Charlie Hardie, an ex-cop still reeling from the revenge killing of his former partner's entire family, fears one thing above all else: that he'll suffer the same fate. Languishing in self-imposed exile, Hardie has become a glorified house sitter. His latest gig comes replete with an illegally squatting B-movie actress who rants about hit men who specialize in making deaths look like accidents. Unfortunately, it's the real deal. Hardie finds himself squared off against a small army of the most lethal men in the world: The Accident People.

When he was 19, James Stark was considered to be one of the greatest natural magicians, a reputation that got him demon-snatched and sent downtown - to Hell - where he survived as a gladiator, a sideshow freak entertaining Satan's fallen angels. That was 11 years ago. Now, the hitman who goes only by Stark has escaped and is back in L.A. Armed with a fortune-telling coin, a black bone knife, and an infernal key, Stark is determined to destroy the magic circle.

A small Georgia town erupts in panic when a young college professor is found brutally mutilated in the local diner. But it's only when town pediatrician and coroner Sara Linton does the autopsy that the full extent of the killer's twisted work becomes clear. Sara's ex-husband, Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver, leads the investigation - a trail of terror that grows increasingly macabre when another local woman is found crucified a few days later.

Redemption isn't a word Jim Heron knows much about - his specialty is revenge, and to him, sin is all relative. But everything changes when he becomes a fallen angel and is charged with saving the souls of seven people from the seven deadly sins. Vin diPietro long ago sold his soul to his business, and he's good with that - until fate intervenes in the form of a tough-talking Harley-riding, self-professed savior.

Cara Stone is a broken woman: penniless, homeless, and hopeless. When given the chance to appear on television, she jumps at the opportunity to win a minimum of $5,000 for her family.

*My name is Ellis DeAngelo.* I tend to get caught in the midst of trouble quite often. I'm an unlucky guy, but fortunate to have friends to help me out. These aren't the memoirs of a geisha you'll be hearing. And most definitely not some soul-searching discovery that depicts eating, praying, and loving. This is so much better...or worse, depending on your perspective.

Tommy O’Brien once hoped to leave his run-down industrial hometown. But, marriage and fatherhood have kept him running in place, working a job that doesn’t even pay the bills. And now, he seems fated to stay for the rest of his life: He's just learned he’s going to die young - and soon. But he refuses to leave his family with less than nothing - especially now that he has nothing to lose. Over a couple of beers with his best friends, John and Sherm, Tommy launches a bold scheme to provide for his family’s future. One man’s war with God may impact us all.

The Cocaine Chronicles contains tough tales by a cross-section of today's most thought-provoking writers. Featuring brand-new stories by: Susan Straight, Lee Child, Laura Lippman, Ken Bruen, Jerry Stahl, Nina Revoyr, Bill Moody, Emory Holmes II, James Brown, Gary Phillips, Jervey Tervalon, Kerry E. West, Donnell Alexander, Deborah Vankin, Robert Ward, Manuel Ramos, and Detrice Jones.

Charlotte Rowe spent the first seven years of her life in the hands of the only parents she knew—a pair of serial killers who murdered her mother and tried to shape Charlotte in their own twisted image. If only the nightmare had ended when she was rescued. Instead, her real father exploited her tabloid-ready story for fame and profit—until Charlotte finally broke free from her ghoulish past and fled. Just when she thinks she has buried her personal hell forever, Charlotte is swept into a frightening new ordeal.

John Lago is a very bad guy. But he’s the very best at what he does. And what he does is infiltrate top-level companies and assassinate crooked executives while disguised as an intern. Interns are invisible. That’s the secret behind HR, Inc., the elite “placement agency” that doubles as a network of assassins for hire who take down high-profile targets that wouldn’t be able to remember an intern’s name if their lives depended on it.

A kidnapped fifteen-year-old girl in a country this father barely understands. Atlas Hargrove is officially on the hunt. Former SWAT commander, Atlas Hargrove, just earned himself back-to-back life sentences in a California supermax prison. One wrong moment cost him his wife, his family, his life. All is not lost, though. On the fringes of polite society, financiers with leverage and influence are in constant search of a brute like Atlas, an unlikely asset with a perfect alibi and the need to raise hell in the middle of hell itself.

Jack Veeder is dying. Soon. And that impending event brings his son Jimmy back to the Imperial Valley of southern California just north of the Calexico/Mexicali border. Jimmy hopes he can spend what time his father has left laughing and reminiscing. But Jack’s got one dying request. He needs Jimmy to find a Mexican prostitute named Yolanda. Enlisting the help of his boyhood friend Bobby Maves, the pair stumbles through the violent, the exploited, and the corrupted of Mexicali.

