Most Popular Books by Lawrence Block

More than 40 years after his debut and nearly a decade since his last appearance, one of the most renowned characters in all of crime fiction is back on the case. Well past retirement age and feeling his years-but still staying sober one day at a time-Matthew Scudder learns that alcoholics aren''t the only ones who count the days since their last slip. Matt''s longtime partner, Elaine, tells him of a group of former sex workers who do something similar, helping each other stay out of the life. But when one young woman describes an abusive client who''s refusing to let her quit, Elaine encourages her to get help of a different sort. The sort only Scudder can deliver. A Time to Scatter Stones offers not just a gripping crime story but also a richly drawn portrait of Block''s most famous character as he grapples with his own mortality while proving to the younger generation that he''s still got what it takes. For Scudder''s millions of fans around the world (including the many who met the character through Liam Neeson''s portrayal in the film version of A Walk Among the Tombstones), A Time to Scatter Stones is an unexpected gift-a valedictory appearance that will remind readers why Scudder is simply the best there is.

"Matthew Scudder is dying, one bottle at a time. A young prostitute named Kim Dakkinen is dying too, her life measured out in tricks. She wanted out, had asked for Scudder''s help, but suddenly she wasn''t dying anymore, she was just dead. The former cop turned P.I. promised to protect her, but he failed. Now his atonement is to find her killer. But the secrets in the dead hooker''s past are dirtier than her living, and searching for a killer in a city where everyone''s a victim is a good way to make the role permanent"--

Lawrence Block has been writing and publishing crime fiction for sixty years. He''s received recognition for lifetime achievement in the US and the UK. His books have won awards and occasionally show up on bestseller lists. Several of them have been fimed. DEAD GIRL BLUES is a new novel, available for the first time in 2020.

Chip Harrison has finally gotten a steady job, acting as the man-about-town for the corpulent detective Leo Haig. And it''s on the dangerous streets of New York that Chip brings home his first case, one in which five beautiful sisters are being systematically murdered. Three of the Trelawney women have already been bumped off, & now Chip is cozying up to the remaining two, & investigating a couple of other nefarious relatives with motive on their minds.

In this third installment of Block''s "New York Times" bestselling series, bookseller and burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr is on the prowl for a long-lost Kipling poem. But Bernie soon finds himself as the prime suspect in a murder investigation.

Happily retired, Keller takes a job as a private investigator to investigate an adulterous spouse.

After spending her girlhood writing gentle and thoughtful novels of the lesbian experience (SHADOWS, WARM AND WILLING, ENOUGH OF SORROW), Jill Emerson reinvented herself in the early 1970s, just when contemporary literature was experiencing an enormous flowering of sexuality. Even as the whole culture rocked with the sexual revolution, popular fiction echoed this change with a flinging off of censorship and a surge of sexual candor. And Jill wrote three books for Berkley. The first, THIRTY, was in the form of a diary, piling incident upon incident as the diarist, a woman in her thirtieth year, fled her safe suburban marriage and went off in search of her real self. The second, THREESOME, took the form of a collaborative novel in which the three participants in a menage a trois wrote a book together to chronicle their own experience—an experience that continued to evolve as each read what the others had written. A MADWOMAN’S DIARY, you won’t be surprised to learn, is a return to the diary form. Once again the diarist is a young woman, seeking a richer and more fulfilling life in and out of bed. But the book owes its storyline to more than Jill Emerson’s imagination. Interestingly enough, it grows out of a psychosexual case history previously reported by John Warren Wells. Jill, having read JWW’s book in manuscript, couldn’t get one particular case out of her head. It was, she thought, a perfect springboard for fiction. And the next thing she knew she was typing away, entirely caught up in the woman’s story as it spooled itself out of her typewriter. John Warren Wells was unlikely to object. He and Jill, always friends, occasionally lovers, were comfortable sharing their work, and not infrequently would dedicate their books to each other. And, even if JWW found Jill’s decorous plagiarism unsettling, what could he possibly do about it? Both he and Jill are in fact pen names—or, if you prefer, alternate selves—of author Lawrence Block. So they have all the reason in the world to get along. This ebook edition of A MADWOMAN’S DIARY includes as a bonus the opening chapter of the seventh Jill Emerson novel, THE TROUBLE WITH EDEN.

Leo Haig and his assistant, Chip Harrison, investigate the deaths of an exotic dancer''s tropical fish only to have Harrison witness the murder of their client''s roommate.

It''s a jungle out there. Literally. At least for Evan Tanner, eternally sleepless sometime superspy, who finds himself in Africa on the trail of the AWOL ruler of tiny Modonoland. It seems the petty despot''s gone missing, and he''s taken the state treasury along with him. No stranger to impossible missions and international peril, Tanner''s been in over his head before. This time, however, he''s in imminent danger of being buried alive. And it all has to do with the CIA, white supremacists, moderate revolutionaries . . . and a blond jungle bombshell named ( no joke!) Sheena. Tanner''s always been a sucker for a pretty face and a curvaceous body, especially one that''s wrapped in leopard skin. But this red hot renegade daughter of a local missionary is a maneater. Which means this time Tanner''s goose is well and truly cooked.

