Bøger af Lawrence Block

For fourteen years, five-time Edgar winner and MWA Grand Master Lawrence Block wrote a monthly column on fiction for Writers Digest magazine. These columns yielded four books regarded as classics: Telling Lies for Fun & Profit, Spider Spin Me a Web, The Liar's Bible...and now The Liar's Companion.Here are some reviews on Goodreads: "This recently released treasure from award winning mystery author Lawrence Block is a welcome addition to my bookshelf. ...Block has a gift for casual gems of wisdom that stir my storytelling imagination.""No subject is off limits for Block. From lofty questions (how do writers get their ideas?) to the mundane (how many pages should you write every day?) to the personal (how often should writers exercise? how should writers budget their money?), the advice is practical, funny, and never boring. I do not have a desire to be an author, but these glimpses into the writing life fascinated me."While Telling Lies for Fun & Profit and Spider Spin Me a Web group the author's columns by topic, Block scrapped this approach when preparing The Liar's Bible and The Liar's Companion, feeling the material flowed more naturally by simply running the columns in chronological order. As Block has written, "Bible and Companion consist of my later columns, and as such they seem to me the best representation of my views on the subjects at hand. Telling Lies has always been the bestseller, perhaps because it led the way, perhaps because I'd had the good luck to stumble on a particularly good title...but I think it quite likely that Bible and Companion are the better books."

Lawrence Block on AFTERTHOUGHTS 2.0: AFTERTHOUGHTS began in 2011, when I first began self-publishing titles from my voluminous backlist. I packed it with forewords and afterwords and essays and articles about the work, and arranged for its distribution as an ebook. Here's wwhat the publisher had to day about it at the time: "In a career spanning more than fifty years, Lawrence Block has produced more than one hundred books, ranging in genre from hard-boiled detective stories to pseudonymous erotica. Collected here for the first time are more than forty-five afterwords from the works that made him a master of modern fiction. Each afterword is an insightful reflection on the experiences that have brought Block's fiction to life, from the lessons he learned as a reader at a literary agency to the unlikely-and semi-autobiographical-origins of the acclaimed Matthew Scudder series. Witty and inspiring, Afterthoughts is a must-read for Block fans and mystery lovers alike."The book was well-received. Then, five years later, my relationship with an online publisher had run its course, and the useful little book went out of print. I kept thinking I ought to do something about it, but I kept finding other things to do.Now I've finally put in the hours to update and expand it, and I've called the result AFTERTHOUGHTS: VERSION 2.0. I think you'll find it at least intermittently informative and entertaining, and hope it may lead you to make the acquaintance of some of my less familiar wor

"The colonel was right. You had to draw a line through mankind, a wavy line but a line, and on one side you had Good and on the other side you had Evil. There was good and bad in everyone, sure, and every shitheel was some mother's son, and it was all well and good to know this, but when push came to shove, it was just words; there was Good and Evil with no shades of gray and Judgment Day came seven time a week."Meet the Specialists, five good men, Manso and Murdock and Simmons and Giordano and Dehn. They scattered when they took off their green berets and returned to civilian life, but now and then their colonel picks up the phone and gets in touch-and they get together to do as they did in Vietnam.Colonel Roger Elliott Cross left a leg in Vietnam. His men came home physically intact, but each bears scars nonetheless. But when they come together, teamed up to right wrongs, they are a powerful force for good.And, by doing good, they also manage to do well. Because when five specialists take on a Mafia-owned bank, why shouldn't they turn profit on the deal?If you saw The A-Team on television, this may seem familiar to you. When Lawrence Block saw the A-Team, it seems uncannily familiar to him, and he had the feeling the show's producers had read his 1968 novel. But he decided, wisely or not, that life is too short for litigation. Now, years later, the TV show has vanished and the book lives on. Isn't that as it should be?THE CLASSIC CRIME LIBRARY brings together Lawrence Block's early crime novels, reformatted and with new uniform cover art

"You may rape the bride..."David and Jill Wade wanted a properly traditional start to their marriage. For openers, they decided to delay its consummation until after the ceremony. They planned a perfect honeymoon at a secluded lakeside resort in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains.Joe Carroll, the guest in the cabin next door, seemed friendly enough. They took his dinner suggestion, then returned to their cabin and prepared to retire-until a noise alerted them, and they went to the porch and watched a group of men descend on Joe Carroll's cabin. They dragged him out at gunpoint, then executed him in cold blood.And Jill screamed...The men heard her, rushed the Wade's cabin. They took their turns with Jill. Then they left.And the newlyweds barely considered reporting the violation to the police. Instead, with only a name and a few bare clues to steer them, they hunted down the men who'd done the awful deed and the crime boss who'd given them their orders.DEADLY HONEYMOON was Lawrence Block's first hardcover novel. It's a powerful tale of revenge, and of a man and woman far more closely bound by their shared mission than they would have been by a more ordinary honeymoon.THE CLASSIC CRIME LIBRARY brings together Lawrence Block's early crime novels, reformatted and with new uniform cover art.

