This Sorcerer's Apprentice is no Mickey Mouse

Would you kill someone if you knew you could get away with it? John Taff's taut thriller The Sorcerer's Apprentice begins with that very question. And David Benning, a successful accountant, is seriously asking it. His dying father is racking up exorbitant charges at an expensive nursing home. And then there's that bank account fat with embezzled money.

When he's blackmailed by a shadowy organization known only as "The Group," David finds himself thrust into a world far beyond his normal boundaries, one in which his survival requires him to kill seemingly ordinary people.

Welcome to a nightmare. It's David Benning's this time, but could be yours the next.

- Richard Curtis

The Killer Inside Her

Jim Thompson is one of the world's great masters of Noir fiction. He's best known for his classic crime novel The Killer Inside Me and for several films based on his books, notably The Grifters.

In Savage Night, a handsome criminal named Carl Bigelow wants to bump off hoodlum Jake Winroy without making it look like a hit. Winroy's gotta go because he's going to turn state's evidence on Carl's boss. But there's good news: Winroy's beautiful wife is bored with the hood's drunken behavior and yearns to become a widow. She also wouldn't mind taking Carl for a lover. If Carl can whack Winroy and hang it on the dame, he can get away with murder.

Don't be surprised if you end up rooting for the bad guys. Everybody does: That's Jim Thompson's genius.

- Richard Curtis