Evolving out of the terse and violent style of the pulp magazines, noir fiction expanded over the decades into a varied, innovative and profoundly influential body of writing. The eleven novels in The Library of America’s adventurous two-volume collecti
Los Angeles has always been a place of paradisal promise and apocalyptic undercurrents. Simone de Beauvoir saw a kaleidoscopic "hall of mirrors," Aldous Huxley a "city of dreadful joy." Jack Kerouac found a "huge desert encampment," David Thomson imagined
How do great writers do it? From James M. Cain's hard-nosed observation that "writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It's not all inspirational," to Joan Didion's account of how she composes a book--"I constant
Compellingly and compulsively readable, "Hard-bolied: An Anthology of American Crime Stories" is a page-turner no mystery lover will want to be without. Included are thirty-six superbly suspenseful stories that chronicle the evolution of this quintessenti
Tautly narrated and excruciatingly suspenseful, Double Indemnity gives us an X-ray view of guilt, of duplicity, and of the kind of obsessive, loveless love that devastates everything it touches. First published in 1935, this novel reaffirmed James M. Cain
Two murderers, the head of their victim, and a frozen creek...Lucky, the hobo, concocts the perfect alibi...The tiger in the kitchen, the baby in the icebox...These are the elements of three stories highlighted by the streamlined prose, concise plots, and
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 Butterfly by James M. Cain was first published in 1946. It takes place among the hills and hollers of West Virginia coal country. Cain uses his favorite form of narration, the first person confessional, in relating this unusual tale of deceit, incest
Da semplice autista del boss a capo dell'intera banda, una bella carriera per l'ex giocatore di football Ben Grace. In una cittadina come Lake City, dove il marcio è normalità, sembra che basti sapersi servire delle debolezze altrui per raggiungere i pr
All three books are written with an enduring view of the dark corners of the American psyche. Cain hammered high art out of the crude matter of betrayal, bloodshed, and perversity.
![Original Sin [A-D-A-M and E-V-E, Cain and Abel, Sodom and Gomorrah]](https://cdn.pdfdrive.com/assets/thumbs/384/384014e2b82a8960dadebc2f6c98dc87-s.jpg "Original Sin [A-D-A-M and E-V-E, Cain and Abel, Sodom and Gomorrah]")