An MWA Grand Master tells it straight: Fredric Brown: "When I read Murder Can Be Fun, I had a bottle ofbourbon on the table and every time Brown's hero took a drink, I had a snort myself. This is a hazardous undertaking when in the company of Brown's characters, and, I've been given to understand, would have been just as dangerous around the author himself. By the time the book was finished, so was I."Raymond Chandler: "You have to wonder how he got it so right.He spent a lot of time in the house-working, reading, writing letters. He saw to his wife, who required a lot of attention in her later years. And when he did get out, you wouldn't find him walking the mean streets. La Jolla, it must be noted, was never much for mean streets."Evan Hunter: "In his mid-seventies, after a couple of heart attacks, an aneurysm, and a siege of cancer that had led to the removal of his larynx, Evan wrote Alice in Jeopardy. And went to work right away on Becca in Jeopardy, with every intention of working his way through the alphabet. Don't you love it? Here's a man with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, and he's perfectly comfortable launching a twenty-six book series."Donald E. Westlake's Memory: "Here's the point: Don's manuscriptarrived, and we had dinner and put the kid to bed, and I startedreading. And my wife went to bed, and I stayed up reading, and after a while I forgot I was having a heart attack, and just kept reading until I finished the book around dawn. And somewhere along the way I became aware that my friend Don, who'd written a couple of mysteries and some science fiction and his fair share of soft-core erotica, had just produced a great novel."Charles Willeford: "Can a self-diagnosed sociopath be at the sametime an intensely moral person? Can one be a sociopath, virtually unaware of socially prescribed morality, and yet be consumed with the desire to do the right thing? That strikes me as a spot-on description of just about every character Willeford ever wrote. How could he come up with characters like that? My God, how could he help it?"An MWA Grand Master and a multiple winner of the Edgar, Shamus, and Maltese Falcon awards, Lawrence Block's reflections and observations come from over a half century as a writer of bestselling crime fiction. Several of his novels have been filmed, most recently A Walk Among the Tombstones, starring Liam Neeson. While he's best known for his novels and short fiction, along with his books on the craft of writing, that's not all he's written. THE CRIME OF OUR LIVES collects his observations and personal reminiscences of the crime fiction field and some of its leading practitioners. He has a lot to say, and he says it here in convincing and entertaining fashion

While he is probably best known as a novelist and short-story writer, Lawrence Block has produced a rich trove of nonfiction over the course of a sixty-year career. His instructional books for writers are leaders in the field, and his self-described pedestrian memoir, Step By Step, has found a loyal audience in the running and racewalking community.Over the years, Block has written extensively for magazines and periodicals. Generally Speaking collects his philatelic columns from Linn's Stamp News, while his extensive observations of crime fiction, along with personal glimpses of some of its foremost practitioners, have won wide acclaim in book form as The Crime of Our Lives.Hunting Buffalo With Bent Nails is what he's got left over.The title piece, originally published in American Heritage, recounts the ongoing adventure Block and his wife undertook, criss-crossing the United States and parts of Canada in their quixotic and exotic quest to find every "village, hamlet, and wide place in the road named Buffalo." Other travel tales share space with a remembrance of his mother, odes to New York, a disquisition on pen names and book tours, and, well, no end of bent nails not worth straightening. Where else will you find "Raymond Chandler and the Brasher Doubloon," an assessment of that compelling writer from a numismatic standpoint? Where else can you read about Block's collection of old subway cars?Highly recommended.

Alex Penn wakes up in a squalid Times Square hotel room. This is what he sees when he finally opens his eyes: "The floor was a sea of blood. A body floated upon this ocean. A girl-black hair, staring blue eyes, bloodless lips. Naked. Dead. Her throat slashed deeply."It had to be a dream. It had to, had to be a dream. It was not a dream. It was not a dream at all."I've done it again, I thought. Sweet Jesus, I've done it again."Years before, Alex Penn woke up in similar circumstances, called the police, went to prison. A technicality freed him-and now there's been another drunken blackout, another dead streetwalker.But something nags at his memory, and he begins to suspect some other hand wielded the knife. And if he didn't murder this woman, maybe he didn't kill the other one, either.So he runs, adrift in an urban jungle, hoping to steer clear of the police long enough to solve the crime.AFTER THE FIRST DEATH is sure to appeal to fans of David Goodis and Cornell Woolrich. And, with its gritty New York setting and its undercurrent of alcoholism, it can be considered a precursor to Lawrence Block's iconic Matthew Scudder series.THE CLASSIC CRIME LIBRARY brings together Lawrence Block's early crime novels, reformatted and with new uniform cover art.

Four-time Edgar Award–winning author Lawrence Block’s definitive essay collection on the art of writing fictionFor ten years, crime novelist Lawrence Block funneled his wealth of writing expertise into a monthly column for Writer’s Digest. Collected here for the first time are those pieces illuminating the tricks of the authorial trade, from creating vibrant characters and generating seamless plots, to conquering writer’s block and experimenting with self-publishing.Filled with wit and insight, The Liar’s Bible is a must-read for experts, amateurs, and anyone interested in learning to craft great fiction from one of the field’s modern masters.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Lawrence Block, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

A must-have collection of essays on the art and craft of fiction from Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence BlockFor ten years, New York Times bestselling crime novelist Lawrence Block drew on the hard-won wisdom he gained creating over one hundred books to write a monthly column for Writer’s Digest. Collected here for the first time are writings that illuminate the tricks of the authorial trade, from creating a fresh story and delivering a powerful ending, to adapting books for the screen and deciding when to make the switch to fulltime writer.Filled with wit and insight, The Liar’s Companion is a must-read for experts, amateurs, and anyone interested in learning to craft great fiction from one of the field’s modern masters.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Lawrence Block, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

