Most Popular Books by Steven Henry

FREE BONUS STORY - This edition includes Screwdriver: A Vic Neshenko Story Breaking through to the truth is deadly After months of nerve-wracking undercover work, Detective Erin O’Reilly is finally getting ready to bring down the Irish Mob. She has everything she needs: recordings, witnesses, and even the secret O’Malley ledger. She just needs to wait a few more weeks while the NYPD makes the final preparations to drop the hammer. If everything stays calm on the street, there’s nothing to fear. But a routine construction job in Brooklyn shatters Erin’s hopes for peace. When a work crew unearths a trio of decade-old bodies, a cold homicide case heats up fast. One of the dead men is a missing O’Malley associate linked to a long-ago turf war with crooked Teamsters. Erin and the Major Crimes squad start digging to find the truth, but unhinged gangster Kyle Finnegan wants answers too. Finnegan may be crazy, but he’s also smart. He’s more than willing to break anything and anyone to reach his goal. Erin and Rolf will have to smash through enemies and so-called allies alike to unearth a secret worth killing for. BONUS - Screwdriver: A Vic Neshenko Story The Manhattan housing market is a killer It was supposed to be a quiet day of apartment-hunting for Detective Vic Neshenko and his girlfriend. But when they stumble across the body of a workman, killed in the middle of a bathroom renovation, it’s back to work. Vic will have to juggle the needs of his relationship and the demands of the case if there’s any hope of solving a murder, discovering a New York family’s secret, finding his girl’s dream home, and salvaging his day off.

Not everyone who comes to America arrives by choice. A man and a teenage girl are found dead in a bullet-riddled motel room. Evidence points to the Russian Mafia. This isn't the first time Erin O'Reilly has tangled with organized crime, but she isn't prepared for the sheer brutality that's waiting for her. She and her trusty K-9 Rolf peel back the curtain on a seedy world of human trafficking and murder. In the streets of Little Odessa, Erin finds men who won't think twice about killing a woman. And this is one place where her gold detective shield will be no protection.

When you strip away everything else, what's left is the truth. Life taught Joe Davidson not to believe in miracles. A blue-collar woodworker, Joe is trying to build a future. His father drank himself to death and his mother succumbed to cancer, leaving a broken, struggling family. He and his brother and sisters are faced with failed marriages, growing pains, and lingering trauma. Then a chance meeting at his local diner brings Mary Elizabeth Reynolds into his life. Suddenly, Joe finds himself reaching for something more, a dream of happiness. The woodworker and the poor girl from a trailer park connect and fall in love, and for a little while, everything is right with their world. But suddenly Joe is confronted with a situation he never imagined. What do you do if your fiancée is expecting a child you know isn't yours? Torn between betrayal and love, trying to do the right thing when nothing seems right anymore, Joe has to strip life down to its truth and learn that, in spite of the pain, love can be the greatest miracle of all.

As long as you’re breathing, you’re still in the fight Erin O’Reilly has been walking a dangerous line. In order to save her lover, smooth-talking gangster and former bomb-maker Morton Carlyle, she’s been pretending to be a dirty cop. Her efforts have worked well—too well. Evan O’Malley and his underlings are convinced Erin is a criminal just like them. But that means, by the unwritten code of the underworld, she’s now fair game. The O’Malley family is a tinderbox of hatred, resentment, and ambition. When a botched car bombing fails to kill O’Malley enforcer Mickey Connor, the blast sets the whole thing ablaze. The fearsome ex-boxer is sure Erin and her boyfriend are to blame, and he’s not the kind of man to just take a punch. He hits back—hard. A serious error in judgment puts Erin’s family on the line, pulling her loved ones into the ring. With more than one life hanging in the balance, Erin and her K-9 Rolf will need every bit of strength, skill, and courage to face down their deadliest opponent in a fight without rules or referee, where the winner will be the one left standing.

Publisher Description

"This catalogue is published in conjunction with the exhibition Shirin Neshat: Facing History, organized by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian institution, Wahington DC May18- September 20, 2015"--Title page verso.

It's time to save Manhattan. An NYPD detective is always on duty. Erin O'Reilly is just settling down for a drink with her favorite gangster, celebrating her promotion to Detective Second Grade, when she hears the call every cop dreads: "Officer down." Soon Erin and her K-9 partner Rolf are chasing a cop-killer through—and beneath—New York City, racing to stop a lunatic's plan to tear the heart out of her city. To make matters worse, rumor has it there's a dirty cop in Erin's precinct, and the watchdogs at Internal Affairs are sniffing around Erin. Now she'll have to prove herself like never before as terrorists, assassins, and even allies stand in her way as she fights to save Manhattan.

