"Years ago the Butcher Boy was betrayed by the Mafia, exacted his revenge, and disappeared. Justice Department official Elizabeth Waring is the only one who believed he ever existed. Now the professional killer finds his peaceful life threatened when a Mafia hit team finally catches up with him. He knows they won't stop coming, and decides to take the fight to their door. Soon Waring, now high up in the Organized Crime Division, receives a late-night...

Humiliated after being outed as a whistleblower at work, Stella Reid returns home to Sutter Creek. She's been gone long enough and is determined to mend fences... and immediately comes face-to-face with the man who broke her heart: Sheriff Ryan Rafferty. Reluctant to trust again, Stella learns that Ryan's no longer a careless bad boy when a blizzard traps them together. But as she opens herself up bit by bit, can Stella find the happily-ever-after...

"Seventeen years ago, Detective Inspector Ewert Grens was called to the scene of a brutal crime. A family had been murdered, and the only survivor was a five-year-old girl. She was placed in the witness protection program and the case went cold, but years later Grens is haunted by it. When he learns that the apartment where the crime occurred is now the scene of a break-in, he fears that someone is intent on silencing the only witness. He races to...

A police detective suffering from cancer makes a deal with an informant to get killed in the line of duty, so his family can receive the hefty death benefits from the department.

When former cop Phil Broker's naïve ex-wife, Caren, blows the whistle on her feckless second husband, Keith Angland, a St. Paul cop making a cool $2 million moonlighting for the Chicago mob, she unwittingly signs her own death warrant. Unwisely for Caren, she not only shared her troubles with Broker, she also told Tom James, a reporter with fantasies of pulling off the perfect crime. Inspired by the $2 million payoff she entrusted to his safekeeping,...

At night, in Huda's fragrant garden, a breeze sweeps in from the desert encircling Baghdad, rustling the leaves of her apricot trees and carrying warning of visitors at her gate. Huda, a secretary at the Australian embassy, lives in fear of the mukhabarat'the secret police who watch and listen for any scrap of information that can be used against America and its allies. They have ordered her to befriend Ally Wilson, the deputy ambassador's wife. Huda...

"When Detective Jack Warr identifies an informer, the terrified man begins to give details of a massive robbery planned by a team of unscrupulous and dangerous men. These men have already orchestrated many audacious robberies, leaving terrified victims in their wake. And they have already killed to get what they want. Detective Jack Warr and his team must use their informant as a 'Judas Horse' to draw in the unsuspecting robbers, so that they go ahead...

When Elizabeth Bentley slunk into an FBI field office in 1945, she was thinking only of saving herself from NKGB assassins who were hot on her trail. She had no idea that she was about to start the greatest Red Scare in U.S. history.Bentley (1908-1963) was a Connecticut Yankee and Vassar graduate who spied for the Soviet Union for seven years. She met with dozens of highly placed American agents who worked for the Soviets, gathering their secrets...

When the FBI needs evidence on an agri-business giant accused of price-fixing, vice president-turned-informant Mark Whitacre eagerly agrees to wear a wire and carry a hidden tape recorder in his briefcase, imagining himself as a secret agent.

"Short stories and a novella from one of crime fiction's most revered writers. Whether they're cops or conmen, savage killers or creative types, gangsters or God-fearing citizens, George Pelecanos' characters are always engaged in a fight for their lives. They fight to advance or simply to survive; they fight against odds, against enemies, even against themselves. In this, his first collection of stories, the acclaimed novelist introduces readers...