What's the autobiography of a prostitute doing in the Collection of Classic Erotica?I asked myself this very question while weighing its suitability for the collection. On the one hand, it's nonfiction, specifically memoir. On the other, it was entirely an invention, a fabrication, its putative narrator no less a creation of my own mind than, say, Linda Shepard in CAMPUS TRAMP.And then I let Wikipedia wisk me back almost 300 years: "The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders (commonly known simply as Moll Flanders) is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1722. It purports to be the true account of the life of the eponymous Moll, detailing her exploits from birth until old age."By 1721, Defoe had become a recognized novelist, with the success of Robinson Crusoe in 1719. His political work was tapering off at this point, due to the fall of both Whig and Tory party leaders with whom he had been associated; Robert Walpole was beginning his rise, and Defoe was never fully at home with the Walpole group. Defoe's Whig views are nevertheless evident in the story of Moll, and the novel's full title gives some insight into this and the outline of the plot: "The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, &c. Who was Born in Newgate, and during a Life of continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest, and died a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums."It is usually assumed that the novel is written by Daniel Defoe, as his name is commonly published as the author in modern printings of the novel, however the original printing did not have an author, as it was an apparent autobiography.[1] The attribution of Moll Flanders to Defoe was made by Francis Noble, a bookseller in 1770, after Defoe's death in 1731.[2]"The novel is based partially on the life of Moll King, a London criminal whom Defoe met while visiting Newgate Prison."I can but conclude that I SELL LOVE has at least as much claim to be regarded as a novel as does Defoe's groundbreaking work-if rather less in the way of literary merit. He, after all, seems to have had a model. And, while I may have rubbed elbows, among other things, with some hookers over the years, Liz Crowley, unlike Ms. Flanders, has no counterpart in reality.When the Goddess of Design and Production asked if I wanted to drop the afterword by one Dr. Louis H. Gold, I went and had a look at it. My initial assumption was that Charles Heckelmann, longtime editor of Monarch Books, had found some writer to dash off a few words under a medical pen name, all with the aim of legitimizing the text. But the miracle of Google confirms that Dr Gold, born in 1912, was indeed a practicing shrink in Hartford at the time. I presume he was a friend of Heckelmann's, but for all I know he was the man's psychiatrist. We always thought old Charlie ought to get his head examined.

THOSE BOYS AND THEIR CARS...Danny Duncan drives his father's Oldsmobile. It's a nice respectable family sedan, and April North is every bit as respectable as the car. Until he manages to get her into the back seat. Now she's no longer a good girl, but only Danny know it, and he can keep a secret, can't he?Well, no. He tells half the town of Antrim, Ohio-the male half, and they all come sniffing around, led by Bill Piersall, driving a homemade hot rod cobbled together from spare parts and held together with spit and baling wire. She gives Bill what he wants, but he turns out to be harder to shake than a summer cold, until a Mercedes 300 SL screeches to a stop, with Craig Jeffers at the wheel. He has money and class and sophistication, and just about everything but a functioning moral compass.And, you know, things happen...April North, April North. A friend of mine thought enough of Mae West to write a book with a heroine he called June East, and I gave the compass and the calendar a further spin. Thus April North, and the name does have a certain lilt to it, doesn't it? Beacon Books thought so, evidently; this was Sheldon Lord's first book for them, and they liked the title enough to keep it, and the reading public liked the book enough to spark a second and third printing. None of this did much for the author, who got a flat fee of $600 for the book. Or maybe it was $750. It's hard to remember, after all these years... This paperback edition of APRIL NORTH reproduces the original cover, as painted by Al Rossi.

Here's CHIP HARRISON-the second series character created by Lawrence Block, bestselling author of A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES...Chip's debut in NO SCORE opens with the lad orphaned and cast adrift by the loathsome headmaster of his prep school. Thus unfolds a picaresque tale in which young Chip travels far and wide, determined to make his way in the world and somehow shrug off the awful cloak of virginity. This earnest and endearing Lecher in the Wry finds work as an assistant to Gregor the Pavement Photographer (whose wife keeps him forever on Third Base, and won't let him steal home) and employment as a Termite Salesman. He falls in and out of love, and, well, you'll see.

TRAMP was first published in 1961 by Nightstand Books, under the pen name of Andrew Shaw. Here's a taste of the text: "IT WAS PRECISELY ten o'clock when the alarm went off. The clock, purchased years ago at a drugstore for not much money, made up in volume what it lacked in melody. It did not ring, exactly; it jangled. Schoenberg would have been delighted with the twelve-tone discordance of the clock."For perhaps ten seconds the clock rang without eliciting any response whatsoever. Then, dreamily, a hand worked its way out from under the bedcovers. The hand pawed its way through warm and musty air until it located the rickety night-table at the side of the bed. The clock was somewhere on top of the night-table, and the hand searched painstakingly until the clock was found. Fingers wound themselves around the clock like tentacles. One finger, more industrious than the rest, succeeded in discovering the little button that would shut off the alarm. The button was pressed and the room was plunged once again into silence. The hand withdrew, found its way once more beneath the blankets, and all was as it had been before the atonality of the alarm."There was, however, a slight difference. The owner of the hand was awake now. Although she tried rather desperately to return to the soft protectiveness of sleep, sleep was not to be hers. The clock had ruined it. The room, which had seemed so silent while she slept, was now filled with noise. Somewhere in the distance a fire engine or ambulance was careening away with its siren wide open. The traffic was heavy around the corner on Broadway, thick with mid-morning trucks. A woman shrieked across the courtyard in Spanish."The girl sighed. Slowly and reluctantly she pushed back the bedcovers. Her eyes opened one at a time and she blinked unhappily at the light. Sunlight peeped in at her through the hole in the window shade. She peeped back at it, thought sadly how nice it would be to go back to sleep, then sighed again and clambered forth out of the bed. She was nude, and her bare skin felt slightly clammy from sleep."She wrapped herself in a bathrobe, slipped her feet into deerskin slippers, unbolted her door and walked down the hall to the bathroom which she shared with the other four occupants of the third floor at 253 West 94th Street. She switched on the light, closed and bolted the bathroom door, and removed her bathrobe and slippers, setting them down on the footstool along with the towel she had brought with her. She turned on the shower and waited nervously until the water was as close to the proper temperature as it ever got. Then she stepped into the shower and scrubbed herself diligently."he worked the soap all over her body. She washed her face-high cheekbones, full mouth with sensuous lips, large eyes and a straight, almost Roman nose. She washed her shoulders, massaged the soap into her high, firm, large breasts, washed belly and thighs and legs. She spent a long time in the shower because she found it quite impossible to start a day unless she was as clean as a shower could make her. Finally she washed her rich nut-brown hair, rinsed it thoroughly, soaped and rinsed twice more. Then she stepped out of the tub and began to dry herself with the towel."And here's author Lawrence Block's take on TRAMP: "I can't say I remember much about TRAMP, but then I've reached an age when it's hard to remember what I had for dinner last night. The book, like most of my pseudonymous work, was written at a time recently examined in A Writer Prepares, a memoir of my beginnings as a writer, to be released on June 24, 2021. I hope you may find A Writer Prepares of interest; in the meantime, perhaps TRAMP will brighten a couple of hours

