The New York Times bestselling Orphan X returns in this "crackerjack new thriller" (Kirkus Reviews) and "crushingly brilliant piece of fiction" (Best Thriller Books)!Once a black ops government assassin known as Orphan X, Evan Smoak left the Program, went deep underground, and reinvented himself as someone who will go anywhere and risk everything to help the truly desperate who have nowhere else to turn. Since then, Evan has fought international crime syndicates and drug cartels, faced down the most powerful people in the world and even brought down a president. Now struggling with an unexpected personal crisis, Evan goes back to the very basics of his mission - and this time, the truly desperate is a little girl who wants him to find her missing dog.Not his usual mission, and not one Evan embraces with enthusiasm, but this unlikely, tiny job quickly explodes into his biggest mission yet, one that finds him battered between twisted AI technocrat billionaires, a mysterious female assassin who seems a mirror of himself, and personal stakes so gut-wrenching he can scarcely make sense of them.Evan's mission pushes him to his limit - he must find and take down the assassin known only as the Wolf, before she succeeds in completing her mission and killing the people who can identify her - a teenaged daughter of her last target, and Evan himself. Matched skill for skill, instinct for instinct, Evan must outwit an opponent who will literally stop at nothing if he is to survive.

Drew Danner, a crime novelist with a house off L.A.'s storied Mulholland Drive, awakens in a hospital bed with a scar on his head and no memory of being found convulsing over his ex-fiancee's body the previous night. He was discovered holding a knife, her blood beneath him. He himself doesn't know whether he's guilty or innocent. To reconstruct the story, the writer must now become the protagonist, searching the corridors of his life and the city he loves.Drew finds himself at the center of an ongoing murder investigation and the target of a series of increasingly bizarre psychological assaults that seem the result of his own dark imagination. As he closes in on clues he might or might not have left, another young woman is similarly murdered, and he has to ask difficult questions not only of others but also of himself.

Bruce Springsteen's melancholy "Meeting Across the River," a song rarely performed but beloved by his countless fans, serves as the inspiration for this eclectic mix of short stories written by an array of acclaimed authors."Meeting Across the River," from Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run album, is a song with an evocative melody and lyrics that unfold like a noir fable: a man down on his luck but desperate to make things right with his girl tells his buddy, Eddie, that they have to get across the river for a last-chance meeting with someone, all in the hopes of a big score: two grand. With that money, our hero can win back his girl and all will be right with the world-but if he and Eddie screw up, the consequences will be grave. Authors including Eric Garcia, C. J. Box, Barbara Seranella, David Corbett, Gregg Hurwitz, and Steve Hamilton, among others, have written imaginative, heartbreaking, funny, and bold stories based on this classic American story of hope and despair, each a surprisingly different experiment with character and plot. For as familiar as this story is, Springsteen's spare lyrics leave much unsaid. How these authors fill in the absences is what makes this collection, published a month before the thirtieth anniversary of the release of Springsteen's Born to Run, such an unusual treasure, proving that, just as with music, in literature no two performances are alike.

Gone Fishing by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child Gone Fishing is the first short story Preston and Child have written together, and the first time Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta appears without Special Agent Pendergast. The story begins with the theft of a priceless Inca sacrificial knife from the Museum of Natural History and ends twenty-four hours later in a clearing in the woods of northern New Hampshire, amidst a scene of transcendental horror. Other Stories Dirty Weather by Gregg Hurwitz As a deputy U.S. Marshal tasked with transporting inmates and hunting down fugitives, Gregg Hurwitz's protagonist, Tim Rackley grapples with issues of vigilantism—justice versus the law—and an ever-evolving perspective. In the course of his research, Hurwitz himself spent time behind bars, getting to know the men and women who keep the prisons running. Dirty Weather was inspired by them. Face in the Window by Heather Graham Heather Graham is known for creating locations that live and breathe—becoming as much a character in her books as the people who propel them. She works in several venues, including vampire, historical, ghost and suspense. Whatever time or place she's dealing in, Graham loves to keep her readers on edge. With The Face in the Window she takes characters from her thriller, The Island, and sets them in the midst of an unexpected storm with unexpected consequences. Spirit Walker by David Dun Technology and its ills, together with Native American mysticism, contrasts two worlds often at war—science versus back-to-nature values. Many of Dun’s novels have involved characters from Tilok tribe, which, although fictional, is in many respects based on various factual accounts of Native American life, lore, myth, history and religion. Kier Wintripp was Dun's first, and perhaps most striking, Tilok character. A superb woodsman and tracker, a guide to youth, a teacher of the forest arts, he's also a doctor of veterinary medicine. This is the story of how he became a Spirit Walker. Goodnight, Sweet Mother by Alex Kava One aspect of the Maggie O'Dell series that readers often comment on is the relationship between Maggie and her mother. It can best be described as challenging and confrontational, and definitely a far cry from what we perceive as a typical mother-daughter relationship. And yet, just like in real life there remains a bond, though sometimes unexplainable and often irrational. Here, in Goodnight, Sweet Mother, Kava takes Maggie and her mother on a road trip to illustrate that relationships, as well as perceptions, aren't always what they appear to be.

Members of the Mystery Writers of America join forces in an ingenious new anthology of short mysteries set in the world of entertainment, featuring original stories from John Lutz, Annette Meyers, Edward D. Hoch, Carolyn Wheat, Parnell Hall, Robert Lopresti, and other popular authors. Reprint.

Featuring North America's foremost thriller authors, Thriller is the first collection of pure thriller stories ever published. Offering up heart-pumping tales of suspense in all its guises are thirty-two of the most critically acclaimed and award-winning names in the business. From the signature characters that made such authors as David Morrell and John Lescroart famous to four of the hottest new voices in the genre, this blockbuster will tantalize and terrify.Lock the doors, draw the shades, pull up the covers and be prepared for Thriller to keep you up all night.

The follow-up to 2007's Expletive Deleted. New stories from Scott Phillips, Allan Guthrie, Christa Faust, Victor Gischler, J.A. Konrath, J.D. Rhoades, Declan Burke, Brian Azzarello, Steven Torres, Stewart Macbride, Simon Kernick, Patrick Bagley, Greg Bardsley, Stephen Blackmore, Tim Maleeny, Nick Stone, Martyn Waites, Talia Berliner, Maxim Jakubowski, Gregg Hurwitz, Blake Crouch, and more! As if all of that wasn't enough, there's an introduction by New York Times best selling author John Connolly.