Narrator

Joe Barrett

Joe Barrett
  • 30th Anniversary Edition with a new introduction by the author

    Robert Pendleton is a chemical genius with a fertilizer worth a fortune to whoever controls the formula. Not surprisingly, the Bank, his notoriously exclusive backer, wants to keep an eye on its investment. But so does the CIA. And the Chinese government. And a few shadier organizations. So when Pendleton disappears from a conference in San Francisco, along with all of his research, Neal Carey enters the picture.

    Neal knows the Bank is calling in its chips in return for paying his grad school bills. He thinks this assignment will be a no-brainer until he meets the beguiling Li Lan and touches off a deadly game of hide-and-seek that will lead him from San Francisco’s Chinatown to the lawless back streets of Hong Kong, and finally into the dark heart of China. In a world where no one is what they seem, Neal must unravel the mystery of a beautiful woman and reach the fabled Buddha’s Mirror, a mist-shrouded lake where all secrets are revealed.

  • 30th Anniversary Edition with a new introduction by the author

    “One of America’s greatest storytellers.”―Stephen King

    Neal Carey is not your usual private eye. A graduate student at Columbia University, he grew up on the streets of New York, usually on the wrong side of the law. Then he met a PI who introduced him to the Bank, an exclusive institution with a sideline in keeping its wealthy clients happy and out of trouble. They pay Neal’s college tuition, and Neal gets an education that can’t be found in any textbook, from learning how to trail a suspect to mastering the proper way to search a room.

    Now it’s payback time. The Bank wants Neal to put his skills to work in finding Allie Chase, the rebellious teenage daughter of a prominent senator. The problem is that she’s gone underground in the London punk scene. To get her back, Neal has to follow her into a violent netherworld where drugs run rampant and rage is the name of the game.

  • “Freeman’s Bourne novels might get more publicity, but his Stride novels are where his skills as a storyteller are really showcased. First-rate.” — Booklist

    A woman has been kidnapped.
    Now Jonathan Stride must decide if her husband wants her back … dead or alive.

    After nearly dying of a gunshot wound, Jonathan Stride has been on leave from the Duluth Police for more than a year. When his partner, Maggie Bei, gets called about a suspicious abduction involving a local lawyer, she tells Stride it’s time for him to come back.

    Attorney Gavin Webster says he paid $100,000 in ransom money to the men who kidnapped his wife. Now they’ve disappeared with the cash, and she’s still missing. Gavin claims to be desperate to find her—but Stride discovers that the lawyer had plenty of motive to be the mastermind behind the crime.

    Even as Stride digs for the truth about Gavin Webster and his wife, he must also deal with a crisis in his own marriage.

    His wife, Serena, is struggling after the death of her mother, the abusive woman she hadn’t seen in twenty-five years. When she loses control at a crime scene and draws her gun on a fellow cop, Serena finds herself kicked off the Webster case. Alone at her desk, she begins hunting through old police files and starts to ask questions about a mother’s death that was written off as suicide. That death haunts Serena like an echo of her own childhood—but her obsession with it takes a terrible toll.

    As Serena shuts him out of her despair, and his own investigation grows increasingly tangled, Stride wonders whether going back to his detective work was the right decision. But all he can do is keep moving forward. Because Stride fears the Webster kidnapping may be only one part of a horrific murder conspiracy.

    And it’s not over yet.

  • Its messaging can seem cryptic, even nonsensical, yet for tens of thousands of people, it explains everything. What is QAnon? Where did it come from? And is the Capitol insurgency a sign of where it’s going next?

    On October 5, 2017, President Trump made a cryptic remark in the State Dining Room at a gathering of military officials. He said it felt like “the calm before the storm”—then refused to elaborate as puzzled journalists asked him to explain. But on the infamous message boards of 4chan, a mysterious poster going by “Q Clearance Patriot,” who claimed to be in “military intelligence,” began the elaboration on their own.

    In the days that followed, Q’s wild yarn explaining Trump’s remarks began to rival the sinister intricacies of a Tom Clancy novel, while satisfying the deepest desires of MAGA-America. But did any of what Q predicted come to pass? No. Did that stop people from clinging to every word they were reading, expanding its mythology, and promoting it wider and wider? No.

    Why not? Who were these rapt listeners? How do they reconcile their world view with the America they see around them? Why do their numbers keep growing?

    Mike Rothschild, a journalist specializing in conspiracy theories, has been collecting their stories for years, and through interviews with QAnon converts, apostates, and victims, as well as psychologists, sociologists, and academics, he is uniquely equipped to explain the movement and its followers.

    In The Storm Is Upon Us, he takes listeners from the background conspiracies and cults that fed the Q phenomenon, to its embrace by right-wing media and Donald Trump, through the rending of families as loved ones became addicted to Q’s increasingly violent rhetoric, to the storming of the Capitol, and on.

    And as the phenomenon shows no sign of calming, despite Trump’s loss of the presidency—with everyone from Baby Boomers to Millennial moms proving susceptible to its messaging—and politicians starting to openly espouse its ideology, Rothschild makes a compelling case that mocking the seeming madness of QAnon will get us nowhere. Rather, his impassioned reportage makes clear that it’s time to figure out what QAnon really is—because QAnon and its relentlessly dark theory of everything isn’t done yet.

  • “You’re safe, Stride. I found the body at the Deeps. I buried him.”

    Jonathan Stride’s best friend, Steve Garske, makes a shocking deathbed confession: he protected Stride by covering up a murder. Hours later, the police dig up Steve’s yard and find a body with a bullet hole in its skull.

    Stride is pretty sure he knows who it is. Seven years ago, an out-of-town reporter disappeared while investigating anonymous allegations of rape against a prominent politician. Back then, the police believed that the reporter drowned at a dangerous swimming hole called the Deeps… but the discovery of the body changes everything. Now Stride’s partner, Maggie Bei, is forced to ask Stride an uncomfortable question: Did you kill him?

    Stride is obviously hiding things. He was the last person to see the reporter alive. And he admits lying to Maggie about that meeting, but won’t tell her why. With suspicion in the murder pointing at him, Stride finds himself off the case and on leave from the Duluth Police.

