James M. Cain

Double indemnity

Mildred Pierce

This collection features three classics from the master of the noir novel--each of which was made into a classic Hollywood film--along with five otherwise unavailable short stories. Ribbon marker.

The Postman Always Rings Twice

A sweeping tale of love, loss, and the pursuit of beauty during the Great Depression From birth, Jack Dillon is a golden child. Blessed with blond locks, glittering eyes, and a perfect voice, he is the most popular child singer in Baltimore. But when puberty robs him of his voice and the stock market wipes out his family fortune, Jack is forced to rebuild. Over the next fifteen years, Jack will see it all. From Maryland to California and back again, he will become a football star, a soldier, and a tramp. Through it all, he never loses his eye for beauty, or his hunger for a woman he has known since childhood. To find happiness in the face of the Depression, Jack will have to remember that no matter how the world has changed him, part of his soul remains as pure as the first note he sang.

The Moth

ساعي البريد يدق الباب دوما مرتين

For the love of a beautiful waitress, a meat salesman will turn butcher Clay Lockwood enters the Portico with corned beef on his mind. He’s a top distributing executive with Grant’s Meats, and the contract with the Portico restaurant chain is only the latest in a long line of boardroom coups. He comes for lunch, and eats his fill of his company’s beef, but leaves with an entirely different hunger gnawing at his gut—a volcanic passion that will tear him apart. The hostess’s name is Sally Alexis, a magician’s wife whose rough-hewn charm mesmerizes this magnate of meat. She rebuffs his first pass, but calls him up later, to explain her situation and plead for tenderness. Although her marriage is miserable, she’s won’t leave her husband because she wants to secure an inheritance for her little boy. As the lovers get closer, Lockwood becomes an amateur illusionist himself, focusing on one very particular trick—how to make a magician disappear.

The Magician's Wife

One man sells his soul to save an innocent -- who turns out not to be so innocent after all. Graham meets Sonya outside of his real estate office. She is sixteen, beautiful, and showing just the right amount of leg. He's ruminating on those legs when she drops the bombshell -- she's there because Graham's brother, Burl, raped her, leaving her frightened, pregnant, and very much alone. She was spending the night with a friend when two boys and a case of beer turned a quiet evening into a hellish orgy. All she wants is the $1,111 it will cost to spend the next few months in a convalescent home, then give the baby up for adoption, but Burl won't give her the money. Sonya's vengeful father, meanwhile, wants far more money from Burl, to pay for harming his daughter. Graham offers Sonya a better choice: He'll marry her so that she can get a legal abortion. This moment of twisted generosity will change his life forever -- but he has no idea that, as he asks for Sonya's hand, he is signing away his soul.

Cloud Nine

Η Μίλντρεντ Πιρς διαθέτει υπέροχα πόδια, ταλέντο στη μαγειρική και ατσάλινο κουράγιο. Χάρη σε όλα αυτά κατάφερε να ξεπεράσει το διαζύγιό της και την ανέχεια, ξεφεύγοντας από τη μιζέρια της μικροαστικής της ζωής. Δύο όμως είναι οι μεγάλες της αδυναμίες: οι αργόσχολοι άντρες και η άπληστη και ανικανοποίητη κόρη της, η Βίντα, η οποία δεν θα διστάσει να διεκδικήσει για τον εαυτό της ό,τι η μητέρα της αγωνίστηκε να αποκτήσει. Ένα μυθιστόρημα καθηλωτικής συναισθηματικής έντασης, διεισδυτικής κοινωνικής παρατήρησης με μια συγκλονιστική ηρωίδα.

Θύελλα σε μητρική καρδιά

For the love of a beautiful waitress, a meat salesman will turn butcher. Clay Lockwood enters the Portico with corned beef on his mind. He's a top distributing executive with Grant's Meats, and the contract with the Portico restaurant chain is only the latest in a long line of boardroom coups. He comes for lunch, and eats his fill of his company's beef, but leaves with an entirely different hunger gnawing at his gut -- a volcanic passion that will tear him apart. The hostess's name is Sally Alexis, a magician's wife whose rough-hewn charm mesmerizes this magnate of meat. She rebuffs his first pass, but calls him up later, to explain her situation and plead for tenderness. Although her marriage is miserable, she's won't leave her husband because she wants to secure an inheritance for her little boy. As the lovers get closer, Lockwood becomes an amateur illusionist himself, focusing on one very particular trick -- how to make a magician disappear.

