Ernest DeWalt has every right to feel reclusive. He can’t drink, he can’t make love, he has lost all faith in a world gone mad with violence and greed. Now that all his old coping mechanisms are denied him, DeWalt, a private investigator turned novelist, attempts to flee the corruption of both professions by accepting a sinecure at a small rural college in Pennsylvania. He wants only to live a quiet, unencumbered life from now on, and to be left alone to tend to his wounds. But the rhythms of DeWalt’s past continue to throb.

From the critically acclaimed author of the best-selling Ryan DeMarco Mystery series comes this collection of crime novellas and stories, Randall Silvis’s first collection since his The Luckiest Man in the World was awarded the 1984 Drue Heinz Literature Prize by Joyce Carol Oates. These six short stories and the title novella—a Ryan DeMarco series prequel—brilliantly showcase the author’s compelling storytelling coupled with the deep characterization and exquisite prose for which he is known. Murderers, grifters, and other unsavory characters people these stories, but so too do those struggling to make the world a kinder and less dangerous place. Praised by the New York Times Book Review as “a masterful storyteller,” Silvis once again demonstrates that he can write short fiction as hypnotic as his novels, and with a distinctive and versatile voice that marks him as one of the best writers at work today.

Author Michael O'Brien authoritatively paints the consummate Paterno portrait, the result of more than ten years of work that included 137 interviews and study of 150 previously published works. Paperback includes an epilogue that reviews the 1998 season in which Paterno won his landmark 300th career victory.

Travel back to a time when General Robert E. Lee was fighting for the South in the Civil War. A young slave by the name of Willie is strong, smart and smitten with the General and soon becomes his servant. Although Willie loves General Lee, he is disillusioned and becomes a spy for the Union soldiers. What will General Lee do when he finds out Willie's disloyalty? What does the other side offer him to become a spy? This enthralling Civil War tale shares a history that many have already forgotten.