Stanley Ellin

Four desperate ex-cons attempt an audacious kidnapping James Flood and his three partners get out of jail with a single number on their minds: $1 million, in cash, for each of them. To get it, they have a simple plan, a mixture of home invasion and kidnapping, with a brilliant twist: Their target is a wealthy family whose religion means they can't possibly fight back.   Armed with enough guns and ammunition to take on an army, Flood and his men storm...

Edgar Award Finalist: A former Miami Beach tennis pro discovers the dangerous price of marrying for money in "one of the year's best chillers" (The New York Times Book Review). There was a time when Davis Cup winner Chris Monte had it all. Now, down and out in Dade County, restringing racquets at a South Beach tennis shop and hiring himself out for an occasional lesson, he's dead broke. Then, along comes Elizabeth Jones, a mousy student with an irresistible...

From a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master: A Manhattan PI heads to Florida to deal with movie stars, a mysterious guru, and murder. New York City private eye John Milano's new client is an old flame-and the fire is still burning in Miami Beach. It wasn't too many years ago that superstar Sharon Bauer dumped John for an aged and infirm billionaire at the instruction of her very persuasive yogi, Kalos, renowned master of "The Path." Following Kalos's...

In the wake of a tragic accident, a young college student haunted by guilt moves to New York City to shake the past and discover his destiny. After three years at Temple University, Dan Egan was still trying to find out who he was. Frustratingly unmoored, he moved from engineering to fine arts and finally to humanities, plowed under each time. He was the one in the back row, sleeping behind dark glasses-the "ivy beleaguered" dilettante soon to be...

Hired as a tutor for a madwoman's son, an American expatriate scraps to stay alive A washed-up heavyweight with dreams of becoming a writer, Reno Davis is down to his last franc when he lands a job as a bouncer at a sprawling Paris discotheque. His first night, he saves a slumming beauty from a pair of café toughs, and she rewards him with a well-paid job tutoring her darling son. But what she really wants is a bodyguard to keep her precious baby...

A young drug runner gets revenge on a crime syndicate in this novel of deception and international double crosses from an Edgar Award–winning author. By the time David Hanna Shaw is shuttled off to an Ivy League school by his preoccupied mother, the brilliant young linguist is already fluent in a half dozen languages. He's also a quick study in international swindling, deceit, drug smuggling, and currency profiteering. That's what comes from having...

From a three-time Edgar Award–winning author: Local rituals and a lost painting draw a New York businessman into intrigue on a remote Pacific island. Ben Smith, a market researcher from New York City, has arrived on Santo Stefano, an island two hundred miles off the coast of Peru. At the behest of his company's seafood division, he's gauging the potential profitability of the island's abundance of rock lobsters. Encouraging a little tin-pot country...