    His only ally in clearing his name is his wife, Serena, who retraces the reporter’s investigation into the explosive allegations. The clues all point to a hot Duluth summer years earlier that everyone in town would prefer to forget.

    Someone was willing to kill rather than let those long-ago secrets come out, and the suspect with the strongest motive … is Stride.

  • In House Privilege, the fourteenth novel in the Joe DeMarco series, Mike Lawson sends his likeable protagonist to Boston, into the world of hedge funds and trust funds.

    When Congressman and DeMarco’s long-time employer John Mahoney gains custody of his fifteen-year-old goddaughter, Cassie Russell, he sends DeMarco to evaluate the situation. Cassie’s parents have just perished in a plane crash that Cassie survived, and she has now inherited her father’s billions. DeMarco plans to advise Mahoney to leave Erin Kelly, manager of the Russell’s fund, in charge of Cassie’s finances, but he soon learns that Erin may not be as trustworthy as she first appeared.

    DeMarco’s digging alarms Erin, who has much to hide, and sets in motion a series of increasingly drastic plans that Erin has devised to protect herself and her wealth. But Cassie has touched DeMarco’s heart of gold, and he won’t let anyone get away with hurting her. A competition in plotting and out-plotting, this latest installment in the series ventures off the grid and outside the reach of extradition treaties for an exhilarating read.

  • “Right out of the gate, the entire game was designed to empty the pockets of those rich, celeb-loving LA suckers.”—Houston Curtis

    Leonardo DiCaprio. Alex Rodriguez. Tobey Maguire. Affleck. Damon. Cassavetes.

    What do these people have in common? Not just fame and fortune; all these men are also alumni of the ultra-exclusive, high-stakes poker ring that inspired Aaron Sorkin’s Oscar-nominated film, Molly’s Game.

    But Houston Curtis, the card shark who cofounded the game with Tobey Maguire, knows that Sorkin’s is the whitewashed version. In Billion Dollar Hollywood Heist, Curtis goes all-in, revealing the true story behind the game. From its origins with Maguire to staking DiCaprio’s first game, installing Molly Bloom, avoiding the hookers and blow down the hall, and weathering the FBI investigation that left Curtis with a lien on his house—this is the no-holds-barred account of the world’s most exclusive Texas hold ’em game from the man who started it—with all the names and salacious details that Molly’s Game left out.

    With the insider appeal of Rounders, more A-listers than Ocean’s 11, and the excitement of The StingBillion Dollar Hollywood Heist is the untold, insider’s story that makes Molly’s Game look tame.

  • During World War II, a group of American fighter pilots roamed the skies over China and Burma, menacing the Japanese war effort without letup. Flamboyant, daring, and courageous, they were called the Flying Tigers. 

    The Tigers—who had been recruited from the Army, Navy, and Marines—first saw action as a volunteer group fighting on the side of the Chiang Kai-shek’s China against Japan. Trained in the unconventional air-combat tactics of their maverick leader Claire Lee Chennault, they racked up some of the most impressive air victory records of World War II.

    This is the story of Chennault and his magnificent Tigers—and how they performed the impossible.

  • This groundbreaking multicultural anthology shares moving personal stories about the impacts of Alzheimer’s and dementia.

    An estimated 5.7 million Americans are afflicted by Alzheimer’s disease, including ten percent of those over sixty-five, and it is the sixth leading cause of death. But its effects are more pervasive: For the nearly six million sufferers, there are more than sixteen million family caregivers and many more family members. Alzheimer’s wreaks havoc not only on brain cells—it is a disease of the spirit and heart for not only those who suffer from it, but also for their families.

    This groundbreaking anthology presents forty narratives, both nonfiction and fiction, that together capture the impact and complexity of Alzheimer’s and other dementias on patients, as well as their caregivers and family. Deeply personal, recounting the wrenching course of a disease that kills a loved one twice—first they forget who they are, and then the body succumbs—these stories also show how witnessing the disease and caring for someone with it can be powerfully transformative, calling forth amazing strength and grace.

  • A darkly luminous new anthology collecting the most terrifying horror stories by renowned female authors, presenting anew these forgotten classics to the modern reader

    Readers are well aware that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein; few know how many other tales of terror she created. In addition to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote some surprisingly effective horror stories. The year after Little Women appeared, Louisa May Alcott published one of the first mummy tales. These ladies weren’t alone. From the earliest days of gothic and horror fiction, women were exploring the frontiers of fear, dreaming dark dreams that will still keep you up at night.

    More Deadly than the Male includes unexpected horror tales by Louisa May Alcott and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and forgotten writers like Mary Cholmondely and Charlotte Riddell, whose work deserves a modern audience. Listeners will be drawn in by the familiar names and intrigued by their rare stories.

    In The Beckside Boggle, Alice Rea brings a common piece of English folklore to hair-raising life, while Helene Blavatsky, best known as the founder of the spiritualist Theosophical Society, conjures up a solid and satisfying ghost story in The Cave of the Echoes. Edith Wharton’s great novel The Age of Innocence won her the Pulitzer prize, yet her horror stories are known only to a comparative few.

    Listeners will discover lost and forgotten women who wrote horror every bit as effectively as their male contemporaries. They will learn about their lives and careers, the challenges they faced as women working in a male-dominated field, the way they overcame those challenges, and the way they approached the genre―which was often subtler, more psychological, and more disturbing.

  • A collection of treasured stories by the unchallenged master of American fiction

    Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow has deservedly been celebrated as one of America’s greatest writers. For more than sixty years he stretched our minds, our imaginations, and our hearts with his exhilarating perceptions of life. Here, collected in one volume and chosen by the author himself, are favorites such as “What Kind of Day Did You Have?” “Leaving the Yellow House,” and a previously uncollected piece, “By the St. Lawrence.” With his larger-than-life characters, irony, wisdom, and unique humor, Bellow presents a sharp, rich, and funny world that is infinitely surprising. With a preface by Janice Bellow and an introduction by James Wood, this is a collection to treasure for longtime Saul Bellow fans and an excellent introduction for new readers.

