Lawrence Block
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Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries volume 1
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English
Description
Bernie Rhodenbarr is a personable chap, a good neighbor, a passable poker player. His chosen profession, however, might not sit well with some. Bernie is a burglar, a good one, effortlessly lifting valuables from the not-so-well-protected abodes of well-to-do New Yorkers like a modern-day Robin Hood. (The poor, as Bernie would be the first to tell you, alas, have nothing worth stealing.) He's not perfect, however; he occasionally makes mistakes. Like...
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Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries volume 2
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English
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Popular author Lawrence Block creates the wild and wonderful world of Bernie Rhodenbarr: fine, upstanding citizen by day, and crafty burglar by night. In this hilarious whodunit, Bernie does a favor for his dentist, only to discover mixing his personal and professional lives can be hazardous to his well-being. As Bernie squirms in the dental chair, Dr. Sheldrake presents a business proposition. He wants Bernie to rob his estranged wife's apartment...
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Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries volume 5
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English
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Description
It's not that used bookstore owner and part-time burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr believes the less legal of his two professions is particularly ethical. (It is, however, a rush, and he is very good at it. ) He just thinks it's unfair to face a prison term for his legitimate activities. After appraising the worth of a rich man's library -- conveniently leaving his fingerprints everywhere in the process -- Bernie finds he's the cops' prime suspect when his...
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Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries volume 8
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English
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Bookseller and New-Yorker-to-the-bone, Bernie Rhodenbarr rarely ventures out of Manhattan, but he's excited about the romantic getaway he has planned for himself and current lady love Lettice at the Cuttleford House, a remote upstate b&b. Unfortunately, Lettice has a prior engagement-she's getting married... and not to Bernie-so he decides to take best buddy Carolyn instead. A restful respite from the big city's bustle would be too good to waste....
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Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries volume 7
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English
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Bookseller Bernie Rhodenbarr's in love-with an exotic Eastern European beauty who shares his obsession with Humphrey Bogart movies. He's in heaven, munching popcorn with his new amour every night at a Bogart Film Festival-until their Casablanca-esque idyll is cut short by his other secret passion: burglary.
When he's hired to pilfer a portfolio of valuable documents from a Park Avenue apartment, Bernie can hardly refuse. But the occupant's early return...
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Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries volume 10
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English
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A philosophical yet practical gentleman, Bernie Rhodenbarr possesses many admirable qualities: charm, intelligence, sparkling wit, and unwavering loyalty. Of course, he also has this special talent and a taste for life's finer things. So he's more than willing to perform some vengeful larceny for a friend -- ripping off a smarmy, particularly deserving plastic surgeon -- for fun and a very tidy profit.
But during a practice run at another address,...
7) Hit Parade
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English
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Keller is friendly. Industrious. A bit lonely, sometimes. If it wasn't for the fact that he kills people for a living, he'd be just your average Joe. The inconvenient wife, the troublesome sports star, the greedy business partner, the vicious dog, he'll take care of them all, quietly and efficiently. If the price is right.
Like the rest of us, Keller's starting to worry about his retirement. After all, he's not getting any younger. (His victims,...
8) Hope to Die
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Series
Matthew Scudder mysteries volume 15
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English
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Description
The city caught its collective breath when upscale couple Byrne and Susan Hollander were slaughtered in a brutal home invasion. Now, a few days later, the killers themselves have turned up dead behind the locked door of a Brooklyn hellhole -- one apparently slain by his partner in crime who then took his own life.
There's something drawing Matthew Scudder to this case that the cops have quickly and eagerly closed: a nagging suspicion that a third...
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English
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SHE WAS EVERY MAN'S DREAM — AND ONE MAN'S NIGHTMARE!
Johnny Hayden and Doug Rance had a scheme to take real estate entrepreneur Wallace Gunderman for all he was worth. But they needed a girl on the inside to make it work.
Enter Evelyn Stone: Gunderman's secretary, his lover — and his worst enemy. Gunderman had promised to marry her, but never came through. Now she's ready to make him pay...
Johnny Hayden has spent a lifetime working the long...
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Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries volume 11
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English
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Burglar Bernie Rodenbarr and his lesbian sidekick Carolyn Kaiser break into houses, apartments and even a museum, in a madcap adventure replete with American Colonial silver, an F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscript, a priceless portrait, a remarkable array of buttons -- and a murder that needs to be solved.
