The unforgettable novel that inspired the classic film. After a messy breakup, Allie Jones finds herself living alone in her New York apartment with no one to share her bed with - and more urgently, no one to share her rent. The solution is obvious - so she advertises for a roommate. And Hendra Carlson seems perfect - shy, quiet... safe. But soon Hendra's disturbing envy of Allie's looks and social life becomes unsettling. She wears Allie's clothes, even buys a wig in Allie's colour and style. And then the obscene phone calls start. Allie's credit cards vanish, and she discovers Hendra is leading a dangerous double life. For Hendra's twisted admiration has no limits, the nightmare has just begun, and there will be a bloody price to pay... Praise for John Lutz: 'Lutz offers up a heart pounding roller coaster of a ride' Jeffrey Deaver. 'Misleading clues and dramatic suspense will keep readers pondering the intricacies of this twisted, creepy whodunit long after the last page is turned' Publishers Weekly, starred review. 'Lutz knows how to make you shiver' Harlan Coben.

To catch a killer... or die trying A murderer dubbed 'The Night Prowler' has turned the city that doesn't sleep into a town kept awake by terror. Unseen, he enters couples' home. Unsuspected, he lingers until the perfect moment arrives. And then he leaves 'gifts' for his victims - before taking their lives. Ex-homicide cop Frank Quinn is still reeling in the wake of an elaborate set-up that ended his career. For Quinn, tracking this killer isn't just any job - it's a last chance to salvage his reputation. And with the body count rising, it's up to Quinn to unlock the mystery of a madman's past and end his bloody reign.

ON THE TRAIL OF A BLOODY KILLER... Frank Quinn is sure he is hunting for a madman: someone who is shooting young women in the heart, defiling their bodies, leaving only the torsos to be found. Quinn, a former NYPD detective, is called into the case by an ambitious chief of police and mobilizes his team of brilliant law-enforcement misfits. But in the concrete canyons of New York, this shocking serial murder case is turning into something very different. . . A COP AND A VICTIM FIGHT BACK... Jill Clark came to the city with too many hopes and too little cash. Now a seemingly deranged woman is telling her an extraordinary story. New to an exclusive dating service, Jill is warned that other women have died on their dates-and that she could be next. Struggling against a death trap closing in around her, Jill has a powerful ally in Frank Quinn. But no one knows the true motives behind a rampage of cold-blooded murder-or how much more terrifying this is going to get. . .

No one thought Curtis Colt had been railroaded for the shooting of a liquor store owner, least of all St. Louis private investigator Alo Nudger. It had been an open-and-shut case of cold blooded murder, and the people of Missouri were just waiting for Colt to be strapped into the electric chair-after all, three eyewitnesses couldn't be wrong. But as time runs out on the convicted killer, Nudger receives a call from Candy Ann Adams, Colt's fiance, who insists he's innocent, because she knows who really pulled the trigger. Despite his better judgment, Nudger takes the case, finding the trail cold and witnesses colder still. But, just as he prepares to abandon the case and leave Colt to his fate, Nudger comes across new evidence that convinces him that maybe Candy Ann is right, maybe the wrong man has been sentenced to 'ride the lightning'... A novel based on his Edgar Award-winning story. By the author of Single White Female.

Private Investigator Alo Nudger is hired by an attorney to learn about the client he is defending on a murder charge. The defendant's wife has disappeared and the police believe that her wealthy husband killed her. But despite his guilt, the husband seems strangely unconcerned. The defendant's sister knows something and so does the sensuous next-door neighbor. What Nudger learns pulls him deep into a tangle of deception, sex and dark family secrets...

Edgar Award-winning author John Lutz returns with his newest Alo Nudger mystery-Thicker Than Blood. When shy, country girl-woman Norva Beane hires Nudger to investigate a possible securities fraud, he thinks it will be a routine case. He doesn't realize it will involve a wandering daughter, drug dealers, a dangerous, tattooed muscle-man, a dysfunctional family, and a poignant past that refuses to release its grip on anyone involved. Nudger, his lady love Claudia Bettencourt, and his friends Lieutenant Jack Hammersmith and Danny Evers are all touched by a tragedy that continues to unfold in surprising directions no matter how hard Nudger tries to stop it. The suspense becomes riveting as trouble builds and answers lead to more questions and more danger. In Thicker Than Blood, the nervous, antacid-chewing detective finds himself embroiled in his most perilous and fascinating case, and one that his readers aren't likely to forget.

"IMAGINE IT AS BAD AS YOU CAN, SIR... AND THEN IMAGINE IT WORSE " What was once New York's proudest skyscraper is now a heap of ruins, littered with the bodies of the dead and the dying. Beyond it, like firecrackers on a string, the rest of the targets wait to be ignited, unless the demands of the Jericho Man are met. The city hesitates. One second too long. And the walls come tumbling down.

