"What a nightmare..." Jake says as one day bleeds into the next. Murders are happening all across the nation... why? Is this a series of freak isolated incidents or by design? Characters in this story cross paths... coincidence? Maybe or maybe not... that is for the reader to determine... and decide whether to answer the S.O.S call...

From a beloved master of crime fiction, The Scarlet Ruse is one of many classic novels featuring Travis McGee, the hard-boiled detective who lives on a houseboat. Travis McGee’s getting lazy. Drinking Boodles on the Busted Flush has become a full-time job. But when he hears that six figures’ worth of rare stamps have wandered off, McGee finds himself back in the salvage business. To deliver on this case, McGee will have to be suspicious of everyone he meets—because what he’s looking for is property of the mob. “The Travis McGee novels are among the finest works of fiction ever penned by an American author.”—Jonathan Kellerman Hirsh Fedderman has misplaced an extremely valuable commodity: the stamp collection of mobster Frank Sprenger. Assessed at around four hundred thousand dollars, these are no ordinary stamps, and Sprenger’s no ordinary collector: He’s liable to break some fingers if he doesn’t get what he’s owed. Lucky for Hirsh, he’s got a friend in Travis McGee. Soon McGee is hot on the trail of the missing collection—not to mention hot for a voluptuous stamp expert by the name of Mary Alice. Only it’s not McGee’s heart that’s in danger. He soon realizes that he’s run afoul of a vicious syndicate, and neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night will keep them from collecting McGee’s head. Features a new Introduction by Lee Child

The renowned novel from crime fiction master Raymond Chandler, with the "quintessential urban private eye" (Los Angeles Times), Philip Marlowe • Featuring the iconic character that inspired the forthcoming film Marlowe, starring Liam Neeson In The Simple Art of Murder, which was prefaced by the famous Atlantic Monthly essay of the same name, noir master Raymond Chandler argues the virtues of the hard-boiled detective novel, and this collection, mostly drawn from stories he wrote for the pulps, demonstrates Chandler's imaginative, entertaining facility with the form. Included are the classic stories "Spanish Blood," Pearls Are a Nuisance," and "Guns at Cyrano's," among others.

Escaping the wrath of General Shermans troops, Joe Edge and his family are forced to seek protection and livelihood in the wilderness of Florida. The Civil War is winding down when the Edges arrive in Sara Sota. Numerous dangerous creatures roam the swamps: panthers, alligators, rattlesnakes, wild boar hogs. Men are the most wicked of all. Florida has become a haven for deserters from both the Union and the Confederate armies. The state is sparsely populatedlawmen few and far between. Murderers, thieves, child abusers, and other assorted human debris take refuge in the palmetto scrubs and pine forests. They are no match for Joe. This legendary novel documents his many courageous acts. He stalks a tiger that attacked his family. He saves the cattle herd of the areas richest plantation owner. He takes revenge against the man who killed a loved one. To a cold-blooded murderer, he dispenses frontier justice. Love blooms for Joe. He must make a choice between faraway medical student, precocious and stubborn Sparky Topp; or the temptress schoolteacher, Grisette Able. In the most exciting action scene ever, Joe takes on a gang of evil outlawsincluding the devil himself. At conclusion, the reader must decide who saves Anne Southern from being skinned alive: Joe Edge, Albert the alligator, or a tiny gold cross and a whispered two-word prayer.

With the recent Sokal hoax--the publication of a prominent physicist's pseudo-article in a leading journal of cultural studies--the status of science moved sharply from debate to dispute. Is science objective, a disinterested reflection of reality, as Karl Popper and his followers believed? Or is it subjective, a social construction, as Thomas Kuhn and his students maintained? Into the fray comes "Mystery of Mysteries," an enlightening inquiry into the nature of science, using evolutionary theory as a case study. Michael Ruse begins with such colorful luminaries as Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) and Julian Huxley (brother of novelist Aldous and grandson of T. H. Huxley, "Darwin's bulldog" ) and ends with the work of the English game theorist Geoffrey Parker--a microevolutionist who made his mark studying the mating strategies of dung flies--and the American paleontologist Jack Sepkoski, whose computer-generated models reconstruct mass extinctions and other macro events in life's history. Along the way Ruse considers two great popularizers of evolution, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, as well as two leaders in the field of evolutionary studies, Richard Lewontin and Edward O. Wilson, paying close attention to these figures' cultural commitments: Gould's transplanted Germanic idealism, Dawkins's male-dominated Oxbridge circle, Lewontin's Jewish background, and Wilson's southern childhood. Ruse explicates the role of metaphor and metavalues in evolutionary thought and draws significant conclusions about the cultural impregnation of science. Identifying strengths and weaknesses on both sides of the "science wars," he demonstrates that a resolution of the objective and subjective debate is nonetheless possible.