New Releases by Thomas Perry

"Thomas Perry just keeps getting better," said Tony Hillerman, about Sleeping Dogs--and in this superb new novel by one of America''s best thriller writers, Jane Whitefield takes on the mafia, and its money. Jane Whitefield, the fearless "guide" who helps people in trouble disappear, make victims vanish,has just begun her quiet new life as Mrs. Carey McKinnon, when she is called upon again, to face her toughest opponents yet. Jane must try to save a young girl fleeing a deadly mafioso. Yet the deceptively simple task of hiding a girl propels Jane into the center of horrific events, and pairs her with Bernie the Elephant, the mafia''s man with the money. Bernie has a photographic memory, and in order to undo an evil that has been growing for half a century,he and Jane engineer the biggest theft of all time, stealing billions from hidden mafia accounts and donating the money to charity. Heart-stopping pace, fine writing, and mesmerizing characters combine in Blood Money to make it the best novel yet by the writer called "one of America''s finest storytellers,"(San Francisco Examiner).

He came to England to rest. He calls himself Michael Shaeffer, says he''s a retired American businessman. He goes to the races, dates a kinky aristocrat, and sleeps with dozens of weapons. Ten years ago it was different. Then, he was the Butcher''s Boy, the highly skilled mob hit man who pulled a slaughter job on some double-crossing clients and started a mob war. Ever since, there''s been a price on his head. Now, after a decade, they''ve found him. The Butcher''s Boy escapes back to the States with more reasons to kill. Until the odds turn terrifyingly against him . . . until the Mafia, the cops, the FBI, and the damn Justice Department want his hide . . . until he''s locked into a cross-country odyssey of fear and death that could tear his world to pieces . . . "Exciting . . . Suspenseful . . . A thriller''s job is to make you turn the pages until the story''s done and your eyes hurt and the clock says 3 a.m. . . . I wouldn''t try to grab this one away from somebody only half-way through. No telling what might happen." -- Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World

“An amazingly entertaining crime novel” from the New York Times bestselling author of the Butcher’s Boy thrillers (Chicago Sun-Times, Favorite Books of the Year). One of Stephen King’s “Must-Reads for Summer” (Entertainment Weekly) A New York Times Notable Crime Book An aging but formidable strip club owner, Claudiu “Manco” Kapak, has been robbed by a masked gunman as he placed his cash receipts in a bank’s night-deposit box. Enraged, he sends his half-dozen security men out to find a suspect who is spending lots of cash and is new enough to Los Angeles not to know he was robbing a gangster. Their search leads them to Joe Carver, an innocent but hardly defenseless newcomer who evades capture and sets out to make Kapak wish he’d chosen someone else. Meanwhile, the real culprit, Jefferson Davis Falkins, and his new girlfriend Carrie seem to believe they’ve found a whole new profession: robbing Manco Kapak. Lieutenant Nick Slosser, the police detective in charge of the puzzling and increasingly violent case, has his own troubles, including worries about how he’s going to afford to send the oldest child of each of his two bigamous marriages to college without making their mothers suspicious. As this odd series of difficulties explodes into a triple killing, Carver finds himself in the middle of a brewing gang war over Kapak’s little empire, while Falkins and Carrie journey into territory more strange and violent than either had imagined. “Perry is at his wicked best in Strip.”—The New York Times “[A] rambunctiously entertaining L.A. crime novel . . . escapist reading at its best.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The New York Times bestselling author “blend[s] the frenetic pacing of a top-notch thriller with Native American mysticism” in Jane Whitefield’s return (Publishers Weekly). “The world’s foremost specialist in hiding fugitives from their pursuers is back with a vengeance” in this “high-potency thriller” (Kirkus Reviews). For more than a decade, Jane Whitefield practiced her unusual profession: “I’m a guide . . . I show people how to go from places where somebody is trying to kill them to other places where nobody is.” Then she promised her husband she would never work again, and settled in to live a happy, quiet life as Jane McKinnon, the wife of a surgeon in Amherst, New York. But when a bomb goes off in the middle of a hospital fundraiser, Jane finds herself face to face with the cause of the explosion: a young pregnant girl who has been tracked across the country by a team of guns-for-hire. That night, regardless of what she wants or the vow she’s made to her husband, Jane must come back to transform one more victim into a runner. Her quest for safety sets in motion a mission that may be as much of a rescue operation as it is a chance for revenge. “Readers who have been clamoring for the return of Thomas Perry’s most popular heroine can stop waiting. After a nine-year absence, Jane Whitefield is back.”—The Associated Press “A first-class thriller and the welcome return of an outstanding series.”—Booklist (starred review)

A dead detective leaves his wife flat broke and in mortal danger in this crime thriller by the New York Times–bestselling author of Silence. When Los Angeles P.I. Phil Kramer is shot dead on a deserted suburban street, his wife, Emily, is left with an emptied bank account and a lot of questions. How could Phil leave her penniless? What was he going to do with the money? And, most of all, who was this man she had married? Meanwhile, professional hit man Jerry Hobart has some questions of his own. It’s none of his business why he was hired to kill Phil Kramer. But now that he’s been ordered to take out Kramer’s widow, he senses a deeper secret at work—and maybe a bigger payoff from Ted Forrest, the mysterious wealthy man behind the hit.

