Showing results by author "Elmore Leonard"

With the closing of the Harlan County, Kentucky coalmines, marijuana has become the biggest cash crop in the state. A hundred pounds of it can gross three-hundred thousand dollars, but that’s chump change compared to the quarter million a human body can get you - especially when it’s sold off piece-by-piece. So when Dickie and Coover Crowe, dope-dealing brothers known for sampling their own supply, decide to branch out into the body business, it’s up to U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens to stop them.

The feds want Miami bookmaker Harry Arno to squeal on his wiseguy boss. So they're putting word out on the street that Arno's skimming profits from "Jimmy Cap" Capotorto - which he is, but everybody does it. He was planning to retire to Italy someday anyway, so Harry figures now's a good time to get lost. U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens knows Harry's tricky - the bookie ditched him once in an airport while in the marshal's custody - but not careful.

From Elmore Leonard, the author who has influenced more writers than any other, comes a collection of the stories that launched his phenomenal career....

Now that his mom's gravy train has derailed, gambling, debt-ridden Palm Beach playboy Warren "Chip" Ganz has decided to take somebody rich hostage - with the help of a Bahamian ex-con, a psycho gardener/enforcer, and the beautiful, if underfed, psychic Reverend Dawn. The trouble is, they choose bookmaker Harry Arno as their victim, and Harry can scam with the best.

After serving time for armed robbery, Ernest "Stick" Stickley is back on the outside and trying to stay legit. But it's tough staying straight in a crooked town - and Miami is a pirate's paradise, where investment fat cats and lowlife drug dealers hold hands and dance. And when a crazed player chooses Stick at random to die for another man's sins, the struggling ex-con is left with no choice but to dive right back into the game. Besides, Stick knows a good thing when he sees it....

They laughed at Roberto Valdez and then ignored him. But when a dark-skinned man was holed up in a shack with a gun, they sent the part-time town constable to deal with the problem, and made sure he had no choice but to gun the fugitive down. Trouble was, Valdez killed an innocent man. And when he asked for justice, and some money for the dead man's woman, they beat Valdez and tied him to a cross. They were still laughing when Valdez came back. And then they began to die.

He used to be on the bomb squad, but it's not until he transfers out that Chris Mankowski really begins juggling with dynamite. Rape and revenge are just the tip of the iceberg in a twisty tale that brings Detroit's denizens to life - and occasional death - in all their seedy glory. Electrifying, explosive, and unexpected, this is Elmore Leonard at his suspenseful best.

The smallest of small-time criminals, Ernest Stickley Jr. figures his luck's about to change when Detroit used-car salesman Frank Ryan catches him trying to boost a ride from Ryan's lot. Frank's got some surefire schemes for getting rich quick - all of them involving guns - and all Stickley has to do is follow "Ryan's Rules" to share the wealth. But sometimes rules need to be bent, maybe even broken, if one is to succeed in the world of crime, especially if the "brains" of the operation knows less than nothing.

Set in Arizona mining country, Hombre is the tale of a white man raised by Indians, who must come to the aid of people who hate him when their stagecoach is attacked by outlaws. As thrilling as his contemporary novels of crime, double-cross, and murder in Detroit and Miami, Hombre is Elmore Leonard at his riveting best - no less than one would expect from the creator of US Marshal Raylan Givens ( Justified).

Working at his brother-in-law's New Orleans funeral home isn't reformed jewel thief Jack Delaney's idea of excitement - until he's dispatched to a leper's hospital to pick up a corpse that turns out to be very much alive ... and under the care of a beautiful, radical ex-nun in designer jeans. The "deceased" is the one-time squeeze of a Nicaraguan colonel who's ordered her dead for trying to "infect" him, and Sister Lucy's looking to spirit the young woman away from his guns and goons.

Carl Webster, the hot kid of the marshals service, is polite, respects his elders, and can shoot a man driving away in an Essex at 400 yards. Carl works out of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, federal courthouse during the 1930s, the period of America's most notorious bank robbers: Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson...those guys.

Vincent Majestyk saw too much death in the jungles of Southeast Asia. All he wants to do now is farm his melons and forget. But peace can be an elusive commodity, even in the Arizona hinterlands - and especially when the local mob is calling all the shots. And one quiet, proud man's refusal to be strong-armed by a powerful hood is about to start a violent chain reaction that will leave Mr. Majestyk ruined, in shackles, and without a friend in the world -- except for one tough and beautiful woman.

World-class gentleman felon Jack Foley is busting out of Florida's Glades Prison when he runs head on into a shotgun-wielding Karen Sisco. Suddenly he's sharing a cramped car trunk with the classy, disarmed federal marshal and the chemistry is working overtime - and as soon as she escapes, he's already missing her. But there are bad men and a major score waiting for Jack in Motown. And the next time his path crosses Karen's, chances are she's going to be there for business, not pleasure.

Jack Foley is serving a 30-year sentence in a Miami penitentiary, but he's made an unlikely friend on the inside who just might be able to do something about that. Fellow inmate Cundo Rey, an extremely wealthy Cuban criminal, arranges for Foley's sentence to be reduced from 30 years to three months, and when Jack is released just two weeks ahead of Cundo, he agrees to wait for him in Venice Beach, California.

Best-selling author Elmore Leonard launched his career as a writer of Westerns. This classic story is the basis for the 1957 film starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin, and the 2007 film starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale.

A character so outrageous he could only have come from the ingenious imagination of Elmore Leonard, lewd, lecherous, law-bending Florida jurist Judge Robert "Maximum Bob" Gibbs has been judged guilty by a grudge-bearing malefactor and sentenced to death - by alligator, if necessary.

Dual Meaders, Doc Taulbee, and their gang of city slickers set out to steal thousands of dollars worth of homemade Kentucky Whiskey from Son Martin, a hell-raising country boy, during the midst of Prohibition.

The sequel to Chili Palmer's hit movie Get Leo tanked, and now Chili's itching for a comeback. So when a power-lunch with record label executive and former associate Tommy Athens ends in a mob hit, he soon finds himself in an unlikely alliance with organized crime detective Darryl Holmes and the likely next target of Russian gangsters. But where others see danger, Chili Palmer sees story possibilities.

In this collection of new and recently published short fiction, Elmore Leonard demonstrates the superb characterizations, dead-on dialogue, vivid atmosphere, and driving plotting that have made him a household name. And once more this master of crime illustrates that the line between the law and the lawbreakers is not as firm as we might think.

Breathtaking suspense, cold-blooded crime and challenging twists of plot make this collection a chilling audio experience. Featuring the finest short-story mystery fiction by the most acclaimed writers, past and present, including: "The Perfect Crime" by Ben Ray Redman, "Quitters, Inc." by Stephen King, "High Darktown" by James Ellroy, "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" by Robert Bloch, "Clerical Error" by James Gould Cozzens, "The Gettysburg Bugle" by Ellery Queen, and more....