Nominated for the 2017 Anthony Award for Best Anthology/CollectionBestselling novelists David Morrell, Alison Gaylin and Elaine Viets headline a new anthology of 22 tales exploring the unique aura of mystery of New Orleans and the surrounding bayou country.BLOOD ON THE BAYOU is published in conjunction with Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, which is being held in New Orleans in 2016. As with the convention itself, the anthology spreads a broad canop...

Taught to fight by his war hero grandfather, Reeves comes home to find Grandpa Butch embroiled in a centuries-old battle over a treasured Japanese sword. Together they team up with Tara the hot-rodding ambulance driver and a secretive member of a samurai warrior brotherhood to take on a powerful clan of ninja and yakuza bent on sparking a third world war.From the heroics of the Devil's Brigade in World War II and the brutal underground fight scene of Tokyo to the American heartland...

The Year's Best Crime & Mystery Stories contains the best crime and mystery stories that were originally published in 2015 in either print or electronic format as selected by editors Kristine Kathryn Rusch and John Helfers.Reading through thousands of titles and carefully narrowing their favorite reads down to the ultimate list that is presented in this volume, the editors chose their top picks of notable works from hundreds of anthologie...

The crime fiction canopy's a broad one, with room to give shelter to writing of all sorts, as editor Lawrence Block shows with At Home in the Dark: "Some of these stories have one or both feet planted in another genre. James Reasoner's story is a period western, Joe Lansdale's is bleakly dystopian, and Joe Hill's novelette slithers through a little doorway into another world. "And now that I've singled out those three, I suppose I should go ahead and list the rest of the gang: N. ...

From Publishers Weekly:"Standouts include Dennis Lehane's gilt-edged chiller, 'A Bostonian (in Cambridge),' in which a wealthy collector of letters of abandonment falls prey to wily blackmailers, and Joe R. Lansdale's 'The Skull Collector,' a gangster yarn featuring gun-toting female grave robbers. Overshadowing everything, though, is Lee Goldberg's 'Lost Shows,' a delightful shocker about a fanatical collector of short-lived and unaired TV shows who has t...

Jay Desmarteaux raised a whole lot of hell in New Jersey after he was released from prison after 25 years for the murder of a rapist bully at his school. Now he's on the run in his home state of Louisiana, where he traces his roots to an evil family tree that's grown large and lush, watered with the blood of the innocent. Jay's hunt for his parents will take him to the doors of stately plantation homes built by the enslaved, through the deadly and gorgeous heart of the bayou, to his greate...

"Bad Boy Boogie is a punch to the heart. Picture James Lee Burke slammed into old-school Dennis Lehane and filtered through Bruce Springsteen, yet having a voice all its own. Now we wait to see what Thomas Pluck does next." –Scott Montgomery, MysteryPeople"Reacher fans can find plenty to root for in this brawler with a strong sense of justice." –Criminal ElementNominated for a 2018 Anthony Award for Best Paperback OriginalWhen Jay Desmarte...

A creepy coming of age novelette from the writer of unflinching fiction with heart:Wade and his best friend Red Collins have only lived eleven summers, but the one they'll remember for the rest of their lives is when Blind Joe Death visited their holler, spinning tales of deadly haints and black dogs that steal souls in the night.Wade lost his father in the mines, and Red wishes his were dead. When the boys invite this strange hoodoo man into their lives they learn that the...

What if on the worst day of your life, you also learned that all the folklore and myths you love were real? Vyx is a twelve-year-old kid who just wants to draw and be accepted for who they are—until their parents are dragged away by the government. Terrified, but determined, Vyx embarks on a rescue mission, journeying through a rapidly changing America where the unimaginable has become the everyday: wild weather, a frightening pandemic, avaricious dragons who attack the post office, talkin...

Bobby and Karen fit together like two sharp-toothed gears, suping up cars, racing them for pinks, and selling their rods to scrape a living. Then an old friend comes calling, and the jealous, brutal world conspires to tear them apart.A fierce and fiery small-block noir tale from the author of the explosive action thriller Blade of Dishonor, and Steel Heart: 10 Tales of Crime & Suspense."Hardcore-clean writing delivered at warp speed." -Andrew Vachss"Short, mean, and...

We know a healthy appetite for well-written short stories exists and we want to help make things better. Our goal with Down & Out: The Magazine is to be a little different than other magazines by standing on the shoulders of the giants that have come before us, or at least tiptoe along the arrows in the backs of the pioneers of modern magazine publishing.Each issue will feature a story based on a series character like this issue’s brand-new Moe Prager story by Reed Farrel Coleman. ...

Robert McCammon, James Renner, Kaaron Warren, Brian Hodge, Bill Schweigart, and Mick Garris reveal sinister secrets and unsavory pasts in a haunting anthology of short stories collected by acclaimed horror editors Brian James Freeman and Richard Chizmar.LIZARDMAN by Robert McCammonThe lizardman thinks he knows about all the mysterious dangers of the Florida swamps, but there are things lurking in the bayou that are older and deadlier than his wildest dreams....