Ed Gorman's mystery short stories have a flavor found nowhere else among contemporary writers. His tales have an amazing breadth of style and plot—classical detection, private eye stories, biter-bit tales in which criminous schemes turn back on the perpetrator, and straight crime stories.What they all have in common is a recognition that we cannot escape our past. The Judge Whitney-Cody McCain stories are filled with the sights and sounds of small-town America around 1958. The Closing Circle is both a detective story and a sensitive evocation of a girl coming of age. The Cage and Favor and the Princess are not only pure detection but also about understanding your first love years later.You may like some of the protagonists, such as private eye Jack Dwyer in Eye of the Beholder, and despise others, including the narrator in Our Kind of Guy, but all of Ed Gorman's stories are filled with the truth of human experience.Stories included in this...

It's not easy to collect, in a single volume, the finest mystery and suspense fiction the world has to offer, but The World's Finest Mystery and Crime Stories: Second Annual Collection rises to that challenge, inviting you to discover what Kirkus Reviews dubs " . . . the year's anthology of choice."In his Second Annual collection, Ed Gorman once again brings together the year's most powerful fiction by such outstanding authors as Lawrence Block, Stuart M. Kaminsky, Ed McBain, Joyce Carol Oates, Ian Rankin, and Donald E. Westlake. The volume also abounds with fresh new stories by newer authors, from U. S. publications, and also from sources on other shores, including England, Germany, and the Netherlands.Ed Gorman set benchmark for great mystery and suspense fiction with the First Annual Collection. Overflowing with award-winning authors and terrific stories, The World's Finest Mystery and Crime Stories: Second Annual Collection also...

Peeps takes movie reviewing to new heights of viciousness.  On this prime-time TV show, two caustic critics look at the hits and misses among the new movies, trading wits, insults - even punches. But even a series with high riatings like Peeps can stare at cancellation - not by the networks, but by murder.  Because Dunpyhy has just been found with a knife in his back in the dressing room of Tobin, his co-host and sparring partner.  The copis' script says Tobin-who'd secretly shared the affections of Dunphy's wife and brawled on air with Dunphy the night before - has the motivation for the part of star suspect.  But for Tobin, the accusation is hardly entertaining, and he sets out to find the real killer in the cast. "If Ed Gorman's name doesn't eventulaly become as famous as that of Lawrence Sanders, it's an unjust world.  His work is fresh, polished, excitingly paced, thoroughly entertaining - and has something to say about the way we live, the way we are, and what we wish we were." -- Dean Koontz ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ed Gorman is an award winning American author best known for his crime and mystery fiction. He wrote The Poker Club which is now a film of the same name directed by Tim McCann. He has written under many pseudonyms including "E. J. Gorman" and "Daniel Ransom." He won a Spur Award for Best Short Fiction for his short story "The Face" in 1992. His fiction collection Cages was nominated for the 1995 Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection. His collection The Dark Fantastic was nominated for the same award in 2001. FIND MORE BOOKS FROM ED GORMAN AND CROSSROAD PRESS FOR YOUR KINDLE - including the popular Jack Dwyer Mysteries, The Robert Payne Mysteries, Cast on Dark Waters written with Award-Winning Author Tom Piccirrilli, and much much more.  Crossroad Press is proud to deliver quality mysteries from such authors as Bill Crider, John Lutz, Bill Pronzini, Tom Piccirilli, and others - as well as Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Romance, Biographies, Young Adult fiction and much more.  Just search the Kindle Store for Crossroad Press.

Jack Dwyer is a former cop who got the acting bug after he was cast in a local public safety commercial. He started acting lessons, quit his job, and applied for his private investigator's license (in very nearly that order). He also took a security guard job to keep the wolves away. The novel opens with Dwyer on a riverside park murder site. He was called there by a panicked former girlfriend. A girlfriend who left him for another man, and a girlfriend Dwyer isn't quite over.The woman is nearly comatose when Dwyer arrives. She is distraught with grief and fear. The man who replaced Dwyer in her life is dead in the grass, and the gun that killed him is in her hand. The police arrive and everything fits neatly into a little package. No real investigation, other than into Jane Branigan—the girlfriend—and the case seems open and shut, but something about it bothers Dwyer. That something may be nothing more than his feelings for Jane, but Dwyer doesn't think she...

Written with Patricia Lee Macomber At first, thirteen-year-old Jamie wasn't sure what had awakened her. Then she heard it again. A telephone ringing. Slowly, she crept up the attic stairs. She had to answer the phone. She had to listen to the voice that whispered through the receiver. And then, she had to do its horrifying bidding...

Battles were won with bullets and sabers on the battlefields of the War Between the States, for sure. But often, the outcome of those battles was affected by the heroic acts of spies—both Union and Confederate. Such heroes, unsung while they did their vital work, included those whose true stories are told in the pages of this book:• Elizabeth Van Lew: Her Richmond, Virginia, neighbors thought her eccentric—or crazy—but her odd behavior covered her activities as a spy for the Union army.• Belle Boyd: A daring Confederate spy whose charm and beauty were exceeded only by her boldness and resourcefulness in eluding Union's efforts to capture her. • Serena Freneau: A beautiful spy who seduced secrets from Union officers—even marrying one of them!• Timothy Webster: A Union spy who dared to infiltrate the South's infamous "Knights of Liberty" as a double agent.Their exploits, and the other...

