"In the first major history of crime fiction in fifty years, the book traces the evolution of the genre from the eighteenth century to the present, offering brand-new perspective on the world's most popular form of fiction"--NoveList Plus.

"1925. London. When Alice Diamond, AKA "Diamond Annie," is elected the Queen of the Forty Elephants, she's determined to take the all-girl gang to new heights. Too bad she's now the target for Britain's first female policewomen who is determined to prove herself. When she hears about the large-scale heist in the works to fund Alice's new dynasty, she realizes it's the chance she's been looking for--and the added bonus of putting Diamond Annie out...

"Justine Poole provides security for wealthy and high-profile Hollywood stars, but that all changes when a job puts her in the limelight. When she prevents a brazen robbery at the Beverly Hills home of two of her clients--killing two of the five armed robbers in the process--she is initially lauded in the media as a local hero. But the spotlight soon puts her in the crosshairs of the crime kingpin behind the burglaries. Unable to stand the embarrassment...

"Mafia hit-man-turned-rabbi Sal Cupertine is ready to get out of the life. But it's not going to be easy. His once-brilliant plan to pass himself off as Rabbi David Cohen is unraveling. Enemies on both sides of the law are hot on his trail. His wife and son are unreachable in witness protection and are probably in danger. In order to find his family, get out of the desert alive, and salvage his long-sought-after happy ending, Sal is going to have...

Living in the Buckingham Palace Casino, Crissy Dowling, a Princess Diana impersonator with her own musical cabaret, finds her carefully constructed kingdom crashing down around her when the owner of the casino is brutally murdered and she is drawn in a world of organized crime, cryptocurrency and obsession.

"Not everyone gets to be the hero. Qi'ra listened to the dreams and promises of a boy with a reckless smile, only to be torn away from him and returned to the White Worms gang while Han made his way to freedom. Now freedom seems like a luxury she can't afford while she concentrates on survival and despairs of ever leaving Corellia. But her fortunes seem to turn when a representative of the crime syndicate Crimson Dawn plucks Qi'ra from captivity and...

"Los Angeles, 1965. Tempers have boiled over in the Watts neighborhood, sparked by the traffic stop of two Black motorists, the Frye brothers, by the Highway Patrol. Freelance crime photographer Harry Ingram is on the scene, capturing images of the cops as they unleash batons, dogs, and water hoses on the predominantly Black crowd. When he snaps proof of an unarmed man being shot down by the LAPD, he winds up in the hospital, beaten, his camera confiscated....