Terse and bleak and low-key emotional... indelible.--Entertainment Weekly

THE CRIME WAS OVER IN A MINUTE -
THE CONSQUENCES LASTED A LIFETIME

Hospitalized after a liaison with another man's wife ends in violence, Paul Cole has just one goal: to rebuild his shattered life. But with his memory damaged, the police hounding him, and no way even to get home, Paul's facing steep odds - and a bleak fate if he fails...

This final, never-before-published novel by three-time Edgar Award winner Donald E. Westlake is a noir masterpiece, a dark and painful portrait of a man's struggle against merciless forces that threaten to strip him of his very identity.

Burke Devore is a middle-aged manager at a paper company when the cost-cutting ax falls, and he is laid off. Eighteen months later and still unemployed, he puts a new spin on his job search -- with agonizing care, Devore finds the seven men in the surrounding area who could take the job that rightfully should be his, and systematically kills them. Transforming himself from mild-mannered middle manager to ruthless murderer, he discovers skills ne never knew ne had -- and that come to him far too easily.

When his friend Andy Kelp has a plan, career criminal John Dortmunder knows that means trouble. Kelp's schemes, no matter how well intentioned, tend to spiral quickly out of control. But this one, Kelp swears, is airtight. He read it in a book!

The novel featured a kidnapping so brilliant there's no way it wouldn't work in real life. Though offended that his usual role as heist planner has been usurped, Dortmunder reluctantly agrees to the scheme.

Unfortunately, they kidnap a kid smarter than all of them put together. What's simple on the page turns complex and chaotic--and there's no reference guide to help Dortmunder through the madness he's signed on for.

[Westlake's] most durable character. Whatever can go wrong in the man's elaborate attempts at larceny invariably does, and in the most amusing and unexpected ways possible. --Los Angeles Times

Westlake has no peer in the realm of comic mystery novelists. --San Francisco Chronicle

John Dortmunder has been working an encyclopedia-selling scam while waiting for his next big heist. Unfortunately, his latest mark seems to be wise to the con, and he has to cut his sales pitch short and make a quick escape.

But opportunity awaits: Main Street bank has temporarily relocated to a mobile home. All Dortmunder has to do is get past seven security guards, put the bank-on-wheels in gear, and drive away. It's a simple plan, until it all goes wrong . . .

Perfect for fans of Carl Hiaasen or Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr series, the Dortmunder novels by New York Times-bestselling and multiple Edgar Award-winning author Donald E. Westlake are a rollicking treat that combine fast-moving suspense with laugh-out-loud wit. Bank Shot is a hilarious standout in the series (The New York Times).

WHAT'S HIDDEN BEHIND THE SILVER SCREEN?

In New York City, a movie critic has just murdered his girlfriend - well, one of his girlfriends (not to be confused with his wife). Will the unlikely crime-solving partnership he forms with the investigating police detective keep him from the film noir ending he deserves?

On the opposite coast, movie star Dawn Devayne - the hottest It Girl in Hollywood - gets a visit from a Navy sailor who says he knew her when she was just ordinary Estelle Anlic of San Diego. Now she's a big star who's put her past behind her. But secrets have a way of not staying buried...

These two short novels, one hilarious and one heartbreaking, are two of the best works Westlake ever wrote. And fittingly, both became movies - one starring Jack Ryan's Marie Josée Croze, and one starring Fargo's William H. Macy and Desperate Housewives' Felicity Huffman.

A book by this guy is cause for happiness - Stephen King

Winston, New York--a nice town, a quiet town. Sure, there's corruption, but the streets are clean, everything works, and everyone has what they need. It's a delicate balance, all held together by private investigator Tim Smith, The Operator. Until it isn't. That's when the killing starts.

A DIRTY DOZEN WITH A FRENCH CONNECTION

When four groups of international heist artists team up to pull off the theft of the century - stealing an entire castle, and the treasure hidden in its walls -what could possibly go wrong? Well, consider this: none of the master thieves speak each other's languages... and no one knows precisely where the loot is stashed... and every one of them wants to steal it all for him or herself. It's MWA Grand Master Donald E. Westlake at his wildest, a breathless slapstick chase through the streets of Paris only one step ahead of the law - and each other.

WINNER OF THE EDGAR ALLAN POE AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL

* mark n. An easy victim; a ready subject for the practices of a confidence man, thief, beggar, etc.; a sucker. - Dictionary of American Slang, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1960

That's the long definition of a mark. But there's a shorter one. It goes:

* mark n. Fred Fitch

What, you ask, is a Fred Fitch?

Fred Fitch is the man with the most extensive collection of fake receipts, phony bills of sale, and counterfeit sweepstakes tickets in the Western Hemisphere, and possibly in the entire world. When Barnum said, There's one born every minute, and two to take him, he didn't know about Fred Fitch; when Fred Fitch was born, there were two million to take him.