Three FBI murder mysteries that crackle with suspense. One gutsy FBI agent who never wanted to become a modern-day heroine.

Pappy tries to break out of the game before the head of his crew, Black, gets them all killed. Against his better judgment Pappy agrees to do one last job, but only because it’s the price of his freedom. He knows Black can’t be trusted. He knows his “brother” would rather see him dead than let him walk away. Yet he still agrees to do the job because Black isn’t the only one who can’t be trusted. Sometimes you have to kill for what you want. Further developing the stark realism and uncompromising streetwise narratives of his lyrics, H.N.I.C. cements Prodigy’s position as one of the foremost chroniclers of contemporary urban life.

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.

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.

Celia Miller is the Ravencourt PD's only female officer. When she's not contending with the latest in a long line of lowlife drug abusers and wife beaters who pay more attention to her body than her badge, she has to put up with a police force that refuses to respect her. But Celia has a job to do, and for months her middle-of-nowhere desert town has been victimized by an increasingly violent gang dubbed "The Illegals". The alien masks they wear have made them an urban legend, but Celia's off-the-books investigation has uncovered the true scope of their criminal operation.

When he was 19, James Stark was considered to be one of the greatest natural magicians, a reputation that got him demon-snatched and sent downtown - to Hell - where he survived as a gladiator, a sideshow freak entertaining Satan's fallen angels. That was 11 years ago. Now, the hitman who goes only by Stark has escaped and is back in L.A. Armed with a fortune-telling coin, a black bone knife, and an infernal key, Stark is determined to destroy the magic circle.

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.

The only sign of life for miles is an empty BMW. Inside the expensive car he finds clothes that fit perfectly, shoes for his tattered feet, a Rolex, and an auto registration in the name of Daniel Hayes, resident of Malibu, California. None of it is familiar. How did he get here? Who is he? Who was he? While he searches for answers, the world searches for him - beginning with the cops that kick in the door of his dingy motel with guns drawn. Lost and alone, the man who might be Daniel Hayes flees into the night. All he remembers is a woman’s face, so he sets off for the only place he might find her.

Kip Weiler is a self-destructive, washed-up, middle-aged professor. Once a superstar of the literary set, he has bottomed out after years of drinking and not writing anything worth a damn. As the novel begins, he’s teaching classes at a small, rural community college. Kip's talent, money, and chances have just about run out, when he rescues a classroom full of his students from a deranged student gunman who opens fire and takes the class hostage. Things then begin to change for Kip - seemingly for the better....

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.

Can humanity Survive what it never saw coming? On October 15 at 2:15 a.ms Earth vanished. A scattered few woke alone in a world with no rules, other than survival at any cost. A journalist wanders the wretched reality of an empty New York, searching for his wife and son. A serial killer must hunt in a land where prey is now an endangered species. A mother shields her young daughter from danger through every terror-filled breath.

There are angels, and they are not beneficent or loving. But they do watch over us. They watch our lives unfold, analyzing us for repeating patterns and redundancies. When they find them, the angels simplify those patterns and remove the redundancies, and the problem that is "you" gets solved.

In Savages, Don Winslow introduced Ben and Chon, twentysomething best friends who risk everything to save the girl they both love, O. Now, in his high-octane prequel, Winslow reaches back in time to tell the story of how Ben, Chon, and O became the people they are. Spanning from 1960s Southern California to the recent past, it is a tale of family in all its forms. As the younger generation does battle with drug dealers and crooked cops, they learn that their future is inextricably linked with their parents' history.

A powerful hit man, Gideon is the master of the game in a jet-setting world dominated by money, women, and violence. Living off the grid, making love on the run, he makes his living as a contract killer by enacting the revenge of the brokenhearted...for a price.

In the American Southwest, Nevada, Arizona, and California skirmish for dwindling shares of the Colorado River. Into the fray steps Angel Velasquez, detective, leg breaker, assassin, and spy. A Las Vegas water knife, Angel "cuts" water for his boss, Catherine Case, ensuring that her lush, luxurious arcology developments can bloom in the desert, so the rich can stay wet while the poor get nothing but dust.

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.

Miriam Black knows when you will die. Still in her early twenties, she’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, suicides, and slow deaths by cancer. But when Miriam hitches a ride with truck driver Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days he will be gruesomely murdered while he calls her name. Miriam has given up trying to save people; that only makes their deaths happen. No matter what she does, she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.

STOP. You should not have touched this flyer with your bare hands. NO, don't put it down. It's too late. They're watching you. My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours. You may not want to know about the things you'll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the future. But it's too late. You touched the book. You're in the game. You're under the eye. The only defense is knowledge. You need to read this book, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why?