Free!

 books for writers, Ehrengraf, free download, Hard Case Crime, Jill Emerson, Subterranean Press  Comments Off
Jul 052012
 

Well, not everything’s free, but that’s where we’ll start. Not long ago I made the first Ehrengraf story, The Ehrengraf Defense, available free on Kindle. During the several days the offer ran, some 1500 of you picked it up—and enough of you went on to buy the complete collection, Ehrengraf For the Defense, for me to decide to Do It Again.

Hence the second story, The Ehrengraf Presumption. It’s free for several days, starting at 3am Eastern time, Friday July 6. Just click the link, then click the button, then boot up your Kindle and start reading. Kindlers outside the US can use these links for the UK, France, Germany, Italy, or Spain.

If you see where all this is going, you might want to speed things up by splurging $4.99 for Ehrengraf For the Defense. But if you just take it a story at a time, perhaps your patience will be rewarded and you’ll be able to get them all for free.

Our LB’s Bookstore page got a full remake; David pointed out that it was unwieldy, and impossible to keep up, so he erased all the endless lists and is just posting when he’s got something to report. He had something yesterday and something more today, including some additions to the store stock and some policy changes resulting from eBay’s upgrading the store’s status. Here’s part of his post:

“One perk is a discount in the fees they charge us, provided we reduce our posted handling time from 3 business days to 1, and maintain a 14-day return policy. We already had the return policy on everything but audiobooks, but we’ve now extended it to include them as well. And, since we’ve filled all orders within a day of receipt, we were happy to embrace that policy as well. So now it’s official: we’ll ship your order right away, and we’ll accept returns…”

I hate to quote the lad at great length. He’ll want royalties. Just click here and read the rest on the Bookstore page. And you might want to take his advice and check out some of the new listings, esp. Ronald Rabbit, an extraordinary example of small-press publishing. Here, because I just can’t help myself, is one of the covers:

He’s also added audiobooks. Previously we just listed those on CD, but now we’ve added around twenty unabridged audiobooks on cassette, many of them long out of print and otherwise unavailable. If cassettes work for you, there are some gems to be found here, and the price is right.

If you ordered the Subterranean Press / Hard Case Crime double volume of Strange Embrace and 69 Barrow Street, your copy’s probably arrived by now. If not, I expect you’ll be getting it shortly. I won’t be offering these for sale, at least not for the near future, so signed copies will be hard to come by. I did drop in to sign for the Mysterious Bookshop; if they have any left, a call to (800) 352-2840 will get you one. I’m also signing tip-in sheets for John Hutchinson of VJ Books, and an email to john@vjbooks.com will get you details on price and availability.

If you just want to read the books, well, that’s easy. Open Road’s bringing them out July 17 as individual eBooks, and you can pre-order to spare yourself having to remember this. Strange Embrace and 69 Barrow Street list at $14.99 apiece, which seems high to me, but they’re discounted to $9.99, which doesn’t seem so bad. They’ll also be available for Nook, Kobo, Apple, and others as well, and you shouldn’t have trouble finding them.

Speaking of Open Road, they’ve got a lot going on and a good deal more on the horizon. They dropped prices on my three writing books (Writing the Novel From Plot to Print, The Liar’s Bible, and The Liar’s Companion) to $3.99, and then further reduced Writing the Novel all the way to $1.99. This last reduction is very short-term, and in fact when I first found  out about it I thought it was a mistake. It’s intentional, but won’t be around long; they guarantee it only until July 10, although some retailers may not get around to boosting the price right away. If this is a book you can use, don’t wait; if you bought a ratty used paperback for 1¢, you’d pay more than $1.99 in shipping charges. Again, all the platforms have this deal; my links are to Amazon, but you can find all the writing books readily enough at B&N, Apple, Kobo, etc.