Perry Christo is a PI with a past. A one-time NYPD homicide cop, his career was ruined when a cops-on-the-take scandal ripped through the department. Though innocent, Perry had no way to prove it, and when he lost his job it was the last nail in the coffin of a strained marriage - his wife left him and took their young daughter with her. In order to drown his anger and grief, Perry throws himself into mindless work as a private investigator for petty crimes. But one day, a call from an Upper East Side matron, Julia Drusilla, throws his world upside down. Julia needs Perry to track down her stunningly beautiful yet hopelessly aimless daughter, Angelina, who has disappeared. Her 21st birthday is around the corner and she is set to inherit her grandfather''s considerable wealth. But as Perry digs deeper into the case, into one suspect after another, he discovers that Angelina may have more to her story than anyone may have realized, and that the person who has threatened her life is now coming after him. SAFE HORIZON Santlofer has arranged to donate any royalties in excess of editor and contributor compensation to Safe Horizon, the leading victim assistance agency in the country. Safe Horizon envisions a society free of family and community violence and leads the way by empowering victims of domestic violence, child abuse, sexual assault, and human trafficking to move from crisis to confidence. www.safehorizon.org

Meet Linda Shepard. She''s sick to death with being wholesome. Linda thinks she knows what would cure her ills. She''s looking for a man. A capable man. Her first man. The campus of Clifton College is the perfect hunting grounds. It''s swelling with men and brimming with liquor, and it doesn''t take Linda long to find her prize. Don Gibbs is the editor of the Clifton Record. He''s brusque, he''s unkempt, and he somehow maintains his broad physique with a strict diet of booze, coffee and cigarettes. Soon enough his piercing intellect and hedonistic ways bring Linda to her knees and lower, lower still. Is she in over her head? As Linda soon discovers, sex can be a dangerous game... Almost as dangerous as love. Lawrence Block is the bestselling author of over fifty novels, including the much-heralded Matthew Scudder crime series. As a young man in New York, Block wrote pornographic paperbacks for outfits such as Nightstand Books to publish under their own house pseudonyms. In this case, Campus Tramp was released as the work of Andrew Shaw; examined retrospectively, however, it has Block written all over it. The year is 1960 and the setting is Clifton College, a thinly disguised analog for the real-life Antioch College, Block''s own Alma Mater, just outside Yellow Springs, Ohio. Campus Tramp is loaded with references to Antioch''s landmarks, personages, history and... reputation. Whether read as a time capsule from the eve of the sexual revolution traversing taboo topics like homosexuality and abortion, or just as a retro sex romp by a masterful writer at the dawn of his career, Campus Tramp, like its titular protagonist Linda Shepard, has something to offer everybody.

In this reissue, a young girl is killed, the prime suspect is found dead in his cell and the NYPD consider the case closed. Ex-cop Scudder, hired to look into the case by the girl''s father is up to his neck in sleaze, corruption, religious cults and murderous lust. In New York''s underbelly, children pay for their parents'' most unspeakable sins.

The second in a new series of 7 Lawrence Block titles featuring Evan Micheal Tanner. He is 34 years old and hasn''t slept a wink since a piece of shrapnel destroyed the sleep centre in his brain during the Korean War. Tanner, enlisted by an undercover agency, so secret it doesn''t have a name, heads for Czechoslovakia where he must engineer the kidnap of a dying man. But first he finds himself leaping from a moving train, tangling with an amourous blonde and trying to act convincing as the key speaker at a Nazi rally.

Tells the stories of a policeman recovering from alcoholism, a clever lawyer who saves his marginally innocent clients, a carefully plotted murder, a pathological killer, and an unusual kidnapping

When ex-policeman and recovering alcoholic Matthew Scudder is stalked by a psychotic killer who murders, one by one, Scudders'' friends and acquaintances, his fate hinges on the survival of a glamorous call girl.

Matt Scudder is an ex-cop,ex-alcoholic,private detective-now licensed but he''s still happier doing favours for friends for a flar fee than anything requiring much more in the way of paperwork.Married to Elaine,a retired call girl and enjoying connubial bliss opposite his old hotel room(now the office)he is intrigued by the problems New Yorks latest serial killer is giving his ex-colleagues.

Matthew Scudder''s 12th adventure is at once a pulse-pounding thriller and an elegiac meditation on aging and mortality and the passage of time. Enlisted to investigate the seemingly improbable death rate of the members of a Club of Thirty-one, Scudder finds himself pitted against an unseen killer whose patience is equaled only by his merciless determination.Reviews:"Fiendishly clever. A welcome visit with an old friend. Lawrence Block''s Matthew Scudder series is one of the sure things in crime fiction and A Long Line of Dead Men carries it forward with a fine flourish." ~Los Angeles Times Book Review"Matthew Scudder has evolved into the perfect noir hero." ~Entertainment Weekly"Ingenious, satisfying, consistently strong. It''s a good one." ~Baltimore Sun"Gritty, letter perfect, a remarkable novel. Block has never been in better form. His decidedly dark sense of humor has never been in better focus." ~The New York Times Book Review"Far out of the ordinary. An intelligent detective story that plays fair with the reader, and yet will keep you guessing until the very end." ~Rochester Post-Bulletin