Short Stories Crime Suspense

This collection of the best crime and mystery short fiction of 1999, gathered from around the globe and including more award-winners and stories than any other comparable volume, fills the void for those with a hunger for the best international mystery and suspense stories.

Everyone comes from someplace. Everyone has somewhere they feel safe. Some people have found their home and are content where they are. Others feel trapped and yearn to go somewhere else. Many are somewhere else and yearn to go back. But even in these safest of places, sometimes…crime hits home. What happens then?

Best-selling author Robert Cormier's suspenseful and masterfully told novel takes bold steps into some of the most difficult topical territory ever conceived for young adult fiction.

Despite their common setting, these stories neither glorify nor castigate this store, which has come to play such a central role in small-town USA life. These are simply crime stories, direct, sometimes humorous, and well-written.

David Bain presents six tales of small town supernatural horror.

In this explosive short story, international bestselling author Jeffery Deaver brings listeners a classic tale of star-crossed lovers who defy the boundaries of enemy territory. When an underworld kingpin gets taken out, his prime turf is up for grabs. For Irish crime lord Brendon Nagle and archrival John Yung, head of a forty-man tong, it’s war. For Nagle’s son, Andrew, and Yung’s daughter, Loi, it’s love at first sight. But others are watching as their secret love unfolds.

In The Man by the Sea, John "Slim" Hardy, heavy drinker and disgraced soldier turned bumbling private detective, is hired to investigate Ted Douglas, an investment banker who slips out of work every Friday to visit a desolate cove on the Lancashire coast. In The Clockmaker's Secret, John “Slim” Hardy comes upon something buried in the peat on Bodmin Moor - an unfinished, ticking clock that holds the key to a decades-old mystery and missing-persons case. In The Games Keeper, he is hired to uncover the identity of a blackmailer, a person already killed.

Fifteen short stories, including: "Ashes to Ashes", "Asylum", "Attack", "Attention", "Bait and Switch", "Charade", "Forever", "Holdup", "I'll Bet I Can", "Just Desserts", "Just What I Always Wanted", "Kerry Me Back", "Make a Run for It", "Million Dollar Smile", and "My Lucky Numbers".

Sin City. An artificial oasis of pleasure, spectacle, and entertainment, the gambling capital of America has reinvented itself so many times that it's doubtful that anyone knows for sure what's real and what isn't in the miles of neon and scorching heat. Las Vegas is considered the ultimate player's destination, no matter what your game. Las Vegas is the true city that never sleeps, where fortunes are made and lost every day, and where snake-eyes aren't found just on a pair of dice.

Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch accompanies his old friend and mentor, retired bush pilot Charley Stevens, as he pays a visit to a mysterious woman, the widow of a Vietnam vet, living in isolation in the Maine wilderness. Many years earlier, she had called Charley, then a young game warden himself, for help. She claimed that her badly bleeding husband had been attacked by a rabid bat. But in the succeeding days, despite her husband's increasingly erratic and aggressive behavior, his wife resisted Charley's attempts to help, arousing his suspicions that more was going on than met the eye.

What would you do if the TSA sexually assaulted your mother? If you're a red-blooded American, you'd do the same thing James Young did. What did James Young do? You'll have to find out. This book really highlights the effects that governmental abuse of power and paranoia can do to individual lives. In this short novel, James Young decides that he has had enough and decides to do something about it. The legal system has failed him. The solution is vigilante justice.

John Lovering Benedict had more than most men - more money, more mansions, more cars, but most of all more women, including three ex-wives with little in common but their extraordinary physiques. For Ellery Queen the question was which one of them had bashed in Benedict's skull with a hunk of iron statuary? The clues were many…but puzzling. All had been planted at the scene of the crime, but by whom, and for what purpose? And who was the last woman in John Benedict's life?

For the first time, all three Lisa Paxton short crime novelettes are available in one convenient book. Come along as Lisa and her hunky partner fight crime, sadistic killers, and their attraction to each other.

In the parish of St. Bruno, sex is easy, corruption festers, and double-dealing is a way of life. Rene Shade is an uncompromising detective swimming in a sea of filth. As Shade takes on hit men, porn kings, a gang of ex-cons, and the ghosts of his own checkered past, Woodrell's three seminal novels pit long-entrenched criminals against the hard line of the law, brother against brother, and two vastly different sons against a long-absent father.

A collection of short stories from the number-one New York Times best-selling "Queen of Suspense" Mary Higgins Clark, including the never-before-published novella Death Wears a Beauty Mask.

A comic vignette in which a carnival barker's valuable watch gets stolen during an illegal poker game. The local sheriff seems in no hurry to apprehend the thief, until a reward is offered.

With hold-your-breath suspense and shocking endings, the five short stories in this collection will put you on the edge of your seat and get your brain and blood pumping.

Rebirth is a dramatic thriller short story, which narrates about a gang group of feminine individuals who were programmed from their youth to do crime. The story reflects the hypocritical lifestyle versus the lifestyle of truth. A conversion from gangster-ism to Christianity. It all started with a puzzling dream Ellen had, which caused her to be isolated for a while because it troubled her. Ellen searched for meanings through the Internet to understand a revelation of a message contained in a dream.

"Get in. We're goin' for a ride." Art grabbed Eddie's left arm, while his partner, Gordo took the other arm. They hurried Eddie along the sidewalk and nearly threw him into the back seat. Eddie quickly scooted across the seat and cowered in the corner near the opposite door. Gordo crawled in next to him while Art slid in behind the wheel. The car squealed away from the curb and headed out of town on the Old Plank Road. Eddie has a fifty-fifty chance of coming out of this alive.

New York Times best-selling author Laura Lippman has been hailed as one of the best crime fiction writers in America today, winning virtually every major award in the genre. The author of the enormously popular series featuring Baltimore P.I. Tess Monaghan as well as three critically lauded stand-alone novels, Lippman now turns her attention to short stories - and reveals another level of mastery.