More about Open Road’s writing books, and the ones from HarperCollins as well, at A Few Words for Writers…

Open Road’s also planning a summer promotion for Jill Emerson. They’ve already reduced the seven Jill Emerson novels to $2.99 apiece, so you don’t have to wait. (You can find links on the About LB’s Fiction page, more information and a good photo show on Jill Emerson’s Page.) And they’ve got something planned the last week of July for Campus Tramp. (And did you know there was a vocal group called the Campus Tramps? News to me. Gosh, my mom would be so proud…)

LB


News From Hard Case Crime

 Hard Case Crime, Stephen King  Comments Off
May 302012
 
New Stephen King Novel Coming

from Hard Case Crime


JOYLAND to be published in June 2013

New York, NY; London, UK (May 30, 2012) – Hard Case Crime, the award-winning line of pulp-styled crime novels published by Titan Books, today announced it will publish JOYLAND, a new novel by Stephen King, in June 2013.  Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, JOYLAND tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever.  JOYLAND is a brand-new book and has never previously been published.  One of the most beloved storytellers of all time, Stephen King is the world’s best-selling novelist, with more than 300 million books in print.

Called “the best new American publisher to appear in the last decade” by Neal Pollack in The Stranger, Hard Case Crime revives the storytelling and visual style of the pulp paperbacks of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.  The line features an exciting mix of lost pulp masterpieces from some of the most acclaimed crime writers of all time and gripping new novels from the next generation of great hardboiled authors, all with new painted covers in the grand pulp style.  Authors range from modern-day bestsellers such as Pete Hamill, Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block and Ed McBain to Golden Age stars like Mickey Spillane (creator of “Mike Hammer”), Erle Stanley Gardner (creator of “Perry Mason”), Wade Miller (author of Touch of Evil), and Cornell Woolrich (author of Rear Window). 

Stephen King commented, “I love crime, I love mysteries, and I love ghosts. That combo made Hard Case Crime the perfect venue for this book, which is one of my favorites. I also loved the paperbacks I grew up with as a kid, and for that reason, we’re going to hold off on e-publishing this one for the time being. Joyland will be coming out in paperback, and folks who want to read it will have to buy the actual book.” 

King’s previous Hard Case Crime novel, The Colorado Kid, became a national bestseller and inspired the television series “Haven,” now going into its third season on SyFy.

“Joyland is a breathtaking, beautiful, heartbreaking book,” said Charles Ardai, Edgar- and Shamus Award-winning editor of Hard Case Crime.  “It’s a whodunit, it’s a carny novel, it’s a story about growing up and growing old, and about those who don’t get to do either because death comes for them before their time.  Even the most hardboiled readers will find themselves moved. When I finished it, I sent a note saying, ‘Goddamn it, Steve, you made me cry.’ ”

Nick Landau, Titan Publisher, added: “Stephen King is one of the fiction greats, and I am tremendously proud and excited to be publishing a brand-new book of his under the Hard Case Crime imprint.”

JOYLAND will feature new painted cover art by the legendary Robert McGinnis, the artist behind the posters for the original Sean Connery James Bond movies and “Breakfast At Tiffany’s,” and by Glen Orbik, the painter of more than a dozen of Hard Case Crime’s most popular covers, including the cover for The Colorado Kid.

Since its debut in 2004, Hard Case Crime has been the subject of enthusiastic coverage by a wide range of publications including The New York Times, USA Today, Time, Playboy, U.S. News & World Report, BusinessWeek, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Houston Chronicle, New York magazine, the New York Post and Daily News, Salon, Reader’s Digest, Parade and USA Weekend, as well as numerous other magazines, newspapers, and online media outlets.  The Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “Hard Case Crime is doing a wonderful job publishing both classic and contemporary ‘pulp’ novels in a crisp new format with beautiful, period-style covers.  These modern ‘penny dreadfuls’ are worth every dime.”  Playboy praised Hard Case Crime’s “lost masterpieces,” writing “They put to shame the work of modern mystery writers whose plots rely on cell phones and terrorists.”  And the Philadelphia City Paper wrote, “Tired of overblown, doorstop-sized thrillers…?  You’ve come to the right place.  Hard Case novels are as spare and as honest as a sock in the jaw.”

Other upcoming Hard Case Crime titles include The Cocktail Waitress, a never-before-published novel by James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, and Double Indemnity, and an epic first novel called The Twenty-Year Death by Ariel S. Winter that has won advance raves from authors such as Peter Straub, James Frey, Alice Sebold, John Banville, David Morrell and Stephen King.

For information about these and other forthcoming titles, visit www.HardCaseCrime.com.

