Showing results by author "Lawrence Block" in All Categories

A very dangerous man. That's Paul Kavanagh, an ex-Green Beret with nothing but time on his hands--until he gets an offer to steal a shipment of tactical nuclear weapons form the US government--and finds himself a partner, George Dattner, who has the cold eyes of a trained killer. Each of these men alone is dangerous. But anyone who tries to stop them together is guaranteed not to come out of it alive!

Matthew Scudder, his wife, Elaine, Mick Ballou, and Mick's new wife sit around a table in Mick's Hell's Kitchen saloon for one last night of stories before the building is transferred to its new owners.

When young, broke, and single Chip Harrison finds a bus ticket to Bordentown, South Carolina, he knows it was sent by the hand of fate. It’s his way out of wintry New York City, Bordentown’s sheriff provides a very warm welcome! Before long, Chip charms his way into the sheriff’s good graces and into the arms of Lucille, the preacher’s daughter. Even Chip should see he is headed for trouble with a capital T, in another furiously funny caper by Edgar Award-winning author Lawrence Block.

This novella continues the story of Keller, after the wistful stamp-collecting hit man retired in New Orleans at the end of Hit & Run. A phone call and an economic downturn is all it takes to put him back in business.Keller in Dallas, a Kindle bestseller, serves too as the opening episode of Lawrence Block's brand-new bestseller, Hit Me.

So this girl walks into a bar…and when she walks out there’s a man with her. She goes to bed with him, and she likes that part. Then she kills him, and she likes that even better. On her way out, she cleans out his wallet. She keeps moving, and has a new name for each change of address. She’s been doing this for a while, and she’s good at it. And then a chance remark gets her thinking of the men who got away, the lucky ones who survived a night with her.

Step into the shoes of Matthew Scudder, one of the titular Batman’s Helpers. And how does he help Batman? He’s part of a group of people hired by Warner Brothers to confiscate pirated Batman products from vendors selling them on the streets of New York.

Cold War superspy Evan Tanner lost the ability to sleep on a battlefield in Korea. So where the heck has he been since the '70s? Frozen. Cryogenically. A Tanner-sicle. Which he never thought would happen when he walked into a basement in Union City, New Jersey, more than a quarter century ago. Now he's unthawed and ready to rumble, and his somewhat addled, former super-secret boss, "the Chief", is glad his favorite operative's active again.

You might as well know this going in: Lawrence Block's new novel is not for everyone. It's recounted in journal form by its protagonist, and begins when he walks into a roadhouse outside of Bakersfield, California, and walks out with a woman. And rapes and murders her. But, um, not in that order. Right. But it's what he does with the rest of his life that's really interesting....

There were five of them, each prepared to kill, each with his own reasons for accepting what might well be a suicide mission. The pay? $20,000 a piece. The mission? Find a way into Cuba and kill Castro. This breathtaking thriller, originally published the year before the Cuban Missile Crisis (under a pen name by Lawrence Block), is the rarest of Block's books - and still a work of chilling relevance all these years later, with Castro and Cuba once again commanding headlines.

Albert Platt is a rotten man. Bred in the rough parts of Brooklyn, he made his name as a killer and has built a fortune from gambling, loan sharking, and the other pastimes of a standard thug. His latest gambit? Buying banks, robbing them, and collecting the insurance. He's a hard man, and no one ever stood in his way until he brushed up against Eddie Manso. Manso is no ordinary veteran.

Five-time Edgar winner and MWA grand master Lawrence Block wrote a monthly column for the Writers Digest magazine for 14 years. The Liar's Bible consists of previously uncollected columns, chosen to illuminate the often dimly-lit path of the writer of fiction.

For almost three years, novelist and short-story writer Lawrence Block's monthly column, "Generally Speaking," was one of the most popular features in Linn's Stamp News. A general collector of pre-1940 issues, Block had the entire world of stamps as his subject, and he turned in 33 columns before he decided it was time to stop. But Keller, the author's fictional character, never lost his enthusiasm for philately. A wistful and introspective killer for hire, Keller rekindled a boyhood passion for stamps at the end of Hit Man, the first of a series of books about him.

A Writer Prepares, an examination of the first quarter century of one writer's life, is arguably the work of two writers. There's the middle-aged fellow who wrote about half of it at a blistering pace in 1994, and there's the octogenarian who finished the job another quarter century later. The older fellow brought less raw energy to the task, and his memory is a long way from infallible, but one can only hope he's offset these losses with a slight edge in judgment, in perspective, in maturity.

Broadway Can Be Murder started out to be a novel based on Johnny Midnight, a TV series which everyone has long since forgotten. Except, of course, that nothing manages to be forgotten in the Internet Age. I, whose job it was to knock out 50,000 words of Johnny Midnightish prose and dialogue, had forgotten when it ran and who was in it, but Google took no time at all to remind me that the title role was played by Edmund O’Brien, and that the series ran during the first nine months of 1960. I was in New York, newly married, living at 110 West 69th Street.

For 14 years, five-time Edgar winner and MWA grandmaster Lawrence Block wrote a monthly column on fiction for Writers Digest magazine. These columns yielded four books regarded as classics: Telling Lies for Fun & Profit, Spider Spin Me a Web, The Liar's Bible, and now, The Liar's Companion. Listen to The Liar's Companion and gain inspiration to create outstanding fiction.

The Cold War's boiling over. Global tensions are near the breaking point. So, what's the perfect assignment for a super-spy who hasn't slept since the Korean conflict? A fun-filled trip to the Montreal World's Fair! The adorable little girl he's escorting - who, under different circumstances, would be sitting on the Lithuanian throne - can hardly contain her excitement, but it isn't all playtime for Evan Tanner.

Being single no longer means being alone! Today all America is turning into a Singles Society. Men and women alike are discovering that traditional marriage no longer satisfies their need to live a full life--especially in regard to sex. Never before have so many people been so open to seeking sensual fulfillment without legal entanglements or extraneous emotional trappings. This is what this book is all about. In it you will discover how different men and women crossed the line from being married to being single, from being square to swinging all the way, and have never life or love more ...

Matthew Scudder gets hired by a fellow bar patron to prove his innocence. Salesman Tommy Tillary is a 45-year-old philanderer with a Manhattan girlfriend and a Brooklyn wife. So when Tommy becomes a suspect in the murder of his wife, it's up to Matt to find the real killer.

"Readers of Brooklyn Noir will recall that its contents were labeled by neighborhood - Bay Ridge, Canarsie, Greenpoint, etc. We have chosen the same principle here, and the book's contents do a good job of covering the island, from C.J. Sullivan's Inwood and Charles Ardai's Upper East Side, to Justin Scott's Chelsea and Carol Lea Benjamin's Greenwich Village."

The Greatest Mysteries of All Time, Volume 4 is the fourth in a series featuring the finest short story mystery fiction by the most acclaimed writers, past and present. From Lawrence Block, Sara Paretsky, Georges Simenon, Edward D. Hoch and everyone in between, this unique collection, edited by multi-award-winning mystery connoisseur Otto Penzler, is a delightful mixture of mystery and suspense.