The Big Sleep, Chandler’s first novel, introduces Philip Marlowe, a private detective inhabiting the seamy side of Los Angeles in the 1930s, as he takes on a case involving a paralyzed California millionaire, two psychotic daughters, blackmail, and murder. In Farewell, My Lovely, Marlowe deals with the gambling circuit, a murder he stumbles upon, and three very beautiful but potentially deadly women. In The High Window, Marlowe searches the California underworld for a priceless gold coin and finds himself deep in the tangled affairs of a dead coin collector.In all three novels, Chandler’s hard-edged prose, colorful characters, vivid vernacular, and, above all, his enigmatic loner of a hero, enduringly establish his claim not only to the heights of his chosen genre but to the pantheon of literary art.

    He held out boldly against the government's efforts to confine the Sioux on reservations. Finally, in the spring of 1877 he surrendered, one of the last important chiefs to do so, only to meet a violent death. Mari Sandoz, the noted author of Cheyenne Autumn and Old Jules, both available as Bison Books, has captured the spirit of Crazy Horse with a strength and nobility befitting his heroism.

    Lee's Lieutenants. 3 Volume Set. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, [1970-1971]. Later editions. Three octavo volumes. Publisher's binding and dust jacket.Folding map at rear of volume 3. All unquestioned masterpiecc of the historian's art, and a towering landmark in the literature of the American Civil War."Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command" is the most colorful and popular of all of Douglas Southall Freeman's works; it is generally considered the most penetrating study ever written of military personalities and tactics during the American Civil War. A sweeping narrative that presents a multiple biography against the flame-shot background of history, it is the story of the great figures of the Army of Northern Virginia who fought under Robert E. Lee as they came forward on the stage of war.In this first volume, "Manassas to Malvern Hill," Dr. Freeman describes the rise and fall of General Beauregard, the growing friction between Jefferson Davis and Joseph E. Johnston, the emergence and failure of a number of military charlatans, and the first display of ability on the part of some new men at a time when the organization developed at Manassas collapsed at Seven Pines. The narrative illumines the rise of "Stonewall" Jackson and traces his progress in the Shenandoah Valley campaign and into Richmond amid the acclaim of the South, accompanies him through the failures during the Seven Days, and then leaves him, with the new army entirely organized, in the center of the stage of history."Manassas to Malvern Hill" is the first volume of a three-volume work. In the second volume, the men whose reputations were made, or lost, on such fields as Manassas at the second battle of Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville dominate the narrative; volume three depicts the Gettysburg campaign and the thunder signaling the ruin of the Confederacy.

    After he died in a tragic accident, among this distinguished legal scholar's papers were found thousands of pages devoted to a staggering feat of literary creation—a detailed history of an imagined country complete with geography, genealogy, literature, language and culture. As detailed as J.R.R. Tolkien's middle-earth novels, Islandia has similarly become a classic touchstone for those concerned with the creation of imaginary world.

    The history of the Great Plains and the Santa Fe Trail is told in text and pictures by focusing on a cottonwood tree and the events that happen around it.

    Alfred PrufrockPortrait of a LadyPreludesMr. Eliot's Sunday Morning ServiceMurder in the Cathederal: Part II, Opening ChorusThe Family Reunion: Part II, A Chorus

    But what a world! Only Thurber could picture a seal peering nearsightedly over a headboard or a former husband crouched atop the armoire. Titles in this selection, all vintage Thurber, hint at the range of his whimsy and include "Courtship Through the Ages," "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," "Interview with a Lemming" and "You Know How the French Are." "Few writers have re-created daydreams and nightmares as Thurber re-creates them. He manages, somehow, to pin them while the nerve filaments are alive and wriggling...." (The New York Times)

    His name represents steamy, suspenseful fiction, chilling encounters on the dark and sultry landscape of urban America in the 1930s and 1940s. Here, in this special collection, are his classic thrilers, including 'Rear Window', the story of Hal Jeffries who, trapped in his apartment because of a broken leg, takes to watching his neighbours through his rear window, and becomes certain that one of those neighbours is a murderer. Also included are such haunting, heart-stopping tales as those involving a man who finds his wife buried alive; a girl trapped with a deranged murderer who likes to knife his victims while dancing; and a woman seizing her chance to escape a sadistic husband, only to find her dream go terrifyingly wrong.Rear window --I won't take a minute --Speak to me of death --The dancing detective --The light in the window --The corpse next door --You'll never see me again --The screaming laugh --Dead on her feet --Waltz --The book that squealed --Death escapes the eye --For the rest of her life

