Most Popular Books by Stuart M. Kaminsky

A Moscow cop is left out in the cold in this “impressive” Edgar Award winner for Best Mystery Novel (The Washington Post Book World). When forced to choose between the law and the party line, Police Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov has a disturbing tendency to fight for justice, and that has won him no friends at the Kremlin. Now his enemies in the KGB have arranged a transfer to the lowest rungs of Moscow law enforcement, a backwater department assigned to only the most hopeless cases, one of which is about to take Rostnikov deep into Siberia. A corrupt commissar has been stabbed through the eye with an icicle. A murder at this level should be a top priority, but Rostnikov gets the distinct impression that the powers-that-be would prefer this case go unsolved—and that Rostnikov not survive this Siberian winter. “As always, Kaminsky provides a colorful, tightly written mystery . . . filled with twists, countertwists, and a surprise ending that is plausible and clever.” —Chicago Tribune

Moscow''s top cops are on the case as multiple murders sweep the city. There''s Rostnikov, once a hero in the great war against Hitler, recently demoted after clashing with the KGB. There''s young Sasha, who looks more like a kid than a cop. And there''s Karpo, intelligent and determined, feared by criminals. Together, they would track down the killers -- but what if their search led into forbidden areas, into the Kremlin itself?

Goodness has nothing to do with it as a hard-luck private eye in 1940s Hollywood takes a case for legendary silver screen sex symbol Mae West. In the early days of talking pictures, the greatest sex symbol in Hollywood was the platinum-blonde bad girl Mae West. Naughty and gorgeous with a razor-sharp wit, West wrote her own material and controlled her own image—until the censors came in and outlawed the racy repartee that made her famous. By the forties, her star has faded and she’s banking everything on a scandalous memoir that she hopes will set the stage for a comeback. When the only copy is stolen, she calls in a favor from an old beau—the brother of wisecracking PI Toby Peters. When Mae West asks, “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?” you don’t say no. Peters arrives at a party at West’s house, where every guest is a man dressed as the woman herself—and one of them may be the thief who stole the manuscript. But before he can tear off the culprit’s wig, Peters finds that this is about more than theft. The crook wants to destroy Mae West, and he has murder on his mind. The star of Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky’s fun forties private eye series, “Peters is a good guy with a sense of humor, and every appearance he makes is a welcome one” (Booklist).

This “superb mystery-thriller” featuring a Moscow cop reminiscent of Arkady Renko delivers “riveting suspense” (Publishers Weekly). Porfiry Rostnikov and his wife Sarah have been in love for decades, since the end of World War II. Now the police inspector is by his wife’s bedside as she recuperates from a brain operation, when a massive naked man staggers into her hospital room, scared out of his mind, and tries to jump out the window. Rostnikov restrains the bearlike man, trying to calm him. As orderlies arrive to return the escapee to the mental ward, he cries out: “The devil came to devour the factory.” Rostnikov has far more important things on his mind than deciphering the ravings of a lunatic, first among them Sarah’s recovery. And of course crime has not stopped while he cares for his wife. Rebels are planting bombs, teenagers are plotting assassinations, and the KGB lurks in every shadow. But despite all these clamors, the man’s strange words continue to haunt Rostnikov—and compel him to investigate. With his Edgar Award–winning Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov mysteries, “Kaminsky has staked a claim to a piece of Russian turf . . . He captures the Russian scene and character in rich detail” (The Washington Post Book World).

A “chilling . . . stunning thriller” from the Edgar Award–winning author of Exercise in Terror (Booklist). It is 1957, and Jean Kaiser is pretending to sleep. When her parents go to bed, she’ll turn her radio on low, and groove to Elvis. But from her parents’ room, she hears something strange—her mother calling her name in a choking, terrified voice so chilling that Jean assumes it can’t be real, and wills herself to sleep. When she awakens in the morning, the nightmare has come true—a killer has slaughtered her parents in their bed. More than two decades later, Jean has done her best to move past her childhood trauma, parlaying a degree in psychology into a position as the host of a radio call-in show. One night, an anonymous caller shakes her to the core when he brings up details that remind her of her parents’ murder. When Jean and her daughter, Angie, get home, they find their pet parakeet crushed to death over Jean’s bed. Her parents’ killer has reemerged ready to tie up loose ends. The nightmare never ended, and now Jean and Angie must fight—or die.