  • Saul Bellow evokes all the rich colors and exotic customs of a highly imaginary Africa in this acclaimed comic novel about a middle-aged American millionaire who, seeking a new, more rewarding life, descends upon an African tribe. Henderson’s awesome feats of strength and his unbridled passion for life win him the admiration of the tribe—but it is his gift for making rain that turns him from mere hero into messiah. A hilarious, often ribald story, Henderson the Rain King is also a profound look at the forces that drive a man through life.

  • In the early 1970s, literary journals that contained Andre Dubus’ short stories were passed around among admiring readers. When his debut collection, Separate Flights, arrived in 1975, it was immediately celebrated and won the Boston Globe’s Laurence L. & Thomas Winship / PEN New England Award.

    The collection includes the novella We Don’t Live Here Anymore, which served as the basis for the 2004 film of the same title (nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival); the novella also introduces Dubus’ writer-protagonist Hank Allison, a character who continues to appear throughout his work.

    Two years later, the title story of Dubus’ sophomore collection Adultery and Other Choices continued the exploits of Hank Allison. “The title story alone will make it worth your while to go out and get the book,” wrote the New York Times Book Review.

    While the collection’s opening stories focus on the fragile nature of youth, later stories shift to darker struggles of adulthood, such as in “Andromache”—Dubus’ first story to appear in the New Yorker (1968)—which traces the aftermath of a tragic death during wartime.

  • While the title novella of Dubus’ Finding a Girl in America returns to the somewhat off-the-rails literary life of Hank Allison, the collection’s opening story strikes a much darker tone: “Killings”—the basis of the Academy Award–nominated film In the Bedroom—is a swift tale of revenge that leaves readers wondering what they might do in the name of family love.

    Dubus’ prowess with narrative compression is on full display in the story “Waiting”: the hollow ache experienced by a woman widowed by the Korean War took Dubus fourteen months to write and was more than one hundred pages in early manuscript form but spans a mere seven pages in published form.

    Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Joyce Carol Oates called “The Pretty Girl”—the opening novella of The Times Are Never So Bad—“the most compelling and suspenseful work of fiction [Dubus] has written.”

    Richard Russo’s introduction to this volume grapples with his complex feelings on reading Dubus’ work over many decades, but when it comes to the much-anthologized masterpiece “A Father’s Story,” Russo writes: “I won’t mince words. It’s one of the finest stories ever penned by an American.”

  • In the thirteenth book in Mike Lawson’s celebrated series, Joe DeMarco finds himself on the wrong side of an investigation―in the wake of a political assassination, he’s been framed as the killer.

    As the fixer for Congressman John Mahoney in Washington, DC, Joe DeMarco has had to bend and break the law more than a few times. But when Representative Lyle Canton, House Majority Whip, is found shot dead in his office in the US Capitol and DeMarco is arrested for the murder, DeMarco knows he’s been framed. Locked up in the Alexandria Jail awaiting trial, he calls on his enigmatic friend Emma, an ex–DIA agent, to search for the true killer.

    Emma’s investigation leads her to Sebastian Spear, the ruthless and competitive CEO of the multi-billion-dollar Spear Industries. Spear had a motive for killing Lyle Canton: Canton’s wife, Jean, had once been Spear’s high school sweetheart and the one true love of his life―until Canton won her over. Now Jean was dead, killed in a car crash while driving drunk, and Spear blamed Canton for the accident. But the case the FBI has built against DeMarco is airtight, and not a single piece of evidence points to the grieving CEO. Using her cunning and her DC connections, Emma sets out to prove that Spear has been using fixers of his own.

    Featuring crimes of passion, corporate corruption, and partisan feuds, House Arrest is a gripping, timely political thriller, and one of Lawson’s best books yet.

  • The Cross Country Runner brings together Voices from the Moon, his longest, most masterful novella, and The Last Worthless Evening, Andre Dubus’ fifth collection of short stories and novellas, along with previously uncollected stories and a new introduction by PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author Tobias Wolff.

    “‘It’s divorce that did it,’ his father had said last night.” So begins Voices from the Moon, the 126-page novella that shows Dubus at the height of his empathetic powers. Alternating between the viewpoints of Richie Stowe, a serious twelve-year-old who plans to become a priest, and the five other members of his family, the story takes place over the course of a single day.

    The four novellas and two stories of The Last Worthless Evening range further than those of any previous Dubus collection—racial tension in the navy, a detective-story homage, a Hispanic shortstop, the unlikely pairing of an eleven-year-old kid and a dangerous Vietnam vet.

    This third volume in the series also draws together for the first time many of Dubus’ previously uncollected stories, including work from the mid-1960s and the late 1990s. The earliest story appearing here in book form for the first time is “The Cross Country Runner,” which was originally published in the long-defunct Midwestern University Quarterly in 1966 when Dubus was thirty years old and only recently graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The final story—the Western-themed “Sisters”—is the last piece of fiction Dubus was working on when he died suddenly in 1999 at just sixty-three years old.

  • Captured by the Japanese after the fall of Bataan, Lester I. Tenney was one of the very few who would survive the legendary Death March and three and a half years in Japanese prison camps. With an understanding of human nature, a sense of humor, sharp thinking, and fierce determination, Tenney endured the rest of the war as a slave laborer in Japanese prison camps. My Hitch in Hell is an inspiring survivor’s epic about the triumph of human will despite unimaginable suffering. This edition features a new introduction and epilogue by the author.

  • As Benjamin Franklin famously put it, Americans have a republic, if we can keep it. Preserving the Constitution and the democratic system it supports is the public’s responsibility. One route the Constitution provides for discharging that duty―a route rarely traveled―is impeachment.

    Cass R. Sunstein provides a succinct citizen’s guide to an essential tool of self-government. He illuminates the constitutional design behind impeachment and emphasizes the people’s role in holding presidents accountable. Despite intense interest in the subject, impeachment is widely misunderstood. Sunstein identifies and corrects a number of misconceptions. For example, he shows that the Constitution, not the House of Representatives, establishes grounds for impeachment, and that the president can be impeached for abuses of power that do not violate the law. Even neglect of duty counts among the “high crimes and misdemeanors” delineated in the republic’s foundational document. Sunstein describes how impeachment helps make sense of our constitutional order, particularly the framers’ controversial decision to install an empowered executive in a nation deeply fearful of kings.

