A family as raw and unyielding as the soil of the Virginia farm they left behind, they pursued their dream, journeying west across the American continent. In a boundless land of unimaginable dangers, they discovered their own will for survival -- and forged a triumph of the human spirit.

It's not a mystery, it's a story of survival and triumph. That's what some people say about Romance, a would-be hit play about an actress pursued by a knife-wielding stalker. But isn't it romantic! Before the show can open, the leading lady is really attacked, outside the theater. And before the detectives of the 87th can solve that crime, the same actress is stabbed again. This time for keeps. A.D.A. Nellie Brand moves in for a murder conviction, but Detective Steve Carella is sure she's got the wrong guy, and wrestles for the case with Fat Ollie Weeks, Isola's foulest cop. While Bert Kling interviews witnesses and suspects ranging from the show's producers to the author - who has written novels about cops and knows how it's done - to the lead's lovely understudy, he can't keep his mind off what's happening to him. He's falling in love. With a doctor. Who happens to be a deputy chief surgeon. Who happens to be a black woman. In the city of Isola, nothing is black and white. In the play Romance, no one is guilty or innocent. And in the gritty reality of the 87th Precinct, everyone is in love with something - even if it's only murder.

Matthew Hope has been shot - taking two bullets outside a bar in Calusa's seediest neighborhood. With Matthew in a postsurgery semicoma, the men and women who know him best go to the places he went, talk to the people he talked to, and desperately try to find out who wanted Matthew Hope dead. The sexy, tough investigator called Toots Kiley, the world-weary cop named Morris Bloom, and Warren Chambers, a strong black man who gets reminded every day that Florida is still the Deep South, start to get the picture: Matthew Hope had walked into a weird and wild world. Hope had been hired to close a real estate deal for a small, successful circus. He found himself surrounded by trapeze artists, wild animal trainers, seductive dancers, and freaks who shared a society of amazing feats, kinky sex, and dark secrets. Before Hope could do his job he had to find out how a curvacious three-foot-tall woman met a violent death, and what happened to her extensive estate. Instead of an answer, Hope got a riddle. Now in a Calusa hospital, he fights for his life. His friends scramble for clues. But the riddle - and a killer - are still out there: There was a little girl who had a little girl who had a little girl...

With his sizzling dialogue and drop-dead surprises, Ed McBain has elevated the crime novel into fine art. Mary, Mary is vintage McBain. It is Christmas in Florida. The decorations are only slightly more false than the cheer, and a trial is going on - the kind of trial that grabs headlines and makes people wonder what kind of person could possibly represent the defendant. For in this case, the accused Mary Barton, is charged with the monstrous murder of three innocent young girls. Matthew Hope, the defense attorney who only represents people he believes innocent, believes the eccentric hard-talking Mary Barton would never harm a soul. So does the beautiful, genteel Englishwoman whose life Mary touched years before and who is now footing the bill for her defense. All the money in the world can't buy Matthew Hope a case. As the trial progresses, eyewitnesses place Mary with the victims; one witness even claims to have seen Mary burying the bodies. The evidence for a conviction is overwhelming, and Mary, stubbornly contrary, seems incapable of helping her own case. Could Mary truly be a homicidal maniac? Or could the witnesses be mistaken? Caught up in an illicit love affair with a sexy prosecutor, scrambling to put up some kind of a defense, Hope is running out of tricks. When the real story of Mary Barton surfaces, defense attorney Matthew Hope will discover just how much he has to lose...and unearth a few long-buried secrets that refuse to die.

The "shocking" and "suspense-packed" bestseller about one teacher's stand against student violence, and the basis for the Academy Award-nominated film (The New York Times Book Review). After serving his country in World War II, Richard Dadier decides to become an English teacher-and for the sin of wanting to make a difference, he's hired at North Manual Trades High School. A tough vocational school in the East Bronx, Manual Trades is home to angry, unruly teenagers exiled from New York City's regular public schools. On his first day, Dadier endures relentless mockery and ridicule and makes an enemy of the student body by rescuing a female colleague from a vicious attack. His fellow educators are bitter, disillusioned, and too afraid of their pupils to risk turning their backs on them in the classroom. But Dadier refuses to give up without a fight. Over the course of the semester, he tries again and again to break through the wall of hatred and scorn and win his students' respect. The more he learns about their difficult circumstances, the more convinced he becomes that a good teacher can make a difference in their lives. His idealism will be put to the ultimate test, however, when a long-simmering power struggle with his most intimidating student explodes into a violent schoolroom showdown. The basis for the blockbuster film starring Glenn Ford and Sidney Poitier, Evan Hunter's The Blackboard Jungle is a brutal, unflinching look at the dark side of American education and an early masterpiece from the author who went on to write the gritty 87th Precinct series as Ed McBain. Drawn from Hunter's own experiences as a New York City schoolteacher, it is a "nightmarish but authentic" drama that packs a knockout punch (Time).