Banned from publication in the U.S. due to its mature subject matter, Solomon's Vineyard is a tense, hard-boiled work starring Karl Craven, a non-nonsense guy who predates detectives like Lew Archer and Mike Hammer. Craven is out to rescue a wealthy heiress from a twisted cult. The novel's famous opening passage --FROM THE way her buttocks looked under the black silk dress, I knew she'd be good in bed. The silk was tight and under it the muscles worked slow and easy. I saw weight there, and control, and, brother, those are things I like in a woman. I put down my bags and went after her along the station platform--explains why this book was too hot for domestic publication. (Initially published in 1941 in the UK, a heavily bowdlerized version came out in the '50s, but the less said about that one the better.)

Solomon's Vineyard

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Latimer, Jonathan

Mystery

Black Mask

1948 Edgar Award Winner! Ed Hunter is eighteen, and he isn't happy. He doesn't want to end up like his father, a linotype operator and a drunk, married to a harridan, with a harridan-in-training stepdaughter. Ed wants out, he wants to live, he wants to see the world before it's too late. Then his father doesn't come home one night, and Ed finds out how good he had it. The bulk of the book has Ed teaming up with Uncle Ambrose, a former carny worker, and trying to find out who killed Ed's dad. But the title is as much a coming-of-age tale as it is a pulp. Author Brown won the Edgar award in 1947 for this spectacular first-effort.

The Fabulous Clipjoint

BROWN, FREDRIC

Welcome to the roller-coaster world of professional con men - and the one wild beauty who can out-swindle and outwit them all. Utterly beautiful, smart as a whip, here is the most fascinating confidence woman in modern suspense fiction. Her name is Cathy Dunbar - all soft and warm and ready for the taking, until one by one her men find out who is really being taken . . .

Nothing In Her Way

WILLIAMS, CHARLES

Thrillers & Suspense

Chaze's long-lost classic, a legend among noir buffs, is back in print for the first time in nearly half a century. The one book Black Lizard never published, it's the dream-like tale of a man after a jailbreak, who meets up with the woman of his dreams... and his nightmares. Phenomenal work of the period, ranking with the best efforts of Thompson, Woolrich, Goodis et al.

Black Wings Has My Angel

Elliott Chaze

Inspired by serial killer Harry Powers, "The Bluebeard of Quiet Dell," who was hung in 1932 for his murders of two widows and three children. This best-selling novel, first published in 1953 to wide acclaim by author Grubb, (who like Powers lived in Clarksburg, West Virginia), served as the basis for Charles Laughton's noir classic . Renamed "Harry Powell," the lead character in this book, with LOVE and HATE tattooed on his fingers, is remembered as one of the creepiest men in book and cinema history.

The Night Of The Hunter

GRUBB, Davis

Complete in one volume, Talbot Mundy's legendary account of the Druid Warrior Tros and his unwilling service to the Roman Empire. First serialized in Adventure, the book chronicles Tros' attempts to keep Julius Caesar from conquering the Britons, and of the young man's efforts to free his father. Stunning for its time, this work of action that shatters anything R.E. Howard could dream up also makes the case that Celtic peoples were far more sophisticated than the wicker-burning freaks they'd been painted as, and goes deeply into the mind of Caesar, depicting the supposed Worthy as a protofascist and demon fully capable of massacring comparatively defenseless barbarians on a whim. No mere hack and slash work, Mundy's Tros grows as the narrative presses along, and survives, ironically, in the service of Rome. This book is the author's finest work, though one that, sadly, ended his relationship with a publisher (who'd been expecting something shorter, and about Cleopatra.)

Tros Of Samothrace

Literature & Fiction

Mundy, Talbot

Contemporary

The wheels were beginning to turn. From all parts of the country quiet, tough men slipped into the small southern coastal town and took up the final vigil. There was the arsonist, the safe blower, the boy-faced killer--there was a regiment of crack, lawless men waiting out the minutes until Saturday night--the night the town would explode into violence. For in the center of town sat the bank--a citadel of twelve million dollars, impregnable as Gibraltar, safe as a church. Safe--until precisely ten-fifteen on Saturday night. Until the wheels began to pick up momentum, and suddenly a fire lit the sky, and the power went off all over town and under way went the king-sized knockover. The grand slam. The Big Caper.

The Big Caper

White, Lionel

"This book by HARRY GREY --an ex-hood himself! --will shock you but you must read it. He dares to tell the truth about cold-blooded Killer Mobs and how they work."-- Mickey Spillaine Written in prison by author Grey, this legendary novel became the source for Sergio Leone's classic Once Upon a Time in America.

The Hoods

Grey, Harry

Is it possible in this day of enlightened justice for a man to be punished twice for the same crime? Double Jeopardy answers this question, at the same time uncovering the greatest of many loopholes in our modern jurisprudence. In this very human but striking novel are portrayed the calamities that can be visited upon any ordinary citizen by the cold dispassionate judgement of our courts and our unimaginative and often stupid juries. Through the eyes of the victim, Peter Thatcher, this tense revelation unfolds, growing to ugly and utterly ridiculous proportions. "Peter Thatcher has murdered his wife," people said. "I heard them quarreling," announced one. "And I," added another, "saw the blood." To make matters worse, Thatcher himself could not be quite sure of his own innocence! Not a problem novel, not a mystery novel, but rather a cross between the two, this thrilling story will always be appreciated by those who read "The Postman Always Rings Twice."

Double Jeopardy

Martin M. Goldsmith

Author Goldsmith drew on his youth hitchhiking across America in this legendary account of a continental trek gone wrong. Alex Roth is a musician who thumbs it out for L.A. and the woman of his dreams. Things hit a snag when a bookmaking driver Alex flags down suddenly ends up dead. With its tight, crisp writing comparable to James M. Cain and Chandler, the work translated perfectly on screen into the legendary noir "Detour," perhaps the greatest low-budget film ever made.

Detour

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