Lawrence Osborne

As night falls on Macau and the neon signs that line the rain-slick streets come alive, Doyle descends into his casino of choice to try his luck at the baccarat tables that are the anchor of his current existence. A corrupt English lawyer who has escaped prosecution by fleeing to the East, Doyle spends his nights drinking and gambling and his days sleeping off his excesses, continually haunted by his past. Taking refuge in a series of louche and dimly...

"Leaving New York for the heat, humidity and anonymity of Bangkok, Sarah arrives in Thailand with the sole desire to lose herself, a stranger in a strange land. Yet she also leaves behind a complicated past, and a deception she holds close to her chest. Taking up a lease at a high-end apartment complex called The Kingdom, she finds herself drawn into the close-knit social circle of three very different, but equally mysterious, ex-pat women: Ximena,...

"Lawrence Osborne brings one of literature's most enduring detectives back to life - as Private Investigator Philip Marlowe returns for one last adventure. The year is 1988. The place, Baja California. And Philip Marlowe - now in his seventy-second year - is living out his retirement in the terrace bar of the La Fonda hotel. Sipping margaritas, playing cards, his silver-tipped cane at the ready. When in saunter two men dressed like undertakers, with...

Presents twenty of the best works of short fiction of the past year from a variety of acclaimed sources. Tom Perrotta explains in his introduction that "all of [these stories] took me somewhere I didn't expect to go, and jolted me into that state of heightened awareness and emotional receptivity that's one of the great rewards of reading good fiction." The characters in these stories seek to discover something lacking in their life. Their stories...