Down Out Books: 337 books

In his debut short fiction collection, A Scholar of Pain, Grant Jerkins remains—as the Washington Post put it—“Determined to peer into the darkness and tell us exactly what he sees.” Here, the depth of that darkness is on evident, oftentimes poetic, display. We meet, and come reluctantly to...

There are seven of them. Children — innocents — whose long-buried remains are uncovered by a flash-flood. No one knows who could have committed such a crime. Clues are scarce, and with the media turning the story into a law enforcement nightmare, time is short. Only Wil Hardesty, a private eye...

Skip tracer Henry Swann cares little about anything but money, so when a beautiful Upper East Side woman shows up in his office and hires him to find her missing husband, he smiles and takes the cash. But when this seemingly simple missing-person case turns into homicide, Swann finds himself trapped...

When Bricks and Cam strike out on their own in the aftermath of their bloody showdown with the Giordano family, not everything goes as planned. Boring, straight jobs aren't satisfying, and their first successful solo hit is a messy one. Worse yet, someone has revenge on their mind. Before they...

The hit-and-run driver took everything — his wife, child and legs. Now a paraplegic, Dean Drayhart unleashes payback on suspected hit-and-runners in Los Angeles with helper-monkey Sid as his deadly assistant. Dean’s gentle, doting nurse knows nothing about what he’s up to and when Sid...

Shadow towns, smugglers and secret notes — this trio of New York authors are a TRIPLE SHOT of twists and turns in three novellas Payback leads to an unmarked grave in Ross Klavan's THUMP GUN HITCHED. A freak accident forces two L.A. cops to play out a deadly obsession that takes them from...

When ex-sheriff Ken Burke is attacked and winds up in an unusual coma, the former hitman Sangster finds himself pulled into the world of Voodoo in order to save his friend. Sangster discovers he has stepped into a hornet’s nest as the search leads him through a myriad of French Quarter Voodoo...

Answering the summons of his old Black Ops mentor to assist in bringing to an end a Mexican cartel preying on the people they smuggle over the border, Joe Hunter is happy to oblige. But he should have guessed there was more to Walter Hayes Conrad's agenda than first believed. For decades, Walter...

After his girlfriend leaves and takes their young son with her, Joey Hidalgo is left alone in the trailer they formerly called home with nothing to do but get drunk and contemplate her reasons. Is he really as angry, as volatile, so close to constant violence, as she claims he is? No, Joey...

Standing between Bo and Slick and $642,000 from the bank job: Prison. A hurricane. A horny cop. A naked priest. An angry cab driver. Two wanna-be criminals. A speeding train. A hot soldering iron. A peeping tom. A fed-up girl. A gun dealer. A homeless lady. An empty shotgun. A girlfriend with...

Bricks and Cam are back, this time fleeing from the East Coast after closing accounts with the mob. Planning a new life on the West Coast, the pair of hit men stop off in Ashton, a small, rural town in eastern Washington, only to immediately find themselves embroiled in trouble in typical fashion. What...

The Anthony-nominated collection of crime stories without guns—the collection we didn't want to be necessary—is back for Volume 2. Two dozen more crime writers have come together to raise their voices and take pen in hand to call for a sensible and reasoned debate about guns in America....

Two years after they escaped the mainland with their lives and little else, save for well over a million dollars in the bank, Lars and Shaine have carved out a nicely spartan existence in Hawaii. Two years without pulling a trigger on another human being. Until Lars’s former employer calls about...

Meet the McGraws. They’re not criminals. They’re outlaws. They have made a living by driving anything and everything for the Stanleys, the criminal family who has been employing them for decades. It’s ended with Tucker. He’s gone straight, much to the disappointment of his father, Webb. When...