Marlowe takes on an assignment from the Sternwood family: the child-woman Carmen, the sultry Vivian, and the ancient General too far past his prime to cope with his daughters' brand of trouble. Stepping in to deal with a case of blackmail, Marlowe follows a trail that leads him into a landscape littered with murder and deception.

The sultry young wife of a diner owner conspires with an aimless drifter to murder her husband

A woman disappears and her husband, who admits he hates her, hires Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe to find her.

A few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, spook-turned-novelist Edwin Lemaster revealed to up-and-coming journalist Bill Cage that he'd once considered spying for the enemy. For Cage, the news story created a brief but embarrassing sensation and heralded the beginning of the end of his career. More than two decades later, Cage, now a lonely, disillusioned PR man, receives an anonymous note hinting that he should have dug deeper.

The first book in Ross Macdonald's acclaimed Lew Archer series introduces the detective who redefined the role of the American private eye and gave the crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity only hinted at before.
Like many Southern California millionaires, Ralph Sampson keeps odd company. There's the sun-worshipping holy man whom Sampson once gave his very own mountain; the fading actress with sidelines in astrology and S&M....

"The first book in the Shady Hollow series, in which we are introduced to the village of Shady Hollow, a place where woodland creatures live together in harmony--until a curmudgeonly toad turns up dead and the local reporter has to solve the case. Reporter Vera Vixen is a relative newcomer to Shady Hollow. The fox has a nose for news, so when she catches wind that the death might be a murder, she resolves to get to the bottom of the case, no matter...

Vadassy was just another name on the guest list at the seedy Mediterranean Hotel until he was accused of spying. Then, suddenly, he was on everybody's list.

Dr. Peter S. Murphy needs fifteen thousand dollars by the end of the day, or the city of Los Angeles can say goodbye to the El Healtho clinic. A recovery center for the most severe cases of alcoholism in the state--even if no one ever does quite seem to get dry there--El Healtho has been the bane of Dr. Murphy's existence ever since he started running it. But now that its doors are about to close forever, Dr. Murphy finds he'll do anything to keep...

Tommy Carver may be every inch the angry, rebellious young man his teachers and parents accuse him of being. But sometimes, there are reasons for a fury like Tommy's. Tommy's relationship with Donna, the daughter of a man he hates almost as much as his own father, has led to more outbursts than anything else in Tommy's firecracker existence. With her unearthly beauty and a passion that rivals Tommy's own, he couldn't help but fall for her. But as...