A reporter who was prying into the cocaine trade in the central Massachusetts town of Wheaton has been murdered, and Spenser is called in to investigate. When he’s rebuffed by the police and threatened by a Colombian produce dealer who may be the cocaine kingpin, it’s apparent that Wheaton isn’t just another small town, but a major center for the cocaine trade in the Northeast.

As Spenser digs deeper for evidence, he meets three women on whom the case seems to turn: Emmy Esteva, the wife of the reputed cocaine kingpin; Juanita Olmos, a young woman who’d been involved with the murdered reporter; and Caroline Rogers, the wife of the Wheaton Police Chief.

After another murder is committed and an attempt is made on Spenser’s life, he turns for help to Hawk, whose special skills keep them all alive, and to Susan, whose psychological insights are more and more necessary as the chase moves away from cocaine and appears to hinge more on older and more basic problems — jealousy, passion, and hate.

Pale Kings and Princes, the fourteenth Spenser novel, takes us into the cutthroat, multibillion-dollar cocaine business, where drugs are valued above all and human life is frighteningly dispensable.

When a popular high school cheerleader dies of a suspected heroin overdose, it becomes clear that the opioid epidemic has spread even to the idyllic town of Paradise. It will be up to police chief Jesse Stone to unravel the supply chain and unmask the criminals behind it, and the investigation has a clear epicenter: Paradise High School. Home of the town’s best and brightest future leaders and its most vulnerable down-and-out teens, it’s a rich and bottomless market for dealers out of Boston looking to expand into the suburbs. But when it comes to drugs, the very people Jesse is trying to protect are often those with the most to lose. As he digs deeper into the case, he finds himself battling self-interested administrators, reluctant teachers, distrustful schoolkids, and overprotective parents... and at the end of the line are the true bad guys, the ones with a lucrative business they’d kill to protect.

Boone Adams met Jennifer Grayle when they were both eighteen and lost her when they were both twenty-two. His life from that point was a steady descent through the circles of American culture until he hit bottom in Los Angeles ten years later. Now he has nothing left but his love for Jennifer, a love that has remained unsullied and still, the eye at the center of his hurricane, his only stay against confusion. It saves him. Slowly, with agonizing effort, he comes back — across the country, across the years, across the despair that nearly destroyed him, sustained only by his determination to get Jennifer back. Love and Glory is a story of love and commitment and regeneration, told in the language of our time and set among the artifacts of recent American culture. In prose that often soars Love and Glory speaks not only of desolation but of possibility. It speaks not only of Boone and Jennifer but of America, and it hints, obliquely, that perhaps we are not merely “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”.

Territorial Marshals Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch are back in Appaloosa, where their work enforcing the law has been exceptionally quiet. All that is about to change. An ominous storm rolls in, and along with it a band of night riders with a devious scheme, who show up at the Rio Blanco camp, where a three-hundred-foot bridge is under construction. Appaloosa’s Sheriff Sledge Driskill and his deputies are the first to respond, but as the storm grows more threatening, news of troubles at the bridge escalate and the Sheriff and his deputies go missing. Virgil and Everett saddle up to sort things out but before they do the hard drinking, Beauregard Beauchamp arrives in Appaloosa with his Theatrical Extravaganza troupe and the promise of the best in lively entertainment west of the Mississippi. With the troupe comes a lovely and mysterious fortune-teller who is set on saving Everett from imminent but indefinable danger. The trouble at the bridge, the missing lawmen, the new arrivals, and Everett’s shoot-out in front of Hal’s Cafe aren’t the only things on Cole and Hitch’s plate as a gang of unsavory soldiers ease into town with a shady alibi, shadier intentions, and a soon-to-be-discovered wake of destruction. As clouds over Appaloosa continue to gather, things get much worse for Cole and Hitch...

Robert B. Parker’s iconic and irresistible PI Sunny Randall is back, and the stakes are higher than ever as she races to protect her ex-husband — and his Mafia family — from the vengeful plan of a mysterious rival.

