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In the year 2038, there’s only one destination that can play host to the world’s wealthiest adventure seekers: the Pengalaman Island Resort and Virtual Reality Theme Park. Located on a private South Pacific island, guests here live out their wildest fantasies in custom-made virtual reality simulations while also enjoying the usual amenities of an exclusive five-star getaway. All is relatively breezy until famed billionaire and avid guest, Mr. Wagner, goes missing within a virtual simulation. His only hope? A daring rescue led by Derek Ambrose and his ragtag search party.

When he meets Bob Ghostly, it’s hardly the first time that Fred Carver has been asked to find a missing spouse. But Ghostly’s tale about a beautiful woman who fled for no apparent reason doesn’t quite convince Carver, who presses for more detail. Finally Ghostly admits it: His wife was beautiful, intelligent, and kind, but she was also a heroin addict. She fled their Florida home with half their savings - nearly $10,000 - and he’s afraid she’s going to put it straight into her veins.

Joel Brandt swears he’s never met the woman before. His wife dead six months before, the small-time businessman is perplexed when Del Moray police inform him that a local woman, Marla Cloy, has accused him of harassing her. According to her, Joel has been lurking outside of her house, following her car, even assaulting her at the grocery store. Brandt says it’s all a lie, but the police don’t believe him. He goes to Fred Carver, an ex-cop turned PI, for help clearing his name.

In the tornado that was downtown New York in the 1980s, John Lurie stood at the vortex. After founding the band The Lounge Lizards with his brother, Evan, in 1979, Lurie quickly became a centrifugal figure in the world of outsider artists, cutting-edge filmmakers, and cultural rebels. Now Lurie vibrantly brings to life the whole wash of 1980s New York as he developed his artistic soul over the course of the decade and came into orbit with all the prominent artists of that time and place.

Twenty-Seven short stories from Edgar Award-winning author John Lutz. Private Eyes, mysteries, and memorable characters.

Private eye Fred Carver investigates the slaughter of an ex-cop, the murder of a man who was found stuffed to the gills with cocaine, and other crimes.

Hattie Evans, a retired schoolteacher, isn’t one to fuss. When her husband drops dead of a heart attack, she does her best to move on without too many tears. After all, Jerome was 70 years old. But an anonymous note, asserting that her husband was murdered, shakes her resolve, and she seeks out help. The police are useless, save that they send her to Fred Carver - a former Orlando cop who turned PI when a bullet shattered his left knee. Her case takes Carver into the depths of Solartown: an old-age mecca where 70 is the new 40, golf carts are the only way to get around, and death from natural causes is nowhere to be found.

Fred Carver is hired by his good friend, Lieutenant Alfonso DeSoto of the Orlando police, to investigate the death of his uncle at Sunhaven, a local nursing home. Carver is harassed by Raphael Ortiz, a viciously depraved thug bent on discouraging Carver from investigating Sunhaven.

When the men find him, the boy’s legs look like they were run through a wood-chipper. He’s bleeding heavily and near death, but he still has strength to tell them of the monster that attacked him: a dark, massive creature that emerged from the bottom of the lake. The child dies before he can say more. Sheriff Billy Wintone has seen too much superstition, drunkenness, and rage in this small Ozarks town to believe the delirious boy’s tale of a monster lurking under the lake’s dark waters. Like it or not, however, Wintone must scour the woods for the man or beast who killed the child before the start of fishing season.

Ernie, a down-on-his-luck gambler who owes the wrong people $1,000, is visited by two enforcers. To escape them, he climbs out onto a narrow building ledge, where he is unseen by the people far below. His only hope of survival lies in his imaginative way with a deck of cards.

Along a beautiful stretch of beach sits a state institution for the criminally insane. Among its inmates are a man who killed his wife with a wine bottle; an ex-butcher who put strange substances into meat; and a man who pushed his daughter out of a 40-story window. When an inmate is found dead on the beach, the rest of the men eye each other coldly - for each of them had a motive to murder the unpopular victim.

