Tod Goldberg

"Sal Cupertine is a legendary hit man for the Chicago Mafia, known for his ability to get in and out of a crime without a trace. Until now, that is. His first-ever mistake forces Sal to botch an assassination, killing three undercover FBI agents in the process. This puts too much heat on Sal, and he knows this botched job will be his death sentence to the Mafia. So he agrees to their radical idea to save his own skin. A few surgeries and some intensive...

Paul Luden has been haunted by a memory he can't recall. Whatever happened to his marriage, to his two-year-old daughter, is too traumatic to remember, so his subconscious has chosen to block out key details. But when he receives a phone call from the small lake town where they'd once lived, telling him that no one had seen or heard from his wife in ten days, he knows what he has to do. He and his nineteen-year-old girlfriend drive from LA to Washington...

In ten seductive new stories, the author of Simplify and Living Dead Girl encounters the ruthless, vulnerable people who inhabit resort cities, along with their misdemeanors and felonies. A mobster hides out in Las Vegas posing as a rabbi; a casino cocktail waitress adopts a Russian teen in an attempt to outrun her loneliness; a disturbed husband sets up a Starbucks in his living room; a retired sheriff looks for his first wife's remains in the Salton...

"Inspired by recent true events, the all-original stories in Witnesses for the Dead are set in motion by the act of witnessing; the characters who populate these pages are not themselves the original perpetrators of crimes, but find their lives indelibly changed by what they see, as they grapple with coming forward, taking action, or retreating into the shadows. In "Envy" by Christopher Chambers, a sweet, shy wallflower watches as something horrific...