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"e;A master crime writer . . . Seicho Matsumoto's thrillers dissect Japanese society."e;The New York Times Book Review"e;A stellar psychological thriller with a surprising and immensely satisfying resolution that flows naturally from the books complex characterizations.Readers will agree that Matsumoto (19091992) deserves his reputation as Japans Georges Simenon.-Publishers Weekly.While on a business trip to Kobe, Tsuneo Asai receives the news that his wife Eiko has died of a heart attack. Eiko had a heart condition so the news of her death wasnt totally unexpected. But the circumstances of her demise left Tsuneo, a softly-spoken government bureaucrat, perplexed. How did it come about that his wifewho was shy and withdrawn, and only left their house twice a week to go to haiku meetingsended up dead in a small shop in a shady Tokyo neighborhood?When Tsuneo goes to apologize to the boutique owner for the trouble caused by his wifes death he discovers the villa Tachibana near by, a house known to be a meeting place for secret lovers. As he digs deeper into his wife's recent past, he must eventually conclude that she led a double life... Seicho Matsumoto was Japan's most successful thriller writer. His first detective novel, Points and Lines, sold over a million copies in Japan. Vessel of Sand, published in English as Inspector Imanishi Investigates in 1989, sold over four million copies and became a movie box-office hit.

FOURTH IN THE MARTIN BORA SERIES.SPELLBINDING MULTI-LAYERED CRIME NOVEL SET IN UKRAINE AS THE GERMANS REGROUP AFTER THE DISASTER OF STALINGRAD.FOR FANS OF PHILLIP KERR (BERNIE GUNTHER SERIES), ALAN FURST (SPIES OF THE BALKANS).THE HERO, MAJOR MARTIN BORA, IS AN ARISTOCRATIC GERMAN OFFICER OF THE ILK OF CLAUS VON STAUFFENBERG, TORN BETWEEN HIS DUTY AS AN OFFICER AND HIS INTEGRITY AS A HUMAN BEING.Ukraine, 1943. Having barely escaped the inferno of Stalingrad, Major Martin Bora is serving on the Russian front as a German counterintelligence officer. Weariness, disillusionment, and battle fatigue are a soldiers daily fare, yet Bora seems to be one of the few whose sanity is not marred by the horrors of war.As the Wehrmacht prepare for the Kursk counter-offensive, a Russian general defects aboard a T-34, the most advanced tank of the war. Soon he and another general, this one previously captured, are found dead in their cells. Everything appears to exclude the likelihood of foul play, but Bora begins an investigation, in a stubborn attempt to solve a mystery that will come much too close to home.

Praise for The Body Snatcher: "e;An excellent and atypical book, a fantastic adventure."e;The Huffington Post "e;An explosive mixture of dread, greed and corruption. You won't put it down until you've read the very last page."e;Cosmopolitan This tightly plotted novel by Brazil's best-selling crime author is a tale of drug dealing gone wrong, police corruption, and macabre blackmail, set in a heat-soaked town in the vast untamed Brazilian lowlands bordering Bolivia. One bright Sunday, alone on the banks of the Paraguay River, the narrator witnesses the fatal crash of a small plane. He finds a kilo of cocaine in the dead pilot's backpack and pockets it along with the pilot's expensive watch. Thus begins the protagonist's long slide into corruption. When police locate the crash site, the pilot's body is missing and a large-scale search ensues. Our hero, now involved in a busted cocaine deal, ends up owing a Bolivian drug gang so much money that blackmailing the wealthy family of the dead pilot seems to be the only way out. When the family secretly agrees to pay serious money to recover the body of their son, our hero, who does not have the pilot's body, decides someone else's will do. . . . Or so he thinks. Patricia Melo is an author and playwright born in Sao Paolo (1962). Her novels Lost World, The Killer, In Praise of Lies, and Inferno have been published in English to rave reviews. Her works have also been translated into Italian, Spanish, and Dutch.

Ian Hamilton Finlay (19252006) was one of Scotland's leading twentieth-century public intellectuals, and famously one of its most brilliant and combative correspondents. His letters raise issues of particular and widespread interest both within Scotland and further afield. His correspondence with Stephen Bann, the English poet and academic, have a very special place in this context. These letters present in a clear and commensurable form the development of his ideas about poetry and art, and increasingly about sculpture and gardening, over this critical five-year period of his creative life.The letters begin when Bann was still a student at Cambridge, and Finlay was living in considerable hardship in Edinburgh, though he already had a significant international reputation as a poet. They reveal in fascinating and intimate detail the poet's developing creative process, and also record his often turbulent relationship to the worlds of literature, art, and critical journalism. When he settles in Lanarkshire, he begins to develop the ideas that will result in the creation of the world-famous sculpture garden known as Little Sparta.This book, edited, introduced, and annotated by Bann himself, is a unique and compelling self-portrait of the man who is now recognized not only as a great poet, but also as a major artist and one of the most original garden designers of modern times.Stephen Bann is a poet, historian, and cultural critic. He is an emeritus professor of the history of art at Bristol University, and the author of numerous books and articles.