Psychological profiler Robert Payne is drawn into a circle of intrigue and murder and he investigates the murder of man's girlfriend, whom he claims was killed by an arsonist who burned down an asylum long ago, and disappeared. With TV Psychics and the local police, Payne must unravel the past to solve the case in the present.

Come and meet the people in Ed Gorman's world. Some are funny, some are sad, some are violent, some are gentle, but every single one of them is thoroughly engaging.

Come and meet the people in Ed Gorman's world. Some are funny, some are sad, some are violent, some are gentle, but every single one of them is thoroughly engaging.

Jack Dwyer is hired  to deal with "some problems" caused by residents of a homeless shelter located near a chic, downtown restaurant. Before Dwyer can even act on his orders from one restaurant owner, he is fired by a second.  Then, several days later, the first owner - a man named Coburn, is murdered, and his gorgeous, none-too-grieving widow re-hires Dwyer to locate the killer. Lots of people have a motive: Coburn was a womanizer and a snob. The restaurant staff hated him for being abusive and demanding; Anton, the second owner, hated him for sleeping with his teenaged daughter; the woman who runs the homeless shelter hated him for jilting her. Jack Dwyer remains one of the easiest mystery protagonists to like, and a very "real" character in this very entertaining addition to the Jack Dwyer series.

### From Publishers Weekly In 1957 perhaps the only thing worse than a new Ford Edsel is a new Ford Edsel with a dead body in the trunk. Veteran crime writer Gorman painstakingly evokes small-town America in the late '50s for this nostalgic prequel to The Day the Music Died. Sam McCain is a young lawyer and PI in quiet Black River Falls, Iowa. Susan Squires is the body discovered in the ill-fated new car while the whole town is engaged in a parade sponsored by the Ford Motor Company. Though the police are called to the crime scene, the bumbling efforts of the ruthless sheriff lead the local judge to assign Sam to the case on the q.t. Sam's prime suspect is Susan's abusive husband, David, a politically ambitious DA. Then David dies, and suspicion shifts to his ex-wife and to Susan's ex-lover. Gorman spends more time polishing up the period details, delving into the town's social intrigues and recounting Sam's love life than he does advancing the murder investigation. But his subplots converge when Mary Travers, a young woman who loves Sam and who was Susan Squire's best friend, vanishes. Gorman's assured prose fits his subject like a tailored suit. He mentions every song playing on the car radio as young couples neck in back seats, and the overall effect is a lot like a Bob Greene newspaper column set inside a mystery. Though the investigation moves slowly, Gorman's depiction of the town's rivalries keeps the tension strong. (Jan.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. ### From Library Journal Iowa lawyer/private investigator Sam McCain has plenty of clues and suspects in the murder of an ambitious county attorney's wife but can't quite put them together. An evocative return to the 1950s and sequel to The Day the Music Died (LJ 1/99). Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Roger Daye, a stockbroker whose wife suddenly left him, has changed his appearance in hopes of changing his life for the better. His longing for Amy, a childhood flame, is rekindled when he sees her at a dance in his old hometown. However, his attention is soon drawn to another attractive woman — and that woman is Amy's daughter. Jealousy and revenge come to the forefront in this dark tale as

It's the far future. Fascist terrorists have all but wiped out the human race with nuclear weapons, and only small pockets of civilization survive. They have gathered in the hospitals, where ever-shrinking supplies and medical staffs have become the core power in hospital fortresses. There are no pain killers left - at least, not of the chemical variety. There are children, small, frail, suffering from an affliction akin to autism, but able to drain away the pain of the world. Until they run out. Until they take a grip on your soul, and the last of your humanity. In the end, the price of survival may be too high...

When two teenage boys befriend and escaped bank robber—because the robber reminds the boys of their idol, Robert Mitchum—the boys set in motion a chilling chain of events that will teach them about trust, brutality, and courage.||||Moonchasers and Other Stories also contains several other riveting tales of suspense by Ed Gorman including "Turn Away," which won a Shamus Award for best detective story. This outstanding collection of fiction is by an author who has been described by the San Diego Tribune as "one of the most distinctive voices in today's crime fiction."

Ed Gorman enjoyed a prolific, award-winning career in a variety of genres—mystery, science fiction, thriller, and horror. He published more than 50 novels, 8 collections, 100+ short stories, and edited 12 anthologies. His presence in the Little Books Series II is a welcome and honored one. Collected in this volume are five of his more cantankerous and hard-nosed novelettes and stories.If this is your first introduction to Gorman's work, we're sure after reading these selections, you'll be looking for more of his tightly-written tales.Included in this collection:"Flying Solo""Stalkers""The Brasher Girl""Cages""The Face"