A character so outrageous he could only have come from the ingenious imagination of Elmore Leonard, lewd, lecherous, law-bending Florida jurist Judge Robert "Maximum Bob" Gibbs has been judged guilty by a grudge-bearing malefactor and sentenced to death - by alligator, if necessary.

World-class gentleman felon Jack Foley is busting out of Florida's Glades Prison when he runs head on into a shotgun-wielding Karen Sisco. Suddenly he's sharing a cramped car trunk with the classy, disarmed federal marshal and the chemistry is working overtime - and as soon as she escapes, he's already missing her. But there are bad men and a major score waiting for Jack in Motown. And the next time his path crosses Karen's, chances are she's going to be there for business, not pleasure.

He used to be on the bomb squad, but it's not until he transfers out that Chris Mankowski really begins juggling with dynamite. Rape and revenge are just the tip of the iceberg in a twisty tale that brings Detroit's denizens to life - and occasional death - in all their seedy glory. Electrifying, explosive, and unexpected, this is Elmore Leonard at his suspenseful best.

After serving time for armed robbery, Ernest "Stick" Stickley is back on the outside and trying to stay legit. But it's tough staying straight in a crooked town - and Miami is a pirate's paradise, where investment fat cats and lowlife drug dealers hold hands and dance. And when a crazed player chooses Stick at random to die for another man's sins, the struggling ex-con is left with no choice but to dive right back into the game. Besides, Stick knows a good thing when he sees it....

The hero of Cat Chaser, George Moran, isn't looking for trouble but finds it anyway when he winds up in bed with the wife of a drug-dealing mob-connected Dominican cop - vicious, macho and ready to follow George to the ends of the earth, which in this case means Miami.

The feds want Miami bookmaker Harry Arno to squeal on his wiseguy boss. So they're putting word out on the street that Arno's skimming profits from "Jimmy Cap" Capotorto - which he is, but everybody does it. He was planning to retire to Italy someday anyway, so Harry figures now's a good time to get lost. U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens knows Harry's tricky - the bookie ditched him once in an airport while in the marshal's custody - but not careful.

Clement Mansell knows how easy it is to get away with murder. The seriously crazed killer is already back on the Detroit streets - thanks to some nifty courtroom moves by his crafty looker of a lawyer - and he's feeling invincible enough to execute a crooked Motown judge on a whim. Homicide Detective Raymond Cruz thinks the "Oklahoma Wildman" crossed the line long before this latest outrage, and he's determined to see that the hayseed psycho does not slip through the legal system's loopholes a second time.

Dual Meaders, Doc Taulbee, and their gang of city slickers set out to steal thousands of dollars worth of homemade Kentucky Whiskey from Son Martin, a hell-raising country boy, during the midst of Prohibition.

Jack Ryan always wanted to play pro ball. But he couldn't hit a curveball, so he turned his attention to less legal pursuits. A tough guy who likes walking the razor's edge, he's just met his match, and more, in Nancy. She's a rich man's plaything, seriously into thrills and risk, and together she and Jack are pure heat ready to explode. But when simple housebreaking and burglary give way to the deadly pursuit of a really big score, the stakes suddenly skyrocket.

Working at his brother-in-law's New Orleans funeral home isn't reformed jewel thief Jack Delaney's idea of excitement - until he's dispatched to a leper's hospital to pick up a corpse that turns out to be very much alive ... and under the care of a beautiful, radical ex-nun in designer jeans. The "deceased" is the one-time squeeze of a Nicaraguan colonel who's ordered her dead for trying to "infect" him, and Sister Lucy's looking to spirit the young woman away from his guns and goons.

Jack Foley is serving a 30-year sentence in a Miami penitentiary, but he's made an unlikely friend on the inside who just might be able to do something about that. Fellow inmate Cundo Rey, an extremely wealthy Cuban criminal, arranges for Foley's sentence to be reduced from 30 years to three months, and when Jack is released just two weeks ahead of Cundo, he agrees to wait for him in Venice Beach, California.

War in Cuba isn't Ben Tyler's concern. Still, sailing mares and guns into Havana harbor in 1898 - right past the submerged wreckage of the U.S. battleship Maine - may not be the smartest thing the recently prison-sprung horse wrangler ever did. Neither is shooting one of the local Guardia, though the pompous peacock deserved it. Now Tyler's sitting tight in a vermin-infested Cuban stockade waiting to face a firing squad....

Set in Arizona mining country, Hombre is the tale of a white man raised by Indians, who must come to the aid of people who hate him when their stagecoach is attacked by outlaws. As thrilling as his contemporary novels of crime, double-cross, and murder in Detroit and Miami, Hombre is Elmore Leonard at his riveting best - no less than one would expect from the creator of US Marshal Raylan Givens ( Justified).

Phil Sundeen thinks Deputy Sheriff Kirby Frye is just a green local kid with a tin badge. And when the wealthy cattle baron's men drag two prisoners from Frye's jail and hang them from a high tree, there's nothing the young lawman can do about it. But Kirby's got more grit than Sundeen and his hired muscle bargained for. They can beat the boy and humiliate him, but they can't make him forget the oath he has sworn to uphold.

Roommates Kelly and Chloe are enjoying their lives and their downtown Detroit loft just fine. Kelly is a Victoria's Secret catalog model. Chloe is an escort, until she decides to ditch her varied clientele in favor of a steady gig as girlfriend to eighty-four-year-old retired lawyer Tony Paradiso, a.k.a. Mr. Paradise.