Praise for Harri Nyknen's Nights of Awe:"e;The clever combination of classic Jewish themes with the traditions of Nordic crime makes for a refreshing tale with wide appeal. And the subtle humor makes it even better."e;Booklist"e;Professional responsibility and ethnic affiliation clash in Nyknen's intriguing first novel. The resolution will satisfy noir fans."e;Publishers Weekly"e;Ariel Kafka wins the award for most intriguing name for a fictional detective, and it suits this impressively labyrinthine mystery series."e;Time OutThe second in the Ariel Kafka series.There are two Jewish cops in all of Helsinki. One of them, Ariel Kafka, a lieutenant in the Violent Crime Unit, identifies himself as a policeman first, then a Finn, and lastly a Jew. Kafka is a religiously non-observant forty-something bachelor who is such a stubborn, dedicated policeman that he's willing to risk his career to get an answer. Murky circumstances surround his investigation of a Jewish businessman's murder. Neo-Nazi violence, intergenerational intrigue, shady loanspredictable lines of investigation lead to unpredictable culprits. But a second killing strikes closer to home, and the Finnish Security Police come knocking. The tentacles of Israeli politics and Mossad reach surprisingly far, once again wrapping Kafka in their sticky embrace.Harri Nyknen, born in Helsinki in 1953, was a well-known crime journalist and is now dedicated to writing fiction. The first in the Ariel Kafka series was Nights of Awe. Nyknen's work exposes the local underworld through the eyes of the criminal, the terrorist, and now from the point of view of an eccentric Helsinki police inspector.

Praise for the Martin Bora series:"e;The tone of Liar Moon has a flu-like grimness, appropriate the 1943 setting. Pastor is excellent at providing details (silk stockings, movie magazines, cigarettes) that light up the setting."e;Booklist"e;Lumen's plot is well crafted, her prose shap . . . a disturbing mix of detection and reflection."e;Publisher's WeeklyRome, 1944. While the Allies are fighting their way up the Italian peninsula, Rome lives the last days of Nazi occupation. Their world is falling apart as the German Army, the Gestapo, and the SS vie for power while holding glittering and debauched parties. But this is also a time of Italian partisan attacks, arrests, and mass executions, all to the sound of Allied artillery bombardment just outside the walls of the city.Baron Martin von Bora, an officer in the Wehrmacht, has the complex and delicate task of solving not one, but three murders. A young German embassy secretary has "e;accidentally"e; fallen to her death from a fourth-floor window, and a Roman society lady and a headstrong cardinal of the Roman Curia are found dead in her apartment. The cardinal is personally known to Bora and, like the officer, secretly active in the resistance against the Third Reich. With Italian police inspector Sandro Guidi at his side, Bora sets off to establish the truth. Different as they are, the two men confront crime, war, and dictatorship in the awareness that the dignity of man comes at a price beyond all imagination.

Baghdad Central is a noir debut novel set in Baghdad in September 2003. The US occupation of Iraq is a swamp of incompetence and self-delusion. The CPA has disbanded the Iraqi army and police as a consequence of its paranoid policy of de-Ba'athification of Iraqi society. Tales of hubris and reality-denial abound, culminating in Washington hailing the mess a glorious "e;mission accomplished."e;Inspector Muhsin al-Khafaji is a mid-level Iraqi cop who deserted his post back in April. Khafaji has lived long enough in pre- and post-Saddam Iraq to know that clinging on to anything but poetry and his daughter, Mrouj, is asking for trouble. Nabbed by the Americans and imprisoned in Abu Ghraib, Khafaji is offered one way outwork for the CPA to rebuild the Iraqi Police Services. But it's only after United States forces take Mrouj that he figures out a way to make his collaboration palatable, and even rewarding. Soon, he is investigating the disappearance of young women Translated bys working for the US Army. The bloody trail leads Khafaji through battles, bars, and brothels then finally back to the Green Zone, where it all began.This is a first novel by Elliott Colla, an American writer totally immersed in Middle Eastern affairs. He is a professor of Arabic literature at Georgetown University, and a well-known Translated by from the Arabic of local fiction and poetry. He lives between Washington, DC, and the Middle East.

