Cain's first novel - the subject of an obscenity trial in Boston and the inspiration for Camus's The Stranger - is the fever-pitched tale of a drifter who stumbles into a job, into an erotic obsession…
The marathon dance craze flourished during the 1930s, but the underside was a competition and violence unknown to most ballrooms—a dark side that Horace McCoy's classic American novel powerfully captu…
Like many Southern California millionaires, Ralph Sampson keeps odd company - there's the sun-worshipping holy man to whom Sampson once gave his very own mountain, and don't forget the fading actress …
When the last honest citizen of "Poisonville" was murdered, the Continental Op stayed on to punish the guilty—even if that meant taking on an entire town.
The classic time travel novel from the legendary writer behind Rebecca and "The Birds." "The House on the Strand is prime du Maurier." --New York Times Dick Young is lent a house in Cornwall by his f…
Pregnant, abandoned by her slimy husband and destitute, Helen Georgesson boards a train going west. In the crowded train car she meets happy newlyweds Patrice Hazzard, also expecting, and Hugh. They a…
Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby. But Miss Wonderley is in fact the beautiful and treacherous Brigid O'Shaug…
Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness and determination. She used those attributes to survive a divorce in 1940s America with two children and to cl…
Miss Gabrielle Dain Leggett is young and wealthy, with a penchant for morphine and religious cults. She also has an unfortunate effect on the people around her. They die - violently.
These are the friends of Eddie Jackie Brown, the gun leader; Dillon, part-time contract killer; Jimmy Scalisi, gang leader. All the hoods, gunmen, drivers, thieves and executioners wheeling, dealing, …
The honeymoon is over, as they say, the bride dead by her own hand. Ray Garrett, the grieving husband, convinces the police in Rome of his innocence, but not his thuggish father-in-law, an American pa…
Nick and Nora Charles are Hammett's most enchanting creations, a rich, glamorous couple who solve homicides in between wisecracks and martinis. At once knowing and unabashedly romantic, The Thin Man i…
A panic-stricken young wife races against time to prove that her convicted husband did not murder his mistress. Writing in first person from her viewpoint, Woolrich makes us feel her love and anguish …
Ned Beaumont is a gambler and a professional troubleshooter for his friend Paul Madvig, a cheerfully corrupt political power broker who aspires to greater things. Madvig has his eyes set on none other…
Sydney Bartleby has killed his wife, Alicia—at least he has thought about it, compulsively, over and over again, plotting schemes, designing escapes, forging alibis. Of course he has; he's a mystery-s…