    With an eye toward the past and the future, Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide considers a host of actual and imaginable arguments for a president’s removal, explaining why some cases are easy and others hard, why some arguments for impeachment have been judicious and others not. In direct and approachable terms, it dispels the fog surrounding impeachment so that Americans of all political convictions may use their ultimate civic authority wisely.

  • When John Nelson abandoned his government job to join a scrappy band of activists, he didn’t realize trying to save the world would be so hard. His ideals remain strong, but his optimism is wearing thin. His fellow activists―computer hacker Jen Owens and Vietnam vet Irving Fetzer―still think he’s a square. And their radio show can’t compete with the corporate media.

    Parts per Million, Julia Stoops’s socially conscious, fast-paced debut novel, is set in Portland, Oregon, in 2002. As the trio dives into anti-war protests and investigates fraud at an elite university, Nelson falls in love with an unlikely houseguest, Deirdre, a photographer from Ireland―and a recovering addict. Fetzer recognizes her condition but keeps it secret, setting off a page-turning chain of events that threatens to destroy the activists’ friendship even as they’re trying to hold the world together, one radio show at a time.

  • This novel in Mike Lawson’s critically acclaimed series takes political fixer Joe DeMarco to New York for behind­-the-­scenes work on a high­-stakes murder case as the witnesses start to decamp one by one.

    In House Witness, the expertly plotted twelfth novel in this critically acclaimed series, Mike Lawson puts his likable protagonist on the trail of a different kind of fixer—one whose job is to inject reasonable doubt into seemingly air-tight criminal cases.

    Minority Leader of the House and Joe DeMarco’s long­time employer John Mahoney has kept more than one secret from his wife over the years but none so explosive as this: He has a son, and that son has just been shot dead in a bar in Manhattan. Mahoney immediately dispatches DeMarco to his native New York to provide prosecutor Justine Porter with any assistance necessary, but with five bystanders willing to testify against rich­ boy Toby Rosenthal, the case seems like a slam ­dunk—that is, until Porter begins to suspect that someone is interfering with those witnesses and that this may be connected to a pattern of cases across the country. Could someone be helping to get witnesses out of the way when the fate of a wealthy defendant is on the line?

    With the help of Porter’s intern, as outrageously smart as she is young, DeMarco becomes determined to follow that question through to its violent resolution in what turns out to be Joe DeMarco’s most unexpected adventure yet.

  • In the fall of 1943, armed with only his notebooks and pencils, Time and Life correspondent Robert L. Sherrod leapt from the safety of a landing craft and waded through neck-deep water and a hail of bullets to reach the shores of the Tarawa atoll with the US Marine Corps.

    Living shoulder to shoulder with the marines, Sherrod chronicled combat and the marines’ day-to-day struggles as they leapfrogged across the Central Pacific, battling the Japanese on Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. While the marines courageously and doggedly confronted an enemy that at times seemed invincible, those left behind on the American home front desperately scanned Sherrod’s columns for news of their loved ones.

    After Sherrod’s death in 1994, the Washington Post heralded his reporting as “some of the most vivid accounts of men at war ever produced by an American journalist.” Now, for the first time, Ray E. Boomhower tells Sherrod’s story in this intimate account of the Pacific front war efforts.

  • The allure of literary letters and rare first editions captures the imaginations of three professors of English literature and leads to tragedy in the wake of the Great Kobe Earthquake of 1995.

    An English professor receives a mysterious package with several smaller packages within it, including a manuscript, from a recently deceased former student. The manuscript tells the former student’s story―a story he had never revealed to anyone. As a newly-minted Ph.D. from Yale, Jack Springs ended up in Kobe, Japan, circa 1992, where he encountered a mysterious Japanese professor of American literature named Goto. The second son of a family of immense wealth and power, Goto was a clandestine collector of literary rarities, manuscripts, and books. Through a series of meetings, Goto provided Jack with a systematic set of revelations about Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and other literary giants, all of which were supported by unknown documents in Goto’s possession. With the allure of these revelations, as well as Goto’s beautiful niece, Jack was drawn back to Goto’s house again and again until the tragic events on the day of the Great Kobe Earthquake of 1995 threatened to destroy all that had been revealed―including Jack’s sense of who he was and what he was capable of.

  • The third of Judy Garland’s five husbands, Sid Luft was the one man in her life who stuck around. He was chiefly responsible for the final act of Judy’s meteoric comeback after she was unceremoniously booted off the MGM lot: he produced her iconic, Oscar-nominated vehicle A Star Is Born and expertly shaped her concert career.

    Previously unpublished, Sid Luft’s intimate autobiography tells his and Judy’s story in hard-boiled yet elegant prose. It begins on a fateful night in New York City when the not quite divorced Judy Garland and the not quite divorced Sid Luft meet at Billy Reed’s Little Club and fall for each other.

    The romance lasted Judy’s lifetime, despite the separations, the reconciliations, and the divorce. Under Luft’s management, Judy came back bigger than ever, building a singing career that rivaled Sinatra’s. However, her drug dependencies and suicidal tendencies put a tremendous strain on the relationship.

    Sid did not complete his memoir; it ended in 1960 after Judy hired David Begelman and Freddie Fields to manage her career. But Randy L. Schmidt, acclaimed editor of Judy Garland on Judy Garland and author of Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter, seamlessly pieced together the final section of the book from extensive interviews with Sid, most previously unpublished.

    Despite everything, Sid never stopped loving Judy and never forgave himself for not being able to ultimately save her from the demons that drove her to an early death at age forty-seven in 1969. Sid served as chief conservator of the Garland legacy until his death at the age of eighty-nine in 2005. This is his testament to the love of his life.

  • New York Times bestselling author Jim Harrison was one of this country’s most beloved writers, a muscular, brilliantly economic stylist with a salty wisdom. He also wrote some of the best essays on food. A Really Big Lunch collects many of his food pieces for the first time—and taps into his larger-than-life appetite with wit and verve.

    Jim Harrison’s legendary gourmandise is on full display in this book, from the titular New Yorker piece about a French lunch that went to thirty-seven courses, to pieces from Brick, Playboy, Kermit Lynch Newsletter, and more. A Really Big Lunch is shot through with Harrison’s pointed comments and keen delight in the pleasures of the senses. And, between the lines, the pieces give glimpses of Harrison’s life over the last three decades.

