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.

"One of the most remarkable prose stylists to emerge from the noir tradition in this century."
-Stephen King
"Hard-boiled horror, pulp noir vampires, decaying urban souls- you're gonna need a shower after this one. . . . [Huston] kicks down the door of horror."
-Fangoria, on Already Dead
There's only so much room on the Island, only so much blood, and Manhattan's Vampyre Clans aren't interested in sharing. So when the Vyrus-infected dregs of New York's outer boroughs start creeping across the bridges and through the tunnels, the Clans want to know why.
Bad luck for PI and general hard case Joe Pitt.
See, Joe used to be a Rogue, used to work off his own dime, picked his own gigs, but tight times and a terminally ill girlfriend pushed him into the arms of the renegade Society Clan. Now he has all the cash and blood he needs, but at a steep price. The price tonight is crossing the bridge, rolling to Coney Island, finding the Freak Clan, and figuring out what's driving that bunch of savages to scratch at the Society's door. No need to look far. The answer lies around the corner in Gravesend. Convenient, all those graves.
From uptown to the boardwalk, war drums are beating. Murderous family feuds and personal grudges are being drawn and brandished, along with the long knives. Blood will spill and, big surprise, Joe's in the middle. But hey, why should this night be different from any other?
Sunset to sunrise: put off a war, keep your head attached to your neck, and save your girl. Check. Joe's on the case.

Praise for Charlie Huston and his Joe Pitt novels
"In conceiving his world (a New York City divided by vampire clans, each with different reasons to hate Pitt), Huston gives a fading genre a fresh afterlife. [Grade: ] A."
-Entertainment Weekly
"[Huston] creates a world that is at once supernatural and totally familiar, imaginative, and utterly convincing."
-The Philadelphia Inquirer

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.

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.

"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

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.