New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The Twins were playing their debut season, ice-cold root beers were at the ready at Drug Store soda counter, and Hot Stuff comic books were a mainstay on every barbershop magazine rack. It was a time of innocence and hope for a country with a new, young president. But for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum it was a summer in which death assumed many forms. When tragedy unexpectedly comes to call on his family, which includes...

Collects two novels and thirteen short stories by American writer Patricia Highsmith, including "Strangers on a Train" in which successful architect Guy Haines is harassed on a train by Charles Bruno, who offers to kill Haines' estranged wife if Haines will in turn kill Bruno's father--and then goes on to carry out the unconfirmed bargain.

When a former NYPD colleague is shot dead in front of him, private investigator Marshall Grade discovers there's far more to the killing than meets the eye. Ray Vialoux is in trouble. Big trouble. And he needs Marshall Grade's help. Reluctantly, Grade agrees to meet. Over dinner in a Brooklyn restaurant, he learns that his former NYPD colleague owes money - a lot of money - to the wrong people. But the conversation is cut short by gunfire, and suddenly...

"In a few years of extraordinary creative energy, Dashiell Hammett invented the modern American crime novel." "The five novels that Hammett published between 1929 and 1934, collected here in one volume, have become part of modern American culture, creating archetypal characters and establishing the ground rules for a whole tradition of hardboiled writing." "Each novel is distinct in mood and structure. Red Harvest (1929), a raucous and nightmarish...

A collection of five crime novels written during the 1950s. The killer inside me / Jim Thompson, The talented Mr. Ripley / Patricia Highsmith, Pick-up / Charles Willeford, Down there / David Goodis, The real cool killers / Chester Himes.

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 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...

"The three novels collected in this second volume in the Library of America Ross Macdonald edition represent for many readers the summit of American crime writing. They remain thrilling for their searing psychological truth-telling, daring flights of narrative invention, and their keenly observed picture of the manners and morals of a particular time and place (Southern California in the early 1960s). Each reflects Macdonald's enduring concern with...

"Nancy Drew has survived the Depression, World War II, and the sixties to enter the pantheon of American girlhood. Here, with all the vivid energy and page-turning pace of Nancy's adventures, is the first behind-the-scenes history of our beloved girl detective. Behind the blue roadster, cloche hats, uncanny timing, and constant presence in the lives of American girls lies an enduring literary mystery: Who created Nancy Drew? And how did she go...