Art historian and critic Steven Henry Madoff offers a contemporary reframing of modernist art and the way it presages installation and performance art For more than a century, European modernist art has been written about as a profound expression of fragmentation—of an alienated world in pieces. In Unseparate, Steven Henry Madoff proposes that there was always another artistic intention present among the modernists, offering visions of wholeness in the face of the instability and alienation brought on by war and new technologies. Blending history, philosophy, and media theory, Madoff argues that from the mid-nineteenth century—when Richard Wagner championed his idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk (the total work of art)—to the rise of the Bauhaus, the urge to connect different art forms into single, unified works anticipates our contemporary networked culture. Madoff revisits the artworks and projects of such leading figures of European modernism as Paul Cézanne, Marcel Duchamp, Hugo Ball, and Walter Gropius, proposing that their various ambitions for totality were both aesthetically beneficent and politically dangerous. This striking contemporary rethinking gives readers a way to understand modernism's complex history more fully. Modernism, seen through the lens of network aesthetics and its emphasis on interconnectivity, presages many different forms of contemporary art, including installation and performance art. Further, as Madoff reveals, the modernist drive for wholeness and unity can give us a way to look at our own increasingly divisive society.

The storm is here When a freak blizzard descends on Manhattan, Erin O’Reilly plans to take shelter and wait for it to blow over. But Irish mobster Evan O’Malley has other ideas. He’s heard there’s an undercover cop in his organization and wants Erin to unmask the infiltrator. Phil Stachowski, Erin’s handler, is in danger, and he’s gone missing. Erin finds herself plunging into the heart of the storm. She finds one dead cop and another clinging to life. And that’s not the worst of it. The evidence points to a traitor in the NYPD, a cold-hearted killer who is willing to do anything to get what he wants—the truth about Erin herself. As the snow and the bodies pile up, Erin and her K-9 Rolf wade through a blinding, deadly flurry of suspicion and danger in which it may be impossible to tell friend from foe until it’s too late. And in the end, the coldest choice will come down to Erin herself: what can she do when protecting her secret means betraying herself?

When the walls are glass, there’s nowhere to hide. No sooner has Detective Erin O’Reilly moved in with her lover, gangster-turned-informant Morton Carlyle, than she gets a call about a body in a fancy downtown hotel. She’s expecting a run-of-the-mill homicide, until she finds herself face to face with a beautiful young woman floating in the hotel’s aquarium. Below the smooth surface of the luxury hotel, she finds a rotten world of bribes, voyeurism, coercion, and murder. Everybody has something to hide. Erin and her faithful K-9 Rolf will have to plunge into the murky depths to hook their quarry. Meanwhile, her personal life is on a fine line between survival and disaster. With all eyes on her, she will have to balance her family, her job, and her increasingly dangerous double life infiltrating the O’Malley mob. It’s a deep dive into another New York murder. It’ll take all Erin’s grit to pull the truth out into the light.

When it comes to love, everyone is compromised The murder scene looks depressingly ordinary at first; a home-invasion shooting of a real-estate agent. But Detective Erin O’Reilly has a nose for trouble, and this case smells all wrong. It’s bad enough that the victim is tied to several sleazy property deals, but the worst of it is the sole witness to the crime; the dead man’s girlfriend is Lieutenant Webb’s ex-wife. Erin is no stranger to personal complications, but Webb’s entanglements threaten to derail the whole investigation. With her commanding officer compromised, she and her K-9 Rolf will have to take the lead as they try to tear open a case involving street thugs, car thieves, a shady trainer of fighting dogs, and a paranoid white-collar guy in way over his head. It’s shaping up to be an ugly dogfight in the streets of Brooklyn.

When you stop running, the past catches up with you. Detective Erin O’Reilly has never needed anyone to tell her she’s tough. She’s taken the worst New York City can throw at her, surviving gunfights, explosions, mobsters, and serial killers. But now, as she returns from a well-earned vacation, she finds there are some enemies that bullets can’t touch. As she and her K-9 partner Rolf dive into their newest case — a military veteran and his wife murdered in a cold-blooded home invasion — Erin must confront the lingering legacy of trauma. Violence leaves scars on the flesh and the spirit of victims and perpetrators alike. Plagued by the aftershocks of what she’s already survived, Erin will need to dig deep to struggle through new dangers. In the process she will tear open the wounds of broken men who are back from war but still fighting for their lives and their sanity. But she will soon find that the enemies on the outside are nothing compared to the toughest battle: the struggle for her own soul.

Erin learned a lot from her partner: stay alert, follow your nose, and once you've got your teeth in them, never let go. It’s tough working nights with the NYPD. The crime rate is high, the hours are terrible, and forget about a personal life. So when Officer O’Reilly and her K-9 Rolf switch over to the day shift, things are looking up. She’s even able to find time for a new boyfriend. But when the theft of a priceless painting from the Queens Museum leaves a fellow police officer dead, Erin and her four-legged partner find themselves dealing with dangerous criminals, sleazy art dealers, and obstructive detectives in a race to capture the killers...and just maybe bring closure to a 75-year-old crime.