World-class gentleman felon Jack Foley is busting out of Florida's Glades Prison when he runs head on into a shotgun-wielding Karen Sisco. Suddenly he's sharing a cramped car trunk with the classy, disarmed federal marshal and the chemistry is working overtime - and as soon as she escapes, he's already missing her. But there are bad men and a major score waiting for Jack in Motown. And the next time his path crosses Karen's, chances are she's going to be there for business, not pleasure.

The feds want Miami bookmaker Harry Arno to squeal on his wiseguy boss. So they're putting word out on the street that Arno's skimming profits from "Jimmy Cap" Capotorto - which he is, but everybody does it. He was planning to retire to Italy someday anyway, so Harry figures now's a good time to get lost. U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens knows Harry's tricky - the bookie ditched him once in an airport while in the marshal's custody - but not careful.

Meet Elvis Cole, L.A. private eye.... He quotes Jiminy Cricket and carries a .38. He's a literate, wisecracking Vietnam vet who is determined never to grow up.

Quarry doesn't kill just anybody these days. He restricts himself to targeting other hitmen, availing his marked-for-death clients of two services: eliminating the killers sent after them, and finding out who hired them…and then removing that problem, as well. So far he's rid of the world of nobody who would be missed. But this time he finds himself zeroing in on the grieving family of a missing cheerleader. Does the hitman's hitman have the wrong quarry in his sights?

Hap Collins looks like a good ol’ boy. But even in his misspent youth, his best pal is Leonard Pine, who is Black, gay, and the ultimate outsider. Inseparable friends, Hap and Leonard climb into the boxing ring, visit their families, get in bar fights, and just go fishing - all the while confronting racists, righting wrongs, and eating a whole lot of delicious food.

The hooker was young, pretty...and dead, butchered in a Greenwich Village apartment. The prime suspect, a minister's son, was also dead, the victim of a jailhouse suicide. The case is closed, as far as the NYPD is concerned. Now the murdered prostitute's father wants it opened again--that's where Matthew Scudder comes in.

In his new life as a bartender at the Little Shamrock, Dismas Hardy is just hoping for a little peace. He's left both the police force and his law career behind. Unfortunately it's not as easy to leave behind the memory of a shattering personal loss - but for the time being, he can always take the edge off with a stiff drink and a round of darts.

Set in a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town, American Rust is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation-as well as the acts of friendship, loyalty, and love-that arise from its loss. From local bars to train yards to prison, it is the story of two young men, bound to the town by family, responsibility, inertia, and the beauty around them, who dream of a future beyond the factories and abandoned homes.

Edgar Award winner Joe R. Lansdale writes outrageous fiction that rockets along with violent spikes of action and intense humor. Gulf War vet Cason Statler has moved back to his East Texas hometown after losing his job as a reporter in Houston (sleeping with both the boss' wife and 30-year-old stepdaughter has a way of ruining career prospects). But when his new gig has him investigating a local girl's disappearance, Cason opens a can of worms that might get him killed.

Accolades for Brad Smith’s celebrated crime novels include a nomination for the coveted Dashiell Hammett Prize. In Smith’s novel Red Means Run, prominent attorney Mickey Dupree is found dead at Burr Oak Golf and Country Club. On record as hating Mickey, small-time rancher Virgil Cain quickly becomes the prime suspect. Virgil knows the fix is in—so he sets out to find the real killer.

He's a self-described beach bum who won his houseboat in a card game. He's also a knight errant who's wary of credit cards, retirement benefits, political parties, mortgages, and television. He only works when his cash runs out, and his rule is simple: he'll help you find whatever was taken from you, as long as he can keep half.

After the stunning historical novels The Clearing and The Missing, Tim Gautreaux now ranges freely through contemporary life with 12 new stories and eight from previous collections. Most are set in his beloved Louisiana, many hard by or on the Mississippi River, others in North Carolina, and even in midwinter Minnesota. But generally it's heat, humidity, and bugs that beset his people as they wrestle with affairs of the heart, matters of faith, and the pros and cons of tight-knit communities.

My life was ordinary until three years ago when I was thrown out of a downtown hotel window. My name is Robbie Brownlaw, and I am a homicide detective for the city of San Diego. I am 29 years old. I now have synesthesia, a neurological condition where your senses get mixed up. Sometimes when people talk to me, I see their voices as colored shapes provoked by the emotions of the speakers, not by the words themselves. I have what amounts to a primitive lie detector.

Three years ago Lew Fonseca quit his job as a process server with the State Attorney's Office in Cook County, Illinois, and drove his rattling Toyota south to escape the memories of his beloved late wife. Headed for Key West, the Toyota broke down in a Dairy Queen parking lot in Sarasota, Florida. Buoyed by the friendship of a few trustworthy souls, Lew settled there, making ends meet by doing some investigative work for local attorneys.

Frank Machianno is a late-middle-aged ex-surf bum who runs a bait shack on the San Diego waterfront. An affable Italian with a love of people and life, he's a stand-up businessman, devoted father, and a beloved fixture in the community. He's also a hit man - specifically, a retired hit man. Back in the day when he was one of the most feared members of the West Coast Mafia, he was known as Frankie Machine.