Sunny Randall is “on” again with Richie, the ex-husband she never stopped loving and never seemed to be able to let go, despite her discomfort with his Mafia connections. When Richie is shot and nearly killed, Sunny is dragged into the thick of his family’s business as she searches for answers and tries to stave off a mob war. But as the bullets start flying in Boston’s mean streets, Sunny finds herself targeted by the deranged mastermind of the plot against the Burke family, whose motive may be far more personal than she could have anticipated...

When two seemingly unconnected mysterious deaths occur on his watch, police chief Jesse Stone must pull out all the stops to unravel the truth and stop a killer from striking again.

The small town of Paradise is devastated when a star high-school baseball player is found dead at the bottom of a bluff just a day after winning the team’s biggest game. For Jesse, the loss is doubly difficult — the teen was the nephew of his colleague, Suitcase Simpson, and Jesse had been coaching the young shortstop. As he searches for answers about how the boy died and why, he is stonewalled at every turn, and it seems that someone is determined to keep him from digging further.

Jesse suddenly must divide his attention between two cases after the shocking murder of former Paradise police chief, Charlie Farrell. Before his death, Farrell had been looking into a series of scam calls that preyed upon the elderly. But how do these “ghost calls” connect to his murder? When threats — and gunshots — appear on Jesse’s own doorstep, the race to find answers is on. Both old and new enemies come into play, and in the end, Jesse and his team must discover the common factor between the two deaths in order to prevent a third.

Following on the heels of the bestselling Night Passage, Jesse Stone returns in a breathtaking novel of death and deception.

Stiles Island is a wealthy and exclusive enclave separated by a bridge from the Massachusetts coast town of Paradise. James Macklin sees the island as the ultimate investment opportunity: all he needs to do is invade it, blow the bridge, and loot the island. To realize his scheme, Macklin, along with his devoted girlfriend, Faye, assembles a crew of fellow ex-cons — all experts in their fields — including Wilson Cromartie, a fearsome Apache. Macklin is a bad man, a very bad man. And Cromartie, known as Crow, is even worse.

As Macklin plans his crime, Paradise police chief Jesse Stone has his hands full. He faces romantic entanglements in triplicate: his ex-wife, Jenn, is in the Paradise jail for assault, he’s begun a new relationship with a Stiles Island realtor named Marcy Campbell, and he’s still sorting out his feelings for attorney Abby Taylor. When Macklin’s attack on Stiles Island is set in motion, both Marcy and Abby are put in jeopardy. As the casualties mount, it’s up to Jesse to keep both women from harm.

Called upon by the Hammond Museum and renowned art scholar Dr. Ashton Prince, Spenser accepts his latest case: to provide protection during a ransom exchange — money for a stolen painting.

The case becomes personal when Spenser fails to protect his client and is unable to recover the valuable painting. Convinced that Ashton Prince played a bigger role than just ransom delivery boy, Spenser enters into a daring game of cat-and-mouse with the thieves. But this is a game he might not come out of alive...

Completed the year before the author passed away, Painted Ladies is Spenser and Robert B. Parker at their electrifying best.

The woman on the bed was barely out of her teens. She hadn’t been exactly beautiful, but she’d tried to make the most of her looks. Now, defiled and alone in a seedy beachfront motel, she was dead. And Paradise police chief Jesse Stone doesn’t even know her name.

Whoever she is, she didn’t deserve to die. State police captain Healy’s resources turn up nothing helpful, and Gino Fish, who knows his way around dark places, is characteristically uncooperative. Unwilling to take no for an answer, Jesse continues digging on his own, only to find himself caught in the crosshairs of a bitter turf war between two ruthless pimps, Thomas Walker and Fat Boy Nelly, a beautiful woman to whom they both lay claim. Jesse tries for a diplomatic solution, but before it’s over, more blood will spill.

This is a love story.

It is true. It has a happy ending.

It is a story about a man and a woman, about breast cancer and mastectomy and recovery. It is about courage and self control, about unity, about compassion, about Joan Parker and her husband and their sons. It is about family and triumph and pervading tenderness. It is about love.

