Richard Stark

Donald E. Westlake is one of the greats of crime fiction. Under the pseudonym Richard Stark, he wrote twenty-four fast-paced, hardboiled novels featuring Parker, a shrewd career criminal with a talent for heists. Using the same nom de plume, Westlake also completed a separate series in the Parker universe, starring Alan Grofield, an occasional colleague of Parker. While he shares events and characters with several Parker novels, Grofield is less calculating...

Donald E. Westlake is one of the greats of crime fiction. Under the pseudonym Richard Stark, he wrote twenty-four fast-paced, hardboiled novels featuring Parker, a shrewd career criminal with a talent for heists. Using the same nom de plume, Westlake also completed a separate series in the Parker universe, starring Alan Grofield, an occasional colleague of Parker. While he shares events and characters with several Parker novels, Grofield is less calculating...

We are born, and we die. In between, during our allotted brief time on this planet, we strive to make sense of our world, seeking answers to universal questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning and purpose of life? As we ponder the answers, we yearn for love, for friendship, and to be happy. “We are in the Together” is a collection of nine beautifully articulated vignettes in which the author shares personal experiences from his...

The hunter becomes prey, as a heist goes sour and Parker finds himself trapped in a shuttered amusement park, besieged by a bevy of local mobsters. There are no exits from Fun Island. Outnumbered and outgunned, Parker can't afford a single miscalculation. He's low on bullets-but, as anyone who's crossed his path knows, that definitely doesn't mean he's defenseless.

After the publication of Butcher's Moon in 1974, Donald Westlake said, "Richard Stark proved to me that he had a life of his own by simply disappearing. He was gone." And readers waited. But nothing bad is truly gone forever, and Parker's as bad as they come. According to Westlake, one day in 1997, "suddenly, he came back from the dead, with a chalky prison pallor"-and the novels that followed showed that neither Parker nor Stark had lost a step....

Deadly Edge bids a brutal adieu to the 1960s as Parker robs a rock concert and the heist goes south. Soon Parker finds himself-and his woman, Claire-menaced by a pair of sadistic, drug-crazed hippies. Parker has a score to settle, while Claire's armed with her first rifle-and they're both ready to usher in the end of the age of Aquarius.

"Hearing the click behind him, Parker threw his glass straight back over his right shoulder and dove off his chair to the left." When a job looks like amateur hour, Parker walks away. But even a squad of seasoned professionals can't guarantee against human error in a high-risk scam. Can an art dealer with issues unload a truck of paintings with Parker's aid? Or will the heist end up too much of a human interest story, as luck runs out before Parker...

The robbery was a piece of cake. The getaway was clean. And seven men were safely holed up in different places while Parker held all the cash. But somehow the sweet heist of a college football game turns sour, Parker's woman is murdered, and the take is stolen. Now Parker's looking for the lowlife who did him dirty, while the cops are looking for seven clever thieves-and Parker must outrun them all. When hunters and hunted meet, some win, some lose....

Bank robberies should run like clockwork, right? If your name's Parker, you expect nothing less. Until, that is, one of your partners gets too greedy for his own good. The four-way split following a job leaves too small a take for George Uhl, who begins to pick off his fellow hoisters, one by one. The first mistake? He doesn't begin things by putting a bullet in Parker. That means he won't get the chance to make a second. One of the darkest novels...

Here's Parker-planning to steal the entire payroll of an Air Force base in upstate New York, with help from Marty Fusco-whose fresh out of the pen-and a smart aleck finance clerk named Devers. Holed up with family in a scrappy little town, the hoisters prepare for the risky job by trying to shorten the odds. But the ice is thinner than Parker likes to think-and Marty's ex-wife is much more complicated.