Download or read book Charles Willeford Omnibus 1 written by Charles Willeford and published by Orion. This book was released on 2015-05-21 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Willeford was a child of the Depression era, one of thousands who drifted across the Dust Bowl of America riding the freight trains. That experience, combined with twenty years spent in and out of the armed forces, and the most colourful of lives afterwards, fuelled his deeply authentic hard-boiled prose. High Priest of California is his first novel, and, like Pick-Up and Wild Wives, it is not pulp fiction, but almost satirises that genre. The humour is raunchy and bad-tempered, but the writing is never pretentious. The stories are not lurid; rather, skilfully crafted tales of men and women responding to their individual circumstances, at times purely for their own gain, at others driven by sheer force of hardship.
Download or read book Cockfighter written by Charles Willeford and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2013-08-11 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the criminal underbelly of the 1960s rural South, a silent, iron-willed man is ready to sacrifice anything to rise to the top. A former professional boxer, actor, horse trainer and radio announcer, Charles Willeford (1919-1988) is best known for his Miami-based crime novels featuring hard-boiled detective Hoke Moseley, including Miami Blues and Sideswipe. His career as a writer began in the late 1940s, but it was his 1972 novel Cockfighter that announced his name to a wider audience. Frank Mansfield is the titular cockfighter: a silent and fiercely contrary man whose obsession with winning will cost him almost everything. Mansfield haunts the cockpits, bars and roads of the rural South in the early 1960s, adrift but always capable of nearly anything... First published in complete form in 1972, and adapted by Willeford for a Monte Hellman film in 1974 (which became infamous for its use of real animals in the fight scenes), the novel Cockfighter has been out of print for nearly 20 years. Praise for Charles Willeford and Cockfighter “One of our most skilled, interesting, accomplished and productive writers.” —Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post “Charles Willeford renders the sport [of cockfighting] with such knowledge and attention to detail that . . . I had the almost inexpressible impression of being on my knees again beside the great fighting pits of the southern circuit.” —Harry Crews “No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford.” —Elmore Leonard “Entertaining every step of the way... Willeford opens up for most of us a whole undiscovered world, and conveys it wonderfully.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book The Burnt Orange Heresy written by Charles Willeford and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A driven art critic’s plan to steal a painting leads to murder in this classic neo-noir novel by the author of the Hoke Moseley series. Fast-talking, backstabbing, womanizing, and fiercely ambitious art critic James Figueras will do anything—blackmail, burglary, and beyond—to make a name for himself. When an unscrupulous collector offers Figueras a career-making chance to interview Jacques Debierue, the greatest living—and most reclusive—artist, the critic must decide how far he will go to become the art-world celebrity he hungers to be. Will Figueras stop at the opportunity to skim some cream for himself or push beyond morality’s limits to a bigger payoff? Crossing the art world with the underworld, Willeford creates a novel of dark hue and high aesthetic polish. The Burnt Orange Heresy—the 1970s crime classic now back in print—has lost none of its savage delights as it re-creates the making of a murderer, calmly and with exquisite tension, while satirizing the workings of the art world as the ultimate con. Now a major motion picture starring Donald Sutherland and Mick Jagger Praise for The Burnt Orange Heresy “Stunning . . . A novel full of genuine fun that also manages to make a level statement about the art world and its hermetic credulities.” —New Yorker
Download or read book Pick Up written by Charles Willeford and published by Library of America. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This underground classic of hard-boiled noir fiction follows two addiction-addled drifters as they struggle to make ends meet in the streets of 1950s California First published as an unheralded paperback original, Pick-Up is an authentic underground classic, an explosive bulletin from the urban underbelly of mid-1950s America. It was Charles Willeford’s second novel, after a rough and wandering earlier life that had taken him from Depression-era hobo camps and soup kitchens to wartime battlefields. The unblinking story of two lost and self-destructive drifters—a failed painter working as a counterman in a cheap diner and a woman in flight from domestic violence—trying to find a place for themselves in the back streets of San Francisco, Pick-Up is hardboiled writing at its nihilistic best: Willeford’s preferred title for the book was Until I Am Dead. Its bleak vision of life beyond the edge is haunted by rape, racism, alcoholism, suicide, and inescapable poverty, yet shot through with a tenderness and compassion sustained against all odds in a society offering few breaks to its outcasts and misfits. Pick-Up’s many twists and violent turns culminate in an ending that continues to surprise, confirming it as what critic Woody Haut has called “a razor-sharp narrative that rips open the genre.”
