Central Kansas Library System

A deranged derelict, a crazed Vietnam vet, has been arrested for gunning down successful young lawyer Glenn Holtzmann at a corner phone booth on Eleventh Avenue -- and the suspect's brother wants P.I. Matthew Scudder to prove the madman innocent. But Scudder's curiosity and dedication are leading him to dark, unexplored places in his own heart...and to passions and secrets that could destroy everything be loves.

Four decades ago, Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence Block introduced the world to one of his most beloved and enduring creations: Bernie Rhodenbarr, the clever, nimble-fingered star of novels such as Burglars Can't Be Choosers, The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling, and The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons. Called "the Heifetz of the picklock" by the New York Times, Bernie has stolen not only antiques, stamp collections, and priceless...

From Publishers Weekly's starred review: "Set in and around colleges and universities, the 17 new stories and one reprint in this top-notch anthology explore the forbidding side of academia. As Block (the Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries) notes in his droll introduction, each of the varied, well-told tales is "as individual as fingerprints." Among the standouts are David Morrell's devious "Requiem for a Homecoming," in which two alumni cast suspicion on...

STRANGE EMBRACE started out to be a novel based on Johnny Midnight, a TV series which everyone has long since forgotten. Except, of course, that nothing manages to be forgotten in the Internet Age. I, whose job it was to knock out 50,000 words of Johnny Midnightish prose and dialogue, had forgotten when it ran and who was in it, but Google took no time at all to remind me that the title role was played by Edmund O'Brien, and that the series ran during...

Welcome to New York City. A place where stories lurk around every corner and linger in the hearts of the millions in these five boroughs. In these pages, tales of the underbelly of ­modern-day New York City hook-up with hilarious and ­poignant stories of love and loss in this annual collection of thrilling short stories by seasoned and fresh writers who know how to tell them. Edited by Peter Carlaftes and Kat Georges, these stories are sharp and...

This is the story of a young woman, Jan Marlowe, who comes to New York fresh out of college, takes an apartment in the Bohemian neighborhood of Greenwich Village, and seeks to find herself—and specifically to come to terms with the puzzling question of sexual identity.

Seventeen stories by seventeen brilliant writers, inspired by seventeen paintings. That was the formula for Lawrence Block's two ground-breaking anthologies, In Sunlight or in Shadow and Alive in Shape and Color, and it's on glorious display here once again in From Sea to Stormy Sea. This time the paintings are exclusively the work of American artists, and the roster includes Harvey Dunn, John Steuart Curry, Reginald Marsh, Thomas Hart Benton, Helen...

Famed detective and mystery writer Lawrence Block (A Walk Among the Tombstones, 8 Million Ways to Die) takes the helm as guest editor for DARK CITY LIGHTS, the fourth edition of the Have a NYC series. Twenty-three thrilling, hilarious and poignant short stories-all based in New York City-written by new and acclaimed fiction masters, including Robert Silverberg (Hugo and Nebula Award multiple winner; grand master of SFWA); Ed Park (author, Personal...