Here's CHIP HARRISON-the second series character created by Lawrence Block, bestselling author of A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES..Chip's second adventure in CHIP HARRISON SCORES AGAIN begins when our lad finds a discarded wallet holding a bus ticket to Bordentown, South Carolina. Instead of cashing it in, he uses it-and winds up as an assistant manager in the hamlet's finest bordello. (Well, it's also the only bordello.) And that's just the beginning. While the virginity that plagued him in NO SCORE is no longer an issue, our Lecher in the Wry retains the irresistible innocence that makes him such delightful company.

A WOMAN MUST LOVE is #12 in the Collection of Classic Erotica, and it's never been reissued since Midwood brought it out in 1960. Consequently I've just read it for the first time since I wrote it some 57 years ago.I remember the circumstances of writing it. I was living in Buffalo, at 422 Starin Avenue, in the house where I grew up. Besides writing, I was co-proprietor of a coffee house and non-alcoholic nightclub called The Jazz Center. (We hosted some decent musicians. Trumpeter Sammy Noto, who'd quit Stan Kenton's band because he didn't like living on the road, led one combo that played our joint with some frequency. Another band was fronted by a dude known alternately as Tommy Green, Tommy Mundy, and Ahmed Khan; his specialty was bongos and bullshit, but he had some good musicians working for him. One night Percy Heath of the Modern Jazz Quartet came by late, sat in with our guys, and played a twenty-minute bass solo that I wish I could hear again. That part was nice, but we never took a dime out of the place, and after I sold my interest to my partner, an old Trotskyite named Frank St. George, he wound up making the musicians partners so he wouldn't have to pay them. After he was forced to close down, Frank went on to have a distinguished career as a Buffalo restauranteur.)See, that much I remember. And I remember my writing schedule at the time. I would be at the club, or out on the town with the unfortunate young woman destined to become the first Mrs. Block. Then I'd get home, and I'd have a cup of coffee with my night owl mother before she went to bed around midnight. Then I'd write until dawn, when I'd have breakfast with my early-rising father. And then I'd go to bed and sleep until it was time to get up and do it all over again.As for the novel itself, A WOMAN MUST LOVE, I can't say I remembered much. It's set in Buffalo, in the very neighborhood in which it was written, and I hadn't even recalled that about the book until I read it on my Kindle. I vaguely remembered that there was a book in which I'd given all the characters English and Irish counties as surnames, and this seems to be the book. Aside from those two elements, I felt like the old boy in the assisted-living center, meeting new people every day.I was surprised to be reading less the erotic romp the Midwood and Nightstand books tended to be than an out-and-out romance novel. Barbara, a young widow, has vowed to be true to her husband's memory (even though he'd wished otherwise). She's courted, and she has a couple of adventures, and there's a certain amount of coupling in the book of one sort or another, but the damn thing's a romance, and I have to wonder how I came to write it.It would have been about a year later that my own father died-suddenly, of an aortic aneurysm. In the years that followed I might well have gone through some sort of Hamlet/Oedipus crap when my mother resumed dating, though I can't recall much in the way of conflicted feelings. But the book was way earlier, and where the story came from I have no idea.Well, never mind. I hope you'll find things to enjoy in Barbara's story-not least of all Paul Rader's cover art. Long after I'd forgotten the words I wrote, I remembered those vivid pastels.