About Hard Case Crime

Founded in 2004 by award-winning novelists Charles Ardai and Max Phillips, Hard Case Crime has been nominated for or won numerous honors since its inception including the Edgar, the Shamus, the Anthony, the Barry, and the Spinetingler Award.  The series’ books have been adapted for television and film, with two features currently in development at Universal Pictures and the TV series “Haven” going into its third season this fall on SyFy.  Hard Case Crime is published through a collaboration between Winterfall LLC and Titan Publishing Group.

About Titan Publishing Group

Titan Publishing Group is an independently owned publishing company, established in 1981, comprising three divisions: Titan Books, Titan Magazines/Comics and Titan Merchandise.  Titan Books, recently nominated as Independent Publisher of the Year 2011, has a rapidly growing fiction list encompassing original fiction and reissues, primarily in the areas of science fiction, fantasy, horror, steampunk and crime. Recent crime and thriller acquisitions include Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins’ all-new Mike Hammer novels, the Matt Helm series by Donald Hamilton and the entire backlist of the Queen of Spy Writers, Helen MacInnes.  Titan Books also has an extensive line of media and pop culture-related non-fiction, graphic novels, art and music books. The company is based at offices in London, but operates worldwide, with sales and distribution in the US and Canada being handled by Random House. www.titanbooks.com

Lawrence Block: A Diet of Treacle

 Hard Case Crime, Lawrence Block, reprints, sleaze  Comments Off
Apr 262012
 
This is one of the old Lawrence Block sleaze titles Hard Case Crime has been reprinting. Killing Castro was somewhat disappointing, and so was this. A Diet of Treacle is a ménage à trois between two beatnik guys (one a loser, other a criminal) and a girl who'd like to be a beatnik. The book is not really a crime novel, it's more a novel with a crime. The actual plot starts only after the middle part, but Block writes so smoothly it's not a huge problem. The problem lies with the fact that the plot is too thin after all - and that there's too much of the beatnik slang, with everything being cool, solid or hip. The ending is good, though, real noir stuff.


The book was first published as Pads Are For Passion (Beacon, in the early sixties), but A Diet of Treacle (name snatched from Lewis Carroll) was Block's original title. This kind of information is something I'd really like Hard Case Crime would tell at their website. The book was first published under the Sheldon Lord by-line and I already started reading Sheldon Lord's Kept that was written also by Block. Seems pretty solid (sic) by the first 50 pages.
 Posted by at 3:21 pm

The Thrill Kill Books: Getting Off and Bad Thoughts

 Dave Zeltserman, Hard Case Crime, Lawrence Block, sleaze  Comments Off
Apr 252012
 
 I finished two books last weekend that shared the same theme: the thrill of a good kill. Both dealt the theme very differently, the other one was very humorous and free-wheeling and the other one developed some real horror out of it.

The latter was Dave Zeltserman's Bad Thoughts that was first published in hardcover by Five Star, but is now available as an e-book. Zeltserman sure knows how to spin a dark tale, as has been witnessed by his earlier books (of which I think Killer is the best - at least of those I've read). And boy oh boy, is Bad Thoughts dark! The killer in Bad Thoughts has a dubious gift of being able to work in the dreams of the people he wants to hurt and seems like there's no escape out of the situation. There are some moments that ask for the suspension of disbelief, but Zeltserman brings the thing to a well-balanced conclusion and does it with verve, through a simple-looking style that maintains the hardboiled noir style that's so familiar to Zeltserman's readers. In the hands of a mediocre serial killer writer, this would merely be a thriller. Now it's something else entirely.

Lawrence Block's hardcover Hard Case Crime outing Getting Off makes the same thing very differently. It tells about a young and attractive woman who kills men to revenge the abuse her father inflicted upon her and does it with great pleasure, first having sex with the men. Block pulls no punches in this tale that develops into a parody of serial killer novels. He turns the clichés upside down: there's nothing inherently bad in getting your joy out of killing people. The book's highly erotic at the same time and it's no wonder Block has used his early Jill Emerson pseudonym in this (though this is much seedier stuff than anything by "Jill Emerson"). There are some moments in the book that feel forced, as a couple of details in the lesbian romance, but I can see Block chuckling to himself while writing those scenes.

The books are very different in depicting the reasons for the thrill kill violence: Zeltserman says there's no reason, the guy was just born broken and it was a pity no one made anything to stop him, Block claims the abuse of the young girl made her what she is today. Seems like the Zeltserman explanation is more fashionable now, as the psychoanalytic-tinged theory of traumatized sexual behaviour has faded out of academic fashion.

