Agent Amy Cornwall excels at working from the shadows --- until a botched field operation reveals dark dealings between her bosses and an informant. And a hidden plot by a terrorist genius that could kill thousands of Americans. Among them: her husband and daughter. She has to go dark. The Division wants to erase her. And they know every detail about her identity, her history and her family. Agent Cornwall’s countdown has begun.

In 1872, 16-year-old Goes First, a Crow Native woman, marries Abe Farwell, a white fur trader. He gives her the name Mary, and they set off on the long trip to his trading post in the Cypress Hills of Saskatchewan, Canada. Along the way, she finds a fast friend; makes a lifelong enemy; and, despite learning a dark secret of Farwell’s past, falls in love with her husband. Then, on the eve of their return to Montana, a group of drunken whiskey traders slaughters 40 Nakota. Mary sees the murderers take five Nakota women back to their fort. She begs Farwell to save them, and when he refuses, she takes two guns, creeps into the fort and saves the women from certain death. Thus, she sets off a whirlwind of colliding cultures that pushes the love between Farwell and Crow Mary to the breaking point.

It begins in an unnamed city nicknamed “the Fairest.” It is distinguished by many things, from the river fair to the mountains that split the municipality in half; its theaters and many museums; the Morgue Ship; and, like all cities, its essential unmappability. Dora has a secret desire --- to find where her brother went after he died, believing that the answer lies within The Museum of Psykical Research. With the city amidst a revolutionary upheaval, Dora contrives to gain the curatorship of the half-forgotten museum only to find it all but burnt to the ground, with the neighboring museums oddly untouched. She is offered one of these, The National Museum of the Worker. However, neither this museum, nor the street it is hidden away on, nor Dora herself, are what they at first appear to be.

After the Underwater Investigation Unit’s disbandment, public outcry ushers Sloan McPherson and her partner, former navy diver Scott Hughes, back into the depths of crime solving. But Sloan’s return comes with a personal case. Longtime family friend Fred Stafford has disappeared. Left behind: his abandoned truck in the vicinity of an unmarked sinkhole and new findings that have Sloan second-guessing everything she thought she knew about the man. There are his gambling debts, his association with a treasure-hunting band of underwater cavern junkies called the Dive Rats, and a discovery in Stafford’s storage shed that raises the stakes even higher and plunges Sloan into an unfathomable mystery. As Sloan’s investigation unfolds, a tragic Florida cold case, local superstitions and a shocking conspiracy collide.

Since debuting 20 years ago, Hard Case Crime has won acclaim for publishing the best in hard-boiled crime fiction --- not least of all the work of founding editor Charles Ardai. Collected here for the first time anywhere are the author’s 20 finest stories, including his Edgar-winning “The Home Front,” about death and repentance during World War II; the Shamus Award finalist “Nobody Wins,” about a brutal gangland enforcer searching for the woman he loves; and year’s-best selections such as “A Bar Called Charley’s,” about a traveling salesman’s most grueling night on the road. From Brazil at Carnival to Times Square at midnight, from Tijuana, Mexico, to history’s first gunshot in 11th-century China, Ardai will take you to some of the most dangerous places in the world --- and the darkest corners of the human heart.

Ciara Dunphy seemingly has it all. But behind the filters, reality is less polished. Enter Ciara’s best friend, Mishti Guha. Discontent in a marriage arranged for her by her parents, she wants what Ciara has --- the ease with which she moves through the world. And there’s earth mother Lauren Doyle. With her disheveled partner and children who run naked in the yard, they’re mostly a happy lot, though ostracized for being the singular dysfunction in Ciara’s immaculate world. But then Ciara is found murdered in her own pristine home, and the house of cards she’d worked so hard to build comes crumbling down. Everyone seems to have something to gain from Ciara’s death. So if they don’t want the blame, it may be the perfect time to air their enemies’ dirty laundry.

Penny Rush has problems. Her marriage is over, and she has quit her job. Her mother and stepfather went missing in the Australian outback five years ago; her mentally unbalanced father provokes her; and her grandmother, Dr. Pincer, keeps experiments in the refrigerator and something worse in the woodshed. But Penny is a virtuoso at what’s possible when all else fails. There will be a road trip in the Dog of the North, an old van with gingham curtains, a piñata and stiff brakes. There will be injury and peril. There will be a dog named Kweecoats and two brothers who may share a toupee. There will be questions: Why is a detective investigating her grandmother, and what is “the scintillator”? And can Penny recognize a good thing when it finally comes her way?

After a traumatic incident, Aster's blood work comes back with some unusual readings. Unsurprising, as she’s the last of an alien race called the Kibsu, though she doesn’t know it. She becomes the focus of a hunt, with her mortal enemies, the Trackers, on one side and the American government on the other. But help has come from a most unexpected quarter. Whoever finds her first, it won’t be good news for Aster. Or for the world!