In Three Weeks in Spring, the Parkers tell us, with a novelist’s skill, the way it was in April when Joan got sick. The way the fear escalated, the way they had to control it, and keep it in, and fight it off. Was it cancer? Would it spread? Would she die? Three Weeks in Spring speaks of pain, and fear. But it speaks ultimately about strength and the power of love. It is a book filled with humor and with an unbreakable will to laugh.

The good guys win in this book.

And to follow the Parkers through fear and laughter and growing elation during three weeks in a recent spring is to share in the victory.

Spenser dies — and lives to tell the tale — in Robert B. Parker’s stunning new bestseller.

“Spenser proves himself once more a modern-day knight in shining armor,” cheered Publishers Weekly of Robert B. Parker’s most recent New York Times bestseller, Chance. And, said The New York Times Book Review, “Parker’s stouthearted hero proves that he is still as tough and manly as they come, and more principled than ever." With Small Vices, Parker adds another masterpiece to the private-eye canon, a novel that is both galvanizing action-suspense and a complex meditation on morality and mortality, as Spenser’s very future hangs in the balance.

Ellis Alves is a bad kid from the ’hood with a long, long record, but did he really murder Melissa Henderson, a white coed from ritzy Pemberton College? Alves’s former lawyers think he was framed, and they hire Spenser to uncover the truth. As he and longtime associate Hawk race front the back streets of Boston to Manhattan’s most elegant avenues, Spenser gets a postgraduate course in the seamy side of life — an ethical no-man’s-land where twisted cops and spoiled rich kids with peculiar private proclivities are just the tip of the iceberg.

The stakes abruptly shift from corruption to catastrophe when a master assassin’s bullets take Spenser down. He survives the attack — barely — but must play dead to the world, while recovering his strength hiding in secret. Only then can he see justice done — and let the shooter know that it’s payback time.

Wonderfully wry and powerfully affecting, Small Vices is a splendid showcase for Robert B. Parker’s prodigious talents.

A former L.A. homicide cop with a drinking problem, a broken marriage, and some lost dreams, Stone has just been hired to be police chief of the small Massachusetts town of Paradise. The Paradise power brokers are sure surprised when Stone not only doesn’t look the other way at various goings-on but also starts looking into such matters as money laundering, militia activities, and murder.

Family ties prove deadly in the brilliant new Jesse Stone novel from New York Times-bestselling author Robert B. Parker. The body in the trunk was just the beginning. Turns out the stiff was a foot soldier for local tough guy Reggie Galen, now enjoying a comfortable "retirement" with his beautiful wife, Rebecca, in the nicest part of Paradise. Living next door are Knocko Moynihan and his wife, Robbie, who also happens to be Rebecca's twin. But what initially appears to be a low-level mob hit takes on new meaning when a high-ranking crime figure is found dead on Paradise Beach. Stressed by the case, his failed relationship with his ex-wife, and his ongoing battle with the bottle, Jesse needs something to keep him from spinning out of control. When private investigator Sunny Randall comes into town on a case, she asks for Jesse's help. As their professional and personal relationships become intertwined, both Jesse and Sunny realize that they have much in common with both their victims and their suspects-and with each other.

A richly imagined novel of the Old West, as spare and vivid as a high plains sunset, from one of the world's most talented performers.

It was a long time ago, now, and there were many gunfights to follow, but I remember as well as I remember anything the first time I saw Virgil Cole shoot. Time slowed down for him. Always steady, and never fast...

When it comes to writing, Robert B. Parker knows no boundaries. From the iconic Spenser detective series and the novels featuring Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone, to the groundbreaking historical novel Double Play, Parker's imagination has taken readers from Boston to Brooklyn and back again. In Appaloosa, fans are taken on another trip, to the untamed territories of the West during the 1800s.

When Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch arrive in Appaloosa, they find a small, dusty town suffering at the hands of renegade rancher Randall Bragg, a man who has so little regard for the law that he has taken supplies, horses, and women for his own and left the city marshal and one of his deputies for dead. Cole and Hitch, itinerant lawmen, are used to cleaning up after opportunistic thieves, but in Bragg they find an unusually wily adversary-one who raises the stakes by playing not with the rules, but with emotions.