"This is either the funniest dirty book or the dirtiest funny book ever written!" -Isaac AsimovSomewhere around 1969 I began to grow dissatisfied with the underlying principle of most novels---that a disembodied voice in the first or third person was telling us a story. I liked the idea of novels passing themselves off as documents, and drew inspiration from Mark Harris's WAKE UP, STUPID, and Sue Kaufman's DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE, the first ostensibly a collection of letters, the second, duh, a diary. (One could, of course, go back further, to the very beginnings of the English novel in the works of Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson.)I also found myself interested in writing with greater candor about sexual topics. I had knocked out dozens of soft-core paperbacks, and wanted to try anew with greater freedom and more realism.I wrote three paperback original novels for Berkley under the pen name Jill Emerson, two of them in diary form, the third a presumed collaborative novel written in concert by the three viewpoint characters. These were fun to do and worked out well, and they led to RONALD RABBIT IS A DIRTY OLD MAN. I riffed on the experience of my friend George Dickerson, who like the novel's protagonist had the magazine he was editing folded out from under him; George went on reporting to his empty office for several months, until they found him out when they noticed he'd stopped using his expense account. (A man of many talents, George went on to serve as a reporter for Time Magazine for several years, then segued into a career as an actor; he had a principal role in Blue Velvet.) I spliced in an experience of my own, when I drank for hours at the Kettle of Fish on Macdougal Street, emerging only to be picked up by a carful of rich Catholic schoolgirls from the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Noroton, Connecticut, who essentially kidnapped me and drove me back to school with them. These things happen.I wrote the book in four furious days in an apartment on West 35th Street. I did so thinking it would be another pseudonymous paperback, and that no doubt gave me the freedom to write it as I did; after it was written, the friends who read it liked it so much that I was persuaded to publish it as a hardcover novel, and under my own name. My agent sent it to Bernard Geis, a quirky publisher whose editor-Don Preston-loved the book. Bernie had offices on two floors in midtown Manhattan, and had installed a fireman's pole in case one wanted to get from 9 to 8 in a hurry. All I recall of Don is he told me to avoid seeing Carnal Knowledge, which he hated, and that I must hurry to see McCabe and Mrs.Miller, which he loved. Once I'd managed to sit through McCabe and Mrs. Miller, I knew I'd love Carnal Knowledge.Around the time Ronald Rabbit was published, Bernard Geis slid into Chapter Eleven. I can't think this had a salutary effect on sales. Martin Levin in the New York Times Book Review pointed out that the book was written in the form of a series of letters, which was also the case with Richardson's Pamela, generally acknowledged to be the first English novel. And that, Mr. Levin said, was as much as he had to say on the subject.Well, that's fair.I had the publisher send a copy to Isaac Asimov, whom I'd met a few times over the years. "That's either the funniest dirty book or the dirtiest funny book I've ever read," Isaac told me. "That would make a wonderful blurb," I said. "Over my dead body," he replied.Well, okay. Isaac's been gone over 25 years now, and while I wish he were still around, he's not. And so I'll just remember him fondly, and thank him for giving Ronald Rabbit is a Dirty Old Man a helping hand, all these years later.

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. (Lust and slut were favorites. I gave one book the can'tmiss title LUST SLUT- but they changed it. Go figure."A confession: in the ordinary course of things, I don't read these early titles before reissuing them in the Collection of Classic Erotica. Like most writers, I find it difficult to look back at my earliest work. But in this case I had absolutely no recollection of the book, although a glance at the very first page made it clear that it was unquestionably my work. I was pretty sure it all took place in the course of a single turbulent weekend, that much was implicit in the title, and again the first page confirmed my suspicion."But I read on, because I have to admit I liked the writing. Really, what's not to like?Between the hours of four and five Friday afternoon, Jordan Flagg sat behind a free-form desk and jotted notes and numbers on sheets of yellow manila paper. The desk was Scandinavian, and in recent years the Scandinavians had developed a penchant for taking a perfectly ordinary garden-variety sort of thing like a desk and designing it in the approximate inglorious shape of a kidney. Jordan Flagg's desk looked like a kidney. The wood was well-polished walnut that glowed like plastic, and the whole desk itself was so determinedly graceful that it looked as though it were capable of dancing.Jordan Flagg liked the desk.Flagg liked things to be modern. Although he never found time to go to a museum or to browse in galleries, he was an ardent fan of modern art. He read only recently published books, went only to first-run movies, and pretty much stuck to tastes and pursuits which, if not actually futuristic, were at least determinedly up-to-date. The kidney-shaped desk reflected this. So did the Bigelow on the floor, the title on the door, the close-cropped crewcut on his head, the heavy horn-rimmed glasses, the natural-shoulder suit, the ultra-slim attaché case, the architect-designed contemporary home in Fairfield County, the clean hands with their manicured nails, the nerve on his forehead with its slight tendency to twitch, and so on, and so on, and so on. Jordan Flagg was modern. Period."I read on, and the narrative moved from one character to another, and before I knew it hooker named Lily Merriman was quoting a parody of Longfellow's poem about the village blacksmith: Under the spreading chestnut treeThe village idiot satAmusing himself by abusing himselfAnd catching the drops in his hat."Now I didn't make that up, nor do I remember who did, but I suspect it's almost as venerable as the original. But, to my utter astonishment, that's not how it reads in Nightstand's edition, where it goes like so: Under the spreading chestnut treeThe village idiot satAmusing himself by abusing himselfAnd singing a quarter-tone flat."I can but guess that a Nightstand editor worried that any reference to ejaculation would rouse a censor from his long sleep. But what a creative solution! It rhymes, it scans, and if it doesn't make a great deal of sense, well, it comes close enough."I wonder who made the substitution, leaving it to me to discover his work 60 years later. Nightstand was the creature of Bill Hamling, who had grown up in science fiction; at one time or another his staff included such SF types as Earl Kemp, Algis Budrys, and Harlan Ellison."You know what? I bet it was Harlan."

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. Like Block, Keller collects the whole world through philately's first century. (How's that for coincidence?) And the nature of his profession gives Keller more discretionary income than Block-and a lot more money to spend on stamps. Published here for the first time is the full run of columns from Linn's, along with six selections from the Keller saga chosen for their philatelic perspective.