Every itinerant grifter, hypester, bunk artist, short-conner, amuser, shearer, short-changer, green-goods worker, pennyweighter, ring dropper, and yentzer to hit New York City considers his trip incomplete until he's also hit Fred Fitch. He's sort of the con-man's version of Go: Pass Fred Fitch, collect two hundred dollars, and move on.

What happens to Fred Fitch when his long-lost Uncle Matt dies and leaves Fred three hundred thousand dollars shouldn't happen to the ball in a pinball machine. Fred Fitch with three hundred thousand dollars is like a mouse with a sack of catnip: He's likely to attract the wrong kind of attention.

Add to this the fact that Uncle Matt was murdered, by person or persons unknown, and that someone now seems determined to murder Fred as well, mix in two daffily charming beauties of totally different types, and you have a perfect setup for the busiest fictional hero since the well-known one-armed paperhanger.

As Fred Fitch careers across the New York City landscape-and sometimes skyline-in his meetings with cops, con men, beautiful girls, and (maybe) murderers, he takes on some of the loonier aspects of a Dante without a Virgil. Take one part comedy and one part suspense and shake well--mostly with laughter.

Dortmunder's lucky ring is stolen in the bungled burglary of a nasty billionaire's Long Island mansion. Now, a series of raids are planned to get the ring back -- and get even.

Cab driver Chet Conway was hoping for a good tip from his latest fare, the sort he could spend. But what he got was a tip on a horse race. Which might have turned out okay, except that when he went to collect his winnings Chet found his bookie lying dead on the living room floor.

Chet knows he had nothing to do with it - but just try explaining that to the cops, to the two rival criminal gangs who each think Chet's working for the other, and to the dead man's beautiful sister, who has flown in from Las Vegas to avenge her brother's murder...

In early 1969, word reached London that the little Caribbean island of Anguilla had become a hotbed of rebellion and a haven for gangsters.

Such flagrant disregard for the rule of law in one of Britain's last remaining overseas outposts could not be allowed to stand.

Her Majesty's government acted decisively, despatching a force of three hundred paratroopers and commandos backed by warships, helicopters and fifty of the Metropolitan Police's finest.

But their mission soon descended into farce. On arrival, the troops were welcomed by several bemused islanders, many reporters from around the world, and a handful of entirely indifferent goats. But absolutely no resistance whatsoever.

Where, asked Downing Street, are the gangsters? What had happened to the violent insurgency? Could it all have been a terrible misunderstanding?

UNDER AN ENGLISH HEAVEN is the extraordinary and hilarious true story of what Time magazine described as 'Britain's Bay of Piglets'.

Tom and Joe have been walking the beat on the mean streets of the Big Apple longer than they can remember--or care to. They've been good cops, protecting the public and holding the line against crime and chaos in a city that has plenty of both. And all they have to show for it is a whole lot of nothing.

But now the partners have devised a scheme to make all their dreams come true: the perfect heist. Tom and Joe are going to rob the fat cats on Wall Street for millions and walk away clean. With the right connections and the proper execution, there's no way their plan can fail. And that's why they're so surprised when everything goes totally, hysterically wrong . . .

With Cops and Robbers, the three-time Edgar Award-winning author, named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, offers another very hot and successful novel with a siren shrill finale (Kirkus Reviews).

Praise for Donald E. Westlake
Westlake has no peer in the realm of comic mystery novelists. --San Francisco Chronicle

No writer can excel Donald E. Westlake. --Los Angeles Times

It isn't easy going to jail for a practical joke. Of course, this particular joke left 20 cars wrecked on the highway and two politicians' careers in tatters - so jail is where Harold K nt landed. Now he's just trying to keep a low profile in the Big House. He wants no part of his fellow inmates' plan to use an escape tunnel to rob two banks. But it's too late; he's in it up to his neck. And that neck may just wind up in a noose...

HELP I AM BEING HELD PRISONER is Donald E. Westlake at his funniest and his most ingenious, a rediscovered crime classic from the MWA Grand Master returning to stores for the first time in three decades.

Dortmunder's lucky ring is stolen in the bungled burglary of a nasty billionaire's Long Island mansion. Now, a series of raids are planned to get the ring back -- and get even.

A book by this guy is cause for happiness.
Stephen King

DONALD E. WESTLAKE

GOES OFF THE BEATEN PATH

In 1977, one of the world's finest crime novelists turned his pen to suspense of a very different sort - and the results have never been published, until now.

Fans of mystery fiction have often pondered whether it would be possible to write a suspense novel without any crime at all, and in CALL ME A CAB the masterful Donald E. Westlake answered the question in his inimitable style. You won't find any crime in these pages - but what you will find is a wonderful suspense story, about a New York City taxi driver hired to drive a beautiful woman all the way across America, from Manhattan to Los Angeles, where the biggest decision of her life is waiting to be made. From Pennsylvania to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Nevada on the way to California, the characters' odyssey takes them through uncharted territory - on the map and in their lives. It's Westlake at his witty, thought-provoking best, and it proves that a page-turner doesn't need to have a bomb set to go off at the end of it in order to keep sparks flying every step of the way.