This thrilling crime novel features “the best cop to come out of the Soviet Union since Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko” (San Francisco Examiner). After a lifetime in service to the Soviet Union, police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov may have found a way out. A high-profile homicide leads him to a cache of documents packed full of incriminating Kremlin gossip, which he uses as a bargaining chip to secure exit visas for himself and his Jewish wife. But just before the deal is concluded, Brezhnev’s death sends the nation into turmoil, and makes escape impossible. His career derailed, the veteran cop is reduced to investigating penny-ante murders—one of which may lead somewhere very big indeed. An elderly Jewish man is shot to death in his bathtub by killers who steal nothing but a worthless brass candlestick. And as the brutal Moscow summer wears on, the police find themselves the targets of car thieves and snipers. With the help of his two faithful lieutenants, Karpo and Tkach, Rostnikov needs to find a way to solve these cases and salvage his good name—if it doesn’t cost him his life. The Edgar Award–winning Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov series is one more reason why New York Times–bestselling author Tony Hillerman says, “Never miss a Kaminsky book.”

Moscow’s gone to the dogs in the “imaginative” Edgar Award–winning crime series about a conscientious Russian cop (The New York Times Book Review). With packs of stray wild canines roaming Moscow, it was inevitable that enterprising criminals would find a way to get rich. As dogfighting became big business, the Mafia got involved, and venues upgraded from alleys and garages to private arenas with padded seats. Police Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov has assigned Sasha Tkach and Elena Timofeyeva to go undercover and bust up a dogfighting ring. But the only ones more vicious than the dogs are the ones who profit from them. Speaking of fighting in the streets, an international drug cartel has chosen Moscow as its next port of call. One man stands in their way—a young Russian mobster whose brutality is matched only by his madness. In a gang war of this magnitude, no civilian is safe. It’s up to Rostnikov and the Office of Special Investigation to prevent a full-scale bloodbath. “As usual, Kaminsky manages to make the postlapsarian fracas strangely engrossing. His major characters are vivid and varied . . . Good storytelling in yet another of a distinguished series.” —Kirkus Reviews

A Moscow cop juggles cases of kidnapping, murder, and a missing Czarist-era document in a modern-day mystery with “never a dull moment” (Library Journal). In the waning days of the Russian Empire, the Czar inked a secret treaty with Japan that was stolen en route by one of the workmen on the Trans-Siberian Railway. More than a one hundred years later, the Soviet Union has gone the way of the Czardom, and police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is trying to find his way in the Russia of Vladimir Putin. A large amount of money is being sent from Odessa to Vladivostok to purchase a mysterious Czarist document, and Rostnikov’s superior believes it may be this long-lost treaty. Eastbound ticket in hand, Rostnikov sets out to investigate. Meanwhile, his subordinates in Moscow tackle a female Jack the Ripper and an anti-Semitic punk rocker whose mob connections may have gotten him kidnapped. It’s a brave new world in western Russia, but where Rostnikov is going, the landscape hasn’t changed in centuries.

A veteran Chicago cop who’s also a mensch, “Lieberman is endearing, wise in his crochets, weary with his wisdom” (The Washington Post Book World). Thirty-three years ago, Connie Gower pulled a gun in a synagogue. He had come to avenge his brother, a two-bit hoodlum who’d been killed in a shootout with a young cop named Abe Lieberman. But Lieberman outsmarted him, and put Gower in jail. After serving his time, for the next few decades Gower bounced around the Chicago underworld, making a name for himself as a second-rate mob enforcer. Fate is a funny thing. When Gower gets arrested in Yuma, Arizona, it’s an aged Abe Lieberman who goes to bring him home, leaving his longtime partner Bill Hanrahan back in the windy city to put up with the hot air of his racist substitute. Handcuffed to each other, Lieberman and his prisoner are about to board the plane when a geriatric janitor shuffles towards them and shoots Gower dead. Connie Gower was scum, but killing him is still murder, and Lieberman is determined to find out who ordered the hit—and why. Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky’s The Last Dark Place is “an entertaining crime novel that should send new readers in search of its predecessors” (Publishers Weekly).

