Kirjahaku

Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson, David Goodis , these are a few of the masters of noir responsible for the great lurid paperbacks of the thirties, forties, and fifties. With titles like The Big Sleep, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, and Street of the Lost, with racy cover lines like "My gun-butt smashed his skull!" and "Ruthless terror ripped away the mask that hid cold fear," and with some of the most extraordinary cover illustrations ever to grace American literature, these paperbacks held the ingredients of American nightmares. In Harboiled America ,lavishly illustrated with 135 paperback covers, and expanded with new material on Thompson, Goodis, and others,Geoffrey O'Brien masterfully explores the art, history, and ideas of the American paperback.

The Walworth family was the very symbol of virtue and distinction for decades, rising to prominence as part of the splendor of New York's aristocracy. When Frank Walworth travels to New York to "settle a family difficulty" by shooting his father at point blank range, his family must reveal their inner demons in a spectacular trial to save him from execution. The resulting testimony exposes a legacy of mania and abuse, and the stately reputation of the family crumbles in a Gothic drama which the New York Tribune called "sensational to the last degree." The Fall of the House of Walworth gives us both the intimate history of a family torn apart by violent obsessions, and a rich portrait of the American social worlds in which they moved. In the tradition of Edith Wharton, this is a riveting true story which "rival s] the most extravagant Gothic novels of the day" (The Chicago Tribune).

In his intense and mysterious evocation of (seemingly) every kind of movie ever made, Geoffrey O'Brien erases the distinction between spectator and commentator and virtually reinvents film writing in our time.

Library of America presents a deluxe edition of unforgettable crime thrillers of the 1960s Here in two volumes are 9 timeless novels, including 4 lost classics now restored to print In the 1960s a number of gifted writers--some at the peak of their careers, others newcomers--reimagined American crime fiction. Here are nine novels of astonishing variety and inventiveness that pulse with the energies of that turbulent, transformative decade: Fredric Brown's The Murderers (1961), a darkly comic look at a murderous plot hatched on the hip fringes of Hollywood.Dan J. Marlowe's terrifying The Name of the Game Is Death (1962), about a nihilistic career criminal on the runCharles Williams's Dead Calm (1963), a masterful novel of natural peril and human evil on the high seas.Dorothy B. Hughes's The Expendable Man (1963), an unsettling tale of racism and wrongful accusation in the American Southwest.Richard Stark's taut The Score (1964), in which the master thief Parker plots the looting of an entire city with the cool precision of an expert mechanic.The Fiend (1964), in which Margaret Millar maps the interlocking anxieties of a seemingly tranquil California suburb through the rippling effects of a child's disappearance.Ed McBain's classic police procedural Doll (1965), a breakneck story that mixes murder, drugs, fashion models, and psychotherapy with the everyday professionalism of the 87th Precinct.Run Man Run (1966), Chester Himes's nightmarish tale of racism and police violence that follows a desperate young man seeking safe haven in New York City while being hunted by the law.Patricia Highsmith's ultimate meta-thriller, The Tremor of Forgery (1969), a novel in which a displaced traveler finds his own personality collapsing as he attempts to write a novel about a man coming undone.Each volume features an introduction by editor Geoffrey O'Brien (Hardboiled America), newly researched biographies of the writers and helpful notes, and an essay on textual selection.

Each of these poems is some sort of story about stories. A crowded city undergoes a spell of enforced confinement. In a war of rumors and conspiracy theories, identities are stolen and shapeshifting outsiders infiltrate urban parks. New fiefdoms consolidate under the sign of pervasive unease. A landscape of dry rivers and toxic weeds reveals itself. Within the zone of isolation, all the stories play out again in the mind, through memory or dream or unexpected waking flash-spectral trespasses, plays staged in empty theaters, messages concealed in drowned books, lives that might have been lived but weren't, hermetic histories, lost paradises continuing to unreel in a subterranean screening room. The stories hang at last on a thread of melody, resolving themselves into a connecting filament that persists even at the core of silence.SAMPLE POEM: The BedThere are momentswhen the sun is nothingorange glowstaining a blank walland the dying see doorwaysnot visible to othersbut cannot enter themor even stir from the bedwhere they beat their hands against the barrier