Dave Zeltserman's Bad Thoughts has also the distinction of being the first e-book I've read. I loaded the free Kindle Reader on my portable and I've been snatching some free e-books whenever they've been available. As a reading experience I thought it was okay, but something I'd think should be done with the real device. But as of yet, I don't own one. As more and more interesting noir and hardboiled books are coming out only as e-books, getting a Kindle or a Nook or something similar seems something I need to do. Just too pity e-books are so expensive here in Finland.
 Posted by at 6:50 pm

Lawrence Block: Grifter’s Game

 Hard Case Crime, Lawrence Block, reprints  Comments Off
Apr 122012
 
I've never actually read much Lawrence Block. I once read one of his later Matt Scudder novels and I really didn't care for it. I'll have to try one of them again. I've liked two of his Tanner novels, even though they are very light. A Bernie Rhodenbarr I had to quit in the middle. And then I've read Killing Castro.

I finally got around to reading the first book Hard Case Crime put out, Block's Grifter's Game that was originally published as Mona (Fawcett Gold Medal 1961). It really shows Block was a good writer even when he was very young (he was 23 when this was published, and I think this is his first, at least under his own name), the text is fluent and very readable. Block's dialogue is paced well and crispy. It's too bad there's so little of it in the middle parts - the narrative turns pretty much into the protagonist's monology. The protagonist is a con man in his late twenties. He's quite sympathetic, though he's a heel of the worst kind, seducing women to to live on their money for days or for months and then dropping them. There are no good people in the world of Grifter's Game, which, combined with the pretty nasty ending, makes this a worthwhile noir novel.

Next off I'll be reading Block's Getting Off and Lucky at Cards. Why? I'm working on an article for a Finnish journal about sex and sleaze paperbacks. And because it's about time I start reading Lawrence Block.



 Posted by at 9:08 am

"The Criminal Kind: Voyeuristic Pleasures" at The Los Angeles Review of Books

 Alison Gaylin, chris f holm, Hard Case Crime, Joe R. Lansdale, Los Angeles Review of Books, Robert Silverberg, Wallace Stroby  Comments Off
Apr 112012
 
My latest column for the Los Angeles Review of Books was published last week. The article was called, "The Criminal Kind: Voyeuristic Pleasures." Here are the books I reviewed:

Kings of Midnight by Wallace Stroby
"At their best, crime novels provide more than the voyeuristic pleasure of looking in on a lifestyle that us law-abiding citizens will never know first-hand: they offer a refractive glance back on our own world. In her own way, Crissa Stone is a modern-day hero for an America still recovering from the economic collapse. There’s an honesty and integrity to her work ethic that separates her from the fold."
And She Was by Alison Gaylin
"A moody, densely layered mystery whose emotional notes are as affecting as the plot points are enthralling. Gaylin excels at getting us into her protagonist’s complex (and crowded) mind."
Edge of Dark Water by Joe R. Lansdale
"Imagine the literary love child of Carson McCullers and William Faulkner, but way more twisted, with a penchant for dismemberment, and a hell of a lot funnier. That’s Joe R. Lansdale’s Edge of Dark Water in a nutshell."
The Next One to Fall by Hilary Davidson
"Don’t let the exotic Peruvian backdrop fool you: this is in no way a picturesque walk in the park — or through the Incan ruins, as the case may be. From its doom-laden opening line (“Standing at the edge of the mountain, I imagined what it would feel like to let go”) to its unexpectedly savage finale, The Next One to Fall is driven by the noir impulse towards oblivion."
Dead Harvest by Chris F. Holm
"Dead Harvest is a wild and unpredictable ride that only gets more bold as the narrative unfurls, and now that the foundation for the series is set, I’m excited to see what hurdles Holm has set for Thornton in the sequel, The Wrong Goodbye, already slated for October 2012."
Blood on the Mink by Robert Silverberg
"What saves the book from becoming an orgy of excess, however, is Silverberg’s stylistic restraint, and his attention to detail and craft. Blood on the Mink is by no means as extreme as something by Mickey Spillane. Silverberg’s style, at least here, is more reminiscent of the cool precision of a Peter Rabe. When it comes to action, there’s a remarkable balance of clarity and brute force to his choreography"
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