Clark Howard
A survivor of Little Bighorn faces down the resulting trauma in the decades following the bloody battle. An old man who has lost his late wife’s cat joins forces with an unlikely partner to rescue abused animals. An ex–racecar driver contends with criminals in the midst of...
In 1946, six men attempted to break out of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison on an island off the coast of San Francisco. Their bloody siege lasted two days, and ended with five dead and fifteen wounded—plus two of the perpetrators executed for their role in the endeavor.
In Six Against...
In the early 1970s, a small band of well-dressed, clean-cut African American men began terrorizing the residents of San Francisco with guns and machetes. Their victims ranged from a teenage Salvation Army cadet to a middle-aged Jordanian grocer to an eighty-one-year-old...
4) The Hunters
Four guys from the suburbs are about to set out on a hunting trip. Wes is an architectural draftsman with a secret. Leo has a high-level advertising job, but is miserable with ulcers. Milt sells pharmaceuticals but is disdained by his wife—who happens to be the object of passionate desire for Lamar,...
5) Hard City
The searing novel of a brutal boyhood in 1940s Chicago—and a young man walking the knife’s edge between a life of crime and a brighter future.
The son of a single mother addicted to heroin, Richie grows up in poverty and hardship. His adolescence is a constant battle between hope—in the form of a kind boxing coach, a job in a bowling alley where he can sneak a nap, and a determination to track down his disreputable
...American Saturday traces one man’s path from the slums of Chicago to the California state prison where he embraced radicalism, was charged for the murder of a corrections officer, and eventually, was gunned down during the violent...
A team of professional stunt performers are likely to lose their livelihoods as a new law goes into effect, severely limiting their ability to take the risks that have made them who they are.
In the meantime, they have a plan to mark a spectacular end to...
After Sam Sheridan returns home from the World War I battlefront, he receives an odd inheritance from a man he’s never met: a parcel of land in east Texas. With little to lose, he and his wife set off from Kansas City and find themselves...
9) The Arm
An ambitious gambler may lose it all in this novel by an Edgar Award–winning “superlative storyteller” (Publishers Weekly).
He was known as Cully the Arm—the best crapshooter in Chicago. Life was a game of both skill and luck, and he’d made his way to the big city seeking his chance to be a winner.
Before long he was moving between bars, backrooms, brothels—anywhere a man could gamble.
...10) The Killings
A pair of twins have been brutally murdered, and Los Angeles detectives George Cascade and Ed Fenner find themselves working a case with puzzling sexual overtones. When a young, intellectually disabled African American becomes the object of suspicion, tensions...
11) Mark the Sparrow
Weldon Whitmen was arrested for committing a series of robberies and bizarre sex crimes while out on parole. Now he’s condemned to die. Claiming innocence, he makes headlines with his appeal—and two people decide to come to his aid.
One is...
A wealthy man has been abducted—but it’s not his money the kidnappers are after—in this inventive thriller by an Edgar Award–winning author.
Devlin’s beat is usually organized crime, but now he’s been called to the home of Jennifer Keyes, a redheaded actress whose husband has gone missing. It’s not Devlin’s sort of case, but he finds Jennifer compelling so he agrees to help—and
...13) Quick Silver
In the aftermath of World War I, three veterans—Mike, Jim, and Buck—meet a seductive woman named Ruby. Quick Silver follows all four over a span of decades, from Virginia City to Las Vegas, as their lives intertwine and intersect. It is a tale...
A small-town doctor copes with an escalating medical mystery in this thriller by a “superlative storyteller” (Publishers Weekly).
Lee Madrigal became a doctor in spite of his difficult working-class upbringing, with a mother who died young and a father who fell under the spell of alcohol. Now Lee serves his neighbors in the California community where he grew up, and has reunited with his high school sweetheart.
...15) Last Contract
He has no police record, not even a traffic ticket. But he’s killed twenty-seven people during his career as a professional assassin. And sometimes it’s not just the target who takes a bullet—if the bodyguard or mistress is unfortunate enough to be around. When the time comes, it happens...
When a topless dancer is beaten to death, police detective Joe Kiley strongly suspects her boyfriend, a mob kingpin’s brother, is the killer. He isn’t—but in the course of trying to track him down, Kiley’s partner...
17) Summit Kill
One man fights to foil a wild plot for worldwide destruction in this action-packed thriller from “a superlative storyteller” (Publishers Weekly).
Herr Inman has a plan and the resources to pull it off.First there will be five assassinations of powerful world leaders—including the pope—then three atomic bombs aimed at major cities. In the resulting chaos, Inman will take over the world . . .
Christian
...18) The Wardens
Dru is the daughter of a warden, the first in a long line keeping watch over a local prison. This multigenerational epic follows Dru’s relationships and conflicts with men on both sides of the bars through the early twentieth century, when convicts were...
19) Siberia 10
As the Vietnam War rages, blood will be shed at a stateside Marine Corps prison, in this novel by a “superlative storyteller” (Publishers Weekly).
Siberia 10 is a military prison in California, and tensions are coming to a slow boil within its walls. Inmates are trying to escape; guards are practicing constant brutality; racial tensions are seething. Those confined to Siberia 10 have been trained to fight and kill—and
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