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Dr. Alexander Gregory, a psychologist recovering from the collapse of a high-profile criminal profiling unit, wants nothing more than a quiet life to finally sit and think things through. But his rare ability to understand the minds of violent offenders makes him hard to ignore --- especially when a small town is shaken by a brutal murder. Reluctantly pulled into the case, Gregory finds himself confronting not only a cunning predator, but the darker corners of his own mind.
Four decades ago, Joyce Carol Oates penned her first novel of psychological suspense under the name “Rosamond Smith.” In the Smith books, Oates explored themes of betrayal and deception, lust and murder, through stories involving twins, doubles and hidden second identities. Hard Case Crime is proud to bring these extraordinary works of crime fiction back into print in definitive double editions, each pairing two complete novels and two never-before-collected Oates short stories, all linked thematically, to weave a sinister web filled with dark reflections. In this volume, a female serial killer seeks refuge in her twin sister’s home in STARR BRIGHT WILL BE WITH YOU SOON, while a male serial killer murders for the woman he craves in SOUL/MATE --- and the echoes continue in the rare short stories “The Murderess” and “An Unsolved Crime.”
1552, Paris: The printing press is quickly spreading new ideas across Europe, threatening the power of church and state and unleashing a wave of book burning and heretic hunting. When frightened ex-nun Lysbette Angiers arrives at Charlotte Guillard’s famous printing shop with her manuscript, neither woman knows just how far the powerful elite will go to prevent the spread of Lysbette’s audacious ideas. 1952, New York: Milly Bennett is a lonely housewife struggling to find her way in her new neighborhood amidst the paranoid clamors of McCarthy’s America. She finds her life taking an unexpected turn when a relic from her past presents her with a 400-year-old manuscript to decipher, pulling her into a vortex of danger that threatens to shatter her world. Milly, Lysbette and Charlotte each face a reality where the spread of ideas are feared and every effort is made to suppress them.
Dan Simon's debut novel takes place in Ashland, New Hampshire, a former mill town in the lakes region, and is told in six voices. Among them are Carolyn, a 20-year-old writer at a turning point in her life; Gordon, who arrives in Ashland in the twilight of his years; Andy, a local boy; Geoff, Carolyn's writing teacher at Plymouth State; and Edith, Gordon's wife, who is inadvertently Carolyn's spiritual guide and friend. Then there is Jennie, Carolyn's aunt, who seems to offer her a model for how to live. But things aren't always what they seem, and Carolyn must discover her own rules and make her own way.
Hemisphere Airlines Flight 777 --- the most advanced jetliner ever built --- disappears without a trace over the North Pole. Crippled by sabotage, it crash-lands on the ice, stranding the surviving passengers in a wasteland of frigid cold and chaos. The real storm, however, is still coming. Hidden inside the wreckage is the prototype for a revolutionary piece of technology that could upend the balance of world power. Now Washington, Moscow and Beijing are racing to be the first on scene to retrieve it --- at any cost. Trapped in the middle of the world’s most dangerous flashpoint are CIA operative Kasey Sheridan and former fighter pilot turned first officer Brett Sharpe. Hunted by enemy forces, they must spirit both the device and its creator across the ice to safety --- before rival superpowers turn the Arctic into a war zone.
In the summer of 1967, as the old Hollywood studio system was dying, an intense, uncompromising young film school graduate named George Lucas walked onto the Warner Bros. backlot for his first day working as an assistant to another up-and-coming, largely unknown filmmaker, Francis Ford Coppola. At the exact same time, across town on the Universal Studios lot, a film-obsessed 20-year-old, Steven Spielberg, longed to break free from his apprenticeship for the struggling studio and become a film director in his own right. Within a year, the three men would become friends. THE LAST KINGS OF HOLLYWOOD tells the thrilling, dramatic inside story of how the three filmmakers rivalled and supported each other, fell out and reconciled, and struggled to reinvent popular American cinema.
The Flynn family is coming undone. Catherine and Bud's open marriage has reached its breaking point as their daughters spiral in their own chaotic orbits: Abigail, the eldest, is dating a man in his 20s nicknamed War Crime Wes; Louise, the middle child, maintains a secret correspondence with an online terrorist; the brilliant youngest, Harper, is being sent to wilderness reform camp due to her insistence that someone --- or something --- is monitoring the town’s citizens. Casting a shadow across their lives, and their small coastal town, is Paul Alabaster, a billionaire shipping magnate. Rumors of corruption circulate, but no one dares to dig too deep. No one except Harper, whose obsession with a mysterious shipping container sends the family hurtling into a criminal conspiracy --- one that may just bring them closer together.
Santa Cruz is one of the country’s surf meccas and a favored getaway of the Silicon Valley elite. For decades, marijuana has been cultivated, consumed and trafficked in these mountains. And it’s where Silicon Valley entrepreneur Tushar Atre was found brutally murdered. Atre was the leader among a clutch of tech execs and venture capitalists with a voracious appetite for risk, work and money. When he met Rachael Lynch, a maverick cannabis grower and mover of product, he had a vision of how their lives could come together in business and in love. Atre sought to disrupt the newly legal cannabis trade by funding a start-up with black-market capital. This illegal pursuit would entangle him with an array of colorful and dangerous characters, many of whom had compelling reason to want him dead.
Reeling from tragedy, a former jazz musician turned schoolteacher named Adi answers a job listing advertising a chance to save the world. The assignment: to spend five weeks alone on the tiny, isolated Pacific Island of Santa Flora righting an ecological balance that has gone severely out of whack, with the aim of preserving countless bird and plant species from certain extinction. What follows, however, is anything but balanced. The threats to the once-Edenic island, Adi soon learns, aren’t exactly what his employers said they were --- and, complicating things further, he discovers he’s not alone on the island. Fearful for his own life, and for the fate of the island's, Adi spends his sun-drenched days rooting out the true threat to Santa Flora, and, by extension, to the world it occupies --- and the desperate steps he must take to eradicate it.
Twelve-year-old Zach is cautiously optimistic. His father Bram, whose business is in dire need of cash, has put together a father-son backcountry ski weekend to wine and dine his biggest investors. Schooled in outdoor survival by his mother, Zach is eager to prove himself to the hypercritical Bram. Maybe if Zach shows how useful he is, he can earn his father’s love. But Zach knows to be on high alert around Bram, and he sees the way the group ignores the increasingly threatening conditions. For the first time in his beloved mountains, he is faced with the unknown, convinced that something watches their cabin from the treeline. Something that leaves behind strange tracks and picks its prey clean. As the adults recklessly test the limits of the outdoors, Zach worries he might be in even more danger than he realized.