“A challenging and satisfying thriller . . . [with] many surprising twists.”—The New York Times Jane Whitefield is a Native American guide who leads people out of the wilderness—not the tree-filled variety but the kind created by enemies who want you dead. She is in the one-woman business of helping the desperate disappear. Thanks to her membership in the Wolf Clan of the Seneca tribe, she can fool any pursuer, cover any trail, and then provide her clients with new identities, complete with authentic paperwork. Jane knows all the tricks, ancient and modern; in fact, she has invented several of them herself. So she is only mildly surprised to find an intruder waiting for her when she returns home one day. An ex-cop suspected of embezzling, John Felker wants Jane to do for him what she did for his buddy Harry Kemple: make him vanish. But as Jane opens a door out of the world for Felker, she walks into a trap that will take all her heritage and cunning to escape. . . . Praise for Vanishing Act “Thomas Perry keeps pulling fresh ideas and original characters out of thin air. The strong-willed heroine he introduces in Vanishing Act rates as one of his most singular creations.”—The New York Times Book Review “One thriller that must be read. . . . Perry has created his most complex and compelling protagonist.”—San Francisco Examiner

Thomas Perry’s novels of suspense have been celebrated for their “dazzling ingenuity” (The New York Times Book Review) and for writing that is “as sharp as a sushi knife” (Los Angeles Times). By turns horrifying and erotic, Perry’s new thriller takes us on a dangerous cat-and-mouse game that pits two women against each other: a beautiful serial killer and the detective who is determined to stop her. When the cousin of Los Angeles underworld figure Hugo Poole is found shot to death in his Portland, Oregon, home, police find nothing at the scene of the crime except several long strands of blond hair hinting that a second victim may have been involved. Hotel security tapes from the victim’s last vacation reveal an out-of-focus picture of a young blond woman entering and leaving his room. Could she also be a murder victim? Portland homicide detective Catherine Hobbes is determined to solve the case and locate the missing blonde, but her feelings, and the investigation, are complicated when Hugo hires private detective Joe Pitt to perform a parallel investigation. As the Joe and Catherine form an uneasy alliance, the murder count rises–and both realize that the pretty young woman in the security tapes is not a victim at all. As Catherine follows the evidence, she finds herself in a deadly contest with an unpredictable adversary capable of changing her appearance and identity at will. Catherine must use everything she knows, as a homicide detective and as a woman, to stop a murderer who kills on impulse and with ease, and who becomes more efficient and elusive with each crime.

All Winners titles focus on high-interest science content and provide both fact and fiction. This book focuses on animals and how they adapt to their environment.Contents:Deserts (Text Type: Feature Article)Multimedia InformationEncyclopedia of Desert Animals (Text Type: Encyclopedia)Spin-E-Fex in the City (Text Type: Comic Strip)How to Build a Desert Ecosystem (Text Type: Procedure)Quick 8 QuizLearn MoreGlossaryIndex

“Perry is the best suspense writer in the business. . . . Pursuit is relentless, filled with twists and turns, that rare page-turner that keeps one reading late into the night to finish.” –The Boston Globe Thirteen bodies are found in a Louisville restaurant. When the police can find no suspect or motive, a victim’s family seeks the services of the enigmatic and solitary specialist Roy Prescott, known for his ability to find people who don’t want to be found. Working outside the law and willing to do what the police can’t, Prescott hunts the killer, an elusive adversary who is as smart, as methodical, as deadly as he is. The only way to conduct this pursuit is to goad the killer into believing that he must kill Roy Prescott. It is a contest fought from one end of the country to the other, and both men understand that when it’s over, only one of them will be alive.

The much-loved comic thriller by the author of the Edgar Award–winning The Butcher’s Boy is now, by popular demand, back in print, featuring a new Introduction by bestselling author Carl Hiaasen. When Leroy “Chinese” Gordon breaks into a professor’s lab at the University of Los Angeles, he’s after some pharmaceutical cocaine, worth plenty of money. Instead, he finds the papers the professor has compiled for the CIA, which include a blueprint for throwing a large city into chaos. But how is the CIA to be persuaded to pay a suitable ransom, unless of course someone actually uses the plan to throw a large city into chaos—Los Angeles, for instance? Assigned to cope with the crisis and restore the peace, veteran agent Ben Porterfield steps onto the scene to remind us that the CIA’s middle name is, after all, Intelligence. Enlivening the mix are Gordon’s beautiful girlfriend, Margaret, his temperamental cat, Dr. Henry Metzger, and Metzger’s friend, an enormous half-wild dog with huge teeth.

When gruff and intimidating security consultant Max Stillman appears without warning in the San Francisco office of McClaren Life and Casualty and begins asking questions and scrutinizing files, the employees can''t help wondering just which of them he''s been hired to investigate. The first to find out is young data analyst John Walker when Stillman''s mysterious investigation leads out of town, he announces he''s taking Walker with him. Walker has been picked because a colleague with whom he once had a love affair has disappeared after paying a very large death benefit to an impostor. Since Walker knew her intimately, Stillman believes he''s likely to be useful in finding and convicting her. But because he knows her so well, Walker is convinced that she is innocent, and that he must join the pursuit so that he can defend her. These conflicting purposes unite Walker and Stillman in an urgent search that propels them across the country and into unexpected dangers. The trail ends in a deceptively peaceful corner of the New Hampshire countryside, where they find themselves trapped by a deadly conspiracy that''s much bigger, older, and more evil than they could ever have imagined. Martin Cruz Smith declared a previous Perry novel as beautifully crafted as a good automatic weapon. In Death Benefits, Perry gives us another stunning suspense story with writing that is, as the Los Angeles Times said, as sharp as a sushi knife.

A novel about a couple who escape the authorities by settling on an island.

When their two-million-dollar Japanese smuggling assignment hits a snag, professional gunrunners Altmeyer and his wife, Rachel, risk nuclear disaster to complete their task