Given its extraordinary span, its international scope, and its variant styles and groundbreaking stylists, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a singular achievement. A bestselling master of suspense himself Jeffery Deaver had the enviable task of selecting from the thousands of stories written over the past one hundred years those which best represented the classic form, as well as the justly celebrated authors whose ironic twists and stunning payoffs left a lasting, vivid, and unnerving impression. The result is a triumph. In this ambitious anthology you’ll revel in the sardonic, overtly amoral plotting of Patricia Highsmith. You’ll rediscover the strangely poignant and surprising...

CARD-GAMBLING AND LOVE GAMBOLING IN THE CITY OF GAY DIVORCEES Jane Delavan had dark, red hair and plenty of shape of a nice, refined kind. To Ed Horner she was only a little fancy flirtation under the Nevada moon, but he found some peculiar circumstances developing when Jane’s husband, Tom Delavan, himself came to town, followed very shortly afterwards by his first wife, the beautiful but jealous Lady Sperry. Ed wondered what kind of game Jane Delavan was playing with him, leading him on as she was? And why should Lady Sperry take a heated interest in him of a sudden? What were the cause of secret midnight callers roaming at will through hotel bedrooms? Suddenly Ed Horner found...

What are the ingredients of a hard-boiled detective story? “Savagery, style, sophistication, sleuthing, and sex,” said Ellery Queen. Often a desperate blond, a jealous husband, and, of course, a tough-but-tender P.I. the likes of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. Perhaps Raymond Chandler summed it up best in his description of Dashiell Hammett’s style: “Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it... He put these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes.” Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind, with over half of the stories...

Here is Cain at his peak, in a new novel that dealt. inevitably, with violent emotions and violent deeds. Here passion and murder are the ingredients of the tale, and what Cain does with them makes this his most terrific adventure in suspense. The hero is a young Confederate spy in Virginia City, the great mining town, at the height of its boom period. The woman for whom he conceives a wild and desperate infatuation is one of the camp’s sporting girls — in every way a dangerous creature, greedy, conscienceless, and utterly irresistible. The story of his fight to possess her, set against that brawling and turbulent scene, produces another unlaydownable book. Mr. Cain writes: “I have...

Pulp fiction has been looked down on as a guilty pleasure, but it offers the perfect form of entertainment: the very best storytelling filled with action, surprises, sound and fury. In short, all the exhiliration of a roller-coaster ride. The 1920s in America saw the proliferation of hundreds of dubiously named but thrillingly entertaining pulp magazines in America: Black Mask, Amazing, Astounding, Spicy Stories, Ace-High, Detective Magazine, Dare-Devil Aces. It was in these luridly-coloured publications, printed on the cheapest pulp paper, that the first gems began to appear. The one golden rule for writers of pulp fiction was to adhere to the art of storytelling. Each story had to have a...

The BIGGEST, the BOLDEST, the MOST COMPREHENSIVE collection of PULP WRITING ever assembled! Weighing in at over a thousand pages, containing over forty-seven stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train — a bullet couldn’t pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes; sultry dames whose looks are as lethal as a dagger to the chest; and gin-soaked hideouts where conversations are...

A beautiful Hollywood movie star, her glamor girl sister, and a handsome sheriff who has an eye for a pretty woman, provide the explosive triangle around which James M. Cane has built this latest story of violence and desire. The first appear in print of this exciting and provocative novel is literary treat you will not want to miss and in only the usual two or three dollars, it is priced to the range of everyone. The flood of vigorous emotions, of love so deadly that it slays, packs “Sinful Woman” from start to smashing finish. You can’t lay it down once the striking Sylvia Shoreham, vivid movie star, hits the Reno gambling halls for a show-down with Baron Adlerkkreutz, her...

James M. Cain, acclaimed as one of the modern masters of mystery, has once again woven a forceful tale that challenges people’s basic morality with temptations they are powerless to resist.　 Davey Howell is content in his rural Ohio solitude; the static broadcasts of the country radio stations are his only steady contact with the “outside” world. But then a hijacker plummets into his life, along with $100,000 cash ransom and a beautiful stewardess as hostage. Suddenly, Davey’s sense of “the good life” faces its toughest challenge — with the hijacker dead, who would know if the money were lost or stolen? RAINBOW’S END bears all the trademarks that have made James Cain one of our most...

Те отидоха твърде далеч. И продължиха. „Като изключим формите й, не беше неземна красавица, но излъчваше някакво горчиво, трескаво недоволство, на фона на което нацупените й устни изпъкваха ярки и сочни…“

Животът на една жена и волята й за успех по време на Голямата депресия. Милдред Пиърс има страхотни крака, кулинарен талант и несломим характер. Тя използва тези свои предимства, за да надживее развода си и бедността и да се измъкне с нокти и зъби от незавидното си социално положение. Но Милдред има две слабости: непреодолимо влечение към безотговорни мъже и безразсъдна преданост към чудовищната си дъщеря. От тези елементи Джеймс М. Кейн изгражда един изключителен психологически роман с опустошителна емоционална сила и героиня, чиито амбиции и болки са близки и понятни за всеки читател. „Това е роман, който веднъж започнат, със сигурност ще бъде завършен, защото в него се долавя...