David Goodis

Their vacation in paradise became a descent into Hell... Their marriage on the rocks, James and Cora Bevan flew to Jamaica for a last chance at patching things up. But in the slums of Kingston, James found himself fighting for his life—while Cora found her own path to destruction...in the arms of another man.

Once upon a time Eddie played concert piano to reverent audiences at Carnegie Hall. Now he bangs out honky-tonk for drunks in a dive in Philadelphia. But then two people walk into Eddie's life—the first promising Eddie a future, the other dragging him back into a treacherous past.

They say that a man needs a woman to go to hell with. Cassidy had two. One was Mildred, the wife who kept him chained with ties of fear and jealousy and paralyzing sexual need. The other was Doris, a frail angel with a 100-proof halo and a bottle instead of a harp. With those two, Cassidy found that the ride to hell could be twice as fast.

"The woman? She is Clara Ervin, blonde and voluptuous, moving with deliberate feline grace and ruthless secret purpose through the ordinary middle-class world about her. As you meet her, she is living quietly on a Philadelphia back street, as second wife to an aging clerk. A pretty, innocent step-daughter of nineteen, and a fading but faithful servant, complete this commonplace household. Into the Ervins' circle come two young men, drawn by Evelyn's fragile charms--one a childhood sweetheart, the other a wealthy Main Line playboy"--Dust jacket flap.

Jodi Adams has landed her dream job as a summer intern at the local city paper, The Montgomery Times. This killer summer job will launch her senior year with a bang as she goes after the hard angle on an investigative piece on area hospitals. But when Jodi's reporting reveals information her employer doesn't want to hear-much less publish-Jodi and Stan Taylor find that the information trail is vanishing before their eyes. Lives are at stake, and it looks like theirs could be next.

This adventurous volume, with its companion devoted to the 1930s and 40s, presents a rich vein of modern American writing too often neglected in mainstream literary histories. Evolving out of the terse and violent hardboiled style of the pulp magazines, noir fiction expanded over the decades into a varied and innovative body of writing. Tapping deep roots in the American literary imagination, the novels in this volume explore 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. The raw power of their vernacular style has profoundly influenced contemporary American culture and writing. Far from formulaic, they are ambitious works which bend the rules of genre fiction to their often experimental purposes.

Collects five crime novels of David Goodis all dealing with unfortunate people and dark doomed settings.

Included in this volume: THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, by Stephen Crane CAPTAINS VENOMOUS, by Arthur J. Burks A SAHIBS' WAR, by Rudyard Kipling WHIRLWIND SQUADRON, by Robert W. Nealey THEY DIED IN VAIN, by George Bruce THE BLOCKADE RUNNERS, by Jules Verne IN THE CLUTCH OF THE TURK, by Benge Atlee THE CRIME OF THE BRIGADIER, by Arthur Conan Doyle [An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge]( by Ambrose Bierce WHISPERING DEATH, by Laurence Donovan A ONE-MAN NAVY, by Eugene Cunningham WHEN A YANK GETS FIGHTING MAD, by Lieut. Jay D. Blaufox A MYSTERY OF HEROISM, by Stephen Crane THE PRIVATE HISTORY OF A CAMPAIGN THAT FAILED, by Mark Twain WITHOUT THE BLUE, by Johnston McCulley PRIVATE WAR, by Norman A. Daniels THE CLOUD WIZARD, by David Goodis KILLER ACE, by David Goodis THE FLY, by Katherine Mansfield THE COLONEL'S IDEAS, by Guy de Maupassant THREE MIRACULOUS SOLDIERS, by Stephen Crane NAVY DAY, by Harry Harrison VICTORY, by Lester del Rey THE DEFENDERS, by Philip K. Dick THE DESTROYERS, by Randall Garrett.