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Evan Tanner novels volume 3
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English
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Description
Sometime spy Evan Tanner has accepted impossible assignments for many reasons: money, thrills, to have something to occupy his waking hours (twenty-four of them every day, in fact, since battlefield shrapnel obliterated his brain's sleep center). But this might be the first time he's put his life on the line... for love.
Tanner's agreed to smuggle a sexy Latvian gymnast-the lost lady love of a heart-sick friend-out of Russia. With the Cold War at...
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Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries volume 6
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English
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Bernie Rhodenbarr is actually trying to earn an honest living. It's been an entire year since he's entered anyone's abode illegally to help himself to their valuables. But now an unscrupulous landlord's threat to increase Bernie's rent by 1,000% is driving the bookseller and reformed burglar back to a life of crime - though, in all fairness, it's a very short trip. And when the cops wrongly accuse him of stealing a priceless collection of baseball...
13) Tanner's Tiger
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Evan Tanner novels volume 5
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English
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Description
The Cold War's boiling over. Global tensions are near the breaking point. So what's the perfect assignment for a super-spy who hasn't slept since the Korean conflict? A fun-filled trip to the Montreal World's Fair!
The adorable little girl he's escorting-who, under different circumstances, would be sitting on the Lithuanian throne-can hardly contain her excitement, but it isn't all playtime for Evan Tanner. Some mysterious disappearances, apparently...
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Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries volume 9
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English
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Gulliver Fairborn's novel, Nobody's Baby, changed Bernie Rhodenbarr's life. And now pretty Alice Cottrell, Fairborn's one-time paramour, wants the bookselling, book-loving burglar to break into a room in New York's teeth-achingly charming Paddington Hotel and purloin some of the writer's very personal letters before an unscrupulous agent can sell them. Here's an opportunity to use his unique talents in the service of the revered, famously reclusive...
15) Hit Me
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John Keller novels volume 5
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English
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BESTSELLING AUTHOR AND GRAND MASTER LAWRENCE BLOCK RETURNS TO HIS DEADLIEST HITMAN
A man named Nicholas Edwards lives in New Orleans renovating houses, doing honest work and making decent money at it. Between his family and his stamp collection, all his spare time is happily accounted for. Sometimes it's hard to remember that he used to kill people for a living.
But when the nation's economy tanks, taking the construction business with it, all...
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Facing his demons in his first year of sobriety, Matthew Scudder finds himself on the trail of a killer. When Scudder's childhood friend Jack Ellery is murdered, presumably while attempting to atone for past sins, Scudder reluctantly begins his own investigation, with just one lead: Ellery's Alcoholics Anonymous list of people he wronged. One of them may be a killer, but that's not necessarily Scudder's greatest danger. Immersing himself in Ellery's...
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This is a city that seduces dreamers . . . then eats their dreams.
Matthew Scudder understands the futility of his search for a longtime missing Midwestern innocent who wanted to be an actress in the vast meat-grinder called New York City. But her frantic father heard that Schudder is the best-and now the ex-cop-turned-P.I. is scouring the hell called Hell's Kitchen looking for anything that might resemble a lead. And in this neighborhood of the...
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Alex Penn wakes up in a squalid Times Square hotel room. This is what he sees when he finally opens his eyes:
"The floor was a sea of blood. A body floated upon this ocean. A girl-black hair, staring blue eyes, bloodless lips. Naked. Dead. Her throat slashed deeply.
"It had to be a dream. It had to, had to be a dream. It was not a dream. It was not a dream at all.
"I've done it again, I thought. Sweet Jesus, I've done it again."
Years before,...
19) Hit List
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John Keller novels volume 2
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English
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Keller is a regular guy. He goes to the movies, works on his stamp collection. Call him for jury duty and he serves without complaint. Then every so often he gets a phone call from White Plains that sends him flying off somewhere to kill a perfect stranger. Keller is a pro and very good at what he does. But the jobs have started to go wrong. The realization is slow coming yet, when it arrives, it is irrefutable: Someone out there is trying to hit...
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That's the product description for Blackstone Audio's excellent rendition of You Could Call It Murder, expertly voiced by Peter Berkrot, and we could leave it at that-but there's an interesting backstory to the book, and the Classic Crime Library seems a good place to share it with you.
In 1961, Lawrence Block was living in New York and earning a living writing Midcentury Erotica and crime fiction. He'd just sold his first book under his own name,...