Author: Fredric Brown
Publisher: Library of America
ISBN: 1598537415
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 867
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Book Description
In the 1960s the masters of crime fiction expanded the genre’s literary and psychological possibilities with audacious new themes, forms, and subject matter—here are five of their finest works This is the first of two volumes gathering the best American crime fiction of the 1960s, nine novels of astonishing variety and inventiveness that pulse with the energies of that turbulent, transformative decade. In The Murderers (1961) by Fredric Brown, an out-of-work actor, hanging out with Beat drifters on the fringes of Hollywood, concocts a murder scheme that devolves into nightmare. This late work by a master in many genres is one of his darkest and most ingenious. Dan J. Marlowe’s The Name of the Game Is Death (1962) channels the inner life of a violent criminal who freely acknowledges the truth of a prison psychiatrist’s diagnosis: “Your values are not civilized values.” Written with unnerving emotional authenticity, the story hurtles toward an annihilating climax. Charles Williams drew on his experience in the merchant marine for his thriller Dead Calm (1963). A newlywed couple alone on a small yacht find themselves at the mercy of the mysterious survivor they have rescued from a sinking ship, in a suspenseful story that chillingly evokes the perils of the open ocean. In the beautifully told and sharply observant The Expendable Man (1963), Dorothy B. Hughes’s final masterpiece of suspense, a young man in the American Southwest runs afoul of racial assumptions after he picks up a hitchhiker who soon turns up dead. In twenty-four brilliantly constructed novels, Richard Stark (a pen name of Donald Westlake) charted the career of Parker, a hard-nosed professional thief, with rigorous clarity. The Score (1964), a stand-out in the series, finds Parker and his criminal associates hatching a plot to rob simultaneously all the jewelry stores, payroll offices, and banks in a remote Western mining town, only to come up against the human limits of even the most intricate planning. Volume features include an introduction by editor Geoffrey O'Brien (Hardboiled America), newly researched biographies of the writers and helpful notes, and an essay on textual selection.
Author: Dan J. Marlowe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781933586441
Category : Bank robberies
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Two novels from "the hardest of the hard-boiled"--Stephen King.
Author: Robert Polito
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 924
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Book Description
This adventurous volume, with its companion devoted to the 1930s and 40s, presents a rich vein of modern American writing too often neglected in mainstream literary histories. Evolving out of the terse and violent hardboiled style of the pulp magazines, noir fiction expanded over the decades into a varied and innovative body of writing. Tapping deep roots in the American literary imagination, the novels in this volume explore themes of crime, guilt, deception, obsessive passion, murder, and the disintegrating psyche. With visionary and often subversive force, they create a dark and violent mythology out of the most commonplace elements of modern life. The raw power of their vernacular style has profoundly influenced contemporary American culture and writing. Far from formulaic, they are ambitious works which bend the rules of genre fiction to their often experimental purposes.
Author: Helen Eustis
Publisher: Library of America
ISBN: 1598534580
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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Book Description
Helen Eustis’s The Horizontal Man (1946) won an Edgar Award for best first novel and continues to fascinate as a singular mixture of detection, satire, and psychological portraiture. A poet on the faculty of an Ivy League school is found murdered, setting off ripple effects of anxiety, suspicion, and panic in the hot house atmosphere of an English department rife with talk of Freud and Kafka. This classic novel is one of eight works included in The Library of America's two-volume edition Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s, edited by Sarah Weinman.
Author: Vera Caspary
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Inc
ISBN: 9780822206460
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 80
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Book Description
THE STORY: When Mark McPherson first falls in love with Laura, he knows he's in love with a phantom--for Laura is dead, and he's in charge of her murder investigation. From her portrait, her letters, her personal effects and from his contacts with the thre
Author: Dorothy B. Hughes
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141192313
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 202
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Book Description
Dix Steele is back in town, and 'town' is post-war LA. His best friend Brub is on the force of the LAPD, and as the two meet in country clubs and beach bars, they discuss the latest case: a strangler is preying on young women in the dark. Dix listens with interest as Brub describes their top suspect, as yet unnamed. Dix loves the dark and women in equal measure, so he knows enough to watch his step, though when he meets the luscious Laurel Gray, something begins to crack. The American Dream is showing its seamy underside.