Every action has consequences When a young man is found outside a tattoo parlor with his skull crushed, not even the NYPD cares very much. The victim, a violent street thug and accused murderer, won’t be missed. But after a second man is slain, Detective Erin O’Reilly becomes concerned. Dangerous men who have evaded the law are being killed by a shadowy avenger. Erin and her squad are faced with an unusual adversary; a killer determined to kill only bad guys. But when a man appoints himself judge, jury, and executioner, he has to be stopped. Erin, her K-9 Rolf, and the Major Crimes unit buckle down to the unpleasant task of bringing in a suspect who genuinely believes he’s doing the right thing. Law, justice, and revenge collide as Erin’s team track their quarry from the streets of Hell’s Kitchen to the marble hallways of New York’s courts. Erin will have to confront not only a self-righteous murderer, but her own sense of right and wrong. And meanwhile, in the background, an old enemy is maneuvering to bring his own brand of street justice crashing down on Erin herself.

Too many sweets can cause tooth decay, cavities... and death. Valentine’s Day with the NYPD: love is in the air, alimony payments are due, and a two-timing dentist is dead after a bad batch of holiday chocolate. As the detectives follow the chocolate trail back to its source, they uncover a rich assortment of suspects. Every step of the investigation reveals new motives, secrets, and agendas. Meanwhile, Detective Erin O’Reilly is trying to juggle the demands of the case with her ongoing relationship, but mixing business and pleasure can get complicated. Carlyle’s Irish Mob colleagues have agendas of their own, and it’ll take all of Erin’s ingenuity and guts, along with her K-9 partner Rolf’s trusty teeth, to chew their way to the heart of the mystery.

Mobsters are like politicians, but more honest A family trip to the museum goes sideways for Erin O’Reilly when a drugged, disoriented young woman stumbles into her on the street. The girl pleads for help and leads Erin to a parked car, where a man lies dead of an apparent drug overdose. A simple investigation quickly derails when the victim turns out to be the son of a prominent politician. The grieving father, locked in a tight re-election struggle, doesn’t want to cooperate with the police. Soon Erin finds herself embroiled in political backstabbing and under-the-table dealing. To make matters worse, she’s also running afoul of the darker politics of the New York underworld. While she and her lover Morton Carlyle slowly build their case against the Irish Mob, Erin confronts notorious Mafia underboss Vinnie “The Oil Man” Moreno, trying to find the links between the Mob’s drug trade and a death that has begun to look more and more like an assassination. Erin will need her wits, street smarts, and her K-9 Rolf’s sharp nose and relentless drive if she’s going to unravel this conspiracy.

Jealousy breeds betrayal. A young woman is strangled in her bed. The door is smashed in and the apartment ransacked. Is this a robbery gone wrong? A random attack? A jealous lover? Or a serial killer? It’s up to Detective Erin O’Reilly, her K-9 Rolf, and the rest of her Major Crimes squad to find out the truth before anyone else dies. It’s a simple case; or is it? Erin has been able to keep an uneasy balance between her personal and work lives. She’s always known it was risky to let herself fall for a gangster. But now, she and her boyfriend, smooth-talking Irishman Morton Carlyle, find themselves drawn into a situation in which the only escape is for the two of them to choose a side and take a stand. Jealousy and betrayal are in the air. Who do you trust when your lover could be your enemy?

The smallest flame can set off an explosion A routine drug bust in Little Italy goes horribly wrong when two squads of plainclothes cops start shooting at each other. When the dust clears, one of Detective Erin O’Reilly’s friends in the Street Narcotics unit is dead. Internal Affairs takes control of the investigation, shoving Erin and her comrades to the sidelines. But Erin, her K-9 Rolf, Vic Neshenko, and the SNEU survivors refuse to be benched. They have questions—questions the NYPD doesn’t want to address. Anything Erin and her friends do will have to be unofficial, but they’re not about to let that stop them. Their search for justice takes them through the crowded streets of Little Italy as they tangle with Mafia drug dealers, freelance gangsters, and crooked cops. It’s a wild ride for Erin and Rolf in a fight to avenge a fallen friend.

If it weren't for the Irish, New York wouldn't have a police force. On the other hand, it might not need one. Starting a new job is always stressful, even when bombs aren't involved. NYPD Officer Erin O'Reilly always wanted to be a detective. But on her first day wearing a gold shield, she finds herself investigating the explosive death of a small-time crook. She and her K-9 partner Rolf, together with her new squad of detectives, plunge into a world of gamblers, mobsters, and retired Irish Republican Army soldiers. It's an Irish cop against the Irish Mob in an intoxicating cocktail of murder, explosives, and betrayal. Can Erin and Rolf solve the killing before the bomber strikes again?