John McAleer

In these never-before-published interviews, the author of Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Mildred Pierce discusses his first notions to be a writer, his newspaper days, his Hollywood years, and Marilyn Monroe with brutal honesty and in a tone and vernacular that only a master like Cain could command. Also in this critical, tell-it-like-it-is study, Cain reveals his thoughts on Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Arthur Miller, Hammett, Chandler, and, in his eighty-fifth year, what he planned for his future. Packed and Loaded is James M. Cain "unplugged", at his finest. The manuscript is seasoned with original epigraphs about this major American writer from masters like Elmore Leonard, Sue Grafton, Robert B. Parker, Dennis Lehane, Peter Lovesey, Phil Lovesey, Edward D. Hoch, Katherine Hall Page, Robin Moore, William G. Tapply, and the grand master of mystery himself, Rex Stout. John McAleer graduated from Harvard University with a Ph.D. in English Literature and was the author of over a dozen books, including an Edgar Award-winning biography of Rex Stout. He was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Emerson. He wrote critically-acclaimed studies of Thoreau and Dreiser, as well as a definitive novel on the Korean War, Unit Pride.

Conversations with James M. Cain

Packed and Loaded

Serenade

A salesman, a would-be divorcée, and an insurance policy turn toxic in Reno. Vegas is a city of lovers, but in Reno, the business is divorce. Six weeks in Reno can erase the darkest marriages, and the only question is how to pass the time -- craps or roulette? Jane Delavan is a roulette woman, a stately beauty from back East who's too classy for the motel where she's shacked up. She's come for a divorce, but her husband has other ideas. He wants an annulment, and in exchange offers to take out a $100,000 insurance policy on himself -- just in case something happens to him before their paperwork goes through. Jane is cunning enough to make sure that, if she wants something to happen, it will. Ed Horner is the insurance agent sent to settle the agreement, and it doesn't take long for Jane to settle him. They fall in love over twenty-five-cent roulette, and soon get a bigger score in mind. In the Biggest Little City in the World, a king-size scheme is brewing.

Jealous Woman

A collection of stories, both early and late, that show how Mystery Writers of America Grand Master James M. Cain made his name There is a hungry tiger loose in the house, and that is not good news for anyone. A jealous husband let the animal out of his cage hoping he would eat his wife alive, but tigers aren’t used to taking orders. This jungle cat will get his meal, and he doesn’t care where it comes from. “The Baby in the Icebox” begins with a murdered wildcat and ends with a dead human—and what comes in between is some of the most striking prose James M. Cain ever put to paper. It is one of the first stories this master of crime fiction ever wrote, and it shows all the hallmarks of the novels that would later make him famous—namely Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. The tales in this collection are short, but Cain never needed more than a few pages to thrill.

And Other Short Fiction

The Baby in the Icebox

A starlet comes to Reno to start a new life—and end her old one forever Sylvia Shoreham’s Hollywood dreams came true long ago. Critically beloved for her beauty, talent, and style, she was on her way to international stardom when a bad contract committed her to seven years of trashy comedies and half-baked melodramas. Her marriage to her producer husband has become a rotten, loveless sham, so Sylvia’s silver screen life verges on a nightmare. To escape her celluloid hell, she’s got only one option: Forget Hollywood. It’s time for a Reno vacation. She comes to Nevada hoping for a divorce from her husband, Vicki, and an end to her contract, but the ugly side of the business follows her. To protect herself from Vicki, she enlists Nevada’s biggest Sylvia Shoreham fan. He’s six feet tall, strong as a mule, and just happens to be Reno’s sheriff. When her divorce turns into a war, this Hollywood icon will be glad to have him on her side.

James M. Cain

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