“Kaminsky gets Russia right, and Cuba right, but best of all he gets his superb cop Rostnikov altogether right yet another time. Bravo!” —Ed McBain The Soviet Union is dead, and Russian society has been fractured into a thousand pieces. Through those cracks seeps the first serial killer in the country’s history, whose exploits send Moscow into a frenzy. As his colleagues hunt for the pipe-wielding maniac who’s killed forty women so far, police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov must depart for Havana to avoid an international incident. First, Rostnikov must confront his fear of flying—or more specifically, flying on Russian airplanes. Assuming he lands safely in Havana, this case will require the utmost diplomacy. A Russian politician is accused of murdering a young Cuban woman. Rostnikov’s superiors want things wrapped up cleanly and quickly. Unfortunately, their man in Havana is about to discover there is nothing simple about this murder. “In a style reminiscent of Martin Cruz Smith in Gorky Park, Kaminsky effectively transplants the police procedural to the fertile ground of ‘democratic’ Russia, where it blossoms anew . . . An excellent novel.” —Booklist

A Soviet cop stars in this novel of “sweaty-palmed suspense . . . Equal parts likeable characters and believable dangers” (The Washington Post Book World). The Moscow Film Festival is in town, and the elite artists of the East and West have convened at the legendary Metropole Hotel to drink, gossip, and flirt. But the party is about to come crashing down. Four men—one American, one Japanese, and two Russians—will all be dead by morning, poisoned. To keep the killings under wraps, the Kremlin hands the investigation over to the famously discreet police investigator Porfiry Rostnikov. A hard-boiled cop with more than three decades’ experience navigating the deadly jungle of the Soviet bureaucracy, Rostnikov is about to find himself both in the international spotlight and in the crosshairs of a terrorist, who is targeting foreigners to embarrass the Soviet state and will happily sacrifice any Russian who gets in the way. This Edgar Award–nominated follow-up to Death of a Dissident confirms Stuart Kaminsky’s status as “the Ed McBain of Mother Russia” (Kirkus Reviews).

After a very long absence, Forge is delighted to be bringing back one of Edgar award winning Stuart Kaminsky''s best loved characters, Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov. Rostnikov is a Russian bear of a man, an honest policeman in a very dishonest post-Soviet Union Russia. Known as "The Washtub," Rostnikov is one of the most engaging and relevant characters in crime fiction, a sharp and caring policeman as well as the perfect tour guide to a changing (that is, disintegrating) Russia. Surviving pogroms and politburos, he has solved crimes, mostly in spite of the powers that be that rule his world. In People Who Walk in Darkness, Rostnikov travels to Siberia to investigate a murder at a diamond mine, where he discovers an old secret...and an even older personal problem. His compatriots head to Kiev on a trail of smuggled diamonds and kidnapped guest workers...and what they discover leads them to a vast conspiracy that not only has international repercussions but threatens them on a very personal level. People Who Walk in Darkness is a fast-paced novel of modern Russia told by one of mystery''s finest storytellers. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

This taut thriller from the Edgar Award–winning author of When the Dark Man Calls “builds with great tension to a shocking conclusion” (Chicago Tribune). On a hot summer afternoon, Maureen sits with her two children in the family car, anxiously waiting for her husband David. There are two men lurking nearby—a couple of drunks who followed them here from the supermarket—and they make Maureen nervous. As David is walking back to the car, the drunks take a baseball bat to his skull. Maureen can do nothing but try to shield their little boy and girl as their father is murdered before their eyes. Eight years later, Maureen makes a living as an exercise instructor and all-around fitness freak, a rigorously disciplined lifestyle that has helped her family get past the horror of David’s murder. But one day, the killers call to taunt her, and say they are not finished tormenting her family. They are coming for Maureen, and no matter how fast she runs, she cannot escape . . .

