Books That Sound Interesting Part 17
Discover intriguing must-reads in Books That Sound Interesting Part 17—from David Wellington's zombie thrillers and Jack Ketchum's horror to James M. Cain's noir classics. Explore gripping fiction by Chester Himes, William Kennedy, and more in this curated book list.
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Double Indemnity
by James M. Cain
ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • James M. Cain, virtuoso of the roman noir, gives us a tautly narrated and excruciatingly suspenseful story in Double Indemnity, an X-ray view of guilt, of duplicity, and of the kind of obsessive, loveless love that devastates everything it touches. Walter Huff was an insurance salesman with an unfailing instinct for clients who might be in trouble, and his instinct led him to Phyllis Nirdlinger. Phyllis wanted to buy an accident policy on her husband. Then she wanted her husband to have an accident. Walter wanted Phyllis. To get her, he would arrange the perfect murder and betray everything he had ever lived for.
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The Postman Always Rings Twice
by James M. Cain
The bestselling sensation—and one of the most outstanding crime novels of the 20th century—that was banned in Boston for its explosive mixture of violence and eroticism, and acknowledged by Albert Camus as the model for The Stranger. The basis for the acclaimed 1946 film. An amoral young tramp. A beautiful, sullen woman with an inconvenient husband. A problem that has only one grisly solution—a solution that only creates other problems that no one can ever solve. First published in 1934, The Postman Always Rings Twice is a classic of the roman noir. It established James M. Cain as a major novelist with an unsparing vision of America's bleak underside and was acknowledged by Albert Camus as the model for The Stranger.
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Monster Island
by David Wellington
It's one month after a global disaster. Manhattan has become Monster Island after a plague has turned all its denizens into shambling, rotting animated corpses, except for a couple who have kept their intelligence and also acquired psychic powers. When a
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Monster Nation
by David Wellington
In the heart of America, in the world's most secure prison, something horrible is growing in the dark. A wave of cannibalism and fear is sweeping across the heartland, spreading carnage and infection in its wake. Captain Bannerman Clark of the National Guard has been tasked with an impossible mission: discover what is happening — and then stop it before it annihilates Los Angeles. In California, he discovers a woman trapped in a hospital overrun with violent madmen. She may hold the secret to the Epidemic but she has lost everything — even her name. David Wellington's first novel, Monster Island, explored a world overcome by horror and the few people strong enough to survive. Now he takes us back in time to where it all began — to the day the dead began to rise.
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Ironweed
by William Kennedy
“[W]ith Ironweed, William Kennedy is making American literature.”—The Washington Post Book World Francis Phelan has hit bottom. More than twenty years ago, the ex-ballplayer, part-time gravedigger, and full-time bum with the gift of gab left Albany after a tragic accident. Now, in 1938, Francis is back in town and faced with the wife and home he abandoned, roaming the old familiar streets, trying to make peace with the ghosts of the past and present. Winner of the Pultizer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Ironweed “goes straight for the throat and the funnybone" (The New York Times). William Kennedy’s Albany Cycle of novels reflect what he once described as the fusion of his imagination with a single place. A native and longtime resident of Albany, New York, his work moves from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, chronicling family life, the city’s netherworld, and its spheres of power—financial, ethnic, political—often among the Irish-Americans who dominated the city in this period. The novels in his cycle include, Legs, Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, Ironweed, Quinn’s Book, Very Old Bones, The Flaming Corsage, and Roscoe.
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The Girl Next Door
by Jack Ketchum
A teenage girl is held captive and brutally tortured by neighborhood children. Based on a true story, this shocking novel reveals the depravity of which we are all capable.
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A Rage in Harlem
by Chester Himes
For the love of fine and wily Imabelle, hapless Jackson loses his life savings to a con man who knows the secret of turning ten-dollar bills into hundreds and steals from his boss, only to lose the stolen money at a crap table. Luckily for him, Jackson has a savvy twin brother, Goldy, who, disguised as a Sister of Mercy, earns a living by selling tickets to Heaven in Harlem. Now for the big payback...
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The Real Cool Killers
by Chester Himes
Many people had reasons for killing Galen, a big Greek with too much money and too great a liking for young black girls. But there are complications--like a drug addict, a disappearing suspect, and the fact that Coffin Ed's daughter is up to her neck in the whole explosive business.
