James M. Cain was among the prominent member of the "hard-boiled" school of writing that characterized the 1930s and 1940s, one of the masters of the genre that included Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. His novels became such popular film noir classics as The Postman always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce, and his 1937 novel Serenade boldly portrayed its hero as a bisexual. Cain also taught journalism at various colleges in Maryland, wrote editorials for the New York World, and was for a brief time managing editor at The New Yorker. This is the first biography of James M. Cain written with the full cooperation of the late novelist's family.

The behind-the-scenes story of the quintessential film noir and cult classic, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity—its true crime origins and crucial impact on film history—is told for the first time in this riveting narrative published for the film's 80th anniversary. From actual murder to magazine fiction to movie, the history of Double Indemnity is as complex as anything that hit the screen during film noir’s classic period. A 1927 tabloid sensation “crime of the century” inspired journalist and would-be crime-fiction writer James M. Cain to pen a novella. Hollywood quickly bid on the film rights, but throughout the 1930s a strict code of censorship made certain that no studio could green-light a murder melodrama based on real events. Then in 1943 veteran scriptwriter and newly minted director Billy Wilder wanted the story for his third movie. With tentative approval from the studio he hired hardboiled novelist Raymond Chandler to co-write a script that would be acceptable to industry censors. Director Wilder then cajoled a star cast into coming aboard: the incomparable Barbara Stanwyck in her unforgettable turn as the ultimate femme fatale; alongside Fred MacMurray, going against type as her accomplice; and Edward G. Robinson as a dogged claims investigator. Wilder kept Chandler on for the entire shoot, and other key collaborators were cinematographer John Seitz, costume designer Edith Head, and composer Miklôs Rôzsa. With all these talented contributors, the final film became one of the earliest studio noirs to gain critical and commercial success, including being nominated for seven Oscars. It powerfully influenced the burgeoning noir movement, spawned many imitators, and affected the later careers of all its cast and crew. Double Indemnity’s impact on filmmakers and audiences is still felt eight decades since its release. Authors Alain Silver and James Ursini tell the complete, never-before-told history of writing, making, and marketing of Double Indemnity in their latest and most provocative work on film noir: From the Moment They Met It Was Murder.

Life is Not Always a Butcher's Game. Sometimes the Prizes Are Real. Sometimes They're Precious. All-time best-selling author STEPHEN KING returns with a novel of carny life—and death... College student Devin Jones took the summer job at Joyland hoping to forget the girl who broke his heart. But he wound up facing something far more terrible: the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and dark truths about life—and what comes after—that would change his world forever. A riveting story about love and loss, about growing up and growing old—and about those who don't get to do either because death comes for them before their time—JOYLAND is Stephen King at the peak of his storytelling powers. With all the emotional impact of King masterpieces such as The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption, JOYLAND is at once a mystery, a horror story, and a bittersweet coming-of-age novel, one that will leave even the most hard-boiled reader profoundly moved.

With a controversial presidential election just weeks away, Quarry is hired to carry out a rare political assignment: kill the Reverend Raymond Wesley Lloyd, a passionate Civil Rights crusader and campaigner for the underdog candidate. But when a hate group out of Ferguson, Missouri, turns out to be gunning for the same target, Quarry starts to wonder just who it is he's working for.

Nolan must rob every store in a mall in one night – or his girlfriend dies. Two Nolan novels from Grandmaster Max Allan Collins, collected in one volume for the first time. Nolan and Jon have put their lives of crime behind them – but when a cruel adversary from their past resurfaces, they're forced back into the heist game with a brutal ultimatum: pull off an insanely ambitious overnight robbery or Nolan's kidnapped lover won't live to see the morning. Appearing in bookstores for the first time in 35 years, this is Nolan's biggest and deadliest job – and Mad Money also features, for the first time ever in the same volume, the bonus full-length novel Mourn the Living, offering a look back at Nolan's early years as a professional thief.

Quarry is a pro in the murder business. When the man he works for becomes a target himself, Quarry is sent South to remove a traitor in the ranks. But in this wide-open city - with sin everywhere, and betrayal around every corner - Quarry must make the most dangerous choice of his deadly career: who to kill?

QUENTIN TARANTINO on NOBODY'S ANGEL: "My favourite fiction novel this year was written by a taxi driver who used to hand it out to his passengers. It's a terrific story and character study of a cabbie in Chicago during a time when a serial killer is robbing and murdering cabbies. Kudos to Hard Case Crime for publishing Mr. Clark's book." TWO KILLERS STALK THE STREETS OF CHICAGO—CAN ONE TAXI DRIVER CORNER THEM BOTH? Eddie Miles is one of a dying breed: a Windy City hack who knows every street and back alley of his beloved city and takes its recent descent into violence personally. But what can one driver do about a killer targeting streetwalkers or another terrorizing cabbies? Precious little—until the night he witnesses one of them in action...

Has Nolan met his match? MWA Grandmaster Max Allan Collins' veteran thief faces off against a cold-blooded femme fatale in this double-length adventure originally published as two complete novels and unavailable in stores for three decades. "Pulp fiction doesn't get much better."Sunday Times SOMETIMES YOU BURY THE PAST. SOMETIMES IT BURIES YOU. Every professional thief knows you never return to the scene of a crime. But what if you're forced to? In this intense heist story – appearing in bookstores for the first time in three decades – MWA Grandmaster Max Allan Collins brings veteran thief Nolan and his young partner in crime Jon back to rob the same bank they targeted in their debut novel, TWO FOR THE MONEY, at the behest of an embezzling executive and a femme fatale with dollar signs where her soul should be. And those aren't the only figures resurfacing from the past either – the ruthless Comfort clan is back to even old scores, and some members of the Outfit are packing bullets with Nolan's name on them. With all these forces marshalled against him, can even the toughest professional hardcase come out on top?

At no point in recorded history has there been an absence of intense, and heated, discussion about the subject of how to conduct relations between women and men. This Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to these omnipresent issues and debates, mapping the present and future of thinking about feminist theory. The chapters gathered here present the state of the art in scholarship in the field, covering: Epistemology and marginality Literary, visual and cultural representations Sexuality Macro and microeconomics of gender Conflict and peace. The most important consensus in this volume is that a central organizing tenet of feminism is its willingness to examine the ways in which gender and relations between women and men have been (and are) organized. The authors bring a shared commitment to the critical appraisal of gender relations, as well as a recognition that to think ‘theoretically’ is not to detach concerns from lived experience but to extend the possibilities of understanding. With this focus on theory and theorizing about the world in which we live, this Handbook asks us, across all disciplines and situations, to abandon our taken-for-granted assumptions about the world and interrogate both the origin and the implications of our ideas about gender relations and feminism. It is an essential reference work for advanced students and academics not only of feminist theory, but of gender and sexuality across the humanities and social sciences.

The flashback is a crucial moment in a film narrative, one that captures the cinematic expression of memory, and history. This author’s wide-ranging account of this single device reveals it to be an important way of creating cinematic meaning. Taking as her subject all of film history, the author traces out the history of the flashback, illuminating that history through structuralist narrative theory, psychoanalytic theories of subjectivity, and theories of ideology. From the American silent film era and the European and Japanese avant-garde of the twenties, from film noir and the psychological melodrama of the forties and fifties to 1980s art and Third World cinema, the flashback has interrogated time and memory, making it a nexus for ideology, representations of the psyche, and shifting cultural attitudes.