Private detective Joe Quinn gambles. That's how he's lost his job, car, clothes, and girlfriend; it's why he's hitchhiking from Reno to California. At The Tower, a back-country compound housing a religious cult, Quinn gambles again, when Sister Blessing asks him to locate one Patrick O'Gorman. It proves to be no easy task: O'Gorman's dead - and, Quinn wagers, not so accidentally as everyone insists.

The unblinking story of two lost and self-destructive drifters - a failed painter working as a counterman in a cheap diner and a woman in flight from domestic violence - trying to find a place for themselves in the back streets of San Francisco, Pick-Up is hardboiled writing at its nihilistic best.

A terrifying vision of scientific progress without moral limits, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein leads the listener on an unsettling journey from the sublime beauty of the Swiss alps to the desolate waste of the arctic circle. Obsessed with the idea of creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material with which to fashion a new being, shocking his creation to life with electricity. But this botched creature, rejected by its creator and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy Frankenstein and all that he holds dear.

Frank "Dolly" Dillon has a job he hates, working sales and collections for Pay-E-Zee Stores; a wife named Joyce he can't stand; and an account balance that barely allows him to pay the bills each month. Working door-to-door one day, trying to eke money out of folk with even less of it than he has, Dolly crosses paths with a beautiful young woman named Mona Farrell. Mona's being forced by her aunt to do things she doesn't like, with men she doesn't know - she wants out, any way she can get it.

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.

Academy Award nominee Samuel L. Jackson ( Pulp Fiction, Star Wars films), fresh off the success of his uproarious, Audie-nominated performance of the mock children’s book Go the F**k to Sleep, delivers a swaggering, darkly-humored rendering of Chester Himes’ classic first novel.

A reluctant ex-spy with demons of her own, Elinor finds herself facing down one of the most dangerous organized crime gangs in London, ultimately exposing corruption from Scotland Yard to the highest levels of government. The private, quiet “Miss White" as Elinor is known, lives in a village in rural Kent, England, and to her fellow villagers seems something of an enigma. Well she might, as Elinor occupies a "grace and favor" property, a rare privilege offered to faithful servants of the Crown for services to the nation.

Beauregard "Bug" Montage is an honest mechanic, a loving husband, and a hardworking dad. Bug knows there's no future in the man he used to be: Known from the hills of North Carolina to the beaches of Florida as the best wheelman on the East Coast. He thought he'd left all that behind him, but as his carefully built new life begins to crumble, he finds himself drawn inexorably back into a world of blood and bullets. When a smooth-talking former associate comes calling with a can't-miss jewelry store heist, Bug feels he has no choice but to get back in the driver's seat.

In his newest collection of essays, David Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface. His world is alive with obscure desires and hidden motives, a world where forgiveness is automatic and an argument can be the highest form of love. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is another unforgettable collection from one of the wittiest and most original writers at work today.

In This Sweet Sickness, David Kelsey has an unyielding conviction that life will turn out all right for him; he just has to fix "the situation" of being in love with a married woman. Obsessed with Annabelle and the life he has imagined for them, David prepares to win her over, whatever it takes. In this riveting tale of a deluded loner, Highsmith reveals her uncanny ability to draw out the secret obsessions that overwhelm the human heart.

Here are 16 chilling, never-before-published tales that explore every aspect of our darkest holiday, Halloween, coedited by Ellen Datlow, one of the most successful and respected genre editors, and Lisa Morton, a leading authority on Halloween. Included are stories about scheming jack-o'-lanterns, vengeful ghosts, otherworldly changelings, disturbingly realistic haunted attractions, masks that cover terrifying faces, murderous urban legends, parties gone bad, cult Halloween movies, and trick-or-treating in the future.

New York City is not only The New Yorker magazine's place of origin and its sensibility's lifeblood, it is the heart of American literary culture. Wonderful Town, an anthology of superb short fiction by many of the magazine's most accomplished contributors, celebrates the 75-year marriage between a preeminent publication and its preeminent context with this collection of 44 of its best stories from (so to speak) home.

For two years, Walter Stackhouse has been a faithful and supportive husband to his wife, Clara. But she is distant and neurotic, and Walter finds himself harboring gruesome fantasies about her demise. When Clara's dead body turns up at the bottom of a cliff in a manner uncannily resembling the recent death of a woman who was murdered by her husband, Walter finds himself under intense scrutiny.

No one knows Mountaineers football better than Don Nehlen, head coach of the Mountaineers from 1980 until 2001. Now fans of this dynamic collegiate powerhouse will relive the greatest moments in West Virginia football through the eyes of its most successful coach. When Coach Nehlen arrived in Morgantown in December 1979, he had a large task in front of him - turn a losing team into a force to be reckoned with. In this book, he shares how he made it happen. Nehlen explains his theories about coaching, the staff that supported him, and the strategies that he employed to create a stronger team.

In the long title story, we accompany Sophia Kovalevsky - a late-19th-century Russian émigré and mathematician - on a winter journey that takes her from the Riviera, where she visits her lover, to Paris, Germany, and Denmark, where she has a fateful meeting with a local doctor, and finally to Sweden, where she teaches at the only university in Europe willing to employ a female mathematician.