Roberto Marais is haunted by his past as an under-cover carabinieri. A time of cynicism and corruption, in the world he investigated, and in his own soul. A meeting with Emmalike Roberto ravaged by guiltbegins to revive him. When her teenage son asks Roberto to help him conquer his nightmares, Roberto at last achieves a true rebirth.

Praise for Iain Levison:"e;The real deal . . . bracing, hilarious and dead on."e;--The New York Times Book Review"e;Witty, deft, well-conceived writing that combines sharp satire with real suspense."e;--Kirkus Reviews"e;Levison writes tight, punchy prose, with deadpan humor and savvy."e;--The Wall Street JournalPhilip Dixon is down on his luck. An escape from a lucrative but botched bank robbery lands him bleeding and on the verge of collapse in a college town in New Hampshire. How can he find a place to hide out in this innocent setting? Peering into the window of the nearest house, he sees a glimmer of hope: a man in his mid-thirties, obviously some kind of academic, is rolling around on the living room floor with an attractive high-school student. Professor Elias White is then blackmailed into harboring a dangerous fugitive, as Dixon--with a cool quarter-million in his bag and dreams of Canada in his head--gets ready for the last phase of his escape.But the last phase is always the hardest. Attractive and persistent FBI agent Denise Lupo is on his trail. As for Elias White, his surprising transition from respected academic to willing accomplice poses a ruthless threat that Dixon would be foolish to underestimate."e;...Funny and acerbic, and crackles with raw energy."e;--The Sunday Times (UK)Iain Levison was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1963. Since moving to the United States, he has worked as a fisherman, carpenter, and cook, and he has detailed his woes of wage slavery in A Working Stiffs Manifesto. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Maori cop Tito Ihaka, unkempt, overweight, intemperate, unruly, unorthodox and profane , is a stubborn investigator with an uncanny instinct for the truth. He hunts a shadowy hit-man who could have several notches on his belt, including that of an undercover cop. To complicate matters Ihaka becomes involved with a female suspect who could hold the key to everything.

A satirical romp and suspenseful mystery set in the world of alternative therapy and meditation centers of Barcelona.

The story of Ramon Mercader, the assassin of Trotsky. Moving seamlessly between Cuba where Mercader lived out the last years of his life, Mercaders early years in Spain and France, and Trotskys long years of exile, it is the story of revolutions fought and betrayed, the ways in which mens which mens political convictions are continually tested and manipulated.

Prosecutor Szackis investigation of a murder in a Polish town reveals the poisonous anti-Semitism that haunts all who live there.

';Prose that penetrates the reader's mind like speed, fast paced, without an ounce of fat.'WeltwocheHe's found five pounds of top--quality Peruvian cocaine in a suit-case. Pur-sued by the police and drug traffickers the luckless Blum falls prey to the frenzied paranoia of the cocaine addict and dealer. This is a fast-paced thriller written with acerbic humour, a hardboiled evocation of drug-fuelled existence and a penetrating observation of those at the edge of German society.Having broken his addiction to on heroin at the age of thirty, Jrg Fauser spent much of the rest of his life dependent on alcohol. He died aged forty-three in 1987, run over by a truck at four am on a German highway.

Scorching novel from a star of Cuban fiction. The return of Mario Conde.

A young transvestite found strangled in a Havana park. The stifling death of a beloved Cuba.

A scorching novel from a star of Cuban fiction. The third in the Havana Quartet series.

The fourth Guerrieri in the series. An investigation into the disappearance of a poor little rich girl in Southern Italy.

Praise for Ben Pastor's Lumen: Pastors plot is well crafted, her prose sharp. . . . A disturbing mix of detection and reflection.Publishers Weekly "e;Rivets the reader with its twist of historical realities. A historical piece, it faithfully reproduces the grim canvas of war. A character study, it captures the thoughts and actions of real people, not stereotypes.The Free Lance-Star And dont miss Lumen by Ben Pastor. . . . An interesting, original, and melancholy tale.Literary Review Italy, September 1943. The Italian government switches sides and declares war on Germany. The north of Italy is controlled by the fascist puppets of Germany; the south liberated by Allied forces fighting their way up the peninsula. Having survived hell on the Russian front, Wehrmacht major and aristocrat Baron Martin von Bora is sent to Verona. He is ordered to investigate the murder of a prominent local fascist: a bizarre death threatening to discredit the regimes public image. The prime suspect is the victims twenty-eight-year-old widow Clara. Haunted by his record of opposition to SS policies in Russia, Bora must watch his step. Against the backdrop of relentless anti-partisan warfare and the tragedy of the Holocaust, a breathless chase begins. Ben Pastor, born and now back in Italy, lived for thirty years in the United States, working as a university professor in Vermont. The first in the Martin Bora series, Lumen, was published by Bitter Lemon Press in May 2011.