Thirty-five short stories by Edgar-winning novelist Lutz are included here, following a perceptive introduction by Nevins. Reflecting the ingenious plotting and characterizations in Tropical Heat, Nightlines and the author's other full-length adventures, these entries are a bonanza for discriminating listeners.

Er war die Ausgeburt der Hölle, der Sohn des Teufels: Lazarus, der Seelenlose. Auf einer Insel hatte er unzählige Jünger um sich geschart und bereitete dort im Geheimen den Angriff auf die Menschheit vor. Warum ich das weiß? Ich erfuhr auf einer Schiffsreise davon, bei einer schicksalhaften Begegnung mit einem Geistlichen. Reverend Malligan teilte mir dort mit, dass es meine Bestimmung war, gegen diesen mächtigen Feind alles Guten anzutreten, denn nur ich sollte ihn der Überlieferung nach an der Ergreifung der Weltherrschaft hindern können.

Seit Anbeginn der Zeit lauert das Böse im Verborgenen, immer wieder versuchen die Mächte der Finsternis die Menschheit zu unterjochen und die Macht zu erlangen. Ob bei der Kreuzigung des Heilands oder den Kreuzzügen im Mittelalter, immer wieder hatten die dunklen Mächte ihre Finger im Spiel. Doch tapferen Menschen gelang es stets, gegen die Mächte der Finsternis zu obsiegen. Im Jahre 1876 versucht Lazarus, der Sohn des Teufels, ein weiteres Mal die Macht über die Welt an sich zu reißen. Doch diesmal gibt es nur einen Menschen, der sich ihm entgegenstellen kann.

Alo Nudger, the St. Louis ex-cop is both the most normal of all fictional private eyes and the most surprising. He's got an uncertain stomach he doses with nonstop antacids; he doesn't like guns or violence; and since he doesn't feel any special affinity for what he does, from nosing into people's dirty laundry to confronting perps with the consequences of their misdeeds, and makes more than his share of mistakes, it's only natural that his business cards identify him in typographical error as a private defective.

He mutilates his victims. Slices their throats. And carves an X into their flesh. Five years ago, he claimed the lives of six women. Then the killings abruptly stopped - no one knows why. Ex-homicide detective Frank Quinn remembers - which is why he's shocked to see one of the dead women in his office. Actually, she's the identical twin of the last victim, and she wants Quinn to find her sister's murderer. But when the cold case heats up, it attracts the media spotlight - and suddenly the killings start again....

Mary Arlington only feels alive when she is dancing. The rest of her life, dominated by a violent boyfriend and a mother intent on drinking herself to death, isn’t worth being awake for, but when she dances the tango her troubles disappear. She’s gotten so good that her studio is taking her to the national competition in Ohio, where she will prove to the world and to herself that her hobby is more than a pastime. That is, if she can stay alive until the music starts to play.

From master mystery author John Lutz comes this collection featuring a gripping man-on-the-run novel and four of his best pieces of short fiction. In The Truth of the Matter, Lou Roebuck is a successful advertising man with all the trappings - prestige, position, a flashy car, money, and a beautiful woman on his arm. He's also a compulsive liar, and what begins as a fib on his expense account leads to trouble that compounds like loan shark interest. His past, and the people in it, has caught up with him, again.

What was once New York's proudest skyscraper is now a heap of ruins, littered with the bodies of the dead and the dying. Beyond it, like firecrackers on a string, the rest of the targets wait to be ignited, unless the demands of the Jericho Man are met.

Wilson Capp is an honorable man in a dishonorable profession. While the others involved in the notorious Gateway scandal that toppled a president told all and made their fortunes, Wilson Capp kept the faith, kept his silence...and was rewarded with prison. Now Wilson Capp is free. And he's out to make his former associates pay the ultimate price for their betrayal.