From the award-winning author, who Stephen King called “a master of the short story� comes this unforgettable 20th-anniversary celebration of Hard Case Crime. Taking you from Brazil at Carnival to Times Square at midnight and from Tijuana, Mexico to ancient China, exploring the dark heart of crime in the tradition of Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, and Graham Greene. CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF HARD CASE CRIME – 20 UNFORGETTABLE STORIES BY HARD CASE CRIME FOUNDER CHARLES ARDAI Since debuting 20 years ago, Hard Case Crime has won acclaim for publishing the best in hardboiled crime fiction – not least of all the work of founding editor Charles Ardai, which has won the Edgar, Shamus and Ellery Queen Awards, been selected for ‘Best of the Year’ anthologies, and earned praise from publications like the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune and authors ranging from James Crumley and George Pelecanos to Megan Abbott and Stephen King.Collected here for the first time anywhere are the author’s 20 finest stories, including his Edgar-winning “The Home Front,� about death and repentance during World War II; the Shamus Award finalist “Nobody Wins,� about a brutal gangland enforcer searching for the woman he loves; and year’s-best selections such as “A Bar Called Charley’s,� about a traveling salesman’s most grueling night on the road. From Brazil at Carnival to Times Square, from Tijuana, Mexico to history’s first gunshot in 11th-century China, Ardai will take you to some of the most dangerous places in the world – and the darkest corners of the human heart.

Award-winning writer and co-founder of Hard Case Crime Charles Ardai returns to the Gun Honey universe in this action-packed spin-off featuring the sultry and explosive artwork of Ace Continuado! Dahlia Racers is a fiery redhead who, when someone's gunning for you, will take the heat on herself - for a price. As a master of disguise and deception, she uses every trick to dupe those who want you captured or dead. But will a new job taking Gun Honey Joanna Tan's place in the crosshairs turn out to be too hot to handle? Marked for death by a U.S. intelligence agency, Gun Honey Joanna Tan turns to Dahlia Racers to help her pull a vanishing act.

AWARD WINNER CHARLES ARDAI, CO-FOUNDER OF HARD CASE CRIME, BRINGS HIS NOIR EXPERTISE TO THE FORE IN HIS DEBUT GRAPHIC NOVEL ABOUT A SEXY WEAPONS SMUGGLER. Fans of pulp noir and crime writers like Ed Brubaker and Max Allan Collins will want to sink their teeth into this salacious and super-charged thriller. She'll get you the weapon you need, when you need it, where you need it - no matter how impossible. But when a gun smuggled into a high-security prison leads to the death of dozens and the escape of a brutal criminal, Joanna Tan is suddenly forced by the U.S. government to do a job for them: find the man she set loose and bring him down. Features bonus material including the story of the real Gun Honey and much more!

By the time Richard Stark sat down to write "Deadly Edge" in 1971, he'd been chronicling the adventures of his antihero, Parker, for nearly a decade. But it turns out he was just warming up: the next three "Parker" novels would see Stark crank everything up a notch - tightening the writing, heightening the violence, and, most of all, hardening the deadly heister at the books' heart. "Deadly Edge" kicks things off by bidding a brutal adieu to the 1960s: Parker robs a rock concert, but the heist goes sour, and he finds himself - and his woman, Claire - menaced by a pair of sadistic, drug-crazed hippies. Slayground turns the hunter into prey, as Parker gets trapped in a shuttered amusement park, besieged by a bevy of local mobsters. He's low on bullets - but, as anyone who's crossed his path knows, that definitely doesn't mean he's defenseless. Finally, in Plunder Squad, job after job disintegrates into failure and violence, and a rare act of mercy from earlier in the series comes back to bite Parker - hard. These books by Stark reveal a master craftsman working at the height of his powers, and they deserve a place on the bookshelf of every fan of crime fiction.