With his Edgar Award–winning series about a Moscow cop, “Kaminsky’s a master of tone, maintaining the edgy excitement of suspense” (The Washington Post). In the 1960s, Russian children wanted to be cosmonauts like Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space. But the Soviet Union is history, and Gagarin’s glory is long gone. For the men and women aboard the decaying Mir space station, life is an unending series of near-disasters. During one such breakdown, cosmonaut Tsimion Vladovka asks ground control to contact Moscow police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov if anything happens to him. The cosmonaut returns to Earth safely, but a year later he goes missing and his former crew members start turning up dead. Vladovka was in possession of state secrets, so there’s also a potential security risk. He must be found, dead or alive. In the days of the USSR, no one could navigate the bureaucratic maze of the Kremlin like Rostnikov—but he’s never encountered anything like the labyrinth that is Star City, home of the Russian space program. Still, the veteran policeman is convinced: The answer to what happened to the cosmonaut on Earth lies in something that happened in space. Bringing to life historic shifts in contemporary Russian history, as seen through the eyes of one hard-boiled Moscow cop, “Kaminsky’s Rostnikov novels are among the best mysteries being written” (The San Diego Union-Tribune).

Abe Lieberman: a strong, sympathetic Chicago cop. His love for his family is matched by his quiet, zealous commitment to do what is right. Sometimes he''s faced with some uncomfortable ethical choices in order to see that justice—rather than the letter of the law—is meted out. Lou Fonesca: a world-weary guy who got in a car and just started driving after his wife died and wound up in front of a Dairy Queen in Sarasota. He now makes his way amid bail jumpers and lost wives, solving the little cases and trying to get by. What do these two men have in common? They are both created by one of America''s best loved mystery authors, Stuart Kaminsky. Putting two of his most beloved series into one volume gives readers an introduction into Kaminsky''s world. Not Quite Kosher and Bright Futures and are two full length novels that Kaminsky fans will cheer at. Double Shot introduces new readers to a national treasure in the mystery field. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A new Inspector Rostnikov title from America''s premier mystery writer, "A Whisper to the Living" continues the adventures of an honest policeman in a very dishonest post-Soviet Union.

A process server quits his job and flees town to escape the memories of his beloved late wife. When his car breaks down in Florida, Lew Fonesca settles there and is hired find a man''s missing wife.

A Chicago cop is out to avenge his nephew’s murder in this “masterly creation” that puts the Edgar Award–winning author in “the Parker/Paretsky league” (Chicago Tribune). When you’re a sixty-two-year-old cop with bad knees, most days feel pretty long. But the longest day of Abe Lieberman’s life begins just after midnight when he learns his nephew David has been shot dead and David’s pregnant wife has been gravely injured by two gunmen trying to rob the couple. Now Carol is barely clinging to life, and it’s up to Lieberman to track down the killers. With the help of his partner, the troubled alcoholic Bill Hanrahan, Lieberman will turn the city upside down to find the men who stole his nephew’s bright future. But as they step out into the howling Chicago wind, it’s clear both partners will need to fight to survive the day that started out terrible and is about to get a lot worse. This day in the life of two veteran Chicago cops is “beautifully rendered . . . Kaminsky is extraordinarily attuned to the domestic minutiae of his detectives’ lives” (The New York Times Book Review).

In this book, Kaminsky and other scholars use the sophisticated critical tools of contemporary literary and film analysis to examine popular American television genres. Critical approaches ranging from historical to anthropological to structural and psychoanalytic are clearly presented and then used to analyze a variety of shows including soap operas, police dramas, game shows, and news programs. Throughout the book the authors explore the ways in ehich the genres of popular television regularly viewed by millions are significant on a cultural and social level. These explorations reveal that popular television can be understood as a rich and complex art form. This book will provide the student with a detailed introduction to the art of television criticism.

Frankly, a killer doesn’t give a damn about offing Clark Gable—or Toby Peters—in this “fast-paced and colorful addition to a very successful series” (Publishers Weekly). On December 10, 1938, Atlanta burned again. In the back lot at David O. Selznick’s studio, sets from a dozen old pictures were pushed together and set ablaze to provide a backdrop for the climax of what Selznick promised to be the movie of the century: Gone with the Wind. Toby Peters, then just a studio security guard, was on hand to help keep the Confederate extras in line. When the fire was over, he found one of them dead, impaled on his own sword. Five years later, Peters scratches out a living as a private detective for Hollywood’s best known stars. Now it’s Clark Gable who needs his help. He’s been getting death threats. On the back of a cryptic poem, the sleuth finds a list of people on scene the night the extra died. Two are already dead, and the rest are next. Sure enough, one of those marked for death is Gable. The other is Toby Peters . . . “Nostalgic readers with a yen for the good old days . . . will find Kaminsky’s story entertaining, clever, eminently readable, and chock-full of snippets from Hollywood’s Golden Age.” —Booklist