Corey Douglas’ former mentor, Jimmy Dietrich, had his whole identity wrapped up in being a cop. When Jimmy retired three years ago, his marriage quickly deteriorated, and he tried --- and failed --- to get back on the force. Jimmy was left to try to adjust to life as a civilian. Not long after, two bodies were pulled from the Passaic River: a local woman, Susan Avery, and Jimmy Dietrich. With no true evidence available, the deaths went unsolved and the case declared cold. This didn’t stop the whispers: an affair gone wrong...a murder-suicide committed by Jimmy. Corey never believed it. With this case, the K Team has the opportunity to find the real murderer and clear Jimmy’s name.

Equal parts fantastical --- a pair of talking dolls help twins escape a stifling home, a heart boils on the stove as part of an elaborate cure for melancholy, a fox demon contemplates avenging her sister's death --- and true to life --- a mother and daughter try to heal their rift when the daughter falls unexpectedly pregnant, a woman reexamines her father's legacy after his death --- the stories in GREEN FROG are hopeful and heartbreaking, full of danger and full of joy.

In shock and found clinging to a tree branch, Bethany Richter is pulled from thrashing floodwaters that have decimated the town of Garnett, Texas, and killed a dozen others. Six months after solving the murder of a local waitress, Annie McIntyre is working as an apprentice P.I. when she's handed her first solo case: uncover the identity of the man who rescued Bethany before he was swept downriver. When Annie's search turns up a different victim --- shot dead, not drowned --- Annie questions if the hero they seek is actually a killer. Flexing her new skills while relying on the wisdom of her eccentric ex-cop grandfather, the case leads Annie into a web of drug dealers, preachers and wayward drifters trying to make sense of life after a disaster.

In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees live three robots --- fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labeled “HAP,” he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio --- a past spent hunting humans. When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic’s assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission…or worse, reprogramming.

Arden Moore enjoyed an affluent life thanks to her husband’s high-paying job. But a year after his death, the 36-year-old is a grieving single mother deeply in debt and living paycheck to paycheck with her three children. Then an unexpected call from a well-known estate lawyer in New York offers a glimmer of hope. It is the beginning of a complex legal journey that could mean the difference between a life of abject poverty and unthinkable wealth thanks to her father, deceased billionaire Wallace Barclay.

For years Mamie Künstler has lived happily in her bungalow in Venice, California, with her inscrutable housekeeper and her gigantic St. Bernard dog. Their tranquility is upended when Mamie’s grandson, Julian, arrives from New York City to seek his fortune in Hollywood. But it is 2020, the pandemic sweeps in, and Julian’s short visit suddenly has no end in sight. Mamie was only 11 when the Künstlers escaped Vienna in 1939. They made their way to sunny, surreal Los Angeles where they joined a colony of distinguished Jewish musicians, writers and intellectuals also escaping Hitler. Now, Mamie begins to tell Julian the buried stories of her early years in Los Angeles. While the pandemic cuts Julian off from the life he knows, Mamie’s tales open up a world of lives that came before him.

When builders discover a human skeleton during a renovation of a café, they call in archaeologist Dr. Ruth Galloway, who is preoccupied with the threatened closure of her department and by her ever-complicated relationship with DCI Nelson. The bones turn out to be the remains of Emily Pickering, a young archaeology student who went missing in 2002. Suspicion soon falls on Emily’s Cambridge tutor and on another archaeology enthusiast who was part of the group gathered the weekend before she disappeared --- Ruth’s friend, Cathbad. As they investigate, Nelson and his team uncover a tangled web of relationships within the archaeology group and look for a link between them and the café where Emily’s bones were found. Then, just when the team seems to be making progress, Cathbad disappears.

October 18, 2019. Cristina Rivera Garza travels from her home in Texas to Mexico City, in search of an old, unresolved criminal file. “My name is Cristina Rivera Garza,” she writes in her request to the attorney general, “and I am writing to you as a relative of Liliana Rivera Garza, who was murdered on July 16, 1990.” It’s been 29 years. Twenty-nine years, three months and two days since Liliana was murdered by an abusive ex-boyfriend. Inspired by feminist movements across the world and enraged by the global epidemic of femicide and intimate partner violence, Cristina embarks on a path toward justice. LILIANA'S INVINCIBLE SUMMER is the account --- and the outcome --- of that quest.

Ropa Moyo is no stranger to magic or mysteries. But she’s still stuck in an irksomely unpaid internship. So she’s thrilled to attend a magical convention at Dunvegan Castle, on the Isle of Skye, where she’ll rub elbows with eminent magicians. For Ropa, it’s the perfect opportunity to finally prove her worth. Then a librarian is murdered and a precious scroll stolen. Suddenly, every magician is a suspect, and Ropa and her allies investigate. Trapped in a castle, with suspicions mounting, Ropa must contend with corruption, skulduggery and power plays. Time to ask for a raise?

Ana will never forget her mother’s face when she and her baby brother, Oskar, were sent out of their Polish ghetto and into the arms of a Christian friend. When a woman from a Jewish reclamation organization seizes them, Ana sees an opportunity to reconnect with her roots, while Oskar sees only the loss of the home he loves. Roger grows up in a monastery in France. When a relative seeks to retrieve him, the Church steals him across the Pyrenees before relinquishing him to family in Jerusalem. Renata is a post-graduate student in archaeology. After her mother’s death, her grief is entwined with all the questions her mother left unanswered. As their stories unexpectedly converge in Israel two decades later, they each must ask where and to whom they truly belong.

