Wallace Stroby

Ray Devlin is retired, living a simple life off the grid in Florida, when a visit from an old colleague stirs some bad memories--and ends with a gunshot. Soon Devlin is forced to again face a past he'd hoped to leave behind, as a member of a mercenary force that helped put a brutal South American dictator into power. Tracy Quinn is an investigative reporter at a struggling Philadelphia newspaper decimated by layoffs and cutbacks. Then one day what...

"It's been a year since professional thief Crissa Stone last pulled a job, and she's spent that time under the radar, very carefully not drawing attention to herself. That kind of life is safe, but it's boring, and it's lonely, and it's not very lucrative. So when Crissa starts to get antsy--and low on funds--she agrees to act as a thief-for-hire, partnering with a wealthy art collector to steal a truckload of plundered Iraqi artifacts before they're...

"A half million dollars in drug proceeds, guarded by three men with automatic weapons. For Wallace Stroby's determined heroine, professional thief Crissa Stone, and her team, stealing it was the easy part. But when the split goes awry in a blaze of gunfire, Crissa finds herself on the run with a duffel bag of stolen cash, bound by a promise to deliver part of the take to the needy family of one of her slain partners. In pursuit are the drug kingpin's...

Hoping for a final big score that will reunite her with her loved ones and allow her to live an honest life, Crissa Stone is forced to flee when her partners in crime kill each other, a situation that is complicated by an ex-mobster's efforts to claim a former associate's hidden millions.

Joette Harper's life brings new meaning to the phrase "paycheck to paycheck." Struggling to afford her mother's sky-high medical bills and also keep the lights on in her trailer home, Joette needs a break. So, when she spies a bag full of money amongst the wreckage of a fiery car accident, she knows she can't just let it be. Inside is a bounty better than she could have dreamed--just shy of $300,000 in neatly stacked hundreds and fifties. Enough to...

A collection of top-selected mystery writing from the past year is culled from a variety of respected sources and offers insight into evolving genre trends.

"The crime fiction canopy's a broad one, with room to give shelter to writing of all sorts, as editor Lawrence Block shows with At Home in the Dark: “Some of these stories have one or both feet planted in another genre. James Reasoner's story is a period western, Joe Lansdale's is bleakly dystopian, and Joe Hill's novelette slithers through a little doorway into another world. “And now that I've singled out those three, I suppose I should go ahead...