A hardboiled novel about life in the American underground, from the pool halls of Portland to the cells of San Quentin. Simply one of the finest books ever written about being down on your luck.Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling is a tough-as-nails account of being down and out, but never down for good—a Dostoyevskian tale of crime, punishment, and the pursuit of an ever-elusive redemption. The novel follows the adventures of Jack Levitt, an orphaned teenag...

Don Carpenter wrote about Hollywood like no one else. Hollywood Trilogy collects, for the first time, Carpenter's most significant Hollywood novels—A Couple of Comedians, The Turnaround and The True Life Story of Jody McKeegan—into a single volume. Here readers will find the jungle of "B" movie Hollywood with no attempt to dress up the rawness and vulgarity of this "glamorous" town. Carpenter's characters occupy every facet of Hollywood—there are naïve and shy young men trying to break int...

Don Carpenter was one of the finest novelists working in the west. His first novel, A Hard Rain Falling, first published in 1966, has been championed by Richard Price, and George Pelacanos who called it "a masterpiece…the definitive juvenile–delinquency novel and a damning indictment of our criminal justice system," is considered a classic. His novel A Couple of Comedians is thought by some the best novel about Hollywood ever written.He was a close friend of Evan ...

Everything Love Brings is the story of a woman named Darlene Carpenter, a community called Cascade, Iowa, and two years which featured tremendous fear, sorrow and loss. It's also a little bit about recovery and moving on with the help of people who love me.You'll meet Darlene, a sweet, kind and caring gal who touched many lives from the Luther Leaguers she worked with when she was younger to countless Cascade folks in the final years of her life. You'll meet Floyd Carpenter and Cec...

"No pretty little thoughts, no fake faith-restoratives — just hard solid craftsmanship and style." — The New York Times (An Outstanding Book of the Year)From the author of Hard Rain Falling and Blade of Light come these two novellas and eight shorter pieces that explore racial conflict and the agonies of loneliness and heartbreak: "The Crossroader," in which a Black drifter outfoxes an all-white crew of small-town hustlers; "Blue Eyes," the story of an ag...

‘Snort up Cocaine Nights. It’s disorientating, deranging and knocks the work of other avant-garde writers into a hatted cock’ Will SelfFive people die in an unexplained house fire in the Spanish resort of Estrella de Mar, an exclusive enclave for the rich, retired British, centred on the thriving Club Nautico. The club manager, Frank Prentice, pleads guilty to charges of murder – yet not even the police believe him. When his Charles arrives to unravel the ...

National Book Award FinalistWith a new introduction by Dennis LehaneElmore Leonard called The Friends of Eddie Coyle “the best crime novel ever written—makes The Maltese Falcon read like Nancy Drew." Time magazine lau**ded its author as** "America's best crime novelist."Picador celebrates the 40th anniversary of this semina...

Crime fiction writer George Pelecanos introduces Spero Lucas, an anti-hero making his place in the world one battle at a time. Includes a bonus work of short fiction focusing on Spero's early life.Spero Lucas has a new line of work. Since he returned home to Washington, D.C. after serving in Iraq, he has been doing special investigations for a defense attorney. He's good at it, and he has carved out a niche: recovering stolen property, no questions asked. His cut is forty percent.

From the creator, writer, and executive producer of the HBO crime series True Detective, comes a dark and visceral literary debut set along the seedy wastelands of Galveston.On the same day that Roy Cady is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he senses that his boss, a dangerous loan-sharking bar-owner, wants him dead. Known “without affection” to members of the boss’s crew as “Big Country” on account of his long hair, beard, and cowboy boots, Roy is alert ...

“The classic trifecta of talent, heart, and a bone-deep sense of storytelling….A masterful performance, deftly rendered and deeply satisfying. For days on end, I woke with this story on my mind.” —David WroblewskiA powerful and resonant novel from the critically acclaimed author of Smonk and Hell at the Breech, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter tells the riveting story of two boyhood friends, torn apart by circumstance, who are broug...

From New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke comes his definitive, must-read first title in his famous Dectective David Robicheaux series.New Orleans Detective Dave Robicheaux has fought too many battles: in Vietnam, with police brass, with killers and hustlers, and the bottle. Lost without his wife's love, Robicheaux haunts the intense and heady French Quarter—the place he calls home, and the place that nearly destroys him when he beomes involve...