This is Robert B. Parker at his storytelling best.

The extraordinary new Western from the New York Times- bestselling author, featuring itinerant lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch.

Law enforcement in Appaloosa had once been Virgil Cole and me. Now there was a chief of police and twelve policemen. Our third day back in town, the chief invited us to the office for a talk.

The new chief is Amos Callico: a tall, fat man in a derby hat, wearing a star on his vest and a big pearl-handled Colt inside his coat. An ambitious man with his eye on the governorship-and perhaps the presidency-he wants Cole and Hitch on his side. But they can't be bought, which upsets him mightily.

When Callico begins shaking down local merchants for protection money, those who don't want to play along seek the help of Cole and Hitch. But the guns for hire are thorns in the side of the power-hungry chief. When they are forced to fire on the trigger-happy son of a politically connected landowner, Callico sees his dream begin to crumble. There will be a showdown-but who'll be left standing?

New York Times-bestselling author Robert B. Parker takes aim at the Old West with this brilliantly crafted follow-up to Resolution and Appaloosa, again featuring guns-for-hire Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch.

When we last saw Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, they had just put things to right in the rough-and-tumble Old West town of Resolution. It's now a year later, and Virgil has only one thing on his mind: Allie French, the woman who stole his heart from their days in Appaloosa. Even though Allie ran off with another man, Virgil is determined to find her, his deputy and partner Everett Hitch at his side. Making their way across New Mexico and Texas, the pair finally discover Allie in a small-town brothel. Her spirit crushed, Allie joins Everett and Virgil as they head north to start over in Brimstone. But things are not the same between Virgil and Allie; too much has happened, and Virgil can't face what Allie did to survive the year they were apart. Vowing to change, Allie thinks she has found redemption through the local church and its sanctimonious leader, Brother Percival. Given their reputations as guns for hire, Everett and Virgil are able to secure positions as the town's deputies. But Brother Percival stirs up trouble at the local saloons, and as the violence escalates into murder, the two struggle to keep the peace.

As sharp and clear as the air over the high desert, Brimstone proves once again that Robert B. Parker is 'a force of nature' (The Boston Globe).

Chief of Police Jesse Stone returns to investigate the murder of a troubled teenager in a seemingly bucolic New England town. The Paradise Men's Softball League has wrapped up another game, and Jesse Stone is lingering in the parking lot with his team-mates, drinking beer, swapping stories of double plays and beautiful women in the late summer twilight. But then a voice, scared, calls out to him from the edge of a nearby lake. He walks to the sound, where two men squat at the water's edge. In front of them, face down, is something that used to be a girl. The local cops haven't seen anything like this, but Jesse's LA past has made him all too familiar with floaters. This floating girl hadn't committed suicide, she hadn't been drowned: she'd been shot, and dumped, discarded like trash. Before long it becomes clear that the dead girl had a reputation and a taste for the wild life; and her own parents can't even be bothered to report her missing, or admit that she once was a child of theirs. All Jesse has to go on is a young man's school ring on a gold chain, and a hunch or two. At the same time, Jesse must battle two demons from his past: a renewed struggle with the bottle, and a continuing relationship with his ex-wife. Neither one will help him solve the case, and either one could jeopardize his career – and his life. Filled with magnetic characters and the muscular writing that are Parker's trademarks, Death in Paradise is a storytelling masterpiece.

Spenser has gone to London – and not to see the Queen. He's gone to track down a bunch of bombers who've blown away his client's wife and kids. His job is to catch them. Or kill them. His client isn't choosy.

But there are nine killers to one Spenser – long odds. Hawk helps balance the equation. The rest depends on a wild plan. Spenser will get one of the terrorists to play Judas Goat – to lead him to others. Trouble is, he hasn't counted on her being very blond, very beautiful and very dangerous.

