A collection of suspense stories, puzzle stories, whodunits and tricky whydunits involving police detectives, private eyes, talented and sometimes lucky amateurs, armchair detectives, and ethnic detectives

It’s a jacket; it’s a mattress; it’s a fortune! Mullaney staked his life on it. The way it all worked out was that Mullaney finally figured he had to take the big gamble; he’d never get rich selling encyclopedias. Consequently, he left his wife and went off to make a killing at cards, horses, dice — you name it. But here he is at the end of the year with a single subway token in his pocket and the hottest, sure-thing tip he’s ever heard on the second race at Aqueduct... So he’s standing at Fourteenth Street and Fourth Avenue wondering where he can promote some coin, who he can put the bite on, when this long black limousine pulls up and out hops a big guy with a beard and a gun and says, “Get in!” That’s how A Horse’s Head, Evan Hunter’s hugely funny new novel, starts. It never lets up as it races back and forth across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, diving into some very odd places indeed — such as the locked stacks of the Library’s Main Branch and an East Side cellar synagogue — and introducing some of the strangest gunsels, moon-struck kooks, and pliant lovelies in the entire metropolitan area. The laughs, the bodies, the girls come tumbling one on top of the other as Mullaney smooth-talks, wheedles and deals his way out of one dangerous situation into the next in his mad chase after the crummy, magical black jacket that doesn’t even fit him but which he’s sure is worth half a million dollars. Wild, wonderful, zany — A Horse’s Head is another surprise from the versatile author of The Paper Dragon, The Blackboard Jungle, and the 87th Precinct mysteries

Evan Hunter’s new novel is a fresh and powerful demonstration of the narrative gifts, the instinct for themes that concern us, the exuberant flow of invention that were responsible for the nation-wide impact of his best-selling Strangers When We Meet and The Blackboard Jungle. A Matter of Conviction is the story — told dramatically and in depth — of a sensational murder, the passions it arouses in a community, the people caught up in its tangled after-math. Above all, it is the story of the ethical dilemma imposed on the young prosecutor who values justice above the triumph of a conviction. The prosecutor, Henry Bell, is dedicated to his profession. He demands of himself an almost inhuman objectivity. He is intensely disturbed when the murder forces him to revisit the crime-breeding slum in which he himself was born, from which he escaped by his ambition and his integrity, and which he has almost, but not quite, managed to forget. How can he serve blind justice when the boys he must prosecute are an image — impossible to shut out — of what he might have been, when the newspapers scream for their blood and their neighbors stop at nothing to protect them, when his superiors insist on chalking up a conviction, and when — the final blow — his investigations bring him face to face with a woman who once had his happiness, as she now has his reputation, at her mercy. Henry Bell’s ordeal is superbly told in a novel that plunges the reader into a world of law and disorder, of crime and vengeance, of turmoil — emotional and political — of cold panic. In Henry Bell, Evan Hunter has created a memorable hero — a man of conscience and heart. When you finish his story you know that you would trust him with your life

Benjamin Thorpe is married, a father, a successful Los Angeles architect — and a man obsessed. Alone in New York City on business, he spends the empty hours of the night in a compulsive search for female companionship. His dizzying descent leads to an early morning confrontation in a mid-town brothel, and a subsequent searing self-revelation

Carmine Canucci (“Ganooch” to his friends) was a retired soft-drinks magnate with a nice estate in Larchmont and influence in, well, certain circles. Which was precisely why Nanny Poole, the English governess he had hired to look after his ten-year-old son, had no desire to let him know that little Lewis had been kidnaped. Since he was vacationing on Capri at the time, it wouldn’t be too hard to keep him in the dark. Provided, of course, the kid returned, safe and sound, before his parents did. So she asked Benny Napkins, who used to be very big in linens and garbage, to help raise the $50,000 ransom — a search that sets off the funniest and most unlikely chain of events since the mob went “respectable.” In this new novel, Evan Hunter conducts a merry romp through the labyrinth of disorganized crime. There’s Cockeye Di Strabismo, the cross-eyed counterfeiter; Dominick the Guru, the hippie housebreaker; Bloomingdales, the fence (not to be confused with the department store); Snitch Delatore, the well-known informer; and many others, all introduced in Hunter’s peerless prose (not to mention pictures, too). The zany plot revolves around a kidnaper who composes his ransom notes from the impenetrable wisdom of two leading critics, and it careens wildly into complications like a legitimate illegitimate deal that injects a few extra packages of $50,000 cash into the picture, a rudely interrupted poker game, and a Spiro Agnew watch