    A Really Big Lunch is a literary delight that will satisfy every appetite.

  • Bill Pronzini is crime-writing royalty. His more than eighty published novels have won or been nominated for Edgar, Hammett, Anthony, Shamus, and Macavity awards—a clean sweep of the crime fiction award field—and received rave reviews from critics. He crafts masterful stories, often from multiple perspectives, in which the human condition is on full display. The Violated is no exception.

    In Echo Park, in the small town of Santa Rita, California, the mutilated body of Martin Torrey is found by two passersby. A registered sex offender, Torrey has been a suspect in a string of recent rapes, and instant suspicion for his murder falls on the relatives and friends of the women attacked. Police chief Griffin Kells and detective Robert Ortiz are under increasing pressure from the public and from a mayor demanding results in a case that has no easy solution.

    Pronzini cleverly unfolds the case through alternating perspectives—Martin Torrey’s wife, caught between her grief and the fear her husband was guilty; the outraged husbands of the women violated; the enterprising editor of the local paper; the mayor concerned most with his own ratings; the detectives, often spinning in circles—until a surprising break leads to a completely unexpected conclusion. The Violated is Bill Pronzini at the height of his storytelling powers.

  • Final Destination: Disaster informs the public, for the very first time, of what actually precipitated the controversial sale of Eastern Airlines—at one time the second largest airline in the free world—to Frank Lorenzo’s Texas Air Corporation, which led to its certain demise. This unbelievable story is written by an eighteen-year veteran Eastern pilot who was intimately involved in many aspects of the tumultuous events that culminated in the sale.

  • From a Sports Illustrated senior writer, a moving epic of football and industrial America, telling the story of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, its now-shuttered steel mill, and its legendary high school football team

    Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, is famous for two things: the Jones and Laughlin Steel mill, an industrial behemoth that helped win World War II, and football, with a high school team that has produced numerous NFL stars including Mike Ditka and Darrelle Revis. But the mill, once the fourth largest producer in America, closed for good in 2000. What happens to a town when a dream dies? Does it just disappear?

    In Playing through the Whistle, celebrated sports writer S. L. Price tells the story of this remarkable place, its people, its players, and through it, a wider story of American history from the turn of the twentieth century. Aliquippa has been many things—a rigidly controlled company town, a booming racial and ethnic melting pot, and, for a brief time, a workers’ paradise.

    Price expertly traces this history, while also recounting the birth and development of high school sports, from a minor pastime to a source of civic pride to today, when it sometimes seems like the only way out of a life of poverty, drug abuse, and crime. Playing through the Whistle is a masterpiece of narrative journalism that will make you cry and cheer in equal measure.

  • The culmination of nearly thirty years of reporting on Donald Trump, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter David Cay Johnston takes a revealingly close look at the mogul’s rise to power and prominence.

    Covering the long arc of Trump’s career, Johnston tells the full story of how a boy from a quiet section of Queens, New York, would become an entirely new and complex breed of public figure. Trump is a man of great media savvy, entrepreneurial spirit, and political clout. Yet his career has been plagued by legal troubles and mounting controversy.

    From the origins of his family’s real estate fortune to his own too-big-to-fail business empire; from his education and early career to his whirlwind presidential bid, The Making of Donald Trump provides the fullest picture yet of Trump’s extraordinary ascendency. Love him or hate him, Trump’s massive influence is undeniable, and figures as diverse as Woody Guthrie (who wrote a scathing song about Trump’s father) and Red Scare prosecutor Roy Cohn, mob bosses and high rollers, as well as the average American voter, have all been pulled into his orbit.

    Drawing on decades of interviews, financial records, court documents, and public statements, David Cay Johnston, who has covered Trump more closely than any other journalist working today, gives us the most in-depth look yet at the man who would be president.

  • In the tradition of bestselling legal memoirs from Johnnie Cochran, F. Lee Bailey, Gerry Spence, and Alan Dershowitz, John Henry Browne’s The Devil’s Defender recounts his tortuous education in what it means to be an advocate—and a human being.

    For the last four decades, Browne has defended the indefensible. From Facebook folk hero the “Barefoot Bandit” Colton Moore, to Benjamin Ng of the Wah Mee massacre and Kandahar massacre culprit Sergeant Robert Bales, Browne’s unceasing advocacy and the daring to take on some of the most unwinnable cases—and nearly win them all—has led 48 Hours’ Peter Van Sant to call him “the most famous lawyer in America.” But although the Browne that America has come to know cuts a dashing and confident figure, he has forever been haunted by his job as counsel to Ted Bundy, the most infamous serial killer in American history.

    Browne, a drug- and alcohol-addicted yet wildly successful defense attorney who could never let go of the case that started it all, here asks himself the question others have asked him all along: Does defending evil make you evil too?

  • In the eleventh novel in Mike Lawson’s bestselling series, Joe DeMarco helps an elderly woman threatened by a shady real estate developer, then seeks revenge.

    In House Revenge, congressional fixer Joe DeMarco is dispatched to congressman John Mahoney’s hometown of Boston. Mahoney wants him to help Elinore Dobbs, an elderly woman fighting against a real estate developer intent on tearing down her apartment building for a massive new development. Mahoney is just in it for the free press until Sean Callahan, the developer, disrespects him, and Elinore suffers a horrible “accident,” likely at the hands of two thugs on Callahan’s payroll. Now Mahoney and DeMarco are out for revenge. DeMarco tries to dig up dirt through Callahan’s former mentor, along with one of his ex-wives. But when DeMarco gets a tip on the likely illegal source of some of Callahan’s financing, the investigation turns deadly.

    A fast-paced adventure into the cutthroat world behind the wrecking ball, House Revenge is another gripping tale of collusion and corruption from a beloved political thriller writer.

  • Detective Jonathan Stride’s first wife, Cindy, died of cancer eight years ago, but her ghost hangs over Stride’s relationship with his current lover and fellow detective Serena Dial. When Serena witnesses a brutal murder outside a Duluth bar, she stumbles onto a case with roots that go all the way back to the last year of Cindy Stride’s life.

