In this first in a series of wickedly funny mysteries, best-selling author Lawrence Block introduces Bernie Rhodenbarr, sometimes burglar, sometimes sleuth. Pulling only an occasional, very discreet job, Bernie manages to maintain his comfortable New York City apartment and keep his unorthodox vocation a closely-guarded secret. Every burglar knows never to trust anonymous phone calls. But when the caller offers easy money for an hour's work, Bernie can't ignore the job.

Acclaimed New York Times best-selling author Lawrence Block returns with the extraordinary Bernie Rhodenbarr. Antiquarian bookseller by day, burglar by night, Bernie has an innate knack, a gift, for getting into places designed to keep him out.

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.

Since the 1970s, Lawrence Block has been writing award-winning novels and short fiction featuring Matthew Scudder. Now, with both himself and his detective half a century older, the author found himself charged with writing a book about his protagonist. And he decided he wasn’t the right person for the job.

Matthew Scudder, a down-but-not-out-detective, is shocked by the apparent suicide of Paula, a waitress at Armstrong’s, one of Scudder’s hangouts. When Paula’s sister shows up and asks Matt to investigate what she believes to be a murder, Scudder agrees to take on the case. A number of clues don’t add up to suicide, and Scudder’s investigation leads him to the dark corners of Paula’s world.

It was all too frighteningly familiar. For the second time in his life, Alex Penn wakes up in an alcoholic daze in a cheap hotel room off Times Square and finds himself lying next to the savagely mutilated body of a young woman. After the first death, he was convicted of murder and imprisoned, then released on a technicality. But this time he has to find out what happened during the blackout and why, before the police do.

Homicide is always an abomination, but there is something exceptionally disturbing about the victim discovered in a high, lonely place: a corpse with a mouth full of sand, abandoned at a crime scene seemingly devoid of tracks or useful clues. Though it goes against his better judgment, Navajo tribal police lieutenant Joe Leaphorn cannot help but suspect the hand of a supernatural killer.

John Dortmunder and company are hired by an U.N. African Ambassador to steal the famed Balabomo Emerald from the hands of a rival African country. But their daring and clever burglarly goes awry, and the emerald slips through their fingers. Undaunted, Dortmunder chases the gem by plane, train and automobile in hot pursuit of the hot rock.

For Mrs Pargeter, it is a matter of principle that she should complete any of her late husband's unfinished business. Amongst his many bequests, perhaps the most valuable is his little black book, in which he listed all the people who ever worked for him, with details of their particular skill sets. This means that whenever Mrs P has a crime to solve, she can readily contact someone with the relevant expertise.

When someone makes a present of a fer-de-lance - the dreaded snake - to Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin knows he's close to solving two apparently unrelated murders. As for Wolfe, he's playing snake charmer in a case more deadly than a cobra and whistling a seductive tune he hopes will catch a killer with poison in his heart.

Everyone is always telling Stone Barrington that he’s too smart to be a cop, but it’s pure luck that places him on the streets in the dead of night, just in time to witness the horrifying incident that turns his life inside out. Suddenly he is on the front page of every New York newspaper and his life is hopelessly entwined in the increasingly shocking life (and perhaps death) of Sasha Nijinsky, the country’s hottest and most beautiful television anchorwoman.

For a generous commission, ex-prizewinning jockey Jonah Dereham reluctantly agrees to bid on a young steeplechaser on behalf of a wealthy American woman. But his life is thrust into danger immediately following the auction, when he receives a blow to the head by two thugs demanding ownership of the horse.

Jodi Taylor reads the long-awaited prequel in her Chronicles of St Mary’s series, as Dr Bairstow struggles to set up St Mary’s as we know it in a world still scarred by the ravages of civil war. Ever wondered how it all began? It’s two years since the final victory at the Battersea Barricades. The fighting might be finished, but for Dr Bairstow, just now setting up St Mary's, the struggle is only beginning. How will he assemble his team? From where will his funding come?

When a sudden crime wave hits several small midwestern towns, the US Attorney for the region calls on Harry Duncan to investigate. An ex-cop known for his unorthodox methods, Duncan is reluctant to go up against a widespread criminal organization—but the attorney in question is Ellen Leicester, the wife who left him fifteen years earlier, and to her, he can't say no.

At the end of her first unsuccessful season out in society, Lady Georgiana has all but given up on attracting a suitable man - until she receives an invitation to a masked Halloween ball at Broxley Manor. Georgie is uncertain why she was invited, until she learns that the royal family intends to marry her off to a foreign prince, one reputed to be mad.