Suppose you're Bernie Rhodenbarr.You've got a dream job, running your own cozy secondhand bookstore, complete with Raffles, your caudally challenged cat. It's in Greenwich Village, and your best friend's dog grooming salon is two doors away, and the two of you lunch together and meet for drinks after work.And you've got another way to make a buck. Every once in a while you put your conscience on the shelf and let yourself into someone else's residence, and ...

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 works...

Matthew Scudder investigates a secret, private club in Manhattan whose members suddenly start dying, when it becomes obvious that someone is trying to kill them all.

MATT SCUDDER RETURNS. More than 40 years after his debut and nearly a decade since his last appearance, one of the most renowned characters in all of crime fiction is back on the case in this major new novella by Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence Block. 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, t...

A NEW HAT.FOR A NEW HIT.Happily retired, living under a new name with his wife and daughter, Keller thought he was out of the murder-for-hire business. Until he got the call from his old employer, asking him to tackle the most unusual assignment of his career. The client's wife is having an affair, and Keller's been hired to get rid of her lover. But who is this mysterious lover? The husband doesn't know—he only knows that she has one, and he wants the man dead.It's ...

Lawrence Block, the award-winning crime fiction author, is almost as well known for his instructional books for writers, and contributed a monthly column on fiction to Writers Digest for 14 years. WRITING THE NOVEL was his first book for writers, and remained continuously in print since its original appearance in 1978. But the world of publishing has changed in the past 40 years, and Block has now expanded and updated his original text, bringing each chapter up to date and adding welcome n...

In his fourth appearance, Matthew Scudder deals as an unlicensed private investigator with a case from his own past as a cop. A serial killer has confessed to the murder of seven woman, but insists he had nothing to do with the death of an eighth victim. The dead woman's father hires Scudder to investigate, and the facts he uncovers tend to confirm the killer's claim of innocence. This tells him a new killer purposely copied earlier crimes—which makes it likely he had a personal motive. Sc...

The wife of Kheran Khoury, heroin wholesaler, is killed after he haggles over the price of her ransom. With the help of two computer geniuses, a streetwise punk, drug lords and his friend, ex-cop Scudder, they track the killers through the back streets of Brooklyn.

Ever since The Burglar on the Prowl climbed the bestseller lists in 2004, fans have been clamoring for a new book featuring the lighthearted and lightfingered Bernie Rhodenbarr. Now everybody's favorite burglar returns in an eleventh adventure that finds him and his lesbian sidekick Carolyn Kaiser breaking into houses, apartments, and even a museum, in a madcap adventure replete with American Colonial silver, an F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscript, a priceless portrait, and a remarkable array o...

Since the 1970s, Lawrence Block has been writing award-winning novels and short fiction featuring Matthew Scudder. Now, with both himself and his detective half a century older, the author found himself charged with writing a book about his protagonist.And he decided he wasn't the right person for the job.LB: "What was Matt's family like? How did he spend his childhood? What steered him toward the NYPD, and how did he get all the way from the Police Academy to a detecti...