The new novel by the author of the best-selling Love, Dad is a love story, compelling and deeply felt, about a man who comes to terms with his own life and his own marriage through the death of his father. It is the story of David Weber, a successful middle-aged New Yorker, who has flown to Miami to be at his father’s hospital bedside; the story of the father. Morris, whose lingering illness and failing memory cannot quite drown his wit; the story of David’s own son. Stephen, whose death at a tragically young age has frozen his father’s heart. It is the story of three women: Bessie, Morris Weber’s new “friend,” whose existence David never even suspected; Hillary, the leggy Englishwoman David encounters in Miami, who tempts him more strongly than any woman ever has. except his wife; and Molly, David’s wife, at home in New York, wondering as David does what went wrong, what happened to the miracle. As David’s father lies dying, David’s life takes on an emotional intensity he has never known. Far from the Sea is a novel in which compassion and excitement work hand and hand: a story laced with humor, sex, and irony, rich with the complexities of family ties. It is perhaps the most moving novel Evan Hunter has ever written

When the strange hourglass-shaped time machine crashed out of the twentieth century and into the Caribbean Sea of fourteen hundred years ago, Neil Falsen realized how unprepared he was to head the expedition that his father had organized back through time. Of the four men who had flown through centuries to solve the mystery of an ancient Mayan god, two had died in the shattering crash. Only Neil and the ship’s pilot Dave remained to cope with the language and customs of a people who had disappeared into the darkness of history. It was confusing enough not to know which century the machine had fallen into. But Neil was sure his eyes were playing tricks when he spotted a Norse ship cutting proudly through southern seas. How ancient Vikings, Mayas and two twentieth-century Americans met — and fought — amid the splendors of a civilization that today dots the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico with its ruins, makes a tale as unique in telling as it is in content. In scenes that throb with drama and thunder with excitement, Dave and Neil found frightening evidence of the approaching Mayan collapse. With a common modern device, Neil stepped into a tense religious ceremony to prevent human sacrifice. Without realizing it, he discovered the secret of the white god among the Mayan Indian dieties. One of history’s most intriguing suppositions forms the basis for this tale of the secret behind the legend of a lost civilization

Americas most celebrated murder case springs to astonishing and blazing life in the new novel by one of Americas premier storytellers. And the most famous quatrain in American folklore takes on an unexpected and surprising twist as. step by mesmerizing step, a portrait of a notorious woman unfolds with shocking clarity. In recreating the events of that fateful day. August 4. 1892. in Fall River. Massachusetts, and the extraordinary circumstances which led up to them. Evan Hunter spins a breathtakingly imaginative tale of an enigmatic spinster whose secret life would eventually force her to the ultimate confrontation with her stepmother and father. Here is Lizzie Borden freed of history and legend — a full-bodied woman of hot blood and passion. fighting against her prim New England upbringing. surrendering to the late-Victorian hedonism of London. Paris and the Riviera, yet fated to live out her meager life in a placid Massachusetts town. Seething with frustration and rage, a prisoner of her appetites, Lizzie Borden finally, on that hot August day... but how and why she was led into her uncompromising acts is at the heart of this enthralling, suspenseful work of the imagination. Alternating the actual inquest and trial of Lizzie Borden with an account of her head-spinning, seductive trip to Europe. Evan Hunter port rays with a master craftsmans art the agony of a passionate woman, the depths of a murdering heart

“I’m not really a brat, please understand that. But, you know, school one day... and there’s your mother wearing her Long Grave Face... and she tells you she’s leaving your father... that you and she will be making new plans...” For Abby O’Neill, those “new plans” mean some big changes in her life, like living in a rented house with her mother and Mr. Stenner, the man her mother plans to marry as soon as a couple of divorces are out of the way. And like seeing her real father only on weekends. The trouble is, Abby still loves her real father, and she is growing to love Mr. Stenner, who is alternately the villain and the hero of her life. But how can she love one without betraying the other? In his first important novel for young readers, Evan Hunter portrays the traumas and triumphs of a child caught in the middle of a divorce. With tenderness, insight, and humor, he shows that change is a part of life, and that accepting change is what life is all about

It's not a mystery, it's a story of survival and triumph. That's what some people say about Romance, a would-be hit play about an actress pursued by a knife-wielding stalker. But isn't it romantic! Before the show can open, the leading lady is really attacked, outside the theater. And before the detectives of the 87th can solve that crime, the same actress is stabbed again. This time for keeps. A.D.A. Nellie Brand moves in for a murder conviction, but Detective Steve Carella is sure she's got the wrong guy, and wrestles for the case with Fat Ollie Weeks, Isola's foulest cop. While Bert Kling interviews witnesses and suspects ranging from the show's producers to the author — who has written novels about cops and knows how it's done — to the lead's lovely understudy, he can't keep his mind off what's happening to him. He's falling in love. With a doctor. Who happens to be a deputy chief surgeon. Who happens to be a black woman. In the city of Isola, nothing is black and white. In the play Romance, no one is guilty or innocent. And in the gritty reality of the 87th Precinct, everyone is in love with something — even if it's only murder