    Farrell"A knockout." —Saturday Review of Literature"Never Come Morning depicts the intensity of feeling, the tawdry but potent dreams, the crude but forceful poetry, and the frustrated longing for human dignity residing in the lives of the Poles of Chicago's Northwest Side, and this revelation informs us all that there lies an ocean of life at our doorstep—an unharnessed, unchanneled and unknown ocean..." —Richard Wright"Utter sincerity and psychological truth." —Philip Rahv in The Nation"Mr. Algren is out to shock, but he does so without seeming to sensationalize. I, for one, found myself believing." —Clinton Fadiman in The New Yorker"The girls sitting around the juke-box in Mama Tomek's, the boys playing under the El, the look of Chicago streets in the rain... It is the poetry of familiar things that is missing in the other Chicago novels... Algren is a poet the Chicago slums." —Malcolm Cowley"A book, a true book, is the writer's confessional. For, whether he would have it so or not, he is betrayed, directly or indirectly, by his characters, into presenting, publicly, his innermost feelings." —Nelson Algren

    Unfortunately her house is located in the middle of a San Diego junkyard. But when they find out a crooked lawyer has been pocketing all the property taxes and they face being evicted it's all hands to the pump...

    No man could resist her charms—not even the hardboiled NYPD detective sent to find out who turned her into a faceless corpse. As this tough cop probes the mystery of Laura's death, he becomes obsessed with her strange power. Soon he realizes he's been seduced by a dead woman—or has he? Laura won lasting renown as an Academy Award-nominated 1944 film, the greatest noir romance of all time. Vera Caspary's equally haunting novel is remarkable for its stylish, hardboiled writing, its electrifying plot twists, and its darkly complex characters—including a woman who stands as the ultimate femme fatale.

    He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.” —William Faulkner, on receiving the Nobel Prize Go Down, Moses is composed of seven interrelated stories, all of them set in Faulkner’s mythic Yoknapatawpha County. From a variety of perspectives, Faulkner examines the complex, changing relationships between blacks and whites, between man and nature, weaving a cohesive novel rich in implication and insight.

    Woods

    A close correspondent and collaborator with H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, Smith was widely celebrated as a master by his contemporaries. Back in print for the first time since 1971, Out of Space and Time showcases the many facets of Smith's unique prose that make him one of the greatest American writers of macabre and fantastic tales. Here are tales of Averoigne, tales belonging to the Cthulhu, stories of sheer horror, and one or two of sardonic comedy. Jeff VanderMeer provides an introduction for this Bison Books edition.

    He enlists private detectives Edward and Cynthia Randall to follow him and uncover his identity, entangling them in a web of intrigue and nightmarish encounters… causing all to question their own and each others' sanity. From the bestselling author of STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, GLORY ROAD and STARSHIP TROOPERS.

    At the center of the story are a wealthy, self-involved newspaper publisher and his scheming, novelist wife, Amanda Keeler. Powell always denied that Amanda Keeler was based upon the real-life Clare Boothe Luce, until years later when she discovered a memo she’d written to herself in 1939 that said, “Why not do a novel on Clare Luce?” Which prompted Powell to write in her diary “Who can I believe? Me or myself?”

    OklahomaCarouselAllegroSouth PacificThe king and IMe and Juliet

    Members of this same family are involved in some of the Mardi Gras traditions still being practiced. The story of the family is very well done but the explanation of the Carnival customs is superb.

    We sat shoulder to shoulder at a little bar in the east Fifties. We ate dinner together, saw a Broadway show together, shared a cab together.The bartender, the waiter, the usher, the cab driver—none of them remembers you. The police say I was home strangling my wife at the moment I met you.You are the only one who can prove my story—but I don't know your name, or where you live. And I can't search for you from a jail cell....