"e;A scathing satire of Spanish society, hilarious dialogue, all beautifully dressed up as a crime novel."e;--Krimi-Couch"e;A first novel that's spread like wildfire by word of mouth."e;--El Avui"e;Teresa Solana is great proof of the vitality of the roman noir in Catalan. . . . A wonderfully ironic hymn to the city of Barcelona."e;--Diari de BalearsAnother day in Barcelona, another slimy politician's wife is suspected of infidelity. Lluis Font discovers a portrait of his wife in an exhibition that leads him to conclude he is being cuckolded by the artist. Concerned only about the potential political fallout, he hires twins Eduard and Pep, private detectives with a supposed knack for helping the wealthy with their "e;dirty laundry."e; Their office is adorned with false doors leading to nonexistent private rooms, a mysterious secretary who is always away, and a broken laptop computer picked up on the street. The case turns ugly when Font's wife is found poisoned by a marron glace from a box of sweets delivered anonymously.This is a deftly plotted, bitingly funny mystery novel. A satire of Catalan politics and a fascinating insight into the life and habits of Barcelona's inhabitants, diurnal and nocturnal.Teresa Solana lives in Barcelona. Born in 1962, she studied philosophy and worked as a literary translator and essayist. She has written several novels kept quietly in her drawer. A Not So Perfect Crime, her first published title, won the 2007 Brigada 21 Prize for the best Catalan mystery novel.

A writer is murdered at the Ritz on the night she wins an important literary prize, battered to death with the trophy she has just won. A satire of the Catalan literary scene dressed up as a hilarious murder mystery.

When no lawyer accepts to represent Marina in her attempt to bring her boyfriend to trial for assault and battery, Guerrieri takes the case. No witnesses willing to testify and a hostile judge: just his kind of case. Doesnt hurt that hes attracted to Sister Maria, the young woman protecting Marina, who shares his love for martial arts.

Third in the Guerrieri series: a legal thriller by an Italian prosecutor. Turow with wry humor.

A black immigrant is accused of child murder in Italy; the court procedural is tainted with racism.

A film director is murdered in Istanbul. The heroine and accidental investigator is the owner of a mystery bookshop.

Young lawyer Alex Zabel defends industrialist Herbert Klofft in a case for wrongful dismissal being brought against him by his former employee and mistress. She is thirty-four, he seventy-eight, a despot, now wheelchair bound and dying of cancer. Alex must deal with a hopeless case, his growing empathy with a repulsive client and his sexual attraction to Kloffts elderly wife.

"e;Pastor's plot is well crafted, her prose sharp. . . . A disturbing mix of detection and reflection."e;Publishers Weekly"e;A mystery, it rivets the reader until the end and beyond, with its twist of historical realities. A historical piece, it faithfully reproduces the grim canvas of war. A character study, it captures the thoughts and actions of real people, not stereotypes."e;The Free Lance-StarPart wartime political intrigue, detective story, psychological thriller, and religious mystery, Ben Pastor's debut follows a German army captain and a Chicago priest as they investigate the death of a nun in Nazi-occupied Poland.In October 1939 Captain Martin Bora discovers the abbess, Mother Kazimierza, shot dead in her convent garden. Her alleged power to see the future has brought her a devoted following; her work and motto, "e;Lumen Christi Adiuva Nos"e; ("e;Light of Christ, help us"e;), appear also to have brought some enemies.Father Malecki has come to Cracow, at the pope's bidding, to investigate Mother Kazimierza's powers. The Vatican orders him to stay and assist Bora in the inquiry into her killing. Stunned by the violence of the occupation and the ideology of his colleagues, Bora's sense of Prussian duty is tested to the breaking point. The interference of seductive actress Ewa Kowalska does not help matters.Ben Pastor, born in Italy, has lived for thirty years in the United States, working as a university professor in Vermont. She is the author of other novels, including The Water Thief and The Fire Walker (St. Martin's Press).