Download or read book A Charles Willeford Omnibus written by Charles Ray Willeford and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of three Charles Willeford thrillers. Cockfighter is set in the seamy underbelly of southern rural life in the USA; The Burnt Orange Heresy features an evil and complicated art-dealer; and Pick-Up tells the story of an alcoholic woman's attempts to avoid destroying herself.
Download or read book New Hope for the Dead written by Charles Willeford and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2009-08-26 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Miami homicide detective Hoke Moseley is called to a posh Miami neighborhood to investigate a lethal overdose. There he meets the alluring stepmother of the decedant, and begins to wonder about dating a witness. Meanwile, he has been threatened with suspension by his ambitious new chief unless he leaves his beloved, if squalid, suite at the El Dorado Hotel, and moves downtown. With free housing hard to come by, Hoke is desperate to find a new place to live. His difficulties are only amplified by an assignment to re-investigate fifty unsolved murders, the unexpected arrival of his two teenage daughters, and a partner struggling with an unwanted pregnancy. With few options and even fewer dollars, he decides that the suspicious and beautiful stepmother of the dead junkie might be a compromised solution to all of his problems. Packed with atmosphere and humor, New Hope for the Dead is a classic murder mystery by one of the true masters of the genre. Now back in print, Charles Willeford’s tour de force is an irresistible invitation to become acquainted with one of the greatest detective characters of all time.
Download or read book Sideswipe written by Charles Willeford and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2005-03-08 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hoke Moseley has had enough. Tired of struggling against alimony payments, two teenage daughters, a very pregnant, very single partner, and a low paying job as a Miami homicide detective, Hoke moves to Singer Island and vows never step foot on the mainland again. But on the street, career criminal Troy Louden is hatching plans of his own with a gang including a disfigured hooker, a talentless artist, and a clueless retiree. But when his simple robbery results in ruthless and indiscriminate bloodshed, Hoke quickly remembers why he is a cop and hurls himself back into the world he meant to leave behind forever. A masterly tale of both mid-life crisis and murder, Sideswipe is a page-turning thriller packed with laughs, loaded with suspense, and featuring one of the truly original detectives of all time.
Download or read book Hoke Moseley Omnibus written by Charles Willeford and published by Orion. This book was released on 2015-06-18 with total page 880 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hoke Moseley is the star of the modern South Florida crime novel, birthed by Charles Willeford, whose forebear is John D. MacDonald and who, in his turn, has inspired Carl Hiaasen and Quentin Tarantino. Through Moseley we are witness to a Miami in transition, from lush retirement haven to capital of 1980s glamour, drugs and weird crime. Willeford's four Miami novels present a hero rather the worse for wear. Hoke sucks at life; in his mid-forties, with false teeth and an aching body, a bad divorce has left him with the cheap work and the care of two teenage daughters. His offbeat humour, brilliant writing and quirky sense of fashion have assured Charles Willeford a permanent place alongside the greats of modern crime fiction.
Download or read book Miami Blues written by Charles Willeford and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2009-08-19 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After a brutal day investigating a quadruple homicide, Detective Hoke Moseley settles into his room at the un-illustrious El Dorado Hotel and nurses a glass of brandy. With his guard down, he doesn’t think twice when he hears a knock on the door. The next day, he finds himself in the hospital, badly bruised and with his jaw wired shut. He thinks back over ten years of cases wondering who would want to beat him into unconsciousness, steal his gun and badge, and most importantly, make off with his prized dentures. But the pieces never quite add up to revenge, and the few clues he has keep connecting to a dimwitted hooker, and her ex-con boyfriend and the bizarre murder of a Hare Krishna pimp. Chronically depressed, constantly strapped for money, always willing to bend the rules a bit, Hoke Moseley is hardly what you think of as the perfect cop, but he is one of the the greatest detective creations of all time.