This “enjoyable lark” is a road-trip mystery with an old Hollywood backdrop, starring PI Toby Peters and the great comic W. C. Fields (Library Journal). Under names like Otis J. Raisincluster, Quigley E. Sneersight, and Cormorant Beecham III, W. C. Fields squirreled away nearly a million dollars in banks across the country during his vaudeville days—before he became one of the silver screen’s most recognizable funnymen. But it’s no laughing matter when a burglar has the audacity to rob him blind, stealing his bankbooks and cleaning out his accounts. Steaming, the comedian hires Hollywood private investigator Toby Peters to track down the missing dough and protect what remains of his nest egg. On a cross-country road trip through small-town 1940s America, a frequently inebriated Fields and a frequently exasperated Peters encounter complications in the form of the Amish, John Barrymore, and the Ku Klux Klan. But can they catch their elusive quarry—Lester O. Hipnoodle? “Even on the printed page . . . Fields’ nasal rap seems to rise up and envelop you” in the Edgar Award–winning author’s “mesmerizing” comic mystery (Chicago Sun-Times).

Edgar Award–Winning Author: A downhearted detective deals with missing persons and murder in the “psychologically acute and fast-moving crime series” (Booklist). Lew Fonesca is a guy just trying to get along. When his wife died in a senseless auto wreck, he got up and left his old life—and when his car gave out in sunny Sarasota, Florida, he stayed. He takes small process-serving gigs and various odd jobs helping people out, and he tries, although maybe not as hard as he should, to fix the gaping hole in his heart. But for a man who just wants to ease through life without any complications, Lew has a pretty full plate. The shrink he’s been seeing for over a year wants him to finally dump all the grief he’s carrying around so he can have more than a half-life. And Sally, the pretty single mom and social worker who’s helped Lew in the past, wants to deepen their friendship. On top of that, a local minister asks him to find a town council member who’s gone missing just before a crucial vote that could ruin a struggling community, and a distraught father comes to Lew to track down his wife and two kids, who Lew suspects ran off with the man’s best friend. When people start showing up dead, Lew knows he’s in way over his head—and this time he may not be able make it all come out okay. . . . “There are three things we’ve come to expect from a Kaminsky story: superb plotting, real-world dialogue and character development. He doesn’t place a foot wrong in any of these departments in Midnight Pass.” —Sarasota Herald-Tribune “Good dark fun.” —Chicago Tribune

PI Toby Peters comes to the aid of Charlie Chaplin when the Little Tramp becomes a big target in this “ingenious” mystery from the Edgar Award winner (Kirkus Reviews). In 1943, Charlie Chaplin is far from the most popular man in America. His communist sympathies and romantic indiscretions with young women have enraged everyone from right-wing radicals and the Ku Klux Klan to furious fathers. But when a knife-wielding intruder breaks into his house one night, the maniac isn’t talking politics. He demands Chaplin stop making his latest black comedy about a man who murders wealthy women for their money—and specifically tells him to stay away from one Fiona Sullivan. Who? Chaplin turns to the shamus to the stars, Toby Peters, to keep him from harm and apprehend his nocturnal visitor. Peters’s lead on Fiona comes from a most unlikely source—his landlady, Mrs. Irene Plaut, knows the woman. Rallying his crew of diminutive Gunther Wherthman, wrestler Jeremy Butler, and dentist Sheldon Minck, Toby’s determined to catch the midnight madman before Chaplin is silenced forever. In the twenty-first book in his long-running series, the Edgar Award–winning author offers an “ingenious twist on the old serial killer chestnut, with the usual manic Peters ménage obbligato” (Kirkus Reviews).

