Short tales about deadly books, by top mystery authors When a bibliophile is murdered, it takes a bookseller to solve the crime Good Advice, New Mexico, is a sunny town with a gloomy bookshop. The store's eerie corridors are the province of Avery Sharecross, an ex-cop who has made the transition from chasing killers to tracking rare books. One afternoon, the local sheriff interrupts his book club meeting, and Sharecross's old career collides with...

A newscaster's son disappears, and Amos Walker dives into the depths of Detroit to rescue the boy On screen, Sandy Broderick is everything a newscaster is supposed to be. He has a deep voice, a ten-thousand-watt smile, and the God-given ability to banter with weathermen until his ears fall off. But when the cameras turn off, he has a private problem: His twenty-year old son, Bud, has disappeared. Amos Walker is going to find him.   The boy and his...

A priest's death leads a Detroit gumshoe into a case of church corruption in this mordantly funny hard-boiled crime novel   Ralph Poteet is forty pounds overweight, out of gin, and he hasn't seen his gun in weeks. As far as private detectives go, he's not much to look at. But he's the only one in the building, and that's enough for Lyla Dane. A call girl who's far better at her job than Ralph is at his, she calls him in the middle of the night because...

Hired to promote the new American dream car, a former reporter finds himself mired in a deadly conspiracy against a union boss and Ford Motors itself It's only been two decades since Connie Minor was on top, but it feels like centuries. Once a journalist, Minor spent Prohibition with his finger on gangland's pulse, a confidant of every rumrunner, boss, and triggerman in Detroit. But as the gangsters fell, Minor went with them, replaced by a generation...

Detroit PI Amos Walker searches for a priceless medieval illuminated manuscript - and for evidence that can put his former partner's killer behind bars. Hired by a curator at the Detroit Institute of Arts to serve as his bodyguard during a transaction involving a stolen illuminated manuscript, Amos Walker enters a darkened skin-flick theater where the exchange is supposed to take place. When the deal goes south, he's lucky to leave with his life......

A faded film star asks Detroit PI Amos Walker to get her out of a relationship with a deadly mobster When Amos Walker was a teen, he had a poster of Gail Hope on his wall. A 60s bombshell in the beach-blanket tradition, she has fallen hard since her glory days as one of the dying studio system's final starlets. But when she calls on Amos Walker she remains as lovely as ever: an elegant beauty with a $750,000 problem.   Since her career evaporated,...

Fresh out of jail, an ex-ballplayer stumbles into the world of bounty hunting and murder in urban Detroit Even prison couldn't stop former big-league pitcher Doc Miller from playing baseball. Jailed after a teenage girl overdosed on cocaine at one of his house parties, the former Detroit Tigers ace became a star at the Michigan State Prison, bringing home the institution's first Midwestern Penal System championship. Now out on parole, his days of...

Multiple award-winner Loren D. Estleman has produced a major biographical novel on the infamous Mobster known as Scarface, rigorously researched and deftly nuanced to offer an intimate portrait of the gangster whose terrible crimes and larger-than-life persona have both fascinated and appalled the world for nearly a century; whose legacy is still widely debated; and whose brutally ambitious career in the Mafia continues to inspire filmmakers and writers...

A policeman falls in the line of duty, and Detroit PI Amos walker searches for the shooters A routine case puts Amos Walker on the highway to Ann Arbor, but the trip turns deadly just a few miles outside of Detroit. Tailing a trucker suspected of faking hijackings, Walker does his best to keep a safe distance, but is recognized anyway. The trucker runs him off the road, and it's only the tight handling of an American-made Cutlass that keeps Walker...

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A HIT MAN MEETS HIS NEW MOTHER-IN-LAW? Multiple Shamus Award winner Loren D. Estleman is "a superb stylist as well as a deft storyteller [who] paints his people and his city with acerbic wit and wry affection" (San Diego Union-Tribune). Peter Macklin was a hit man for a long time but he has taken steps to distance himself from his past, like quitting the mob, moving away from Detroit, and marrying the gorgeous, intelligent Laurie....