An anthology of stories An all-new mystery anthology edited and featuring a new story by #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris Nighttime is the perfect time for the perfect crime. #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris edits and contributes an all-new story-set in her Sookie Stackhouse universe-to this anthology from the Mystery Writers of America. Other authors include: Steve Brewer Dana Cameron Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane Barbara D'Amato Brendan DuBois Terrie Farley Moran Jack Fredrickson Parnell Hall Carolyn Hart S. W. Hubbard Toni L. P. Kelner Lou Kemp William Kent Kreuger Harley Jane Kozak Margaret Mahon Martin Meyers Jeffrey Somers Elaine Viets Mike Wiecek

From Publishers Weekly One of a handful of novels he was working on at the time of his death, this fine, perhaps final, work from hard-boiled fiction icon Spillane (1918–2006) was prepared for publication by Hard Case vet Max Allan Collins. In it, NYPD detective Jack Stang receives word that his old fiancee, Bettie, who supposedly died in a kidnapping-gone-wrong 20 years earlier, is still alive and residing in a small Florida coastal community. The good news is countered by the fact that, in the car crash that was supposed to have killed her, she lost her eyesight and all her memories. Even worse, the men who had her kidnapped in the first place have perfectly good memories and are still looking for her—and willing to kill for the information locked in her damaged brain. This is a more sentimental Spillane than readers might expect, but the women are still dolls, the bad guys are still louses, and the hero still packs a helluva punch (along with his trusty .45, natch). Spillane always said he wrote for his fans, not for the critics, but both should be pleased with this late addition to the writer's canon. Product Description THE FINAL CRIME NOVEL FROM THE KING OF PULP FICTION! For 20 years, former NYPD cop Jack Stang has lived with the memory of his girlfriend’s death in an attempted abduction. But what if she didn’t actually die? What if she somehow secretly survived, but lost her sight, her memory, and everything else she had… except her enemies? Now Jack has a second chance to save the only woman he ever loved – or to lose her for good

When Joe Boyle delivered the message to Renzo, one of the toughest crime lords in the city, he didn't expect to be beaten to within an inch of his life. But the message was from Vetter, one the most dangerous underworld figures. No one had ever seen Vetter, but all the crime lords knew his reputation―whatever city he came to, he took over to his advantage leaving a pile of corpses in his wake. Joe is going to be lucky to stay alive when they realize that he maybe the only chance the city's underground has of striking Vetter first. Joe's only chance may lie in the arms of the beautiful lounge singer Helen Troy

Here's Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer in their roughest and readiest--a double-strength shot of sex, violence, and action that is vintage Spillane all the way. It's a tough-guy mystery to please even the most bloodthirsty of fans!

A beautiful woman's cold-blooded murder has the mark of the Mafia. Although warned to stay away, Hammer won't stop until he gets revenge

After Mike Hammer witnesses Wall Street superstar Vincent Colby getting clipped by a speeding red Ferrari, the shaken victim’s stockbroker father hires Hammer to find the driver. But the toughest private eye of them all soon is caught up in a series of bizarre, seemingly unconnected slayings marked by a forbidden martial arts technique

A walk on the wild side! In this series of collections of gritty Noir and Hardboiled stories, you’ll find some of the best writers of the craft writing in their prime

This anthology features some of the most famous authors writing at the peak of their careers!

