Nobody knows better than Matthew Scudder how far down a person can sink in this city. A young prostitute named Kim knew it also—and she wanted out. Maybe Kim didn't deserve the life fate had dealt her. She surely didn't deserve her death. The alcoholic ex-cop turned p. i. was supposed to protect her, but someone slashed her to ribbons on a crumbling New York City waterfront pier. Now finding Kim's killer will be Scudder's penance. But there are lethal secrets hiding in the slain hooker's past that are far dirtier than her trade. And there are many ways of dying in this cruel and dangerous town—some quick and brutal . . . and some agonizingly slow.

The national bestselling saga of Robert Silverberg's stunning imagination continues in the first new hardcover Majipoor novel in nearly a decade. As a prequel to Silverberg's earlier Majipoor novels. Sorcerers of Majipoor provides a deep, dark vision for the background of the conflict in Lord Valentine's Castle and Valentine Pontifex. Treachery and wizardry run rampant under the reign of the mighty Pontifex, as both the rightful and the unworthy heirs to the throne anxiously await his demise. Korsibar, son of the current Coronal, plots with his twin sister and ambitious companions to seize the power of the Coronal when his father ascends to the throne of the Pontifex. But the burdens of the crown and scepter exact more of a price than Korsibar is prepared to pay. His rival fights to take his appointed place as keeper of his beloved Majipoor . . . and to resbackse order to the utter chaos that has befallen their world.

She was the beautiful daughter of a dirt-poor Alabama farmer. But Angela Sherrington had a dream: to love dashing Bradford Maitland, the handsome heir to magnificent Golden Oaks. In the satin boudoir of a Yankee bordello, Angela's prayers are answered in the loving arms of the man she lived for. But scandal, cruelty and a shocking family secret threaten to tear apart two passionate hearts newly joined, imperilling a bold and forbidden romance too overpowering to deny.

The interstellar Bridge System was the greatest invention in the long history of cosmic humanity. Spread through dozens of planets, men and their societies had drifted apart in isolation until the Bridge came to link together humanity's multifold worlds and had affirmed once more that all men were brothers and sisters under the skin. But the far away world of Azreal was the exception, the one dissident world that refused the Bridge. It became the task of two agents, a man and a woman, to bring Azreal back into manshape unity, to ferret out the hidden reasons for the stubborn refusal. The problem, with its perils and high risks, was to involve more than just secrets, for Manshape is John Brunner novel that deals with the very fabric of civilization

**Deadeye Dick** is Kurt Vonnegut’s funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors—a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb—Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe . . . and who we say we are. *From the Trade Paperback edition.*

Hawk was just passing through Santa Rosa ...Until outlaws hit the bank and he left them spilling blood on the street.Charles Sweeney owned most of the town—he needed a man like Hawk to carry $20,000 through to Tucson.But Sweeney's wife had other plans for the gunfighter, and she was watched by a black killer called Ace.Hawk found himself caught up in a murderous double-cross with only one way out ...Hawk's way ...The killing way!

A woman had been born nude and whole,, though when she moved she still gave of a gust of cold like wind off a glacier. She spoke:"Hail to you, Northron Nifft, call also Nifft the Lean, You and Haldar both are known to me— your qualities of craft and soul. It is ypur luck that you chose this camp, and mine that I reached you in it. Know, gentle thieves, that your fortune has changed. I am your gate to fame, to wealth and power past the tongue’s telling. If you go through me you will go, at first, tbrough terrible darkness, but at the last you will go in brightest daylight, amid pomp and acclamation."I am Dalissem I was a tempie-child of Lurkna Downs. I have been dead these seven years.“I come to offer what you seek. I'll give you the Wizard's Key. For this, you nust bring down to me one living man, one ma stilldon to me to where I dwell in the place of the Raging Dead.

A college professor and other oddballs are dropped onto a bleak world near a giant blue cube -- with no idea how to proceed.

The Case of the Vagabond Virgin (1948) – A man picks up an innocent young hitchhiker and gets into even more trouble when his partner is found murdered.After prominent businessman John Racer Addison gives some fatherly help to a mixed-up eighteen-year-old runaway, an unscrupulous gossip columnist threatens to turn their innocent relationship into a tawdry tabloid tale. The scandal will be on everyone's lips -- unless Addison pays through the nose.

Epub (good conversion)ContentsIntroduction · Ellery Queen · inChain of Terror · Patricia McGerr The Strong and the Weak · Ruth RendellThe Dead Past · Thomas Walsh Don’t Cry, Sally Shy · Barbara CallahanThe Second Reason · William BrittainThe Sark Lane Mission · Michael Gilbert The K-Bar-D Murders · Gerald TomlinsonThe Final Twist · William Bankier A More-or-Less Crime · Edgar Wallace A Kind of Madness · David BradtThe President’s Half Disme · Ellery Queen Beauty Is as Beauty Does · Jack RitchieThe Long Glass Man · Rosalind Ashe The Death of the Bag Man · Stephen WasylykThe Rose Murders · E. X. FerrarsGentlemen’s Agreement · Lawrence BlockThe Will-o’-the-Wisp Mystery · Edward D. Hoch

The fourth in Doris Lessing's visionary novel cycle Canopus in Argos: Archives. It is a mix of fable, futuristic fantasy and pseudo-documentary accounts of 20th-century history.

The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson

 Translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal

 Introduced by Ali Smith A book of haunting suspense, a dark companion to The Summer Book, introduced by Ali Smith. In the deep winter snows of a Swedish hamlet, a strange young woman fakes a break-in at the house of an elderly artist in order to persuade her that she needs companionship. But what does she hope to gain by doing this? And who ultimately is deceiving whom? In this portrayal of two women encircling each other with truth and lies, nothing can be taken for granted. By the time the snow thaws, both their lives will have changed irrevocably. First ever publication in English, in a translation by Thomas Teal.