Jeff Flanders has a perfectly good life. Until Candace Cain sashays into it and turns it upside-down. Jeff's got a good-looking wife; he loves her and she loves him. He's got a job, swinging a desk at a semi-shady finance company, signing off on usurious loans to losers; he doesn't love it and it doesn't love him, but it's easy work and it pays the bills. Until a girl called Candy applies for a $1000 loan-with no job, no bank account, no security. Nothing but a beautiful face, an awesome body, and all the nerve in the world. He lends her the money himself. That's a mistake. In return, she takes him to bed. That's a bigger one. All she wants in the world is someone who'll keep her in style. All he wants is more Candy. . . CANDY, first published in 1960, is a noir novel of sexual obsession. It seems a better fit for the Classic Crime Library than the Collection of Classic Erotica. Either way, we get to use the gorgeous Paul Rader cover.

Lawrence Block reports: "THE SIN-DAMNED was one of the early Andrew Shaw titles, published by Nightstand Books in sometime in 1960. The cover, like that of many of its contemporaries, is the work of Harold W. McCauley. "While I can recognize the text as my work, I can't claim to recall writing it. Every day the great hoard of things I don't remember grows incrementally larger, and writing this novel has long since been a part of it. I do know, though, that someone else supplied the title, probably some editor in publisher Bill Hamling's employ. It could have been Harlan Elison, or Algis Budrys-or perhaps it was the janitor. In any event, when the publisher reissued the bok in the early 1970s, it bore a different title: The Switchers. "And now you know as much about THE SIN-DAMNED as I do..."

LAWRENCE BLOCK remembers: "Actually, the header's mistaken. In point of fact, I remember next to nothing about Trailer Trollop. I've loaded it onto my Kindle in advance of republishing it, and I've made my way through a few of its chapters, and while there's sufficient textual evidence to make it very clear that I wrote this book, the memory of the two or three weeks devoted to so doing has long since left me. "I can tell you where and when I wrote it. In the spring of 1960, my recently-acquired first wife and I took an apartment on West 69th Street in New York. I installed a desk in the bedroom, and I spent my days seated at it, flailing away at a manual typewriter. A year earlier, unmarried and living in an SRO hotel some twenty-two blocks to the south, I'd launched Andrew Shaw's career with Campus Tramp, and ever since then I'd had a standing assignment; I produced a 50,000-word book every month, for which the publisher paid $750. (My agent took $75, which left me with $675. And yes, one could live on that; the rent at 110 W 69th was $125 a month.) "Of course I was writing more ambitious work as well. Short stories for crime fiction magazines. Novels, too--my first crime novel under my own name, now available as Grifter's Game, came about when what I'd intended as an opening chapter for that month's Andrew Shaw title struck me as having the potential to be something more. I wrote a little of this and a little of that, I completed a mystery novel that William Ard had left unfinished at his death, I fielded whatever assignments my agent steered my way, and I have to say I kept busy. "Nightstand Books published Andrew Shaw, and God knows they were easy to work with. They left it to me to come up with the backgrounds and storylines each month, and I can only recall one book that grew out of a suggestion of a Nightstand editor, relayed to me by my agent. "And that was Trailer Trollop. 'A mobile home with three or four hookers parked on the edge of an army base. They share it, they live and work in it, it moves around. You get the idea.' "Well, sure. I got the idea, and a couple of weeks later the manuscript was on its way to Nightstand's Illinois offices, and sometimes in 1961 the book was published. The title, a pair of alliterative trochees, may be the book's most memorable element, and I have to think that it popped into my mind when the book's premise was proposed to me. "Or had someone at Nightstand come up with it, along with the idea itself? "No way to know. But I think I'll claim it as my title. At this stage, there's no one left alive to say otherwise. "So that's as much as you--or anyone, really--needs to know about Trailer Trollop. I can but hope you find some diversion and amusement in it. And, of course, if you've any interest in my beginnings as a writer, and my adventures in Midcentury Erotica, you'll probably want a look at my memoir of those days, A Writer Prepares."

I'd no sooner finished CARLA, my first book for Midwood Tower, than Harry Shorten asked for another. I'd just returned to Antioch College, where after two years as an undistinguished student I'd dropped out for a year to hang on to a summer job at Scott Meredith's literary agency and bucket shop. It was wonderful training, but after a year there I decided I should go back to school, where I had a chance to assume the editorship of the school newspaper. So there I was in Yellow Springs, Ohio, taking a batch of English courses, and I had a publisher who wanted me to write a book. What'll it be, Larry-a paper on Tobias Smollett and the Great Chain of Being, or 50,000 words of soul-searching and sex for Harry Shorten? 50,000 words for which I'd be paid $600?No contest, really.The story concern a has-been writer trying to get back in the game, and all these years later I find it interesting that this young wannabe was already picturing himself on the way down and out.A fellow named Craig said some nice things in his Amazon review, which vanished when an earlier edition went off the boards, so I'll excerpt it here: "The protagonist Dan Larkin is an aspiring author, like Block himself, and it's downright eerie how many aspects of Dan's fictional life would end up paralleling the arc of Block's own life over the next 25 years: the progression from obscure pulp writer to eventual best-seller stardom, the women, the binge drinking, and the eventual spiral into alcoholism. . ."There are flashes of some really good writing. The narrator's voice resembles shades of Matt Scudde at times. It doesn't quite match up to the plot, which is mostly devoid of gritty realism and tension. There is a very funny chapter detailing a ten-day drinking binge that presages passages in After the First Death and When the Sacred Gin Mill Closes. There's a memorable scene of frank and unexpected violence during an encounter with an older woman. Above all, the author's young-eyed enthusiasm for the publishing industry and the life of being a professional writer shines through despite an affected veneer of world-weariness."My guess is that some of the writing stuff is interesting. Interesting, too, is the title-which was not my idea, in case you were wondering. I have no idea what title I hung on it, but Harry or one of his elves went for A STRANGE KIND OF LOVE. Meanwhile, my very first novel, a sensitive lesbian coming-of-age effort which I'd called SHADOWS, was in the process of being accepted over at Fawcett Books for their Crest imprint. (They were the first publisher to see it, and in fact had it in hand before I wrote the opening sentence of CARLA, but Harry could commission two books and publish them both in less time than Fawcett could read a manuscript and reach a decision.) And when they did say yes to it, and when I'd revised it to their satisfaction, they changed my pen name (from Rhoda Moore to Lesley Evans, for reasons no one ever explained) and my title from SHADOWS to STRANGE ARE THE WAYS OF LOVE.A STRANGE KIND OF LOVE and STRANGE ARE THE WAYS OF LOVE? Really? I don't think I've ever used the word "strange" in a title since, and doubt I ever shall. Unless, of course, I were to write a politically incorrect novel of a young gay man's coming out, but I don't think so. Besides, STRANGE FRUIT only works if you can get Billie Holiday to sing it.The cover, as I've just learned from Lynn Munroe's wonderful website, is by Rudy Nappi (1923-2015), who was for 20 years the principal cover artist for the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries. The rumor that his cover for A STRANGE KIND OF LOVE was adapted from a rejected Nancy Drew cover strikes me, I have to say, as fanciful. But what do I know?