ME, HOOD! YOU, CORPSE! The bodies were piling up like basketball points, but the name of this game was Mafia Murder. The punks, the junkies and the hookers were running scared, and the police weren’t far behind them. Then some smart cop got an idea which would either make him Commissioner or get him kicked off the force: Con the coolest hood in New York onto the Department payroll and send him out to do his own violent thing in the name of law and order. The bait: ten grand, a beautiful bitch begging to be tamed — and a license to bag all the corpses he can shoot... DOUBLE-BARRELLED SPILLANE: ME, HOOD! and RETURN OF THE HOOD, two new pulse-racers never before published in the U.S. They’re vintage Spillane — brutal, sexy, unbeatable

Nobody ever walked across the bridge at night. But on the foggy night that Hammer took that chance, his encounter with a gun-toting thug and a girl on the lam ended with both strangers dead. Soon Hammer is caught in a web of sinister gangsters and beautiful women the likes of which he's never seen -- and his only way out is to kill and kill again...even with his bare hands

The master of hard-boiled detective fiction is back — and better than ever — with Something’s Down There, a blade-sharp thriller set among the islands of the Caribbean. To the casual observer, Mako Hooker looks like any other grizzled fishing-boat captain trawling the Bermuda Triangle. He’s content with his nets in the water and a beer in the cooler, but he’s hardly your typical fisherman. Hooker is in fact a retired government operative taking a much-needed respite from his highly secret, highly lethal career in the States. But when local fishermen begin to fall prey to a mysterious sea creature the islanders dub “the eater,” he discovers the truth in that old saw about the spy game: You’re not retired from the Company until you’re dead. Is the monster a prehistoric beast rising from the depths? Or mines from a sunken WWII destroyer, only now shaken loose by the U.S. Navy’s depth charges? Or the work of someone with an agenda even more deeply undercover than Hooker’s? Hooker quietly begins to investigate with the help of his unwitting fishing partner, Billy Bright; a local movie heiress, the seductive Judy Durant; and Hooker’s old nemesis, Chana Sterling. The Company sent her as backup, but Hooker doesn’t trust power-hungry government agents too far — especially Chana, who once put a bullet in him for no good reason. As more boats arc mauled and the islanders begin to panic, the action heats up and the players multiply: a Hollywood film company arrives on the scene, eager to turn live footage of “the eater” into box-office payoff, and the heavyweight film executive in charge looks suspiciously like Tony Pallatzo, a Brooklyn mobster from Hooker’s violent past. As he moves steadily closer to the truth, Hooker realizes that someone (or something) is plotting to stop him, and only his rusty instincts will save him this time. A riveting story of criminal intrigue, greed, romance, and the mysteries of the deep, Something’s Down There showcases Mickey Spillane at his best

The murder of Lippy Sullivan earned very little news space. Lippy was a loser and a pickpocket whose only claim to fame was his acquaintance with Mike Hammer. But was that reason enough for someone to torture and kill him? By the time Hammer figures out that the wrong man was killed, it's almost too late. Containers of a viral bacteria are already hidden around the country. Hammer tracks down clues, but instead of leading him to the canisters, they lead to another corpse

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

In his first book in almost nine years, Mickey Spillane proves conclusively that he is still the unequalled master of the style he invented. The Deep has all the elements that made Spillane the bestselling mystery writer of all time: dramatic scenes, splashed with color; a masterful new protagonist; a beautiful and desirable girl; and all the action and violence Spillane’s most ardent fan could ask. Deep was back in town after a twenty-five year exile — to inherit an empire and avenge a death. He and Bennett had made the inheritance pact when they were kids — blood brothers in crime. They had known then that even New York was too small for them both to share, and so they had tossed a coin to determine who would stay and who would build his organization in another town. Deep had lost and gone. But now Bennett has lost — been murdered in his own home — and Deep is ready to prove lie is strong enough to take over. Deep wants Bennett’s killer; the others want Bennett’s job. And all too many of them — including the beautiful Irish — want Deep dead. The Deep is the mastermind in one of the most exciting stories Spillane has ever written — a breathtaking tale of violence in action

In this book Hammer's secretary, Velda, has been missing for seven years, but she's still alive if Hammer can reach in time

