Dorothy B Hughes

“It was surprising what old experiences remembered could do to a presumably educated, civilized man.” And Hugh Denismore, a young doctor driving his mother’s Cadillac from Los Angeles to Phoenix, is eminently educated and civilized. He is privileged, would seem to have the world at his feet, even. Then why does the sight of a few redneck teenagers disconcert him? Why is he reluctant to pick up a disheveled girl hitchhiking along...

"The society pages announce it before she even arrives: Griselda Satterlee, daughter of the princess of Rome, has left her career as an actress behind and is traveling to Manhattan to reinvent herself as a fashion designer. They also announce the return of the dashing Montefierrow twins to New York after a twelve-year sojourn in Europe. But there is more to this story than what's reported, which becomes clear when the three meet one evening during...

Handed a mysterious package, a woman finds herself caught in a deadly game
Her name is not Eliza Williams. A fashionable young woman with a taste for adventurous men, she made the mistake of falling in love with Towner Clay—a New York City playboy whose international jetsetting conceals dangerous secrets. On Towner’s behalf, she has spent six months pretending to be Eliza Williams, a dowdy Midtown secretary. It’s dull work...

An escapee from a Spanish prison hunts for his best friend’s killer in New York
For more than a year, Kit McKittrick languishes in a Fascist prison, his days spent in darkness and his nights tortured by fear of his limping jailer, whose name he never learns. He escapes Spain with the help of Louie Lepetino, a childhood friend who came with him to fight on behalf of the Republican cause. Back in the United States, Kit heads out West...

To stop a Communist plot, a secretive man searches Los Angeles for a confidential report
When bad weather forces his flight to Los Angeles to land outside of town, Steve Wintress agrees to share a car with three of his fellow travelers: a timid young soldier, a powerful Justice Department official, and a taciturn Hollywood beauty. They don’t know it yet, but all four strangers have something in common—and one of them might kill...

Lost in New York, a GI stumbles upon a nest of peculiar Germans
Private First Class Johnnie Brown has only two days to spend in New York before he ships out to fight the Nazis. While his fellow soldiers amuse themselves at the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, and the night clubs of Times Square, Johnnie has a humbler wish: to ride the subway. But no sooner has he paid his nickel than he detects something peculiar: a stout, mysterious...

A classic World War II-era noir with a page-turning plot, a cast of colorfully sinister characters and a protagonist who is thrust into the heart of political intrigue, this captivating 1943 novel parallels the spy novels of Grahame Greene, Eric Ambler, and the films of Hitchcock and Lang. But in -signature Hughes fashion, The Blackbirder has a genre-bending twist: its hardboiled protagonist is a woman.

Born of American expatriate

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A down on his luck screenwriter reluctantly agrees to adapt a trashy bestseller to the silver screen. Rather than read the book himself, Steele convinces a star-struck hatcheck girl, Mildred Atkinson, to accompany him home and tell him the story in her own words. Later that night, Mildred is found murdered and Steele, who has a history of violent behavior, becomes the prime suspect. A neighbor who is attracted to him lies to the police providing him...

In the 1960s the masters of crime fiction expanded the genre’s literary and psychological possibilities with audacious new themes, forms, and subject matter—here are five of their finest works
This is the first of two volumes gathering the best American crime fiction of the 1960s, nine novels of astonishing variety and inventiveness that pulse with the energies of that turbulent, transformative decade.
In The Murderers...