There's a song they used to sing at Antioch College, and it went something like this: "She was just a little freshmanVictim of Admission's whimThen she met an upperclassman-we won't name him-And she had a child by him."Now he's off in New York CityRescued by the co-op planWhile she walks the streets of Yellow Springs, Ohio, Looking for another man."Ah, they don't write 'em like that anymore, and it's not hard to see why. And the sad story recounted in the song is not entirely unlike that of Linda Shepard, titular (so to speak) heroine of CAMPUS TRAMP.The story of the book may be more interesting than the story told in the book. I wrote it in July of 1959, at the Hotel Rio on West 47th Street in New York. I'd just arrived from, yes, Yellow Springs, having spent a year writing books for Harry Shorten, editing the college newspaper, and giving short shrift to my academic studies. (This was my third year at Antioch. I was there for two years, took a year off to work at a literary agency, and then came back, only to discover that, having seen Paree, you couldn't keep me down on the farm. I tried to drop out during the first semester, got manipulated into staying by my parents, and somehow finished the year. Now I was in New York, where I was to spend the summer writing, before returning for what was supposed to be my last year of school.)Well. My agent came up with an assignment. William Hamling, publisher of science fiction and Rogue Magazine, had decided to initiate a line of erotic novels similar to what I'd been writing for Midwood. Could I write one?I could and did, and thought it might be amusing to use Antioch as a setting, and to choose the characters' surnames from the buildings and dormitory units on the Antioch campus. I picked the title CAMPUS TRAMP and sent it off, and they liked it well enough in Hamlingville (that would be Evanston, Illinois, IIRC) to ask for more.Not long after I'd finished the book, I got a letter from Yellow Springs. The Student Personnel Committee, having taken a long look at my academic performance, advised me of their decision that I might be happier elsewhere. I thought this was very perceptive of them, that I would indeed be happier almost anywhere else, and the passive-aggressive lout I was at the time found this an ideal resolution to a situation I seemed incapable of resolving on my own. Their letter had left the door slightly ajar, if not wide open; I sensed I could talk my way back in, but why?Then CAMPUS TRAMP came out, and a copy or two made it all the way to Yellow Springs, and a legend sprang up. I'd written the book as payback, it was said, a way to revenge myself upon the school that had expelled me. Now when I'd written CAMPUS TRAMP I'd still thought I was to return in the fall. And I was if anything profoundly grateful to the school for having cut the umbilical cord and sent me out into the world. No end of people knew better, even as they were sure they knew who the models were for the various characters-but that happens all the time. But never mind. One recalls the newspaperman's line from THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend!"Foir years I wondered who painted the cover, and recently learned it was one Harold W. McCauley. If he himself wasn't familiar with the college, he must have had coaching; that's a remarkably accurate representation of Antioch's Main Building, towers and all. Copies of the book commanded high prices at Antioch Senior Sales over the years, I've been assured, and Christian Feuerstein used to perform inspired readings of the text at what I can but assume were memorable occasions. I just wish someone had thought to hire her to do the audioboo

