The Heartbreak Lounge

Ex-state trooper Harry Rane, who first appeared in Wallace Stroby's brilliant debut novel, The Barbed-Wire Kiss, is at loose ends. Doing some investigative work for a friend's firm just to keep himself busy, Harry meets Nikki Ellis, a woman desperate for help. Her ex, Johnny Harrow, was just released from prison after a seven-year stretch for attempted murder. Nikki hasn't spoken to him since he went down, but she knows what he's capable of, and that he'll be looking for her-and for the baby she put up for adoption after Johnny went away. She knows it's up to her to protect the child once again. And she's afraid. As Harry finds out, she should be. Johnny is headed home to New Jersey to settle up with anyone who did him wrong while he was gone, including Nikki and his former employer, mobster Joey Alea. Then he's planning to find his son and start a new life. Johnny starts at the Heartbreak Lounge, where Nikki was a dancer when she first met Johnny, and works his way through their old life, leaving a trail of blood and fear in his wake. Only Harry might be tough enough-or reckless enough-to help her. What happens next shows why the searing talent and explosive writing evident in The Barbed-Wire Kiss was only the beginning, and why Wallace Stroby is destined to be one of the finest crime writers of a generation.

Taking the case of Nikki Ellis, who is seeking protection from her recently released ex-boyfriend, former state trooper Harry Rane learns that the boyfriend is out to exact revenge from anyone he believes crossed him.

It's late at night when Florida sheriff's deputy Sara Cross arrives at the scene of a roadside shooting along a deserted highway. Another deputy, Billy Flynn, her former partner, who also happens to be her former lover, has fatally shot a twenty-two-year-old man during what started out as a routine traffic stop, and she's the first to arrive on the scene. He claims that the man pulled a gun, and that when he didn't respond to Billy's commands to drop it, Billy shot him. Billy is clearly upset, shaken up; Sarah sees the gun in the dead man's hand and the bag of illegal weapons in the trunk of his car and believes Billy's actions were justified. Up north in New Jersey, Mikey-Mike runs a major drug operation and is tightening his hold on the competition, making a deal with a new supplier. Morgan, a middle-aged enforcer for Mikey who's been in the life too long, would like to make one last score, walk away, and retire for good. Mike asks Morgan to head to Florida to find out what's holding up his new deal, and Morgan sees the job as a possibility for his last big payday. As more details of the roadside shooting emerge with Sara's investigation, and as Morgan follows the trail Mikey lays out for him, the two storylines begin to merge into a much darker, more menacing scenario than either Morgan or Sara imagined. Sara, in order to protect herself and her son, must follow the truth no matter where it leads. Acclaimed crime writer Wallace Stroby delivers a gripping novel in Gone 'til November that is part modern noir, part intense character study---and totally compelling from start to finish.

Two years ago, Harry Rane's wife died after a bout with cancer. Then, grief-stricken and careless, he went back to his job as a New Jersey state cop and got shot in the line of duty. He took early retirement, and now lives in an old farmhouse in rural New Jersey and takes life one day at a time. It's not much, but he gets by. Things change when an old friend from his grade school days in Long Branch calls him for help. Bobby was Harry's best friend until high school graduation, but when Harry went to the police academy Bobby went another way, working, dealing a little on the side. Now he's taken one last chance and gotten in over his head for $50,000 to Eddie Fallon, a local crime boss. Harry goes to see Fallon on Bobby's behalf, hoping to work something out, but it's hard to negotiate with a man like Fallon, and things quickly get complicated, and dangerous. He does learn, too, that he and Fallon have something in common --- Fallon's wife is an ex-girlfriend Harry hasn't seen since he was eighteen, a girl who was pregnant with his child when she ran away. In The Barbed-Wire Kiss, Wallace Stroby's brooding, blistering debut set against the spare, atmospheric background of downstate New Jersey, Harry gets caught between his past and his future, between right and vengeance.