A KILLER OF MANY PERSONALITIES Martin Karpp was Alan Hobson, a compulsive thief. He was Willy Bennet, a flagrant homosexual. He was Jay Jefferson, a fanatic right-winger. He was Paul Liggett who hid his true nature behind a mask of mystery. Martin Karpp was in the nation's top maximum security prison, convicted of assassinating a Presidential candidate. That should have been the last the world would ever have to fear from this madman and his many personalities. It wasn't possible that one of them could escape both the prison and Martin Karpp's own body to roam free and kill again But try telling that to the men and women being stalked by-THE SHADOW MAN. NO PRISON CAN HOLD HIM. NO DEFENSES CAN STOP HIM. HE IS THE ULTIMATE ASSASSIN, SIX KILLERS IN ONE

Wilson Capp is an honorable man in a dishonorable profession. While the others involved in the notorious Gateway scandal that toppled a President told all and made their fortunes, Wilson Capp kept the faith, kept his silence... and was rewarded with prison. Now Wilson Capp is free. And he's out to make his former associates pay the ultimate price for their betrayal. Each victim crossed off his list brings him one corpse closer to his final target... The supreme master of dirty tricks himself... The ex-President of the United States

Private investigator Alo Nudger of St. Louis beguiles the reader again in another of Lutz's droll, deftly-plotted mysteries. Timid Nudger, determined to be a mensch, gives new meaning to fighting city hall on an assignment from Adelaide Lacy. Her sister Mary and Mary's boss, Virgil Hiller, are missing from their government posts, along with $500,000 in public funds. According to Adelaide, Mary and Virgil despised each other so much, they would only be found together outside the office if they were dead. Which is how Nudger believes he and Adelaide could wind up, as he picks up slim clues and dodges the armed stalker hired to mark the case closed.

Kidnap proves only the prelude to a diabolically clever scheme of fraud and murder in this vivid tale of taut suspense. Private investigator Alo Nudger didn't have to think twice about accepting the $2,500 fee from Gordon Clark, whose seven-year-old daughter had been "kidnapped" by his ex-wife, Joan. After all, the pay was good, and the job seemed simple enough: bring young Melissa back from Florida to her frantic father. Nudger arrives at his destination to find only an empty house but soon locates Melissa in the safekeeping of a neighbor and reckons his job is done... or is it? For now Joan is missing, and the man she and Melissa had been living with is murdered. Nudger's new proposition from an equally distraught parent-Joan's father-is not so readily appealing as before. Fifty thousand dollars to locate a missing person is a tempting sum, indeed-assuming Alo Nudger can stay alive long enough to enjoy it. "One of the best and most unusual novels in the history of private eye fiction." -Cedar-Rapids Gazette. Lutz's bestselling novel SWF Seeks Same was released as the major motion picture, Single White Female starring Bridget Fonda. About the Series St. Louis private eye ALO NUDGER is perhaps the most Chaplinesque of fictional gumshoes. Where other P.I.s are hardcases living on cigarettes, booze, broads and danger, Alo survives (just) on antacid tablets (it was his nervous stomach that forced Alo to resign from the police force) and grocery coupons.

A murderer is stalking the streets of St Louis, and the only thing linking his victims is a system of special nightlines used by the phone company to test equipment. Lonely people use them to make contact with one another-but these people are dying. The series has garnered its share of awards. Both What You Don't Know Can Hurt You won a Shamus for Best Private Eye Short Story and Ride the Lightning nabbed an Edgar for Best Short Story in 1985.

Helen Crane, a beauty "men build dreams around," hires private eye Alo Nudger to find out what's troubling her lover Jake Dancer. Middle-aging, old-shoe Nudger tails Dancer and manages to save him from a couple of strong-arm men. Dancer, handsome, feckless, an alcoholic and compulsive gambler is vague about the money he owes, and Nudger learns that Helen, working for an "escort service," plans to move "up" to prostitution to help pay Dancer's debts. Then Dancer vanishes, Nudger's lover Claudia is abducted, and the story ends with the uncovering of a grisly, sadistic snuff-film operation.

PI Alo Nudger, at the St Louis airport to pick up a pal, offers his business card to a distraught woman just before an incoming plane blows apart. The next morning she arrives at his office with a wild story about a bomb in an attache case and a fortune in stolen diamonds, and Nudger gets involved because he needs the fee to fend off his greedy, vindictive ex-wife and her sleazy lawyer. Then his new client is tortured and murdered, and when the hard-nosed killers threaten Nudger's lover and let Nudger know that they are watching his every move, Nudger's friend and former partner, police detective Jack Hammersmith, offers information and protection.

New Orleans is off Alo Nudger's beaten path; the St. Louis private detective likes the comforts of home. But he also loves jazz and when he's given a round-trip ticket to the Crescent City by legendary clarinetist Fat Jack McGee, who needs to talk to him, Nudger is willing to take a flyer. Fat Jack has a problem, maybe two: a singer named Ineida, whose father is a very important man in New Orleans, and a pianist named Hollister. Hollister plays the blues just fine, but there's something about him that disturbs Fat Jack. In fact, now that Hollister and the girl are an item, Fat Jack's scared. It doesn't take long before Nudger is, too...

The moment of contact between two peoples, two alien societies, marks the opening of an epoch and the joining of histories. What if it had happened differently? The stories that indigenous peoples and Europeans tell about their first encounters with one another are enormously valuable historical records, but their relevance extends beyond the past. Settler populations and indigenous peoples the world over are engaged in negotiations over legitimacy, power, and rights. These struggles cannot be dissociated from written and oral accounts of "contact" moments, which not only shape our collective sense of history but also guide our understanding of current events. For all their importance, contact stories have not been systematically or critically evaluated as a genre. Myth and Memory explores the narratives of indigenous and newcomer populations from New Zealand and across North America, from the Lost Colony of Roanoke on the Atlantic seaboard of the United States to the Pacific Northwest and as far as Sitka, Alaska. It illustrates how indigenous and explorer accounts of the same meetings reflect fundamentally different systems of thought, and focuses on the cultural misunderstandings embedded in these stories. The contributors discuss the contemporary relevance, production, and performance of Aboriginal and European contact narratives, and introduce new tools for interpreting the genre. They argue that we are still in the contact zone, striving to understand the meaning of contact and the relationship between indigenous and settler populations.