    At the time, Cindy and Stride were on opposite sides of a domestic murder investigation. Gorgeous, brilliant Janine Snow—a surgeon transplanted to Duluth from Texas—was the prime suspect in the shooting death of her husband. Cindy believed her friend Janine was innocent, but Stride thought all the evidence pointed to the surgeon—even though the gun was never found. Despite Cindy’s attempts to help Janine, the case led to a high-profile murder trial in which Janine was convicted and sent to prison.

    During the current investigation, Serena finds a gun used in the murder of a woman connected to an organized crime syndicate—a gun that turns out to be the same weapon used to kill Janine Snow’s husband. Two unrelated cases years apart suddenly have a mysterious connection. As Stride investigates the possibility that human traffickers are targeting women in the Duluth port, he begins to question whether he made a terrible mistake eight years ago by putting an innocent woman in prison—and whether he will ever be able to make peace with the memory of his beloved wife and give his heart to Serena.

  • Katherine Kelly’s mentor says she has the makings of a good reporter, but to be great, she must learn to find the emotional core of a story and not hold back in its telling. Then he suggests one last graduate-school assignment: find someone who has influenced her family and tell that story.

    Katherine decides to pursue the only family story that has eluded her all her life: the identity of the father she never knew. Her mother, knowing her persistent daughter won’t stop until she gets the truth, breaks her years of silence and makes the call she always swore she would never make.

    The reality of her father stands in stark contrast to the father of her dreams, and Katherine realizes she must decide for herself who her father really is: the guardian of a group of wounded souls he calls the Collectibles, the attentive father of a newly discovered daughter, the person of interest in a bank-fraud investigation, or a little of all three.

    Blood is deeper than principle, or so she is told. And a great journalist follows a story wherever it leads. It’s Katherine’s call, and only she can make it.

  • In his award-winning debut novel, James J. Kaufman delivers a gripping and unforgettable story of two strong men from separate worlds—one touched by tragedy, the other by greed—brought together with unexpected results. In chronicling how their lives and those they touch are dramatically changed by their encounter, Kaufman reveals the power of relationships, the nature of love, and ultimately the meaning of life.

    “Do what the other fella can’t. Be what the other fella ain’t. And then help the other fella.” Joe Hart has never let go of his uncle’s words. An orphan from the unspoiled Adirondack mountains, Joe leaves his humble beginnings and goes on to distinguish himself, first as a navy submarine commander, then as an attorney unequaled in his field. But Joe’s world crashes with an unexpected tragedy.

    A child of wealth and privilege from New York’s Upper East Side, Preston Wilson harbors a fear of financial failure. When that fear threatens to become reality, Preston tracks down the one attorney who might be able to save him. Joe reluctantly decides to help—but only after extracting a promise that Preston will fulfill an unspecified condition when called upon. Preston, desperate, agrees.

    Too soon, Joe calls in his unconventional IOU. The self-absorbed Preston balks when Joe tells him he must meet, earn the trust of, and care for several people. Each of Joe’s collectibles—none of whom Preston would ever want to know—has a serious personal challenge. Can Preston find the integrity to make good on his promise to Joe? Does he have a choice?

  • It all started with a blind promise—now Preston Wilson faces a dilemma that will ultimately destroy him or define him.

    In The Collectibles, book one of the Collectibles trilogy, James J. Kaufman delivers the gripping and unforgettable story of Joe Hart and Preston Wilson, two strong men from different worlds—one touched by tragedy, the other by greed—brought together by a promise that changes six lives forever.

    In The Concealers, book two of the trilogy, Kaufman’s readers meet Katherine Kelly, a budding journalist driven to find the truth. As she investigates bank fraud in Long Island, she discovers the identity of her father, only to learn that he is being drawn into her investigation. Too soon, she learns the agony and price of the truth she seeks.

    In The Conciliators, the conclusion of the Collectibles trilogy, Preston Wilson’s life is once again imploding—this time as headline news, bylined by Katherine Kelly. Under fire thanks to the financial shenanigans of a longtime friend, the CEO finds himself in trouble with the FBI, the Russian Mafia, and his creditors. If he doesn’t come up with a plan (and quickly) he could lose everything and find himself, his wife, and his shareholders in prison. Inspired by Joe Hart’s life lessons, Preston sets a new course, vowing to fight for what matters most: his family, his friends, and the Collectibles.

  • The great revival of interest in Patricia Highsmith continues with the publication of a novel that will give dog owners nightmares for years to come.

    With an eerie simplicity of style, Highsmith turns our next-door neighbors into sadistic psychopaths, lying in wait among white picket fences and manicured lawns. In A Dog’s Ransom, Highsmith blends savage humor with brilliant social satire in this dark tale of a high-minded criminal who hits a wealthy Manhattan couple where it hurts the most—by kidnapping their beloved poodle.

  • Take A Christmas Story and mix in The Sandlot and you’ll get Joseph Walker’s charming holiday novel—Christmas on Mill Street.

    It’s 1962, and young Sam Andrews just moved to Utah from Arizona. A tall, overweight, semi-clumsy outsider, he’s still trying to fit in with the neighborhood boys. When discussion about sledding down the infamous Mill Street begins, Sam pipes in and says he’ll do it. The problem is, Sam has only seen snow in pictures and has never actually ridden a sled. And to top it all off, Mill Street is practically a vertical drop with two deadly curves. A rider going too fast would shoot right off Mill Street and into the Kimballs’ thorn-filled pyracantha bushes. But there’s no turning back now.

    Listeners will laugh out loud at the adventures and many poignant lessons leading up to Christmas Day and Sam’s eventual duel with Mill Street. Christmas on Mill Street is a delightful and inspirational family gift for the holiday season.

  • For more than a century, the interplay between private, investor-owned electric utilities and government regulators has shaped the electric power industry in the United States. Provision of an essential service to largely dependent consumers invited government oversight and ever more sophisticated market intervention. The industry has sought to manage, co-opt, and profit from government regulation. In The Power Brokers, Jeremiah Lambert maps this complex interaction from the late nineteenth century to the present day.