A blazingly original new novel from the undisputed dean of American crime fiction, featuring a sharp, tough, sexy new P.I., Sunny Randall.

Sunny Randall is a Boston P.I. and former cop, a college graduate, an aspiring painter, a divorcee, and the owner of a miniature bullterrier named Rosie. Hired by a wealthy family to locate their teenage daughter, Sunny is tested by the parents’ preconceived notion of what a detective should be. With the help of underworld contacts she tracks down the runaway Millicent, who has turned to prostitution, rescues her from her pimp, and finds herself, at thirty-four, the unlikely custodian of a difficult teenager when the girl refuses to return to her family.

But Millicent’s problems are rooted in much larger crimes than running away, and Sunny, now playing the role of bodyguard, is caught in a shooting war with some very serious mobsters. She turns for help to her ex-husband, Richie, himself the son of a mob family, and to her dearest friend, Spike, a flamboyant and dangerous gay man. Heading this unlikely alliance, Sunny must solve at least one murder, resolve a criminal conspiracy that reaches to the top of state government, and bring Millicent back into functional young womanhood.

The Barnes Noble Review

Much of Robert B. Parker's fiction – his recent Spenser novel, Potshot, is a notable example – has straddled the boundary between two traditional forms: the private-eye novel and the Western. Parker's latest, the spare, evocative Gunman's Rhapsody, represents his first attempt at a pure, unadulterated Western, moving from Boston and environs to Tombstone, Arizona and focusing on one of Spenser's true spiritual forebears: Wyatt Earp.

Gunman's Rhapsody begins in 1879. Wyatt, whose exploits have already found their way into the dime novels of the period, has just arrived in Tombstone, accompanied by several of his brothers and his common-law wife, Mattie Blaylock. The Tombstone of this era is a semi-lawless boomtown located in the heart of the silver mine district. It also serves as a kind of crossroads, a meeting place for some of the iconic figures of the Old West, figures such as Johnny Ringo, Bat Masterson, Ike Clanton, Katie Elder, and the drunken, slightly demented gunfighter, Doc Holliday.

A single romantic encounter dominates this rambling, almost plotless narrative: Wyatt's discovery of the love of his life: beautiful showgirl Josie Marcus, who happens to be engaged to Johnny Behan, the shady, politically connected Sheriff of Tombstone. Wyatt's affair with Josie – which takes on an obsessive, almost mythical dimension – forms the central element in an interlocking series of personal rivalries and political enmities that will culminate in the gunfight at the OK Corral, and in its bloody, extended aftermath.

Parker's clean elegant style and essentially romantic sensibility prove perfectly suited to the peculiar material of this novel. Without a false note or wasted word, Parker recreates the ambiance of the West, bringing its saloons, jails, and gambling halls and its endless, wide-open vistas, to immediate, palpable life. He brings that same effortless authority to bear in describing the lives and motivations of violent, hard-edged men who live – and sometimes die – according to highly developed codes of personal behavior. The result is a fascinating historical digression that illuminates a piece of the American past while simultaneously illuminating the central concerns of Parker's large, constantly evolving body of work. (Bill Sheehan)

April Kyle, the damsel in distress that Spenser rescued in two earlier books, Ceremony (1982) and Taming a Sea Horse (1986), again turns to the iconic Boston PI for help in the 34th entry in Parker's popular series. Cynical yet romantic, Spenser easily handles the immediate threat of some men trying to muscle in on the high-class Boston whorehouse April is running. Unfortunately, that isn't the real problem, and Spenser without much surprise finds that April, the thugs and everyone else involved is lying to him. Instead of walking away, Spenser continues to probe, following trails that lead to New York, a con artist, mob connections and other complications. This is vintage Parker, with Spenser exchanging witty dialogue with the faithful Hawk, sexy dialogue with his beloved Susan and smart-alecky dialogue with cops and villains. The old pros can make it look easy, and that goes for both the author and his hero as they deliver the goods smoothly and with inimitable style.