Author: Jim Thompson
Publisher: Mulholland Books
ISBN: 0316196029
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 207
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Book Description
In The Killer Inside Me, America's "Dimestore Dostoevsky" Jim Thompson goes where few novelists have dared to go, giving us a pitch-black glimpse into the mind of the American Serial Killer years before Charles Manson and Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho, in the novel that will forever be known as the master performance of one of the greatest crime novelists of all time. Everyone in the small town of Central City, Texas loves Lou Ford. A deputy sheriff, Lou's known to the small-time criminals, the real-estate entrepreneurs, and all of his coworkers — the low-lifes, the big-timers, and everyone in-between — as the nicest guy around. He may not be the brightest or the most interesting man in town, but nevertheless, he's the kind of officer you're happy to have keeping your streets safe. The sort of man you might even wish your daughter would end up with someday. But behind the platitudes and glad-handing lurks a monster the likes of which few have seen. An urge that has already claimed multiple lives, and cost Lou his brother Mike, a self-sacrificing construction worker fell to his death on the job in what was anything but an accident. A murder that Lou is determined to avenge — and if innocent people have to die in the process, well, that's perfectly all right with him.
Author: Tim Lucas
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 420
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Book Description
Read What You've Been Missing! This profusely illustrated video consumer guide is a must for all fans & collectors of Horror, Science Fiction & Fantasy films on tape & disc. A companion to the popular VIDEO WATCHDOG Magazine, THE VIDEO WATCHDOG BOOK contains witty & informative descriptions of 100s of titles, including out-of-print rarities, alternate versions, foreign language & import releases, continuity errors... even detailed descriptions of missing (& censored) scenes! Written by video authority Tim Lucas, whose work has appeared in numerous books & magazines in the United States & Europe. Also includes an indispensible list of more than 650 retitled videos, a book index, plus a complete index to the first 12 issues of VIDEO WATCHDOG Magazine! Features a Foreword by cult Director Joe Dante (GREMLINS, THE HOWLING), a striking full-color cover by Stephen R. Bissette (SWAMP THING), & spot illustrations by Brian Thomas (TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES). Here's what the experts say about VIDEO WATCHDOG: "Fascinating... the best effort of its kind I've seen!"--Vincent Price. "A thorough, accurate, & knowledgeable source that's as good as anything I've read!"--Christopher Lee. "Intriguing, thought-provoking, & marvelously obsessive!--USA TODAY.
Author: Dorothy B. Hughes
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480427039
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 223
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Book Description
DIVDIVHanded a mysterious package, a woman finds herself caught in a deadly game/divDIV Her name is not Eliza Williams. A fashionable young woman with a taste for adventurous men, she made the mistake of falling in love with Towner Clay—a New York City playboy whose international jetsetting conceals dangerous secrets. On Towner’s behalf, she has spent six months pretending to be Eliza Williams, a dowdy Midtown secretary. It’s dull work until the day Gavin Keane, a blue-eyed associate of Towner’s, leaves her with a mysterious package. Eliza understands that protecting it is a question of life and death. When he comes to pick up the package that night, Gavin is followed, and he shoots the man to protect the parcel’s secret. With blood on her carpet and a mystery on her hands, the woman who is not Eliza will have to act quickly to survive./div/div
Author: David Cycleback
Publisher: Hamerweit Books
ISBN: 9780692567678
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 822
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Book Description
"Will computers ever think like humans?" "Not if they're well designed." Mixing academic essay, anti-art philosophy, unsettling memoir and wry wit, Noise Music is a profoundly complex and open-ended collage covering a plethora of topics including psychology of information processing, consciousness, science, time, perception, art theory and criticism, morals, mental illness, the human condition, artificial intelligence, cognitive biases, language and communication. However, at its core the book is about the limits of human knowledge and understanding due to how minds and senses work. Going hand in hand with the philosophy, the aleatory narrative and miscellaneous scope expects readers to critique and expand beyond their conventional aesthetic modes of thinking and, in the end, makes the book itself "unsolvable."
