Showing results for "Lawrence Block" in Literature & Fiction

The Sounds of Crime is an exclusive collection of five brand new short stories by some of the best crimewriters around. Using the theme of 'audio', this unique collection features brand new stories by Lawrence Block, Peter James, Val McDermid, Mark Billingham and Christopher Fowler.

All of a sudden the streets of your city are so overpopulated with security cameras and closed-circuit TV that you have to lock yourself in the bathroom to have an undocumented moment. And locks, which used to provide the recreational pleasure of a moderately challenging crossword puzzle, have become genuinely pickproof.

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.

Well past retirement age and feeling his years - but still staying sober one day at a time - Matthew Scudder learns that alcoholics aren't the only ones who count the days since their last slip. Matt's longtime partner, Elaine, tells him of a group of former sex workers who do something similar, helping each other stay out of the life. But when one young woman describes an abusive client who's refusing to let her quit, Elaine encourages her to get help of a different sort. The sort only Scudder can deliver.

In this brand-new novella, Keller, everyone's favorite assassin for hire, is Chicago-bound on Amtrak's City of New Orleans, ready to do what he does best. But it's complicated. Usually there's someone ready to point him toward the target. Or he'll have a photo, say. Or, bare minimum, a name and address. Not this time. When he gets to Baker's Bluff, Illinois, he'll have to play private detective before he can get down to business. Well, okay. He knows how it works. So before he even packs his suitcase, Keller buys a fedora.

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.

It's a jungle out there. Literally. At least for Evan Tanner, an eternally sleepless, sometime superspy, who finds himself in Africa on the trail of the AWOL ruler of tiny Modonoland. It seems the petty despot's gone missing, and he's taken the state treasury along with him. No stranger to impossible missions and international peril, Tanner's been in over his head before. This time, however, he's in imminent danger of being buried alive. And it all has to do with the CIA, white supremacists, moderate revolutionaries...and a blond jungle bombshell named (no joke!) Sheena.

Ever since a shred of shrapnel did a number on his brain's sleep center, Even Tanner has been awake 24/7. This gives him more time than your average underachiever. Time to learn the world's languages (he's fluent in Basque, but has trouble with Chinese). Time to embrace the world's lost causes and irredentist movements (The Flat Earth Society, the League for the Restoration of Cilician Armenia, the Society of the Left Hand). Time to write term papers theses for students with more money than knowledge.

Each year, for 17 years, Mysterious Bookshop proprietor Otto Penzler commissioned an original Christmas story by a leading suspense writer. These stories were then produced as pamphlets, just 1,000 copies, and given to customers of the bookstore as a Christmas present. Now, all 17 tales have been collected in one volume.

A truly unprecedented literary achievement by author and editor Lawrence Block, this newly-commissioned anthology of 17 superbly-crafted stories, each inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper. Contributors include Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Olen Butler, Michael Connelly, Megan Abbott, Craig Ferguson, Nicholas Christopher, Jill D. Block, Joe R. Lansdale, Justin Scott, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Warren Moore, Jonathan Santlofer, Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, and Lawrence Block himself.

For all those craving more adventures of their favorite bookseller-by-day and burglar-by-night, The Burglar in Short Order for the first time ever collects all of Bernie Rhodenbarr's short-form appearances in one complete volume. From the story in which a prototype of Bernie first appeared (“A Bad Night for Burglars”) to his appearances in Playboy and (maybe? It's kinda complicated) Cosmopolitan...from an essay discussing Bernie's misadventures in Hollywood to a piece commissioned by a European publisher for a tourist guide to New York....

Fourteen-year-old Moshe Kessler steps off the train at Buchenwald concentration camp. Having endured the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau, lost touch with his entire family, and survived the death march in the freezing winter, Moshe has seen more than his share of tragedy. At Buchenwald, the new arrivals are assigned to their barracks. Kinder Block 66 is to be Moshe’s new home, but he doesn’t yet realize just how significant this will turn out to be. For just a short time later, the Germans decide to destroy the camp—but they are not prepared for Buchenwald’s secret resistance.

In the third installment of his acclaimed anthology series, master of crime fiction Lawrence Block has gathered together the best talent from popular fiction to produce an anthology of short stories based on masterpieces of American art. Among the star-studded lineup of writers you'll find Jerome Charyn, Jane Hamilton, Christa Faust, John Sandford, Sara Paretsky, Walter Mosley, Charles Ardai, Barry Malzberg, and Janice Eidus.

"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."

Matthew Scudder and his wife, Elaine, talk of the night they met while listening to music in various places around their part of New York.

The story I wrote, set in the same Hell's Kitchen neighborhood that's home to my detective hero, Matthew Scudder, was "If You Can't Stand the Heat". (And in fact the bar where the story begins bears a definite resemblance to Grogan's Open House, where Matt's friend Mick Ballou holds court.) I didn't know very much about the young woman who stars in "If You Can't Stand the Heat", not even her name. I learned more as I found myself moved to record further adventures for her.

It was all too frighteningly familiar. For the second time in his life, Alex Penn wakes up in an alcoholic daze in a cheap hotel room off Times Square and finds himself lying next to the savagely mutilated body of a young woman. After the first death, he was convicted of murder and imprisoned, then released on a technicality. But this time he has to find out what happened during the blackout and why, before the police do.

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....

An intense and gripping short story audiobook that delves into the unsettling psyche of a twisted individual, "A Fire at Night" by Lawrence Block narrated by Mike Vendetti is a chilling exploration of the mind of a deranged arsonist.

Four Gangsters are creating a problem in a medium-sized town, and the police can't seem to handle it. The city fathers consider murdering them, but they are too old, so they hire a professional killer who does the job in one night; but will the problem go away?