Adult

In Jenny Allen's debut essay collection, the longtime humorist and performer declares no subject too sacred, no boundary impassable. One moment she’s flirting shamelessly --- and unsuccessfully --- with a younger man at a wedding; the next she’s stumbling upon X-rated images on her daughter’s computer. She ponders the connection between her ex-husband’s questions about the location of their silverware, and the divorce that came a year later. While undergoing chemotherapy, she experiments with being a “wig person.” And she considers those perplexing questions that we never pause to ask: Why do people say “It is what it is”? What’s the point of fat-free half-and-half ? And haven’t we heard enough about memes?

In 1949, Frank Weeks of the newly formed CIA was exposed as a Communist spy and fled the country to vanish behind the Iron Curtain. Now, 12 years later, he has written his memoirs and has asked his brother Simon, a publisher, to come to Moscow to edit the manuscript. At first Frank is still Frank --- the same charm, the same jokes, the same bond of affection that transcends ideology. Then Simon begins to glimpse another Frank, still capable of treachery, still actively working for “the service.” He finds himself dragged into the middle of Frank’s new scheme, caught between the KGB and the CIA in a fatal cat and mouse game that only one of the brothers is likely to survive.

Military intelligence operator Tristan Lyons approaches Melisande Stokes, an expert in linguistics and languages, about translating some very old documents, which, if authentic, are earth-shattering. They prove that magic actually existed and was practiced for centuries. But the arrival of the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment weakened its power and endangered its practitioners. And so the Department of Diachronic Operations --- D.O.D.O. --- gets cracking on its real mission: to develop a device that can bring magic back, and send Diachronic Operatives back in time to keep it alive…and meddle with a little history at the same time.

In the vein of Richard Russo and Tom Perrotta, SMALL HOURS is a gripping and suspenseful debut novel --- told hour-by-hour over the course of a single day --- in which a husband and wife try to outrun long-buried secrets, sending their lives spiraling into chaos.

Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In HUNGER, she explores her past --- including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life --- and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself.

Two decades ago, the producers of the James Bond movies hired legendary crime novelist Donald E. Westlake to come up with a story for the next Bond film. The plot Westlake dreamed up --- about a Western businessman seeking revenge after being kicked out of Hong Kong when the island was returned to Chinese rule --- had all the elements of a classic Bond adventure, but political concerns kept it from being made. Never one to let a good story go to waste, Westlake instead wrote an original novel based on the premise --- a novel he never published while he was alive. Now, nearly a decade after Westlake’s death, Hard Case Crime is proud to give that novel its first publication ever.

In January 2015, Ford unveiled a new car at the Detroit auto show and the automotive world lost its collective mind. This wasn’t some new Explorer or Focus. Onto the stage rolled a supercar, a carbon-fiber GT powered by a mid-mounted six-cylinder Ecoboost engine that churned out over 600 horsepower. It was sexy and jaw-dropping, but more than that, it was historic, a callback to the legendary Ford GT40 Mark IIs that stuck it to Ferrari and finished 1-2-3 at Le Mans in 1966. Detroit was back, and Ford was going back to Le Mans. Journalist Matthew DeBord has been covering the auto industry for years, and in RETURN TO GLORY he tells the story of Ford’s revival as a company as exemplified by the new GT.

Anna Fox lives alone --- a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times...and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, mother and their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble --- and its shocking secrets are laid bare. What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW, no one --- and nothing --- is what it seems.

As an old house is demolished in a gentrifying section of London, a workman discovers a tiny skeleton, buried for years. For journalist Kate Waters, it’s a story that deserves attention. She cobbles together a piece for her newspaper, but at a loss for answers, she can only pose a question: Who is the Building Site Baby? As Kate investigates, she unearths connections to a crime that rocked the city decades earlier: A newborn baby was stolen from the maternity ward in a local hospital and was never found. Her heartbroken parents were left devastated by the loss. But there is more to the story, and Kate is drawn --- house by house --- into the pasts of the people who once lived in this neighborhood that has given up its greatest mystery.

Ronni Sunshine left London for Hollywood to become a beautiful, charismatic star of the silver screen. But at home, she was a narcissistic, disinterested mother who alienated her three daughters. Still, when Ronni discovers she has a serious illness, she calls her now-adult girls home to fulfill her final wishes. And though Nell, Meredith and Lizzy have never been close, their mother’s illness draws them together to confront the old jealousies and secret fears that have threatened to tear these sisters apart. As they face the loss of their mother, they will discover if blood might be thicker than water after all.