Showing results by author "Lawrence Block" in All Categories

Turning 29 years old, Janet Giddings Kurland starts a journal and records her comfortably routine suburban lifestyle. But when she rolls the dice with her friend's husband, she starts down a path that will lead her to the hip streets of Greenwich Village. Amidst the sexually free, Janet blossoms and her housewife's journal turns into a sex diary filled with unexpected encounters, dangerous partners, and drug-fueled sexual escapades.

It's a crime that Times Square dives aren't private investigator Chip Harrison's usual hangouts. Tulip Willing is the star attraction at the Treasure Chest, and also Chip's newest client. It seems she wants cover for a mysterious stranger who's been scaring her out of her clothes. Cherry Bounce, another dancer at the Treasure Chest, is shot dead in the act. Chip finds himself on the trail of a killer who's eager to trap the street-wise detective and strip him of his livelihood forever...

Rhoda’s divorce has her thinking that romance is not for her. But maybe she just needs to look in a new direction. Megan is an attractive blonde who instantly sees what Rhoda’s love life has been missing: a woman’s touch. As Megan guides Rhoda into the sensuous - but hidden - world of women who love women, the two unlock a passion that may be too hot to contain. There are a lot of beautiful women in the Village, and Rhoda’s just begun her adventure as a freewheeling lesbian.

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Born to Be Bad and experience the compelling world of erotica.

Hard Case Crime, die außergewöhnliche Krimi-Reihe als exklusive und ungekürzte Hörbuchproduktionen: Willkommen in einer Welt, in der die Sonne nur scheint, um tiefe Schatten zu werfen und in den Augen verkaterter, übernächtigter Männer zu brennen. Einer düsteren, brutalen Welt der Ganoven und Huren, in der die scheinbar ehrbaren Bürger moralisch verkommen sind, die Polizisten sowieso.

In the third installment of his acclaimed anthology series, master of crime fiction Lawrence Block has gathered together the best talent from popular fiction to produce an anthology of short stories based on masterpieces of American art. Among the star-studded lineup of writers you'll find Jerome Charyn, Jane Hamilton, Christa Faust, John Sandford, Sara Paretsky, Walter Mosley, Charles Ardai, Barry Malzberg, and Janice Eidus.

Is he an out-and-out mincing homosexual? Or a closet queen? A transvestite masquerading in full make-up and dress as a woman? A muscle-bound stud? Or is he just your normal American boy who happens to be in the business for himself, selling desirable merchandise--his body--at prices the market will bear? In THE MALE HUSTLER John Warren Wells talks frankly and at length to seven male prostitutes. They tell exactly what they do for a living; how they find their clients, what they think about their clients--and themselves; they talk about money, about men, about women. This book is a ...

The crime fiction canopy's a broad one, with room to give shelter to writing of all sorts, as editor Lawrence Block shows with At Home in the Dark.

O Rose thou art sick. /The invisible worm, /That flies in the night /In the howling storm: /Has found out thy bed /Of crimson joy: /And his dark secret love / Does thy life destroy. Those eight lines constitute the complete text of “The Sick Rose,” published by William Blake in Songs of Experience in 1794. I took to Blake early on, and thought Of Crimson Joy would make a dandy title. I accordingly fastened it on this novel when I sent the manuscript to Harry Shorten at Midwood.

Es difícil ignorar a alguien cuando tienes sus manos dentro de tu boca. Bernie Rhodenbarr es todo oídos cuando el Dr. Sheldrake, su dentista, empieza a quejarse de su detestable casi-ex esposa, y de paso menciona los valiosos diamantes que ésta tiene mal guardados dentro de su apartamento. Como es cosa sabida que Bernie suele complementar sus entradas como dueño de una librería con algunas aventurillas no tan infrecuentes en el área del latrocinio de alta categoría, unas cuantas noches más tarde se encuentra dentro del apartamento Sheldrake con la idea de volarse algunas cositas –...

Kit Tolliver’s got a problem. Whenever she has sex with a man, she feels an irresistible urge to kill him. That’s fine, she enjoys the killing as much as the sex, but it does limit the possibilities for a satisfying long-term relationship. But she’s got a friend, a woman in Kirkland, Washington, and there’s a definite sexual undercurrent to the friendship. Is that a possibility? And would she even enjoy sex with a woman? And what would happen afterward? She’s in St. Louis, hoping a lesbian bar might hold the answer. And she’s not the bar’s only patron with a hidden agenda. ...