"TERRIFIC . . . EXCEPTIONAL." --Detroit Free Press Crime in post-communist Russia has only gotten worse: rubles are scarce, blood, plentiful. In the eyes of Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov and his metropolitan police team, newfound democracy has unleashed the desperation that pushes people over the edge, and a trio of nasty cases confirms their worst fears. Deputy Inspector Sasha Tkach must find the murderous thieves who have terrorized an impoverished neighborhood. Policewoman Elena Timofeyeva joins the tax police in a raid on a house filled with priceless Czarist treasures--which disappear the following day without a trace. And relentless Inspector Emil Karpo will not rest until he finds the Mafia beasts who killed the only woman he has ever loved in a bloody drive-by shooting--and Karpo intends to punish them his way. . . . "Deeply absorbing, full of character nuance and irony . . . Kaminsky''s laconic tone and colorful prose bring [Moscow] and its denizens to life." --The Sunday Herald "Kaminsky excels each time he enters the harshness of post-Cold War Russia." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The final Toby Peters Hollywood whodunit from the Edgar Award–winning author is “a marvelous magic trick of a mystery” featuring Harry Blackstone (Booklist, starred review). When an anonymous rival demands that master illusionist Harry Blackstone reveal his secrets on stage or die, the magician hires Toby Peters and his brother, ex-cop Phil Pevsner, to run security for his show at the famous Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Of course, Peters doesn’t expect the job to include replacing a showgirl for Blackstone’s show-stopping sawing-a-woman-in-half trick after the saboteur has stolen the blade. Peters’s brief career in magic is only the first surprise as a blackmailing con man turns up shot in a dressing room backstage and one of Blackstone’s competitors ends up dead at a testimonial dinner. With “The Great Blackstone” now a murder suspect, the sleuth will need to pull a rabbit out of a hat to solve this mystery . . .

A forties Hollywood PI does not forsake Gary Cooper: “Like all of Toby [Peters’s] adventures, High Midnight is high entertainment” (The Cincinnati Post). When laconic leading man Gary Cooper needs a detective, he does the smart thing and hires Toby Peters, sleuth to the stars. But the man he finds in Peters’s office isn’t the famously discreet private eye—it’s the dentist who shares his office, who’s always had a fantasy of playing gumshoe, and happily agrees to take care of Cooper’s blackmail problem. Impersonating Peters, the dentist bungles the case disastrously, and setting it right will be like pulling teeth. Cooper is in trouble with a Chicago gangster named Lombardi, who’s come to Los Angeles intending to set himself up as the cold cuts king of California. Thanks to the dentist’s meddling, he wants the actor dead. When Cooper hightails it with his old drinking buddy Ernest Hemingway, it’s up to Peters to avoid a showdown. High Midnight shows once again how Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky “has a delightfully original mind enriching—rather than just borrowing from—an old literary form” (Los Angeles Times).

In the Edgar Award–winning crime series featuring a veteran Moscow cop, “Kaminsky evokes Russian life like a born Muscovite” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). During the widespread corruption of the Yeltsin era, violent crime has risen in Moscow by 200 to 300 percent, keeping Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov and his team at the Office of Special Investigation busier than ever. So it’s fortunate that having his bad leg amputated six months ago and replaced by a prosthetic limb has not slowed down the veteran Moscow cop one bit. Now he’s investigating a hate-fueled crime wave, as a bloodthirsty gunman wages a campaign to systematically exterminate the city’s Jews. At the same time, a knife-wielding rapist is running rampant. Despite the urgent demand to end the mayhem, the inspector finds himself most intrigued by a centuries-old mystery concerning a murdered baroness and a priceless golden wolf statue that has been missing since 1862. Stuart Kaminsky’s long-running, Edgar Award–winning series has seen his intensely moral Moscow police inspector through the turbulence of several regimes, and always “Kaminsky takes care not to rob his beleaguered cops of their human core” (The New York Times).