You’ve seen the headlines. On the court they brawl with opponents, fight with fans, and attack their own coach. Off the court they get drunk, grope women, and, sometimes, get tried for murder. Now these all-star bad boys from the ranks of today’s pro basketball provide easy layup material for the fictional imaginations of our finest contemporary mystery writers. Refereed by prizewinning editor Otto Penzler, this anthology collects fourteen dazzling, original tales of buzzer-beating suspense and postgame mayhem.

In “Keller’s Double Dribble,” Lawrence Block tails a clueless hitman with courtside tickets to unplanned bloodshed… Jeffery Deaver’s power guard summons his formidable game instincts to thwart a pack of scammers in “Nothing but Net”… a flagrant foul and a cruel betrayal send a star player crashing in Mike Lupica’s “Mrs. Cash”… George Pelecanos’s “String Music” traces the dangerous escalation of a playground beef… and in “Galahad, Inc.,” by Joan H. Parker and Robert B. Parker, a college prodigy seeks unlikely defensive help against a sorority party sex rap.

Other literary slam-dunk tales ask just how hard a former Olympic medalist will fight to get back his old glory… what hustle will win you the dunk-or-die prison matchup… and why the pride of the Knicks will never live to see the playoffs. You’ll find all the answers inside these pages from acclaimed storytellers Sue DeNymme, Brendan DuBois, Parnell Hall, Laurie R. King, Michael Malone, R. D. Rosen, S. J. Rozan, Justin Scott, and Stephen Solomita. There’s the whistle. Here’s the tip-off. Let these great clutch shot-makers put you in the zone.

MARLOWE IS BACK – IN A CLASSIC THRILLER NO CHANDLER AFICIONADO WILL BE ABLE TO RESIST…

When Raymond Chandler died in 1959, he left behind an unfinished Philip Marlowe novel. Now, thirty years later,has become a complete work, thanks to the inspired writing of Robert B Parker, the foremost contemporary exponent of the Chandler style.

As the novel opens, Marlowe is married and bored. Naturally enough, he starts up a detective agency, and within hours he has alienated solid citizens, tangled with the cops and been hired by a local gangster to find a gambler who's skipped out on a debt.

And this is only the beginning. Before Marlowe brings in his man, he discovers another side of- a dark and dangerous place, where desperation makes men and women lead secret lives – and, if that fails, the only alternative is murder…

The New York Times'"bestselling author's richly imagined work of historical fiction: a powerful tale of the Old West from the acknowledged master of crime fiction.

I had an eight-gauge shotgun that I'd taken with me when I left Wells Fargo. It didn't take too long for things to develop. I sat in the tall lookout chair in the back of the saloon with the shotgun in my lap for two peaceful nights. On my third night it was different. I could almost smell trouble beginning to cook . . . .'

After the bloody confrontation in Appaloosa, Everett Hitch heads into the afternoon sun and ends up in Resolution, an Old West town so new the dust has yet to settle. It's the kind of town that doesn't have much in the way of commerce, except for a handful of saloons and some houses of ill repute. Hitch takes a job as lookout at Amos Wolfson's Blackfoot Saloon and quickly establishes his position as protector of the ladies who work the backrooms - as well as a man unafraid to stand up to the enforcer sent down from the O'Malley copper mine.

Though Hitch makes short work of hired gun Koy Wickman, tensions continue to mount, so that even the self-assured Hitch is relieved by the arrival in town of his friend Virgil Cole. When greedy mine owner Eamon O'Malley threatens the loose coalition of local ranchers and starts buying up Resolution's few businesses, Hitch and Cole find themselves in the middle of a makeshift war between O'Malley's men and the ranchers. In a place where law and order don't exist, Hitch and Cole must make their own, guided by their sense of duty, honor, and friendship.

A hurricane hinders a kidnapping and Spenser goes on a search for the man responsible – the infamous Gray Man, who has both helped and hunted Spenser in the past.

Heidi Bradshaw is wealthy, beautiful, and well connected – and she needs Spenser's help. In a most unlikely request, Heidi, a notorious gold digger recently separated from her latest husband, recruits the Boston P.I. to accompany her to her private island, Tashtego. The reason? To attend her daughter's wedding as a sort of stand-in husband and protector. Spenser consents, but only after it is established that his beloved Susan Silverman will also be in attendance.

