Harry just wants to help, but before long he and Helen are both adrift in a sea of alcohol - until Harry conceives the ultimate crime...

    I watched her as she toyed with the man, laughing, her tumbled hair like raw blue-black silk, her brown shoulders bare. Eyes deep-set, a girl with a gypsy look. So this was the girl I had risked my life to find. This was the girl who was going to lead me to a buried fortune in stolen loot.

    Includes the novella, Sardonicus, and 16 other short stories.

    We talked a little about the weather and how hot it was, and then I hung up the hose and went to work on the windshield. That was when I got my first good look at the woman. And she just about took my breath away. Originally published in 1955.

    Free online fiction.Believe! Believe Now! There'll never be a second chance.Originally published Good Housekeeping, March 1955places: New York, NY: Acme Travel Bureau, West 42nd Street, Fifth Avenue, Sixth Avenue, Lexington Avenue, Acme Depot, Long Island; Verna: The Colony

    He tries to protect her and keep them both alive.

    To Usez, who is assigned to the case, and who follows him intermittently, his is a dissonant personality- and the nihilism of his viewpoint jars with his sense of social mission, his perverse mannerisms with his apparent charm for many people. While to those in the San Francisco department store where he takes a job in the stockroom under the name of Al. Barker, there are the friendships which do not falter with the revelation of his identity and the many unpleasant events which take place there. And it is there too, having attempted to run away from the guilt of Hiroshima and its betrayal of civilization, that he finds he can run no further--love and compassion and his own humanity--"the hound of earth" -- have caught him.... A first novel [not true; it's Bourjaily's second novel], this follows the offbeat of a sick civilization and a sick mind, and the department store Santaland where Pennington ends his days of freedom is an equally unhealthy habitat. But there are moments here, sad, shabby and sordid as they may be, which provide a speculative commentary on the way of the world.--Kirkus

    

    The first sentence sets the tone for the swashbuckling fun to come: “The late afternoon sun made a white splendor of the city that lay sprawled across the low, sloping sands of the African coast.” You’ll be drawn into an exciting world of pirates, harem beauties, sword fights and ships at sea. Barbary Slave is fun. After being captured by pirates, Stephen Fletcher is enslaved and given the daunting task of protecting the queen and the other girls in the harem. But the queen, Marlani Chamiprak, lusts after Fletcher. She taunts him, forces him to watch her and the other harem girls bathing, fanning the flames of his strong desire. Meanwhile, Fletcher plots his escape after learning there may be American frigates off the coast of Tripoli. Knowing that cavorting with Marlani or any of the girls will mean certain death, Fletcher is careful to keep his boiling passion in check. But then an enslaved American girl named Eve Doremus is brought into the harem and Fletcher falls for her voluptuous charms. Intent on securing freedom for them both, Fletcher plans carefully for the day he can strike back and win their freedom. With enough action to counter-balance the sinewy romance and harem intrigue, the plot boils over at times before gasping toward its conclusion. This was a great old paperback to read, and it lives up to its cover blurb: “Passion and Plunder Rule a Pagan Land!” The great Gardner Fox wrote Barbary Slave under the Kevin Matthews pseudonym. - Thomas McNulty

    Most are are no more than 3 or 4 pages or less, and deal with O'Hara people from small towns and country clubs to New Yorkers who feed off other people. Slice-of-life moments, often with a twist.

    Now he's a drifter, on the run after escaping from a mental institution. One afternoon he meets Fay, a beautiful young widow. She is smart and decent -- at least when she's sober. Soon Collins finds himself involved in a kidnapping scheme that goes drastically wrong almost before it even begins. Because the kid they've picked up isn't like other kids: he's diabetic and without insulin, he'll die. Not the safest situation for Collins, a man for whom stress and violence have long gone hand-in-hand.

    They managed to survive the violence of nature only to face the fiercer violence of human passions. For their need of each other was only exceeded by their hate."

    Roy Nichols is trying to make a go of running a motel with his wife, but forces are conspiring against them. The highway that was supposed to run past their motel may never get built, and their business is drying up. When Roy stumbles upon a briefcase loaded with cash, his problems seem to have miraculously disappeared. But in Gil Brewer’s world, good fortune is never free and greed inevitably leads to destruction.