"e;This is not simply a triumph of style; it is both a reflection on a time of bloodshed and a raw vision of human misery."e;Guillermo Saccomanno, winner of the Argentine National Literature Prize"e;This man knows. He knows about guns, knows about women, knows about dead bodies. . . . But above all he knows how to narrate."e;Ana Mara Shua, author of El peso de la tentacinSuperintendent Lascano is a detective working under the shadow of military rule in Buenos Aires in the late 1970s. Sent to investigate a double murder, he arrives at the crime scene to find three bodies. Two are clearly the work of the Junta's death squads, murders he is forced to ignore; the other one seems different.The trail leads Lascano through a decadent Argentina, a country poisoned to its core by the tyranny of the regime. The third corpse turns out to be that of Biterman, moneylender and Auschwitz survivor. When Lascano digs too deep, he must confront Giribaldi, an army major, quick to help old friends but ruthless in dealing with dissenters such as Eva, the young militant with whom Lascano is falling in love.Born in 1948, Ernesto Mallo is a published essayist, newspaper columnist, screenwriter, and playwright. He is a former anti-Junta militant who was pursued by the dictatorship. Needle in a Hay Stack is his first novel and the first in a trilogy with superintendent Lascano. The first two are being made into films.

';...One shares Susanne's belief that she must try to carry the deception off. Whether she will succeed keeps the reader, peering over Susanne's shoulder at all the traps, turning the pages of this remarkable book.'The Independent (UK)Praise for Petra Hammesfahr's The Sinner:';The Sinner is best psychological suspense novel I have read all year.'Daily Telegraph';Dubbed Germany's answer to Patricia Highsmith, Hammesfahr should win new fans with this novel.'Publishers Weekly';Demonstrates why she is one of Germany's bestselling writers of crime and psychological thrillers. It's grim, delves deep into the human psyche, and keeps you gripped.'The Times (London)Nadia and Susanne look uncannily alike, but one of the women is seriously rich and the other is destitute. When Nadia asks Susanne to spend the weekend with her husband so that she can sneak off with a lover, how can Susanne refuse the outrageous payment on offer? Nadia and her husband barely speak to each other and he will be working most of the weekend. Easy money, or so it seems.One Friday afternoon Susanne drives Nadia's Alfa to her beautiful suburban villa with its indoor pool and glass doors opening onto the sloping lawn. This first stay is followed by others, as an apparently harmless game becomes a deadly web of lies.Petra Hammesfahr, born in 1951, has not had an easy life: she left school at thirteen and became pregnant by an alcoholic husband at seventeen. She published her first novel when she was forty and has since written over twenty crime and suspense novels. Petra also writes scripts for television and film. She has won numerous literary prizes, including the Crime Prize of Wiesbaden and the Rhineland Literary Prize.

"e;An agile novel written in a language perfectly pitched for the subject matter, a ruthless dissection of a fast decaying society"e;Jose Saramago, Nobel Prize winnerThe English translation of hit novel Las Viudas de Los Jueves!';Pieiro's clever U.S. debut.. . illuminates the hypocrisies of the country's upper classes after 9/11.'Publishers Weekly';Pieiro is particularly skilful at exposing the social forces undermining Argentine society, and the fragility of personal relationships. We learn the surprising truth of the three men's death in the final chapter; the build-up to it is riveting.'The Times (London)"e;Pieiro builds up tension through banal, domestic details and the accretion of despair in everyday marital and professional struggles. There may be bloody murder at the centre of this novel, but the dystopia portrayed is an indictment not solely of an assassin but of Argentina's class structure and the willful blindness of its petty bourgeoisie."e;Times Literary Supplement';A razor-sharp psychological and social portrait not only of Argentina, but of the afluent Western world as a whole.'Rosa MonteroThree bodies lie at the bottom of a swimming pool in a gated country estate near Buenos Aires. It's Thursday night at the magnificent Scaglia house. Behind the locked gates, shielded from the crime, poverty, and filth of the people on the streets, the Scaglias and their friends hide lives of infidelity, alcoholism, and abusive marriage. Claudia Pieiro's novel eerily foreshadowed a criminal case that generated a scandal in the Argentine media. But this is more than a story about crime. The suspense is a byproduct of Pieiro's hand at crafting a psychological portrait of a professional class that lives beyond its means and leads secret lives of deadly stress and despair. It takes place during the post-9/11 economic meltdown in Argentina, but it is a universal story that will resonate among credit-crunched readers of today.The film of Thursday Night Widows, by Argentine New Wave and award-winning director Marcelo Pieyro is coming soon with trailers available online.Claudia Pieiro was a journalist, playwright, and television scriptwriter and in 1992 won the prestigious Pleyade Annual Journalism Award. She has more recently turned to fiction and is the author of literary crime novels that are all bestsellers in Latin America and have been translated into four languages. This novel won the Clarin Prize for fiction and is her first title to be available in English.