It should be a straightforward job for Spenser: show up for appearances, have some drinks, and spend some quality time with Susan. But when Spenser's old nemesis Rugar – the Gray Man – arrives, Spenser realizes that something is amiss. A storm, a kidnapping, and murder tear apart what should be a joyous occasion, and Rugar is seemingly at the center of it all. The only thing is that the sloppy kidnapping is not Rugar's style – as Spenser knows from past encounters. With six dead bodies and more questions than he can process, Spenser begins a search for answers – and the Gray Man.

With its razor-sharp dialogue, crisply etched characters, and high-wire narrative tension, Rough Weather once again proves that 'Robert B. Parker is a force of nature'

Family ties prove deadly in the brilliant new Jesse Stone novel from New York Times-bestselling author Robert B. Parker.

The body in the trunk was just the beginning.

Turns out the stiff was a foot soldier for local tough guy Reggie Galen, now enjoying a comfortable "retirement" with his beautiful wife, Rebecca, in the nicest part of Paradise. Living next door are Knocko Moynihan and his wife, Robbie, who also happens to be Rebecca's twin. But what initially appears to be a low-level mob hit takes on new meaning when a high-ranking crime figure is found dead on Paradise Beach.

Stressed by the case, his failed relationship with his ex-wife, and his ongoing battle with the bottle, Jesse needs something to keep him from spinning out of control. When private investigator Sunny Randall comes into town on a case, she asks for Jesse's help. As their professional and personal relationships become intertwined, both Jesse and Sunny realize that they have much in common with both their victims and their suspects-and with each other.

For many years, some of the most vital, creative, and exciting fiction published in America has been in the field of mystery, crime, and suspense. Now Robert B. Parker and Otto Penzler — both Edgar winners — have assembled the best that 1997 had to offer: twenty terrific, titillating tales from such masters of the genre as Elmore Leonard, Elizabeth George, James Crumley, Jonathan Kellerman, and Andrew Klavan, from newcomers like Brad Watson, and from well-known literary writers such as Joyce Carol Oates and Michael Malone.

"Robert B. Parker has taken his place beside Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross MacDonald".-The Boston Globe.

***

This is the first Spenser book. Spenser is hired by a local university to recover a rare stolen manuscript and along the way gets embroiled with campus politics and murder.

A knock on Spenser's office door can only mean one thing: a new case. This time the visitor is a local lawyer with an interesting story. Elizabeth Shaw specializes in wills and trusts at the Boston law firm of Shaw Cartwright, and over the years she's developed a friendship with wives of very wealthy men. However, these rich wives have a mutual secret: they've all had an affair with a man named Gary Eisenhower – and now he's blackmailing them for money. Shaw hires Spenser to make Eisenhower 'cease and desist,' so to speak, but when women start turning up dead, Spenser's assignment goes from blackmail to murder.

As matters become more complicated, Spenser's longtime love, Susan, begins offering some input by analyzing Eisenhower's behavior patterns in hopes of opening up a new avenue of investigation. It seems that not all of Gary's women are rich. So if he's not using them for blackmail, then what is his purpose? Spenser switches tactics to focus on the husbands, only to find that innocence and guilt may be two sides of the same coin.

With its eloquently spare prose and some of the best supporting characters to grace the printed page, The Professional is further proof that '[t]here's hardly an author in the crime novel business like Parker' (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).

Hired as security man for Alexander's election campaign, Spenser checks out blackmail concerning the politician's wife. Aided by sidekick Hawk, and surrogate son Paul Giacomin, he is sucked into political ambition, corruption, violence, and the truth about his relationship with Susan Silverman.

At 46, Aaron Newman was enjoying the good things in life – a good marriage, a good job – and he was in good shape himself. Then he saw the murder. A petty vicious killing that was to plunge him into an insane jungle of raw violence and fear, threatening and defiling the things he cared about.