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William Lashner

E-Book Extra: On Writing: An Interview with William LashnerAuthor of the acclaimed novels Fatal Flaw, Bitter Truth, and Hostile Witness, bestselling writer William Lashner crafts dark, witty, engrossing tales of suspense involving one of the most intriguing characters of modern popular fiction: Victor Carl.A defense attorney who lives his life in shades of gray, Victor Carl fights all the right fights for all the wrong reasons. With a failing legal practice, a dead-end love life, a pile of unpaid traffic tickets, and a talent for mixing it up in tough working-class bars and sparring with obstinate cops, Victor skates on the razor's edge of legal ethics in search of the easy buck. But the one absolute in Victor's life is loyalty, especially to a client -- even if he happens to be dead. Like Joey Cheaps, a no-account who takes a knife to the throat down on the waterfront, but not before he shares with his lawyer his part in a terrible crime.With his client murdered, Victor must search for a killer. But solving the crime means investigating the darkest spot in Joey Cheaps's misspent youth, sending Victor on a twisting journey that leads to a missing suitcase stuffed with money, photographs of a mysterious naked woman, and a Supreme Court justice with a secret to hide. And most dangerous of all, Victor steps into the crosshairs of a vengeful enemy with a past full of pain and a taste for blood.As thrilling as it is darkly evocative, Past Due is a superb tale of crime and justice that takes the intrepid Victor Carl into brilliant new territory and confirms William Lashner's place among the top suspense writers of our time.

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Walter Mosley

The police don't show up on Easy Rawlins's doorstep until the third girl dies. It's Los Angeles, 1956, and it takes more than one murdered black girl before the cops get interested. Now they need Easy. As he says: "I was worth a precinct full of detectives when the cops needed the word in the ghetto." But Easy turns them down. He's married now, a father -- and his detective days are over. Then a white college coed dies the same brutal death, and the cops put the heat on Easy: If he doesn't help, his best friend is headed for jail. So Easy's back, walking the midnight streets of Watts and the darker, twisted avenues of a cunning killer's mind....

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K.K. Beck

**The Brockhursts' Easter week house party was taking an ominous turn.** *A sinister seance...* Madame Sophie's usually brilliant mediumistic performance was spoiled by a sudden blackout and eerie, unexplained screams and knockings. *A missing butler...* Chan, the perfect Chinese butler, suddenly was no longer there. Neither was his silver salver. *The wrong body in the mummy case...* And when pretty Iris Cooper's beau, Clarence Brockhurst, took her upstairs to meet his mummy, they found that 5,000-year-old Ra-Hotep had been ousted from his sarcophagus by the dead body of a scantily clad young woman. Someone at the Brockhursts' palatial California estate that beautiful spring week in 1928 had committed the perfect crime -- without a weapon, without a motive. Was it, as Madame Sophie insisted, the mummy's curse? Or a cold, clever killer on the prowl?

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Agatha Christie

Some of Agatha Christie’s earliest stories – including her very first – which show the Queen of Crime in the making… A macabre recurring dream … revenge against a blackmailer … jealousy, infidelity and a tortured conscience … a stolen gemstone … the haunting attraction of an ancient relic … a race against time … a tragic love triangle … a body in a box … an unexpected visitor from beyond the grave… Nine quintessential examples of Agatha Christie's brilliance are contained in this new collection of early short stories - including the very first one she ever wrote - and provide a unique glimpse of the Queen of Crime in the making.