    Lambert’s narrative focuses on seven important industry players: Samuel Insull, the principal industry architect and prime mover; David Lilienthal, chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), who waged a desperate battle for market share; Don Hodel, who presided over the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) in its failed attempt to launch a multiplant nuclear power program; Paul Joskow, the MIT economics professor who foresaw a restructured and competitive electric power industry; Enron’s Ken Lay, master of political influence and market-rigging; Amory Lovins, a pioneer proponent of sustainable power; and Jim Rogers, head of Duke Energy, a giant coal-fired utility threatened by decarbonization. Lambert tells how Insull built an empire in a regulatory vacuum and how the government entered the electricity marketplace by making cheap hydropower available through the TVA. He describes the failed overreach of the BPA, the rise of competitive electricity markets, Enron’s market manipulation, Lovins’ radical vision of a decentralized industry powered by renewables, and Rogers’ remarkable effort to influence cap-and-trade legislation.

    Lambert shows how the power industry has sought to use regulatory change to preserve or secure market dominance and how rogue players have gamed imperfectly restructured electricity markets. Integrating regulation and competition in this industry has proven a difficult experiment.

  • "I can lick any son-of-a-bitch in the world."

    So boasted John L. Sullivan, the first modern heavyweight boxing champion of the world, a man who was the gold standard of American sports for more than a decade and the first athlete to earn more than a million dollars. He had a big ego, a big mouth, and even bigger appetites. His womanizing, drunken escapades, and chronic police-blotter presence were godsends to a burgeoning newspaper industry. The larger-than-life boxer embodied the American dream for late nineteenth-century immigrants as he rose from Boston's Irish working class to become the most recognizable man in the nation. In the process, the "Boston Strong Boy" transformed boxing from outlawed bare-knuckle fighting into the gloved spectacle we know today.

    Strong Boy tells the story of America's first sports superstar, a self-made man who personified the power and excesses of the Gilded Age. Everywhere John L. Sullivan went, his fists backed up his bravado. Sullivan's epic brawls, such as his seventy-five-round bout against Jake Kilrain, and his cross-country barnstorming tour in which he literally challenged all of America to a fight are recounted in vivid detail, as are his battles outside the ring with a troubled marriage, wild weight and fitness fluctuations, and raging alcoholism. Strong Boy gives readers ringside seats to the colorful tale of one of the country's first Irish American heroes and the birth of the American sports media and the country's celebrity obsession with athletes.

  • From bestselling author Mike Lawson comes the latest installment in the award-winning Joe DeMarco series.

    As a fixer for influential congressman John Mahoney in Washington, DC, Joe DeMarco has found himself in plenty of unexpected and dangerous situations. In House Rivals, DeMarco is taken further out of his element than ever before, sent to North Dakota to protect a passionate but naïve twenty-two-year-old blogger who has put herself in harm’s way.

    The young woman is Sarah Johnson, whose grandfather saved Mahoney’s life in Vietnam. For the past two years, Sarah has been on a relentless crusade against a billionaire oil tycoon who has profited handsomely from the natural gas boom in the Dakotas—and who she believes has been bribing small-time politicians and judges to keep things in his favor. Though she has no hard evidence against the man, Sarah has been assaulted and received death threats for her meddling. DeMarco, given his years of experience bending the rules in DC, suspects that a middleman like himself is pulling strings for the tycoon. But as DeMarco tries to identify his adversaries, the situation turns unexpectedly violent, and DeMarco finds himself in a battle of wits against two ruthless problem solvers who will stop at nothing to win.

  • Detective Jonathan Stride is back.

    A third woman dead in two months, and for the third time, Alison Malville isn't sure her husband was home all night.

    When the killer sends the usual photo of his victim to the press, she sees an item of her clothing left with this body, too.

    Could you believe your own husband was capable of murder? Would you turn him in?

    This gripping thriller from the acclaimed author of Spilled Blood will keep you riveted.

  • Fought on July 28, 1864, the Battle of Ezra Church was a dramatic engagement during the Civil War's Atlanta campaign. Confederate forces under John Bell Hood desperately fought to stop William T. Sherman's advancing armies as they tried to cut the last Confederate supply line into the city. Confederates under General Stephen D. Lee nearly overwhelmed the Union right flank, but Federals under General Oliver O. Howard decisively repelled every attack. After five hours of struggle, 5,000 Confederates lay dead and wounded, while only 632 Federals were lost. The result was another major step in Sherman's long effort to take Atlanta.

    Detailing Stephen D. Lee's tactical missteps and Howard's vigilant leadership, Hess challenges many common misconceptions about the battle. Richly narrated and drawn from an array of unpublished manuscripts and firsthand accounts, Hess' work sheds new light on the complexities and significance of this important engagement, both on and off the battlefield.

  • International Thriller Writers Award–winner and bestselling author Brian Freeman has established himself as a master of psychological thrillers. In Season of Fear, Freeman returns to the sun-drenched beaches of Naples, Florida, and the idiosyncratic world of Detective Cab Bolton.

    Attractive and popular politician Diane Fairmont is running for the Florida governorship, but a chill is cast over the campaign when she receives an anonymous note announcing the return of the assassin who killed her husband ten years earlier. Because of complicated ties between Fairmont and his mother, movie actress Tarla Bolton, Detective Bolton is assigned to the case.

    As Bolton struggles to penetrate the veil of secrecy surrounding the Fairmont campaign, he begins to realize that the death threat is not the only danger faced by the campaign staff. A desperate race against the clock ensues as Bolton tries to unlock the secrets of a poisonous conspiracy before nature provides the perfect cover for a long-dormant killer to strike again.

  • Veteran journalists Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge have written the definitive inside look at the Boston Marathon bombing with a unique, Boston-based account of the events that riveted the world. From the Tsarnaev brothers' years leading up to the act of terror to the bomb scene itself (which both authors witnessed firsthand within minutes of the blast), from the terrifying police shootout with the suspects to the ultimate capture of the younger brother, Boston Strong: A City's Triumph over Tragedy reports all the facts—and so much more.

    Based on months of intensive interviews, this is the first book to tell the entire story through the eyes of those who experienced it. From the cop first on the scene to the detectives assigned to the manhunt, the authors provide a behind-the-scenes look at the investigation. More than a true-crime book, Boston Strong also tells the tragic but ultimately life-affirming story of the victims and their recoveries and gives voice to those who lost loved ones. With their extensive reporting, writing experience, and deep ties to the Boston area, Sherman and Wedge create the perfect match of story, place, and authors.