A decade ago, two vans filled with high school seniors on a school service trip crashed into a Tennessee ravine, which claimed the lives of multiple classmates and teachers. The nine students who managed to escape the river that night were irrevocably changed. A year later, after one of the survivors dies by suicide on the anniversary of the crash, the rest of them make a pact: to come together each year to commemorate that terrible night. But by the 10th anniversary, Cassidy has worked to distance herself from the tragedy. This year, she is determined to finally break ties once and for all. But on the day of the reunion, she receives a text with an obituary attached: another survivor is gone. Now they are seven, and Cassidy finds herself hurling back toward the group, wild with grief --- and suspicion.

PINEAPPLE STREET follows three women in one wealthy Brooklyn clan. Darley, the eldest daughter in the well-connected old money Stockton family, followed her heart, trading her job and her inheritance for motherhood but giving up far too much in the process. Sasha, a middle-class New England girl, has married into the Brooklyn Heights family and finds herself cast as the arriviste outsider. And Georgiana, the baby of the family, has fallen in love with someone she can’t have and must decide what kind of person she wants to be.

On a cold November evening, Guido Brunetti and Paola are up late when a call from his colleague Ispettore Vianello arrives, alerting the Commissario that a hand has been seen in one of Venice’s canals. The body is soon found, and Brunetti is assigned to investigate the murder of an undocumented Sri Lankan immigrant. As the investigation expands, Brunetti, Vianello, Commissario Griffoni and Signora Elettra each assemble pieces of a puzzle --- random information about real estate and land use, books, university friendships --- that appear to have little in common. Until Brunetti stumbles over something that transports him back to his own student days, causing him to reflect on lost ideals and the errors of youth, on Italian politics and history, and on the accidents that sometimes lead to revelation.

The cherry blossoms are in full bloom in Washington, D.C., and the Calhouns are in the midst of hosting their annual party to celebrate the best of the spring season. With a house full of friends, neighbors and their beloved three adult children, the Calhouns are expecting another picture-perfect event. But a brutal murder in the middle of the celebration transforms the yearly gathering into a homicide scene and all the guests into suspects. Behind their façade of perfection, the Calhoun family has been keeping some very dark secrets. As the investigation heats up, family tensions build, and alliances shift. Long-buried resentments surface, forcing the Calhouns to face their darkest secrets before it’s too late.

Gods are forbidden in the kingdom of Middren --- but now they are stirring, whispering of war. Godkiller Kissen sacrificed herself to vanquish the fire god Hseth, who murdered her family and endangered her friends. But gods cannot be destroyed so easily, and Hseth’s power threatens to reform with even greater strength and a thirst for vengeance. As tensions rise throughout the land, the kingdom needs its Godkiller more than ever. Still reeling from the loss of Kissen, young noble Inara and her little god of white lies, Skedi, have set out to discover more about the true nature of their bond. As the divide between gods and humans widens, Inara and Skedi will uncover secrets that could determine the fate of the war to come.

It’s early morning in the small Texas town of Edenberg when the body of 65-year-old Beverly Hoffman is discovered in the Guadalupe River. After elementary school teacher Nichole Miller discovers the woman's body, she makes two phone calls: first to the police, who call Beverly's death a slip and fall, and second to her best friend, journalist Jenny Martin, who knows foul play when she sees it. The two women enlist the help of Beverly’s daughter-in-law, Robin, who’s eager to expose the truth. Beverly had been beloved in the tight-knit community, having cofounded the wildly popular personal-development company Genetive, Inc., alongside her influential husband. But something sinister has been smoldering beneath the surface of their picturesque hometown. And Genetive is at the center of it all.

After decades as a real estate broker specializing in old religious properties, 52-year-old Claire is looking for something new. And then, on the eve of her 30th college reunion, a call comes from Rome. It’s from a struggling convent facing a precipitous end, and Claire isn’t so sure she can help out. But once in Rome, she finds a group of funny, fearless nuns in a gorgeous, if crumbling, villa. It leads her unexpectedly to wonder: maybe she should stay in Rome. In the convent. Forever. Her college roommate and business partner has thoughts. So does Claire’s daughter. And so does Marcus, a once-buzzy actor, who’s still as devastatingly handsome as he was when he first fell for Claire at 18. He’s come and gone from Claire’s life since college but reappears in Rome just as she’s about to decide what’s next.

A reluctant ex-spy with demons of her own, Elinor White finds herself facing down one of the most dangerous organized crime gangs in post-WWII London, ultimately exposing corruption from Scotland Yard to the highest levels of government. “Miss White," as Elinor is known, lives in a village in rural Kent, England, and to her fellow villagers seems something of an enigma. It will take Susie, the child of a young farmworker, Jim Mackie and his wife, Rose, to break through Miss White's icy demeanor. When the powerful Mackie crime family demands a return of their prodigal son for an important job, Elinor assumes the task of protecting her neighbors. Yet in her quest to uncover the truth behind the family’s pursuit of Jim, Elinor unwittingly sets out on a treacherous path.