Harlan Ellison introduces a collection of 16 taut and muscular tales starring some of fiction's hardest-boiled criminals, crooks, deperados and rogues. Anti-heroes to a man, these are the guys who can be guaranteed to outwit the cops, make off with the dough and get the girl. Just don't get in their way. Legendary writers you've already heard of like Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner, Cornell Woolrich and Raymond Chandler are here. Legendary writers that you should have heard of like Frederick Nebel, James M. Cain, Norbert Davis, Leslie Charteris, C. S. Montayne and Raoul Whitfield are also where they should be - with the greats. Tailor-made for pulp novices and hard-boiled fans with a soft spot for the masters, this collection shows that some writing has an edge that time just can't dull.

"The authenticity is on display on every page, in every paragraph. From how hot desert air feels on the skin in Las Vegas to how paperwork is shuffled in the Justice Department to how a hired killer slips into a locked hotel room to fulfil a contract, the author's skiff in creating his world repeatedly awes the reader" Michael Connelly
A stunning debut ... a brilliantly plotted thriller. 'Washington Post A writer of infernal ingenuity ' New York Times Review

Murder has always been easy for the Butcher's Boy-it's what he was raised to do. But when he kills the senior senator from Colorado and arrives in Las Vegas to pick up his fee, he learns that he has become a liability to his shadowy employers. His actions attract the attention of police specialists who watch the world of organized crime, but though everyone knows that something big is going on, only Elizabeth Waring, a bright young analyst in the Justice Department, works her way closer to the truth, and to the frightening man behind it.

Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mum and Deliverance consultant to the Diocese of Hereford, heads for the Malvern Hills in the latest installment of Phil Rickman's acclaimed series of 'first class thrillers with a difference' ("The Guardian"). In 1934, the dying composer Edward Elgar feebly whistled to a friend the theme from his Cello Concerto and said, 'If ever you're walking on the Malvern Hills and hear that, don't be frightened. It's only me.' Over seventy years later, Merrily is called in to investigate an alleged paranormal dimension to a spate of road accidents in the Malvern village of Wychehill, where she discovers new tensions in Elgar's countryside. The proposed take-over of a local pub by a nightclub owner with a criminal reputation has become the battle-ground between the defenders of Olde Englande and the hard-men of drug culture - with extreme and sinister elements on both sides. And as the local choral society prepares to stage an open-air performance of Elgar's Caractacus on the Iron Age hillfort known as British Camp, the deaths begin...

Called in secretly to investigate an allegedly haunted house with royal connections, Merrily Watkins, Deliverance Consultant for the Diocese of Hereford, is exposed to a real and tangible evil. A hidden valley on the border of England and Wales preserves a long-time feud between two old border families and an ancient Templar church with a secret that may be linked to a famous ghost story by M R James. On her own and under pressure, with the nights drawing in, the hesitant Merrily has never been less sure of her ground. Meanwhile, her closest friend, songwriter Lol Robinson, is drawn into the history of his biggest musical influence, the tragic Nick Drake.

Con Niemand is a mercenary whose business is surviving. John Anselm is a struggling intelligence agent whose business is information. And Caroline Wishart is a tabloid journalist whose business, until now, has been the sex lives of politicians. Their paths collide when Neimand stumbles across a secret terrible enough to destroy lives and depose governments. Against his will, Anselm is plunged into a world of violence, betrayal, and death. He must break out of his anesthetized life and pit himself against forces that he does not understand, forces determined to rebury an atrocity that threatens reputations and lives across the globe, while Niemand is hunted across two continents by people he doesn't know. Cleverly plotted and peppered with dark irony and lean prose, "In the Evil Day" conjours a world where information is more dangerous than explosives and secrets are worth more than human life.

In Ulan Baatar, a high-profile criminal prosecution collapses as police evidence is revealed to have been faked. The female judge, Radnaa, throws out the case and the defendant, Muunokhoi, a wealthy and influential businessman with suspected links to organised crime, walks free. Meanwhile, on the Mongolian steppes, the police discover the body of a woman who has been tortured before being murdered. Nergui is assigned to conduct an internal enquiry into Muunokhoi's failed prosecution, while Doripalam has to deal with both a major murder investigation and suspected corruption in his own team.
Tunjin, an alcoholic and overweight member of the Serious Crimes Unit, is suspended, accused of forging evidence in an attempt to secure Muunokhoi's prosecution. Cut adrift from the police, he realises that Muunokhoi's men are pursuing him, determined to exact revenge. He flees to the industrial ruins of the city, knowing it is only a matter of time before he is discovered.
As the book moves towards its climax, Doripalam faces gunfire in the northern mountains, Nergui is attacked and Judge Radnaa is kidnapped. Meanwhile Tunjin decides to take matters into his own hands. And,
as Nergui frantically tries to put together the pieces of this jigsaw, he begins to realise that Muunokhoi's influence is more malign and far-reaching than he could ever have suspected.

Hollywood. 1963. A Saturday night. A broken taillight leads to a routine traffic stop. It shouldn't have changed the lives of the four men involved, but it did. Before the night was over, one was dead, two would find themselves facing the death penalty, and the other's life would never be the same again. Fresh from a string of robberies, the car contained two desperate men who got the drop on the two LAPD cops who stopped them, seized their guns and kidnapped them. They then drove to a rural onion field where they decided to execute the cops. One officer was able to escape, but only at the price of his partner's life. Haunted by horrific memories, wracked by guilt, ostracized by his own, and repeatedly tormented by defence attorneys in one retrial after another as the defendants manipulate the quicksilver legal system, this cop suffered emotional meltdown. Wambaugh, takes us meticulously through the crime, second by second, and then tells the surviving cop's powerful and moving story: the destruction of a forgotten victim. "The Onion Field" is Joseph Wambaugh's best-known and most celebrated work. It may be based on a true story, but it reads like a novel, much like Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood".

‘Joseph Wambaugh invented the modern police novel and Hollywood Station is classic Wambaugh: brilliant characterization, impeccable plotting, stunning sense of place, and that special brand of irreverent, mordant humour for which Wambaugh holds the patent. This is the master at his best.’ Jonathan Kellerman