Edgar Award Finalist: The story of the infamous escape attempt and bloody siege at Alcatraz.In 1946, six men attempted to break out of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison on an island off the coast of San Francisco. Their bloody siege lasted two days, and ended with five dead and fifteen wounded—plus two of the perpetrators executed for their role in the endeavor.In Six Against the Rock—the basis for a TV movie—an award-winning...

The Christian movement emerged amidst complex social tensions, power politics, ethnic diversity, economic stress, and cultural changes. Both biblical scholars and social scientists find that a social scientific study of early Christian phenomena yields fascinating results. However, biblical scholars are sometimes unaware of the breadth of the useful social scientific concepts and techniques, and social scientists sometimes lack the most basic background in literary research methods. The

The Cambridge Companion to the Bible, 2nd edition provides in-depth data and analysis of the production and reception of the canonical writings of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, and also of the apocryphal works produced by Jewish and Christian writers. Unique among single-volume introductions, this book focuses on the ever-changing social and cultural contexts in which the biblical authors and their original readers lived. The authors of the first edition were chosen for their interna...

"[This] deeply engaging tale of a teenager who may—or may not—have helped kill her parents [is] a model of evenhanded true-crime writing." — Kirkus ReviewsSixteen-year-old Patricia Columbo began working for pharmacist Frank DeLuca, a married father of five, in the 1970s, and the two soon entered into a sexual relationship. Against her father's wishes, Patricia and Frank moved in together. Then, in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, Patricia's father was brutally...

Edgar Award Finalist: The true story of a string of brutal crimes committed in the name of religious fanaticism and racial hatred in 1970s San Francisco.In the early 1970s, a small band of well-dressed, clean-cut African American men began terrorizing the residents of San Francisco with guns and machetes. Their victims ranged from a teenage Salvation Army cadet to a middle-aged Jordanian grocer to an eighty-one-year-old janitor. The streets became deserted and tour...

A "gripping, emotionally charged" account of a brutal crime committed by escaped prisoners from an Edgar Award–winning author ( Los Angeles Times Book Review).In 1973, six members of the Alday family were brutally murdered in their home in Donalsonville, Georgia, by fugitives who escaped from a Maryland prison and broke in to the Alday's house. Two of the escapees were brothers, and they picked up another one of their siblings, only fifteen years old, alon...

A "vividly written" account of the bloody 1971 San Quentin riot by the Edgar Award–winning author of Zebra and Six Against the Rock ( Kirkus Reviews).American Saturday traces one man's path from the slums of Chicago to the California state prison where he embraced radicalism, was charged for the murder of a corrections officer, and eventually, was gunned down during the violent chaos following a failed escape attempt. This chilli...

A hit man tries to make a clean break from his murderous career in this chilling novel from an award-winning author.He has no police record, not even a traffic ticket. But he's killed twenty-seven people during his career as a professional assassin. And sometimes it's not just the target who takes a bullet—if the bodyguard or mistress is unfortunate enough to be around. When the time comes, it happens fast: assemble the weapon, load, ditch the evidence.Now ...

An " intense, deeply haunting" saga about love, money, and murder, set amid Nevada's mining and gambling booms ( Publishers Weekly).In the aftermath of World War I, three veterans—Mike, Jim, and Buck—meet a seductive woman named Ruby. Quick Silver follows all four over a span of decades, from Virginia City to Las Vegas, as their lives intertwine and intersect. It is a tale of marriage and infidelity, an orphaned boy and a forbidde...

Two LAPD detectives are at odds over a horrifying case in this "taut shocker" of a novel by an Edgar Award–winning author ( The Boston Globe).A pair of twins have been brutally murdered, and Los Angeles detectives George Cascade and Ed Fenner find themselves working a case with puzzling sexual overtones. When a young, intellectually disabled African American becomes the object of suspicion, tensions flare between the two officers—and it will push them to t...

A gritty, action-packed novel about a World War II suicide mission that goes sideways from a "superlative storyteller" ( Publishers Weekly).In the midst of World War II, a Japanese submarine base must be destroyed. But someone needs to draw enemy fire while the goal is accomplished and the task would be a suicide mission. Only a certain kind of soldier can handle a job this risky. Now, six men have been chosen to serve as decoys, and a seventh has agreed t...

A collection of short fiction, including an Edgar Award–nominated story, about hard-luck characters and the human instinct to survive.A survivor of Little Bighorn faces down the resulting trauma in the decades following the bloody battle. An old man who has lost his late wife's cat joins forces with an unlikely partner to rescue abused animals. An ex–racecar driver contends with criminals in the midst of the famous Dakar Rally. Challenge the Widow-Maker is...