The stakes are life and death when Bela Lugosi is threatened in this “affectionate parody of the hard-boiled private-eye” genre (The New York Times). 1942: In the basement of a crumbling Los Angeles movie palace, five vampires crowd around Bela Lugosi. They should not frighten the fading horror icon, who found worldwide fame as Dracula, for these are only wannabes—diehard fans who get their kicks dressing up as bloodsuckers. But Lugosi is terrified, because he knows that one of these crackpots has been making threats against his life. Their fangs may be plastic, but their lethal intentions are all too real. For protection, Lugosi hires Hollywood private eye Toby Peters, who’s splitting his time between this case and a job for his old employers: the Warner brothers. A Hollywood murder has been linked to one of the studio’s star screenwriters: the brilliant novelist and violent drunk, William Faulkner. To his horror, Peters finds a connection between the two cases. To get Faulkner off the hook, he’ll have to find out who wants to close the coffin lid on Dracula. With “shades of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett” Edgar Award–winning author Stuart Kaminsky’s 1940s Hollywood PI is once again cracking wise and saving celebrities from psychos (The San Diego Union-Tribune).

It doesn’t take a genius to see Albert Einstein’s life is in danger, but it will take a hard-headed Hollywood PI to save him. It’s all relative. It’s April 1942, the world is at war, and LA private detective Toby Peters has been summoned to Princeton, New Jersey, to deal with a situation of the utmost gravity—the world’s greatest physicist is being threatened. Blackmailers claim to have evidence that Albert Einstein has been passing nuclear secrets to Russia, and Nazi assassins want to do away with one of the most famous opponents of Hitler’s rule. Sounds like a formula for disaster. Peters is used to dealing with Hollywood’s elite—not exactly a brain trust—but the East Coast is a new beat for him. Soon he’s swept up in some serious Manhattan mayhem, trying to keep Einstein from harm but also trying to stay alive himself. Incorporating cameos from Paul Robeson and Frank Sinatra, Edgar Award–winning author Stuart M. Kaminsky “has such a good time writing, and he so loves the period, that the reader is swept along willy-nilly” (TheNew York Times Book Review).

Four years ago Lew Fonesca''s wife was struck and killed in a hit-and-run within sight of their apartment. He fled Chicago, driving mindlessly until his car gave up the ghost in Sarasota, FL. Working from a cheap office behind the Dairy Queen on Highway 301, he makes a threadbare living as a process server and savors his clinical depression like a fine wine. Life''s a sneaky mistress, though, and has a way of suckering you into caring. Lew''s found that he''s really good at helping people get out of bad situations. That he matters. And Lew''s therapist, who alternately acts as his conscience and his sparring partner, tells him that unless he''s willing to leave the planet, it''s about time that he goes back to Chicago and closes the door to the past so that he can finally get on with the rest of his life. Lew hates to admit it, but he''s beginning to see her point. So Lew returns to his home town, to friends and family...and to a grief that threatens to engulf him. He''s resolved to dig until he finds out who killed his wife. In doing so, he''ll uncover both sweet and painful memories of his past. He''ll also confront a murderer who''ll not hesitate to kill again to make sure hidden secrets stay buried. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

“Never miss a Kaminsky book, and be especially sure not to miss Death of a Russian Priest.” —Tony Hillerman, New York Times–bestselling author In the darkest hours of communist rule, Father Merhum fought to protect the sanctity of the Orthodox Church. Now the Soviet Union is gone, but the bureaucracy survives, and within it lurk men who would do anything to undermine the fragile new Russian democracy. Father Merhum is on his way to Moscow to denounce those traitors when he is struck with an ax and killed. As police inspectors Porfiry Rostnikov and Emil Karpo dig into the past of this celebrated village priest, they uncover strange church secrets and a conspiracy to carry the vile corruption of the former regime on into the twenty-first century. But if they don’t watch their steps, someone may need to say the last rites for them. With the Edgar Award–winning Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov series, “Stuart Kaminsky evokes Russian life like a born Muscovite. . . . Don’t miss this one. It’s even better than his Edgar-winning A Cold Red Sunrise.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “Kaminsky moves closer to becoming the Ed McBain of Mother Russia . . . The usual strengths of the series—ingenious plotting, solid police procedure, and Rostnikov’s shrewdly perceptive presence—are joined here by casually effective glimpses of the old Soviet Union in chancy transition. It all adds up to Rostnikov’s best outing since A Cold Red Sunrise.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Edgar winner Kaminsky offers plenty of nostalgic fun” as Hollywood PI Toby Peters teams up with Cary Grant in this World War II–era spy romp (Publishers Weekly). Since the start of World War II, Cary Grant has been working undercover in Hollywood as a spy for the British crown. When a ring of Nazi sympathizers gets wise, they start blackmailing the debonair leading man. Now Grant has hired Toby Peters to handle the payoff. But when the blackmailer is killed, the rumpled detective and the suave movie star are thrust into a complex plot of murder, money, and Nazi spies, leading to a literal cliffhanger . . . “For anyone with a taste for old Hollywood B-movie mysteries, Edgar winner Kaminsky offers plenty of nostalgic fun in his 22nd book to feature good-natured, unprepossessing sleuth Toby Peters . . . Toby and the acrobatic Grant at his lithe best make an appealing team. The tone is light, the pace brisk, the tongue firmly in cheek.” —Publishers Weekly