Bruce Springsteen's melancholy "Meeting Across the River," a song rarely performed but beloved by his countless fans, serves as the inspiration for this eclectic mix of short stories written by an array of acclaimed authors. "Meeting Across the River," from Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run album, is a song with an evocative melody and lyrics that unfold like a noir fable: a man down on his luck but desperate to make things right with his girl tells his buddy, Eddie, that they have to get across the river for a last-chance meeting with someone, all in the hopes of a big score: two grand. With that money, our hero can win back his girl and all will be right with the world-but if he and Eddie screw up, the consequences will be grave. Authors including Eric Garcia, C. J. Box, Barbara Seranella, David Corbett, Gregg Hurwitz, and Steve Hamilton, among others, have written imaginative, heartbreaking, funny, and bold stories based on this classic American story of hope and despair, each a surprisingly different experiment with character and plot. For as familiar as this story is, Springsteen's spare lyrics leave much unsaid. How these authors fill in the absences is what makes this collection, published a month before the thirtieth anniversary of the release of Springsteen's Born to Run, such an unusual treasure, proving that, just as with music, in literature no two performances are alike. Jessica Kaye is a publishing law attorney, occasional writer and the founder and former publisher of the Publishing Mills, an award-winning audiobook company, as well as a lifelong fan of great music and great writing. Richard J. Brewer is an author, actor, and voice-over talent for films and audiobooks.

The adventure begins when Meg’s mother, Addie, vacationing in Florida, takes a spill. At the hospital, Addie bolts upright on her gurney and yells “I demand an autopsy!” before passing out cold. “One minute, she is unconscious, the next, she’s nuts,” observes Meg Federico in this hilarious and poignant memoir of taking care of eighty-year-old Addie and her relatively new (and equally old) husband, Walter, in their not-so-golden years. Addie’s accident is a portent of things to come over the next two years as Meg oversees her mother’s home care in the Departure Lounge, the nickname Meg gives Addie and Walter’s house in suburban New Jersey. It is a place of odd behaviors and clashing caregivers, where chaos and confusion reign supreme. Meg had expected that Addie and Walter would settle into a Rockwellian dotage of docile dependency. Instead the pair regress into terrible teens. Meg watches from the sidelines in disbelief as her mother and stepfather, forbidden by doctors to drink, conspire to order cases of scotch by phone; as Addie’s attendant accuses the evening staff of midnight voodoo; as the increasingly demented Walter’s sex drive becomes unbridled and mail-order sex aids are delivered to the front door. Meg jumps in to cope with the pandemonium–even as she struggles to manage her own family back in Nova Scotia. With a fresh voice and a keen eye for the absurd, Meg Federico writes a story that will resonate with the generation now caring for their parents. Welcome to the Departure Lounge is a moving and madcap chronicle of a family–their moments of joy, the memories they’d rather forget, and the just plain loopiness of their situation. “How’s life at the Departure Lounge?” Meg’s brother asks. Meg doesn’t know where to start. “Let’s just say the drinks are outrageous, and they never run out of nuts.”

America's greatest crime writer investigates his mother's murder. On 21 June 1958, Geneva Hilliker Ellroy left her home in California. She was found strangled the next day. Her ten year-old son James had been with her estranged husband all weekend and was informed of her death on his return. Her murderer was never found, but her death had an enduring effect on her son - he spent his teens and early adult years as a wino, petty burglar and derelict. Only later, through his obsession with crime fiction, triggered by his mother's murder, did Ellroy begin to delve into his past. Shortly after the publication of his groundbreaking novel WHITE JAZZ, he determined to return to Los Angeles and, with the help of veteran detective Bill Stoner, attempt to solve the 38-year-old killing. The result is one of the few classics of crime non-fiction and autobiography to appear in the last few decades; a hypnotic trip to America's underbelly and one man's tortured soul.

ONE OF GRAZIA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2021 'I loved it. Atmospheric and so good' MARIAN KEYES 'A dark, bewitching and captivating read that had my heart in my mouth by the ending' JENNIFER SAINT, author of ARIADNE Lancashire, 1620. Young Sarah Haworth and her family live as outcasts. They are 'cunning folk', feared by the local villagers by day, but called upon under cover of darkness for healing balms and spells. Against the odds, love blossoms when Sarah meets Daniel, the local farmer's son. But when a new magistrate arrives to investigate a spate of strange deaths, his gaze inevitably turns to Sarah and her family. In a world where cunning women are forced into darkness by powerful men, can Sarah reckon with her fate to protect all she holds dear? 'Fans of intensely atmospheric historical fiction will love this' STYLIST 'Elizabeth Lee's debut novel is timely in its depiction of hysteria and persecution, and beautifully evokes a historical period poised between dark ignorance and long-overdue enlightenment' OBSERVER 'Wonderfully original . . . devastating . . . and fabulously atmospheric' ELODIE HARPER, author of THE WOLF DEN