For the most part, Kit Tolliver’s homicidal lifestyle suits her just fine. But her recent North Carolina reunion with a wounded veteran (“One Kind Favor I Ask of You”) has left her with her own verion of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. She’s found a room in a cheap hotel in the Rust Belt, she’s working a minimum-wage job, and she’s letting time take time. But a girl gets restless, you know? And one night she goes out for a walk, and a car pulls up, and a guy rolls down the window and offers her a ride. “Don’t get in the car,” a little voice says. But she gets in the car......

In 2006, the estimable S J Rozan invited me to contribute a story to Bronx Noir, an anthology she'd been commissioned to edit for Akashic Books. As she'd been obliging enough to write a story for my own Manhattan Noir, I felt honor-bound to return the favor. To do so, I enlisted the homicidal services of a young woman who'd starred in "If You Can't Stand the Heat," my Hell's Kitchen story for Manhattan Noir. Although she seemed quite capable of standing the heat, I figured it was nevertheless time for her to get out of the Kitchen, so I sent her up to the Riverdale section of the Bronx. My ...

When Don Westlake and I were starting out as writers, we both served an apprenticeship writing erotic novels for Harry Shorten at Midwood Books and Bill Hamling at Nightstand. (I was Sheldon Lord for Midwood and Andrew Shaw for Nightstand, while Don was Alan Marshall for both publishers. Note though that the presence of either name upon a book is no guarantee that one of us wrote it. Both of us made arrangements whereby lesser writers would submit works under our names—and I know it's hard to believe that any writers were less than we were back then, but it's true.) Well. We'd become ...

Lawrence Block on Lust Weekend: “LUST WEEKEND was written in 1962 and published that same year by Nightstand Books. The title’s an obvious play on THE LOST WEEKEND, Charles Jackson’s groundbreaking novel of alcoholism. The book was a sensation, as was the film adaptation starring Ray Milland. “The people at Nightstand generally changed the titles on my manuscripts. But LUST WEEKEND made the cut, and I’m sure I came up with the title first and wrote the book to fit. ‘Lust’ was a favorite word at Nightstand, where they wanted to excite the readers withoutd alarming the censors. ...

Lawrence Block on GIRLS ON THE PROWL: “GIRLS ON THE PROWL was first published by Nightstand Books in 1961, with Andrew Shaw credited as author. Harold W. McCauley provided the cover art. The principal characters—one hesitates to characterize them as titular—are Saundra, Marilyn, and Joan. (Joan is the lesbian.) “A mere forty-three years later, THE BURGLAR ON THE PROWL was first published by William Morrow in 2004, with Lawrence Block credited as author. Amy King provided the jacket design, Paul Oakley the jacket illustration, while the author photograph was the work of Athena ...

Twelve-year-old Ariel is a strange, solitary girl. Recently, Ariel and her mother have seen a ghostly figure in their house. As a result, they are both having dreams that are becoming stranger, yet more and more real. What is the link between this frightening manifestation and the house? Lawrence Block carefully blurs the boundaries between fear and obsession as he steadily increases the suspense. As Ariel's family moves toward tragedy, so does the reader's certainty that a terrible force is at work.

For almost three years, novelist and short-story writer Lawrence Block's monthly column, "Generally Speaking," was one of the most popular features in Linn's Stamp News. A general collector of pre-1940 issues, Block had the entire world of stamps as his subject, and he turned in 33 columns before he decided it was time to stop. But Keller, the author's fictional character, never lost his enthusiasm for philately. A wistful and introspective killer for hire, Keller rekindled a boyhood passion for stamps at the end of Hit Man, the first of a series of books about him.

One morning in the spring of 1958 I woke up in my room at the Hotel Alexandria with a paralyzing hangover (which was not unusual) and an idea for a book (which was). I sat in front of my typewriter, and within a few hours I had produced a chapter-by-chapter outline of a novel. I had all the characters sketched out and knew how they'd relate to one another, and how the rather elementary storyline would resolve itself. I even had a title: Shadows.

Because they were collected into a single hardcover volume published by Subterranean Press, a good number of readers are acquainted with my three collaborations with Donald E. Westlake. That's not the case with CIRCLE OF SINNERS, a similar joint effort undertaken with another longstanding (and, I'm pleased to say, still standing) friend and colleague, Hal Dresner. Unlike two of the Block/Westlake titles, CIRCLE OF SINNERS did not bear a joint byline; Nightstand issued it as "by Don Holliday," which was in fact Hal's pen name. (To increase the level of confusion, one book of mine was ...