"The first chance I got, I bought my very first bag of crystal methamphetamine... A monster was born. Try as I might, there is simply no way for me to minimize the impact with which crystal meth slammed into my life, at least not without straying far from the truth. It was like throwing a forty-pound sledge hammer though a plate glass window. What a cunning thing this was that lived inside of me. How could I ever hope to win against it? My good intentions meant nothing what I lacked was power."

Seventeen-year-old Haley McWaid is a good girl, the pride of her suburban New Jersey family, captain of the lacrosse team, headed off to college next year with all the hopes and dreams her doting parents can pin on her. Which is why, when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home the night before, and three months quickly pass without word from the girl, the community assumes the worst.

Corey Douglas and his K-9 partner, Simon Garfunkel, have recently retired from the police force. Not ready to give up the life yet, they come up with a proposal for fellow former cop, Laurie Carpenter, and her investigating partner, Marcus. They call themselves the K Team, in honor of Simon. Their first job as private investigators comes to them from Judge Henry Henderson, who's known as a very tough but fair judge, and they've all come up against him in court at one time or another. Though it's hard to believe, Judge Henderson is being blackmailed and extorted.

When 11-year-old James Renner fell in love with Amy Mihaljevic, the missing girl seen on posters all over his neighborhood, it was the beginning of a lifelong obsession with true crime. That obsession led James to a successful career as an investigative journalist. It also gave him PTSD. In 2011 James began researching the strange disappearance of Maura Murray, a UMass student who went missing after wrecking her car in rural New Hampshire in 2004.

Widower Jack Harris has resisted the dating scene ever since the shooting of his wife Molly by a fifteen-year-old boy three years ago. An early morning run along the Hudson River changes that when he spots a woman in last night’s party dress, barefoot, enjoying a champagne picnic alone, reading his favorite novel. Everything about her reminds him of what he used to have with Molly. Eager to help Jack find love again, his best friend posts a message on a popular website after he mentions the encounter.

Dion Fuller sheltered a US marine who'd stolen night vision goggles, and perhaps a few top-secret files, from a nearby military base. Dion found himself arrested (under the ostensible auspices of The Patriot Act) for conspiring with international terrorists to smuggle top-secret military equipment out of Camp Pendleton. The fact that Dion had absolutely nothing to do with international terrorists, smuggling, top-secret military equipment, or Camp Pendleton didn't seem to bother the military.

New Jersey state police officer Doug Brock has been after infamous criminal Nicholas Bennett for years. When Bennett kills someone close to Doug, Doug's investigation - and his life - start spiraling out of control. He's placed on indefinite suspension from the police force and breaks things off with his fiancée, but he can't let the case go, and he continues an off-the-books investigation on his own.

As a small-town reporter for the Bergen News, Chris Turley could never measure up to his father, Edward--one of the last great investigative journalists. With his father's legend ever-present, Chris dreams of his own Pulitzer, as he bides his time covering press conferences and town hall meetings. Then one day his fortunes turn.

Jamie Wagner is a young lawyer who is happy to be flying under the radar at a large firm doing background research for the partners. It's not that he isn't smart. He is. It's just that hard work, the whole legal world, isn't really his thing. Underachiever? Yes. Content? At least until the firm puts him on a case that turns his whole world upside down.

Years ago, Katie Sanford’s husband was convicted of the murder of Jenny Robbins, then died himself in prison. It’s a small town and memories are long, and Katie and Jenny’s husband, Chief of Police Jake Robbins, have had to work at putting the tragedy behind them. But it's all brought up again in the wake of a hurricane which has just wreaked havoc on their quiet Maine town.

Tim Wallace's wife died in a New Jersey boating accident several months ago and the cops suspect Tim murdered her, though they have no real case against him. Now it's New Year's Eve, and Tim's life is about to go from bad to worse.

On March 29, 1975, sisters Katherine and Sheila Lyons, ages 10 and 12, vanished from a shopping mall in suburban Washington, DC. As shock spread, then grief, a massive police effort found nothing. The investigation was shelved, and the mystery endured. Then, in 2013, a cold case squad detective found something he and a generation of detectives had missed. It pointed them toward a man named Lloyd Welch, then serving time for child molestation in Delaware.

Richard Kilmer is head over heels in love with Jennifer Ryan, who takes him home to meet her parents, where she accepts his marriage proposal. While visiting, they set out on a nostalgic drive up to Kendrick Falls. On their way, a freak storm rolls in, Richard loses control of his car, and it rolls. When the storm clears in a matter of seconds, Jen is gone. Richard can't find her, and neither can the police who respond to the scene.

Reporter Willie Black has squandered many things in his life, including a cushy job covering - and partying with - the politicians at the capitol. Now he’s back on the night cops beat, right where he started almost 30 years ago. But the thing Willie’s always had going for him is grit. When a coed at the local university is murdered, the alleged killer is arrested within days. Everyone seems to think the case is closed - except Willie. Embarking on a one-man crusade to get the story, he runs afoul of David Junior Shiflett.

From the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police press club: a unique, firsthand, revelatory look at Japanese culture from the underbelly up.