Murder intrudes on a Moscow cop’s vacation: “Kaminsky’s Rostnikov novels are among the best mysteries being written” (The San Diego Union-Tribune). Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is finding spring in Yalta to be quite lovely. Accompanying his wife, Sarah, as she gets much needed rest and recuperation after her surgery, reading American crime novels, and gazing at the Black Sea, the Moscow cop is reasonably content—even if his superiors did insist that he take this vacation. But his time off is destined to be short-lived. A former colleague with emphysema has come south to improve his health. Instead Georgi Vasilievich has dropped dead from what appears to be heart failure. The inspector is not so sure. The local officials want to sweep the incident under the rug. But it turns out Vasilievich was investigating a high-level military conspiracy. Rostnikov takes a look at his files, putting him on the trail of a gang of hardliners who refuse to give up the Soviet dream—and who will go to murderous lengths to ensure that perestroika never comes to pass. With his Edgar Award–winning Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov series, “Kaminsky takes care not to rob his beleaguered cops of their human core—a courtesy he also extends to Moscow, which comes across as a character in its own right: rough and dangerous and somehow tragic” (The New York Times).

In this mystery introducing a hard-boiled Soviet police inspector, “Kaminsky gets Russia right” (Ed McBain). Aleksander Granovsky has dedicated his life to exposing the brutality of the Russian penal system. In two days he will be tried for the crime of smuggling essays to the West. It is a show trial, and there is no doubt he will be convicted and executed, yet before he dies, he intends to tell the truth one more time. But this is Moscow, where death is never heroic. While writing his final speech in his government flat, Granovsky is surprised by an assassin, who pierces his heart with the point of a rusty scythe. The case is given to Porfiry Rostnikov, a veteran Moscow police inspector with a knack for navigating the labyrinths of Soviet bureaucracy. A bruising bear of a man, whose love of weightlifting and American pizza has left him as squat and powerful as a .38 bullet, Rostnikov may be the toughest cop in Moscow. This winter, his challenge is not just to find the killer, but to survive the investigation, as every question he asks takes him closer to exposing the dark heart of the KGB. A Cold War–era hero, Porfiry Rostnikov is “quite simply the best cop to come out of the Soviet Union since Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko in Gorky Park.” (San Francisco Examiner)

Two Chicago cops need to defuse an explosive situation in this “tightly plotted” police procedural (Chicago Tribune). After killing his wife and her lover, an unhinged and heavily armed Chicago cop named Bernie Shepard barricades himself at the top of a high-rise apartment building and sends a message to the police: meet his demands, or he’ll detonate enough explosives to blow the whole block sky high. If it’s a choice between chewing the fat at his brother Maish’s deli or hunting down armed lunatics, world-weary veteran cop Abe Lieberman knows where he stands. But no one’s giving him a choice. It’s up to Lieberman and his longtime partner, Bill Hanrahan—aka the Rabbi and Father Murphy—to play Bernie’s game, betting their lives on a madman’s whim. With a crazed cop holding “enough explosives to blow the North Side of Chicago to kingdom come . . . Kaminsky mines plenty of suspense” (The New York Times Book Review).

The second original novel based on the hit CBS series. A family is murdered inside their home in a quiet neighborhood in Queens. In Brooklyn, an Orthodox Jew is found dead in his synagogue. Two different crimes with one commonality: CSI investigators who won''t give up. Original.