Download or read book Paperback Confidential written by Brian Ritt and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 132 profiles of the men and women who wrote the books that became the backbone of the Pulp and Paperback Era from the 1930s through the 1960s. Each profile contains details about the author's life and explores key works; also covered are screenplay and teleplay work, as well as movies based on the authors' stories.
Download or read book The Way We Die Now written by Charles Willeford and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2009-09-09 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Miami Homicide Detective Hoke Moseley receives an unexplained order to let his beard grow, he doesn't think much about it. He has too much going on at home, especially with a man he helped convict ten years before moving in across the street. Hoke immediately assumes the worst, and considering he has his former partner, who happens to be nursing a newborn, and his two teenage daughters living with him, he doesn't like the situation on bit. It doesn't help matters when he is suddenly assigned to work undercover, miles away, outside of his jurisdiction and without his badge, his gun, or his teeth. Soon, he is impersonating a drifter and tring to infiltrate a farm operation suspected of murdering migrant workers. But when he gets there for his job interview, the last thing he is offered is work. In this final installment of the highly acclaimed Hoke Moseley novels, Charles Willeford's brilliance and expertise show on every page. Equally funny, thrilling, and disturbing, The Way We Die Now is a triumphant finish to one of the most original detective series of all time.
Download or read book Raw Rumbles written by Hal Ellson and published by Rudos and Rubes. This book was released on 2008 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Juvenile delinquent fiction is today largely the domain of collectors and scholars of pop culture, but Hal Ellson was, in his day, a phenomenally successful writer. While contemporaries like David Goodis and Jim Thompson have been the subjects of glowing critical reassessments, Ellson has languished in obscurity, mostly due to the (admittedly) salacious nature of his work. More often than not, readers feverishly turned the pages for Ellson's vivid descriptions of drugs, gangs, crime, rumbles, hot rods, and hot lovin' -- his potent insight into the lives of urban youth often went unnoticed. This long-overdue anthology contains three of Ellson's most famous novels: Duke, Tomboy, and The Knife. Read today, the novels capture the reader's attention with their willingness to explore the mental conditions of gang members and the environmental conditions that cause gangs to flourish while eschewing the easy answers and grossly simplified sociology of preachy message novels.
Download or read book Charles Willeford Omnibus 2 written by Charles Willeford and published by Orion. This book was released on 2015-05-21 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Willeford's varied, colourful life informs his tongue-in-cheek attitude towards the violence, treachery and plain craziness evident in his four novels in this second omnibus. The Woman Chaser allows its hero, Richard Hudson, womaniser and used car salesman, to play skilfully on all the vulnerabilities of men and women . . . but not without a comeuppance. Cockfighter is the least likely pulp novel of these: it is a masterpiece, a portrait of silent, passionate masculinity set against the underbelly of the rural South of the early 1960s. The Burnt Orange Heresy is a long satire on art, art criticism and collecting, and reflects Willeford's favourite pastime. The Machine in Ward Eleven collects six stories that display the madness that lies at the heart of politics, as Willeford lays bare the American Dream.
Download or read book Sleep With The Devil written by Day Keene and published by www.PulpFictionBook.Store. This book was released on 2023-11-12 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ferron was part hoodlum, part gigolo, a guy who’d break your arm as quick as he’d look at you. Suddenly his whole world began to shatter with unspeakable savagery. Sleep With The Devil (1954) THE beautiful red-haired girl told Ferron he was a heel straight down the line. But she’d do anything for him—anything at all. Wayne would find out, too, that Ferron was part hoodlum, part gigolo, a guy who’d break your arm as quick as he’d look at you. Yet Wayne wanted to give him a quarter of a million bucks. And the police knew that Ferron was the most wanted man in the state. But they did nothing about it. They didn’t even look for him. It was a swell setup, Ferron thought. They’d never get him because he was too smart. Maybe. He began to wonder . . . and then suddenly his whole world began to shatter with unspeakable savagery. Sleep With The Devil is a sixteen chapter novel first published in 1954.
Download or read book Crime Novels written by Robert Polito and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 924 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Everyman s Genius written by Mary Austin and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Coal mining Safety in the Progressive Period written by William Graebner and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 1976-01-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
