The first stand-alone thriller by critically acclaimed author Huston, "The Shotgun Rule" is a raw tale of four teenage friends who go looking for a little trouble--and find it.

A high-concept spy thriller that pushes the genre into the 21st century. 'One of the most remarkable prose stylists to emerge from the noir tradition in this century' Stephen King 'Just when you think you've caught up with him on the curve, Charlie Huston drives right off the cliff, landing on a road no one else could see ... shockingly original' NEW YORK TIMES 'Among the new voices in 21st-century crime fiction, Charlie Huston is where it's at' WASHINGTON POST Skinner wasn't like other boys. He appeared to have no emotions, powered by reason and logic alone. And to the CIA, he's the perfect asset. An assassin they can programme and control. But now Skinner has been tasked with a new mission. One that will place him at the heart of a deadly conspiracy. Even for an operative with Skinner's off-the-wall skillset, it's a suicide mission. And Skinner begins to wonder if he's become too good at his job for his employers to keep around. For the first time, Skinner has to decide whose side he's really on. And if the price of his own survival is worth paying.

With his teaching career derailed by tragedy and his slacker days numbered, Webster Fillmore Goodhue makes an unlikely move and joins Clean Team, charged with tidying up L.A.'s grisly crime scenes. For Web, it's a steady gig, and he soon finds himself sponging a Malibu suicide's brains from a bathroom mirror and flirting with the man's bereaved and beautiful daughter.
Then things get weird: The dead man's daughter asks a favor. Every cell in Web's brain tells him to turn her down, but something makes him hit the Harbor Freeway at midnight to help her however he can. Soon enough it's Web who needs the help when gun-toting California cowboys start showing up on his doorstep. What's the deal? Is it something to do with what he cleaned up in that motel room in Carson? Or is it all about the brewing war between rival trauma cleaners? Web doesn't have a clue, but he'll need to get one if he's going to keep from getting his face kicked in. Again. And again. And again.

It's three thousand miles from the green fields of glory, where Henry "call me Hank" Thompson once played California baseball, to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where the tenements are old, the rents are high, and the drunks are dirty. But now Hank is here, working as a bartender and taking care of a cat named Bud who is surely going to get him killed.
It begins when Hank's neighbor, Russ, has to leave town in a rush and hands over Bud in a carrier. But it isn't until two Russians in tracksuits drag Hank over the bar at the joint where he works and beat him to a pulp that he starts to get the idea: Someone wants something from him. He just doesn't know what it is, where it is, or how to make them understand he doesn't have it.
Within twenty-four hours Hank is running over rooftops, swinging his old aluminum bat for the sweet spot of a guy's head, playing hide and seek with the NYPD, riding the subway with a dead man at his side, and counting a whole lot of cash on a concrete floor.
All because of two cowboys, two Russian mafia men, and some of the weirdest goons ever assembled in one place. All because of Bud. All because once, in another life, in another world, the only thing Hank wanted was to take third base--without getting caught.

"From the Hardcover edition."

Skinner--known by the name of the psychological experiment that fostered his emotionless brutality--founded his career in "asset protection" on fear. To touch anyone under Skinner's protection was to invite destruction. A savagely effective methodology, until Skinner's CIA handlers began to fear him as much as his enemies did and banished him to the hinterlands of the intelligence community.
Now, a cyber-terrorist attack on the US power grid is about to end that long exile. His asset is Jae, a roboticist with a gift for seeing the underlying systems violently shaping a new era of global guerrilla warfare.
At the root of is all is a young boy, the innocent seed of a plot grown in the slums of Mumbai. Brought to flower, that plot will tip the balance of world power in a perilous new direction.
A combination of Le Carre spycraft with Stephenson techno-philosophy, SKINNER is the triumphant novel that delivers a new kind of thriller for a new kind of world.

"Among the new voices in twenty-first-century crime fiction, Charlie Huston . . . is where it's at."
-The Washington Post
"Huston writes dialogue so combustible it could fuel a bus and characters crazy enough to take it on the road."
-The New York Times Book Review
Reluctant hitman Henry Thompson has fallen on hard times. His grip on life is disintegrating, his pistol hand shaking, his body pinned to his living room couch by painkillers-and his boss, Russian mobster David Dolokhov, isn't happy about any of it. So Henry is surprised when he's handed a new assignment: keep tabs on a minor league baseball star named Miguel Arenas.
Henry has no pity for the slugger and the wicked gambling problem that got him in trouble, but he can't help liking the guy. After all, Henry used to be just like him: a natural-born ball player with a bright future. But hell, that was long ago. Before Henry did some guy a favor and ended up running for his life. Before his girlfriend and buddies got gunned down by someone on his tail. Before he agreed to buy his parents' safety with a life of violence.
And when Miguel gets drafted by the Mets and is sent to the Brooklyn Cyclones, Henry must head back to New York, back to the place where all his problems began-and where Henry might find a real reason to keep living, a reason that may just cost him his life.

"Huston reminds me of all my favorite writers-Pete Dexter, Robert Stone, Crumley. If there is such a thing as compassionate noir, Charlie has found it. He's a true marvel."
-Ken Bruen, author of The Guards
"Charlie Huston is the real deal."
-Peter Straub

Those stories you hear? The ones about things that only come out at night? Things that feed on blood, feed on us? Got news for you: they're true. Only it's not like the movies or old man Stoker's storybook. It's worse. Especially if you happen to be one of them." "Just" "ask Joe Pitt."
"
There's a shambler on the loose. Some fool who got himself infected with a flesh-eating bacteria is lurching around, trying to munch on folks' brains. Joe hates shamblers, but he's still the one who has to deal with them. That's just the kind of life he has. Except afterlife might be better word.
From the Battery to the Bronx, and from river to river, Manhattan is crawling with Vampyres. Joe is one of them, and he's not happy about it. Yeah, he gets to be stronger and faster than you, and he's tough as nails and hard to kill. But spending his nights trying to score a pint of blood to feed the Vyrus that's eating at him isn't his idea of a good time. And Joe doesn't make it any easier on himself. Going his own way, refusing to ally with the Clans that run the undead underside of Manhattan-it ain't easy. It's worse once he gets mixed up with the Coalition-the city's most powerful Clan-and finds himself searching for a poor little rich girl who's gone missing in Alphabet City.
Now the Coalition and the girl's high-society parents are breathing down his neck, anarchist Vampyres are pushing him around, and a crazy Vampyre cult is stalking him. No time to complain, though. Got to find that girl and kill that shambler before the whip comes down . . . and before the sun comes up.

Hank Thompson is living off the map in Mexico with a bagful of cash that the Russian mafia wants back and many, many secrets. So when a Russian backpacker shows up in town asking questions, Hank tries to play it cool. But he knows the jig is up when the backpacker mentions the money . . . and the family Hank left behind. Suddenly Hank' s in a desperate race to get to his parents in California before anyone can harm them. Along the way he' ll face Federales and Border Patrol, mafiosi and vigilantes, extortionists and drug dealers, and a couple of psychotic surf bums with an ax to grind. From the golden beaches of the Yucata n to the seedy strip clubs of Vegas, Charlie Huston opens a door to the squalid underworld of crime and corruption- and invites the reader to live it in the extreme.