James M. Cain

A special edition of The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain. Featuring an introduction by James Ellroy. When Frank, an amoral young drifter, gets thrown off a hay truck in the California desert, he ends up at a diner run by Cora and her inconvenient husband, Nick. This chance meeting puts them all on a sure path to perdition. First published in 1934 and banned in Boston for its explosive mixture of violence and eroticism, The Postman Always Rings Twice is a classic of the roman noir. It established James M. Cain as a major novelist with an unsparing vision of America's bleak underside and was acknowledged by Albert Camus as the model for The Stranger. A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Special Edition

Following her husband's death in an accident, beautiful young widow Joan Medford is forced to take a job serving drinks in a cocktail lounge to make ends meet. At the job she encounters two men who take an interest in her, a handsome young schemer and a wealthy but unwell older man who rewards her for her attentions with a $50,000 tip and an unconventional offer of marriage...

The Embezzler is a murder mystery novel written by James M. Cain and is part of the Murder Mystery Monthly series. The story revolves around the life of a man named Vincent Nolan, who is an embezzler. Vincent is a successful businessman who has been stealing money from his employer for years. However, his life takes a turn for the worse when he is caught and sent to prison.After serving his sentence, Vincent is released and tries to start a new life. He changes his name and moves to a new city, hoping to leave his past behind. However, things don't go as planned when he is confronted by a former colleague who threatens to expose him. To make matters worse, Vincent's wife is murdered, and he becomes the prime suspect.The novel takes readers on a thrilling journey as Vincent tries to clear his name and find the real killer. Cain's writing style is gripping and keeps readers on the edge of their seats throughout the book. The Embezzler is a classic murder mystery that will leave readers guessing until the very end.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

'Cain has established a formidable reputation of furious pace, harsh and masterful realism, tough, raw speech right out of the mouths of the people' SATURDAY REVIEW

'Cain was not just a great hard-boiled novelist but a great novelist, period ... To read MILDRED PIERCE now is to experience a double vision, in which we confront both how much and how little things have changed' LA TIMES

The classic tale of an evil woman motivated by greed who corrupts a weak man motivated by lust. Walter Huff is an insurance investigator like any other until the day he meets the beautiful and dangerous Phyllis Nirdlinger and falls under her spell. Together they plot to kill her husband and split the insurance.

'One of the great crime novels of all time' Tony Parsons, Express'Nobody has ever quite pulled it off the way Cain does, not Hemingway, and not even Raymond Chandler' Tom Wolfe

These three classics from the master of the noir novel, along with five otherwise unavailable short stories, are electric with the taut narrative voice, the suspense, and the explosive violence and eroticism that were James M. Cain's indelible hallmarks. The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cain's first novel-the subject of an obscenity trial in Boston, the inspiration for Camus's The Stranger-is the fever-pitched tale of a drifter who stumbles into a job, into an erotic obsession, and into a murder. Double Indemnity-which followed Postman so quickly, Cain's readers hardly had a chance to catch their breath-is a tersely narrated story of blind passion, duplicity, and, of course, murder. Mildred Pierce, a work of acute psychological observation and devastating emotional violence, is the tale of a woman with a taste for shiftless men and an unreasoned devotion to her monstrous daughter. All three novels were immortalized in classic Hollywood films. Also included here are five masterful stories-"Pastorale," "The Baby in the Icebox," "Dead Man," "Brush Fire," "The Girl in the Storm"-that have been out of print for decades.

Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness. She used those attributes to survive a divorce and poverty and to claw her way out of the lower middle class. But Mildred also had two weaknesses: a yen for shiftless men, and an unreasoning devotion to a monstrous daughter. Out of these elements, Cain creates a novel of acute social observation and devastating emotional violence, with a heroine whose ambitions and sufferings are never less than recognizable.