    If you're only going to read one book on this tragic but uplifting story, this is it.

  • The ninth installment in Mike Lawson's Washington, DC, political thriller series takes listeners back into Joe DeMarco's past—to the murder of his father, which was never investigated, let alone solved.

    DeMarco always knew that his father Gino had a shady job for a local mafioso, but he didn't understand that Gino had been a hit man until he was murdered. Now, nearly twenty years later, one of Gino's former mob associates is dying of lung cancer, and he wants to get something off his chest before retiring to his grave: the truth about Gino's killer. The shocking information and the powerful position the killer now occupies sends DeMarco on a mission of revenge with terrible consequences. Now that the secret has been kept for so long, DeMarco has to rush to do something about it because the killer is on the brink of taking a job in Washington, DC, that will leave him untouchable.

    With his job, his morals, and his very life on the line, DeMarco must ask himself: How far will he go for revenge?

  • Turn to Stone takes place in the days immediately preceding the events of The Cold Nowhere, the sixth book in Freeman's thrilling Jonathan Stride series. On his way back to Duluth, Stride stops to visit the grave of his mother in a small Wisconsin town. After a shocking occurrence in the cemetery, Stride becomes enmeshed in a gruesome and suspenseful search for a killer who knows things no one else alive should know.

    This novella from master of suspense Brian Freeman, winner of the International Thriller Writers Award, is not to be missed.

  • In 1915, the British ocean liner Lusitania was making its way from New York to Liverpool when it was sunk by a German U-boat, shocking the world with the massive death toll. Infuriated by the tragedy, Arthur Guy Empey, an American citizen, traveled to England to enlist in the Royal Fusiliers, as the United States had not yet entered the war. Over the Top tells the story of Empey's experiences in a voice straight from the western front, causing listeners to feel as if they are right there in the trenches.

    This book was the biggest bestseller of the war, with sales totaling a million copies. Perhaps one of its most entertaining features is the appendix entitled "Tommy's Dictionary of the Trenches," which defines slang and other terms used by British soldiers. The book remains a classic, the fascinating story of an American soldier fighting in the British Army.

  • In this unique noir masterpiece by the incomparable Saul Bellow, a young man is sucked into the mysterious, heat-filled vortex of New York City.

    Asa Leventhal, a temporary bachelor with his wife away on a visit to her mother, attempts to find relief from a Gotham heat wave only to be accosted in the park by a down-at-the-heels stranger who accuses Leventhal of ruining his life. Unable to shake the stranger, Leventhal is led by his own self-doubts and suspicions into a nightmare of paranoia and fear.

  • A hippie commune has invaded Black River Falls. While the majority of the townspeople believe that the bohemians have the right to stay—despite how bizarre some of their ways can seem. As always, there is a minority that constantly accuses them of everything from criminal activities to satanism. As usual, lawyer and private investigator Sam McCain finds himself in the middle of the controversy, especially when the teenage daughter of Paul Mainwaring, one of the town's wealthiest men, is found murdered in the commune's barn. A deeply troubled young man, and Vietnam vet named Neil Cameron, is immediately charged with the crime, but Sam has serious doubts. 

    In this lively and poignant new novel, Ed Gorman offers listeners his richest portrait yet about Black River Falls and its people.

  • Bradford Morrow's stories have garnered him awards such as the O. Henry and Pushcart prizes and have given him a devoted following. Now gathered here for the first time is a collection of his finest gothic tales. 

    A young man whose childhood hobby of collecting sea shells and birds' nests takes a sinister turn when he becomes obsessed with acquiring his brother's girlfriend, in "The Hoarder," which was selected as one of the Best American Noir Stories of the Century. 

    An archeologist summoned to attend his beloved sister's funeral is astonished to discover it is not she who has died, but someone much closer to him, in "Gardener of Heart." 

    A blind motivational speaker has a crisis of faith when he suddenly regains his sight, only to discover life was better lived in the dark, in "Amazing Grace."

  • This bitingly hilarious American satire will forever define late twentieth-century New York style.

    Tom Wolfe’s bestselling modern classic tells the story of Sherman McCoy, an elite Wall Street bond trader who has it all: wealth, power, prestige, a Park Avenue apartment, a beautiful wife, and an even more beautiful mistress, until one wrong turn sends Sherman spiraling downward in a humiliating fall from grace.

    A car accident in the Bronx involving Sherman, his girlfriend, and two young lower-class Black men sets a match to the incendiary racial and social tensions of 1980s New York City. Suddenly, Sherman finds himself embroiled in the most brutal, high-profile case of the year, as prosecutors, politicians, the press, the police, the clergy, and assorted hustlers rush in to further their own political and social agendas. With so many egos at stake, the last priority on anyone’s mind is truth or justice.

  • A post-apocalyptic thriller of the after effects in the United States after a terrifying terrorist attack using electromagnetic pulse weapons.

    In a small North Carolina town, one man struggles to save his family after America loses a war that will send it back to the Dark Ages.

    Already cited on the floor of Congress and discussed in the corridors of the Pentagon as a book all Americans should read, One Second After is the story of a war scenario that could become all too terrifyingly real. Based on a real weapon—the electromagnetic pulse (EMP)—which may already be in the hands of our enemies, it is a truly realistic look at the awesome power of a weapon that can destroy the entire United States, literally within one second.

    In the tradition of On the Beach, Fail Safe, and Testament, this book, set in a typical American town, is a dire warning of what might be our future and our end.

  • Nicholai Hel, born in the ravages of World War I China to an aristocratic Russian mother and a mysterious German father, and raised in the spiritual gardens of a Japanese Go master, survives the destruction of Hiroshima to emerge as the world’s most artful lover and its most accomplished and highly paid assassin. Genius, mystic, master of language and culture, Hel’s secret is his determination to attain a rare kind of personal excellence, a state of effortless perfection—shibumi.

    Now living in an isolated mountain fortress with his magnificent Eurasian mistress, Hel faces his most sinister enemy, a super-monolith of espionage and monopoly. The battle lines are drawn: ruthless power and corruption on one side, and on the other, shibumi.