bystanders whose ranks need some serious thinning.

Elmore Leonard, a literary icon praised by The New York Times Book Review as "the greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever," has captured the imagination of millions of readers with his more than three dozen books.

In this short fiction collection, Leonard demonstrates the superb characterizations, dead-on dialogue, vivid atmosphere, and driving plots that have made him a household name -- and once again illustrates that the line between the law and the lawbreakers is not as firm as we might think.

Federal marshal Karen Sisco, from the bestselling novel Out...

New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth George serves up a century's worth of superb crime fiction penned by women. This veritable all-star team delivers tales of dark deeds that will keep you reading long into the night. Included are these works:

• "A Jury of Her Peers" by Susan Glaspell
• The Summer of People" by Shirley Jackson
• "The Irony of Hate" by Ruth Rendell
• "Country Lovers" by Nadine Gordimer
• "Wild Mustard" by Marcia Muller
• "Murder-Two" by Joyce Carol Oates

A Moment on the Edge is a rare...

A new crime-thriller full of suspense from Sujata Massey, the acclaimed author of The Bride's Kimono and The Floating Girl.

Antiques dealer Rei Shimura is in San Francisco visiting her parents and researching a personal project tracing the story of 100 years of Japanese decorative arts through her own family's experience. Her work is interrupted by the arrival of her boyfriend, lawyer Hugh Glendinning, who is involved in a class action lawsuit on behalf of aged Asian nationals forced to engage in slave labour for Japanese companies during

...

The seventh book in Sujata Massey's Agatha and Macavity Award-winning mystery series is a witty, suspenseful story that takes its young sleuth into the Washington DC restaurant world.

A dazzling engagement ring and the promise of a fresh start bring antiques dealer and sometime sleuth Rei Shimura to Washington, DC. But just as she's starting to settle down -catching up with a long-lost cousin and undertaking a lucrative commission furnishing a trendy Japanese restaurant nearby - things begin to go haywire. First, her cousin vanishes from the restaurant's opening-night party, and...

The year is 1962. John Glenn is in orbit, Audrey Hepburn is breakfasting outside Tiffany's, Elvis is recording "Bossa Nova Baby," and in Istanbul, a middle-aged Dutch spy has just met a fiery death. Enter Jack Mallory and Laura Morse, clandestine operatives for the Consultancy. He's a laconic ex-soldier from the oil fields of Corpus Christi; she's a wintrily beautiful Boston Brahmin and an adept at Floating Hand karate. The murdered man was their colleague, and the Consultancy has ordered them to exact revenge on the genially murderous Piotr Nemerov and the playboy-turned-arms-dealer Anton...

Annie Darling, owner of the Death on Demand mystery bookstore, is understandably upset. It isn't like her p.i. husband Max to abruptly disappear--and homicide is definitely not his style. But when his car is found abandoned on a remote road with a brutally slain, once-beautiful young woman nearby and the murder weapon stashed in the trunk, Annie's worst fears seem justified.

The police have Max all but tried and convicted--except for Chief Billy Cameron, whose unshakable belief in his friend's innocence prompts his removal from the case. And as a media circus descends on tiny...

In this, the second book in Robert van Gulik's classic mystery series of ancient China, Judge Dee must look into the murder of his predecessor. His job is complicated by the simultaneous disappearance of his chief clerk and the new bride of a wealthy local shipowner.

Meanwhile, a tiger is terrorizing the district, the ghost of the murdered magistrate stalks the tribunal, a prostitute has a secret message for Dee, and the body of a murdered monk is discovered to be in the wrong grave. In the end, the judge, with his deft powers of deduction, uncovers the one cause for all of these...

Meet Judge Dee, the detective lauded as the "Sherlock Holmes of ancient China"

Fans of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series will thrill to this reissue of the first volume in Robert van Gulik's classic Chinese Murders series. The Chinese Bell Murders introduces the great Judge Dee, a magistrate of the city of Poo-yang in ancient China.

In the spirit of ancient Chinese detective novels, Judge Dee is challenged by three cases. First, he must solve the mysterious murder of Pure Jade, a young girl living on Half Moon Street. All the evidence...

Bernie Rhodenbarr is actually trying to earn an honest living. It's been an entire year since he's entered anyone's abode illegally to help himself to their valuables. But now an unscrupulous landlord's threat to increase Bernie's rent by 1,000% is driving the bookseller and reformed burglar back to a life of crime -- though, in all fairness, it's a very short trip. And when the cops wrongly accuse him of stealing a priceless collection of baseball cards, Bernie's stuck with a worthless alibi since he was busy burgling a different apartment at the time . . . one that happened to...