New Jersey state police officer Doug Brock has been after infamous criminal Nicholas Bennett for years. When Bennett kills someone close to Doug, Doug's investigation - and his life - start spiraling out of control. He's placed on indefinite suspension from the police force and breaks things off with his fiancée, but he can't let the case go, and he continues an off-the-books investigation on his own.

As a small-town reporter for the Bergen News, Chris Turley could never measure up to his father, Edward--one of the last great investigative journalists. With his father's legend ever-present, Chris dreams of his own Pulitzer, as he bides his time covering press conferences and town hall meetings. Then one day his fortunes turn.

Marshall Karp is an acclaimed playwright known for his witty sense of humor and crackling dialogue. His debut novel The Rabbit Factory stars the irreverent LAPD detective duo of Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs. Dean Lamaar is the architect of an entertainment empire and the creator of iconic characters like Rambunctious Rabbit and McGreedy the Moose.

Burke's newest client is a woman named Flood, who has the face of an angel, the body of a high-priced stripper, and the skills of a professional executioner. She wants Burke to find a monster for her - so she can kill him with her bare hands. In this thriller, Andrew Vachss's renegade private eye teams up with a lethally gifted avenger to follow a child's murderer through the catacombs of New York, where every alley is blind and the penthouses are as dangerous as the basements.

Four bodies, each with a single bullet wound in the back of the head, stacked like cordwood in a weed-choked vacant lot: That's the front-page news facing Carter Ross, investigative reporter with the Newark Eagle-Examiner. Immediately dispatched to the scene, Carter learns that the four victims - an exotic dancer, a drug dealer, a hustler, and a mama's boy - came from different parts of the city and didn't seem to know one another.

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.

Zoe Nolan disappeared from Manchester University in 2011. Her story was sad, certainly, but hardly sensational, Joseph Knox thought. As a crime writer, he felt that dead girls were everywhere, and the missing ones just didn't cut it. He wouldn't have given her any more thought were it not for Evelyn Mitchell. Another writer struggling to come up with a new idea, Evelyn attended one of Joseph's publicity events, and she was wondering just what happened to all the girls who go missing.

On January 21, 1998, the night before his 38th birthday, federal prosecutor Stanley Alpert was kidnapped by a car full of gun-toting thugs. Hoping to make a large withdrawal with his ATM card, they took him, blindfolded, to a Brooklyn apartment, and improvised. All night, his captors alternately held guns to his head, threatened his family, engaged him in discussions of "gangsta" philosophy, sought his legal advice, and even offered him sexual favors from their prostitute girlfriends as a "birthday present."

Heloise considers it a blessing to be a person who seldom attracts attention. In her suburb, she's just a mom, the young widow with the forgettable job, who somehow never misses a soccer game. In the state capital, she's the redheaded lobbyist with a good cause and a mediocre track record. But in discreet hotel rooms throughout the area, she's the woman of your dreams - if you can afford the hourly fee. For more than a decade, Heloise believed she was safe, managing to keep up this rigidly compartmentalized life. But her secret life is under siege. One county over, another so-called suburban madam has been found dead in her car, an apparent suicide.

After a life in various war zones, Dell and Dolly have settled in this town, fulfilling Dolly's lifelong dream. Though she has given up her nursing career and moved smoothly into civilian life, Dell had been a mercenary, so they both have to sacrifice their prior identities. When the star of the girls' softball team shoots and kills the most popular boy in school, Dolly asks Dell to uncover the motive behind this inexplicable crime. It doesn't take him long to uncover a horrifying rite of passage.

This is a message from the Human Resources Division of the New York Journal, New York City's leading photo-newspaper. Please be aware that according to our records you have not yet listened to this book. What exactly are you waiting for? This book has it all: humor, romance, cooking tips, Great Danes, heroine in peril, and dolphin-shaped driftwood sculptures. If you wish to hear about any of the above, please do not hesitate to scroll to the top of this page, where you will find the button to help you buy this book. Sincerely, Human Resources Division, New York Journal

Dennis Hof, proprietor of the world-famous Moonlite Bunny Ranch brothel and the P.T. Barnum of prostitution, charts his path to fame and infamy, while dispensing homespun wisdom about sex, sales, money, and how to live as the country's most recognizable pimp. In The Art of the Pimp, Dennis Hof offers a hilarious, insightful, behind-the-scenes look at life as the proprietor of The Moonlight Bunny Ranch, the world's most famous legal brothel, and recounts his chaotic life.

Detective Peter Decker of the LAPD is stunned when he gets the report. Someone has shattered the sanctuary of a remote yeshiva community in the California hills with an unimaginable crime. One of the women was brutally raped as she returned from the mikvah, the bathhouse where the cleansing ritual is performed.

The missing-persons case of Heather Strong, a young, beautiful suburban mother, baffled Florida detectives. When the file was handed to a veteran investigator, he knew Heather was dead. The challenge was to find her body - and whoever killed her. Soon a sordid triangle of sex, jealousy, and rage came to light. The killers were cunning, manipulative, depraved - and they were as close to Heather as a man and a woman could possibly be.

Lurking in the dark corners of J. P. Beaumont's bizarre case was not just a demented mind obsessed with murder, but secrets so deadly that even a street-tough cop could die guessing.