This is a novel about three generations of men in an American family — a grandfather, a father, and a son — focusing on those crucial years when each was between the ages of seventeen and twenty. War, and its effects on those who survive, is the common element in the lives of these men and their women — World Wars I and II and the Vietnam War, wars that are profoundly the same yet compellingly different. And it is in the difference that the core of this extraordinary novel lies, for Evan Hunter has succeeded in portraying nothing less than the vast, changing heart and mind of America over the last fifty years, an America at once the same and radically altered. In this dramatic saga of the Tyler men and women, the reader discovers, with an immediacy more apparent than in any history, many of the ideas and feelings that took shape at the beginning of the century and grew with the passing years into the attitudes of today about ourselves, the world, prejudice, violence, justice, sex. love the family and personal commitment. Sons tells a dramatic story about loving, hating, struggling, and dying; in short, about the endlessly fascinating adventure of life. It is the most ambitious and exciting novel Evan Hunter has ever written

Ignazio Silvio Di Palermo was born in an Italian neighborhood in New York’s East Harlem in 1926. He was born blind but was raised in a close, vivid, lusty world bounded by his grandfather’s love, his mother’s volatility, his huge array of relatives, weekly feasts, discovery of girls, the exhilaration of music and his great talent leading to a briefly idolized jazz career

In his introduction to the The Best American Noir of the Century, James Ellroy writes, 'noir is the most scrutinized offshoot of the hard-boiled school of fiction. It's the long drop off the short pier and the wrong man and the wrong woman in perfect misalliance. It's the nightmare of flawed souls with big dreams and the precise how and why of the all-time sure thing that goes bad.' Offering the best examples of literary sure things gone bad, this collection ensures that nowhere else can readers find a darker, more thorough distillation of American noir fiction. James Ellroy and Otto Penzler, series editor of the annual The Best American Mystery Stories, mined one hundred years of writing - 1910-2010 - to find this treasure trove of thirty-nine stories. From noir's twenties-era infancy come gems like James M. Cain's 'Pastorale,' and its post-war heyday boasts giants like Mickey Spillane and Evan Hunter. Packing an undeniable punch, diverse contemporary incarnations include Elmore Leonard, Patricia Highsmith, Joyce Carol Oates, Dennis Lehane, and William Gay, with many page-turners appearing in the last decade

Rick Dadier wasn’t looking to be a hero, when he got his first teaching job at North Manual Trades High School. Admittedly the kids would probably be tough. That was likely to be true in any city vocational school. But Rick had a couple of years in the Navy under his belt, and he didn’t think any school disciplinary problems were going to throw him. Not when he was getting his first big chance at the job he wanted most to do. Not when Anne was so proud of him. Not when the baby was only a few months off. No, he wasn’t looking to be any damned hero. He just wanted to teach. But against his will, Rick was forced to become a hero within twenty-four hours after he stepped into his first classroom. From then on, things got tougher faster. It was one thing to face sullenness and impertinence, but it was another to stumble on a rape attempt. Any teacher might find himself in a war of wits against his pupils, but does he expect to find himself having to fight against teen-age gangsters for his very life? The Blackboard Jungle is the first novel to dramatize one of the top social problems of our day. The reader will want to race through the completely gripping plot just as fast as he can turn the book’s pages, but he will think about its implications for a long time to come

Hadley, the rattlesnake-toting patriarch who took his comfort where he found it — in the Bible, the bottle or the bed... Minerva, the lusty, stubborn woman he loved, shepherding her young through the harsh realities of the way west and the terrifying passions in their own hearts... Will, the brawling, hard-drinking sinner who sought salvation in the arms of a savage... Bobbo and Gideon, boys at the start of a journey, blood-stained men at the end... Bonnie Sue, too young to love, too ripe not to; a child forced to womanhood in the wilderness... Annabel, the youngest, whose quiet courage was tested in an act of unspeakable savagery. The Chisholms — a family as raw and unyielding as the soil of Virginia they left behind; as wild and enduring as the dream they pursued across the American continent

It’s two o’clock in the morning when Andrew Gulliver gets a phone call from his mother, who tells him his twin sister, Annie, is gone. This is not the first time. Ever since she was sixteen, she’s been taking off without notice to places as far distant as Papua New Guinea, then returning unexpectedly, only to disappear yet another time, again and again and again But this time is different. Last month, Annie got into serious trouble in Sicily and was briefly held in a mental hospital, where an Italian doctor diagnosed her as schizophrenic. Andrew’s divorced mother refuses to accept this diagnosis. Andrew himself just isn’t sure. But during the course of a desperate twelve hours in New York City, he and the Gulliver family piece together the past and cope with the present in a journey of revelation and self-discovery. Recognizing the truth at last, Andrew can only hope to find his beloved sister before she harms herself or someone else. The Moment She Was Gone, a shattering novel of a family confronting its collective secrets, marks the high point in a writing career spanning almost five decades

An outstanding human drama. It is the story of strangers, the story of lovers, of men and women drawn together by a week-long trial that affects them more deeply than they dare to admit. But as each day passes, the suspense mounts in an emotional crescendo that engulfs them all — and suddenly one man's verdict becomes the most important decision in their lives…