"I rammed my elbow back and felt teeth go under it and the back of my head mashed the guy's nose who was holding me." Mike Hammer is back, and after almost 20 years, he's as psychotically hard-boiled as ever. Here, there's a dead man in Hammer's office chair. He has been horribly tortured; a note on the desk reads "You die for killing me," signed "Penta." Hammer's longtime secretary and sometime love interest, Velda, has been knocked unconscious and Hammer (no mellower despite the years), goes a-hunting. Gorgeous assistant DA Candace Amory warns Hammer off the case; he changes her mind. Penta turns up on government files as an assassin for hire, a billion dollars in drug money is missing and renegade CIA agents and mobsters are looking for Penta, while gunning for Hammer. Spillane's ( Kiss Me, Deadly ) dirty rain, mean streets, leggy broads, etc. have made him one of the all time best-selling authors--but many things, including present-day New York city, have changed since the '50s and Spillane has, for the most part, failed to notice. Readers will catch the bad guy 50 pages before Hammer does. $100,000 ad/promo. 

In this first novel in a bold new Western series, crooked Sheriff Harry Gauge rules the town of Trinidad, New Mexico, with an iron fist. His latest scheme is to force rancher George Cullen into selling his spread and to take Cullen’s beautiful daughter Willa for his bride — whether she’s willing or not. The old man isn’t about to go down without a fight. He sends out a telegram to hire the west’s toughest gunslinger to kill the sheriff. But when a stranger rides into Trinidad, no one’s sure who he is. Wherever he came from, wherever he’s going, it’s deadly clear he’s a man who won’t be pushed — and that he’s a damn good shot... With stirring authenticity and heart-racing drama, Spillane and Collins add Caleb York to the roster of unforgettable western heroes

In touristy Peachtree Heights, Georgia, a string of presumably accidental deaths of area physicians rouses the suspicions of Police Chief Blake Cutter. But the former big-city cop’s attempts to warn Dr. Roy Ryan are viewed by his estranged wife as an attempt to muddy the waters of a custody battle over the couple’s young son, Richie. Too late to do anything more, a small, incredibly powerful creature emerges from the night to brave the walls of the doctor’s compound, terrorizing the family and any and all police guarding them. The menace is suddenly real, and those physicians’ deaths are anything but accidental. And when young Richie’s archeologist uncle gives the boy a grisly birthday present — an actual Aztec mummy! — the child begins to think the long-dead corpse is his friend, one who is still-breathing

Pulp fiction has been looked down on as a guilty pleasure, but it offers the perfect form of entertainment: the very best storytelling filled with action, surprises, sound and fury. In short, all the exhiliration of a roller-coaster ride. The 1920s in America saw the proliferation of hundreds of dubiously named but thrillingly entertaining pulp magazines in America: Black Mask, Amazing, Astounding, Spicy Stories, Ace-High, Detective Magazine, Dare-Devil Aces. It was in these luridly-coloured publications, printed on the cheapest pulp paper, that the first gems began to appear. The one golden rule for writers of pulp fiction was to adhere to the art of storytelling. Each story had to have a beginning, an end, economically-etched characters, but plenty going on, both in terms of action and emotions. Pulp magazines were the TV of their day, plucking readers from drab lives and planting them firmly in thrilling make-believe, successors

A tough-guy mystery to please even the most bloodthirsty of fans!

“The Tough Guys” contain three Spillane short stories that came out in men’s magazines in the early sixties. All are solid Spillane high caliber yarns , with a guy ready to tackle injustice with violence, always with a clip in the gun and a broad by his side

A kidnapping case links Hammer to a fourteen year-old mystery and the most venomous killer the private eye has ever faced

He was a nice guy. Now he's dead. That's all Hammer knows about the stiff in the hotel room. But that isn't enough because Hammer suspects murder while the cops are calling it a suicide. Without a license or a gun, Hammer is pushing his way through a swirl of sex-and-game clubs, high priced models and not just a little blackmail. Someone is working hard to frame Hammer and he's working hard to find out why. Everywhere he turns, he keeps coming up against a blonde beauty named Juno. She holds the key to the crime wave that could unlock the mystery behind the nice guy's murder