The eleven novels in The Library of America’s adventurous two-volume collection taps deep roots in the American literary imagination, exploring themes of crime, guilt, deception, obsessive passion, murder, and the disintegrating psyche. With visionary and often subversive force they create a dark and violent mythology out of the most commonplace elements of modern life.James M. Cain’s pioneering novel of murder and adultery along the California highway, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), shocked contemporaries with its laconic toughness and fierce sexuality.Horace McCoy’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1935) uses truncated rhythms and a unique narrative structure to turn its account of a Hollywood dance marathon into an unforgettable evocation of social chaos and personal desperation.In Thieves Like Us (1937), Edward Anderson vividly brings to life the dusty roads and back-country hideouts where a fugitive band of Oklahoma outlaws plays out its destiny.The Big Clock (1946), an ingenious novel of pursuit and evasion by the poet Kenneth Fearing, is set by contrast in the dense and neurotic inner world of a giant publishing corporation under the thumb of a warped and ultimately murderous chief executive.William Lindsay Gresham’s controversial Nightmare Alley (1946), a ferocious psychological portrait of a charismatic carnival hustler, creates an unforgettable atmosphere of duplicity, corruption, and self-destruction.I Married a Dead Man (1948), a tale of switched identity set in the anxious suburbs, is perhaps the most striking novel of Cornell Woolrich, who found in the techniques of the gothic thriller the means to express an overpowering sense of personal doom.Disturbing, poetic, anarchic, punctuated by terrifying bursts of rage and paranoia and powerfully evocative of the lost and desperate sidestreets of American life, these are underground classics now made widely and permanently available.

    The rumors say you must cross Indian land to get there. They tell of hostile locals and shark-infested waters where waves in excess of thirty feet break a mile from shore. For down-and-out photographer Jack Fletcher, the chance to shoot these waves in the company of surfing legend Drew Harmon offers the promise of new beginnings. But Drew is not alone in the northern reaches of the state. His young wife, Kendra, lives there with him. Obsessed with the unsolved murder of a local girl, Kendra has embarked upon a quest of her own, a search for truth - however dark that truth may prove to be. The Dogs of Winter is a portrait of two men and an appealing yet troubled young woman set against an unforgettable background of stark and violent beauty.

    

    When Tim Kearney, a small-time criminal, slits the throat of a Hell's Angel and draws a life sentence in a prison full of gang members, he knows he’s pretty much a dead man. That’s until the DEA makes Kearney an offer: impersonate the late, legendary dope smuggler Bobby Z so that the agency can trade him for one of their own, who was captured by a Mexican drug kingpin. Knowing his chances of survival are a little better than in prison, Kearney accepts, and he winds up in the middle of a desert at the notorious drug lord’s lavish compound. To his surprise he meets Bobby Z's old flame, Elizabeth, and her son. At first, it’s a short vacation by the pool, but when things turn bloody, the three of them begin the most desperate flight of their lives, with drug lords, bikers, Indians, and cops furiously chasing after them. Whether he pulls it off, whether he can keep the kid and the girl and his life, makes this compelling novel a hilarious, fast-paced thriller about a con caught in a devil’s bargain.

    

    "Willeford" is the first extensive critical appreciation of the life and writing of Charles Willeford (1919-1988), author of "Miami Blues, The Burnt Orange Heresy" and "Cockfighter." From his early Depression-era experiences as a teen-age hobo, through his twenty-year enlistment in the Army and Air Force (including his role as a tank commander with Patton's Third Army, fighting in the Battle of the Bulge), his years of struggle in the paperback original jungle, to a final triumph with his series of crime novels about Miami homicide inspector Hoke Moseley, this book tells his story.

    Manhattan private eye Payton Sherwood searches for a runaway teenager and finds murder down the shadowy sidestreets of the East Village.Introducing the detective of the novels EAST OF A and LOSERS LIVE LONGER.Originally appeared under the title, "East of A," in the pages of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 1997ALSO the first chapter of the Payton Sherwood mystery novels EAST OF A and LOSERS LIVE LONGER (now availabe as Kindle editions)Plus a bonus short story, "HOLES."

    This riveting true-crime focuses on the motivating factors of lust, greed, and cheating, which triggered the murder of Walter Scott, the singer of the national hit song "The Cheater." The pages recreate Scott's struggle to attain stardom, sexual passion, the gruesome discovery of Scott's body in a cistern, and years of legal maneuvers in a faltering justice system.