Lawrence Block remembers: "Back in the 1960s, when I was writing erotic novels for several publishers, I trauned and employed several ghostwriters. The first, William Coons, was recruited by my friend Donald Westlake; MAN FOR RENT is half his work and half mine, and here's what wrote about it in my memoir of those early years, A Writer Prepares..." This happened fairly early in Bill's ghosting career, when he was living with his wife and daughter in Washington Heights-but not too early, because it was after Nightstand had upped their order to two Andrew Shaw titles a month. I'd let myself be lured back into the game. So we were each writing a monthly book, and you'd think one of Hamling's editors would have to have suspected something, but if so he kept it to himself. Bill and I wrote our books and the checks kept coming. And one day I gave him a call. "I wrote three chapters of a book," I said, "and I just went dead on it, and I hate it, and I don't want to write any more of it but I hate to let sixty pages go to waste. Why don't you read what I've done, and if you can see a way to go on you can write the next three chapters, and then we'll alternate until we've got a book. And Henry can submit it as our collaboration." "By Andrew Shaw and Dell Holland?" Dell Holland was the pen name Bill had chosen for his own non-Shaw work. "Sure," I said. "And we'll each write half the book and take half the money." That sounded fine to him, so I got on the A train and took the three chapters uptown. "A sow's ear," I said. "Make some kind of a purse out of it. It doesn't have to be silk."Then the two of us went out for a beer. Maybe two beers, or even three, and then I got back on the subway and headed home. And he returned to his apartment. His wife had come home in the interim, and saw the stack of sow's-ear manuscript on the table where Bill had left it, and she was just finishing the last page when he walked in the door. "This is really good," she told him. "You're really improving, honey. This is far and away the best thing you've ever written." One of the best things about the story-and one of the worst things as well-is that Bill chose to tell it on himself. The fellow was not without a sense of irony. And he did in fact write the next three chapters, and we shuttled the manuscript back and forth until it was done, and Henry sent it to Nightstand and in due course it was published. Not by Andrew Shaw & Dell Holland, Nightstand never used dual bylines, but as Man For Rent, by John Dexter. (That was a house name, fastened at the editor's whim on odd books and extra books, and this was both.) And who wrote which chapters, and how do they compare in quality? I leave that decision to you, Gentle Reader.

When Joyce Kendall arrives in New York, fresh out of Clifton College in Iowa, she has a job and an apartment waiting for her. The job's as a first reader for Armageddon Publications. The apartment's at 21 Gay Street, and the small Federal-period house is already home to a lesbian couple, Jean Fitzgerald and Terri Leigh, and an out-of-work newspaperman, Pete Galton.The relationships of these four people under one roof add up to a fast-paced story that is not only satisfying fiction but a rare window on Bohemian life in the late 1950s. A drug-fueled rent-party-turned-orgy at the apartment of one Fred Koans is just link to a world some older readers may recall.Gay Street, in the heart of Greenwich Village, runs for only a single block between Christopher Street and Waverly Place. The 1943 movie A Night to Remember portrays 13 Gay Street as the address of the building where most of the action, including a murder, occurs. In 1996, Sheryl Crow made a video on Gay Street for the song "A Change Would Do You Good."21 Gay Street, a very early Lawrence Block novel, was originally published under the pen name Sheldon Lord. It was never reprinted after its initial publication in 1960, and this marks its first appearance in 56 years. As such, it seems an ideal choice to lead off Lawrence Block's Collection of Classic Erotica, and the book's original cover, with a painting by the great Paul Rader, is reproduced here.

Lawrence Block has this to say about Flesh Parade: "FLESH PARADE was first published in 1962 by Midnight Reader, a sister imprint of Nightstand Books. The title was supplied by an editor, and we'll never know what my own title may have been. The publisher was fond of two-word titles, often with favorite words: Flesh, Slut, Lust. They could slip past the censors while letting the reader know what kind of book he was getting."I've had a complicated relationship with my early pseudonymous books. There was a time when I rejoiced in the fact that they had not been printed on acid-free paper. With time I came first to accept and acknowledge the work of Andrew Shaw and Sheldon Lord, and eventually to put my shoulder to the wheel and bring all those early titles back into print. The twin engines of Ego and Avarice are largely responsible for the change, but where would I ever have been without them?"As one reviewer once wrote of a long-forgotten novel, 'For people who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.' Here's a taste of Flesh Parade; perhaps it will help you determine if this is the sort of thing you like."A concert, he thought. A stupid broad playing bongos. Just what he wanted.Then a man about thirty years old came out onto the stage. He was very tall and very gaunt, thin as a rail, and he had a neat goatee hanging from his chin. He carried a few sheets of paper in one hand. He stood motionless on the stage and looked out at the audience for about a minute. Then his left foot began tapping in time to the bongo drums that the girl was playing.He tapped for a while. Then he began to read the poems from the sheets of yellow paper. He read: "My name is Elijah, you nonbelievers, And I came from the Valley of Death in Kansas CityWhere the smoke rises gray from the stockyardsChurning and aching in the morning groan of lust.Hear me, sinners. This is the world's end, Let the lion lie down with the lamb, let the animalsWail, 'til the whales quake. Hear me, foolsHear the song of the brakeman on a swift train westWith hobos jungle-happy, and everybody swinging, And totality grooving like a mother's son-But what do we call that sweet little old ladyNow that mother is a dirty word?"There was more, of course. Tony didn't listen to it. Everybody else seemed to be listening, and as far as he could tell they found the reading most meaningful. But as far as Tony was concerned, the poet was full of crap. If he was saying anything, Tony didn't understand it. And he didn't give a damn.He ignored the poet and concentrated on the rest of the room. The orange-haired broad on the stage was really wailing away with the bongos, and occasionally she got so carried away that all you could hear was her drumming. She drowned out the poet, which was a rare blessing, although she wasn't much better. Like the obscene paintings on the walls, it had to be art.Otherwise there was no excuse for it.Still, the beat cats and broads seemed to be moved by the performance. The two dykes gave up their chess game to pay attention to the poem. The cat in the Eisenhower jacket went on feeling under one girl's skirt, but he quit talking to the other one about Baudelaire so that he could spend his time tuning in on what the poet was saying. Even the waitress quit taking orders. She too was listening to the poet.Tony tried again-"Once upon a time a man named HannibalHad crabs and lice and impetigoAnd saddle sores from all those elephants.He was the roamingest noble of them allTo sacrifice the falling world and allFor one gray cat-"Now if that made any sense at all, Tony thought, he must be crazy. Poetry had never particularly knocked him out, although he'd gotten a chuckle or two from some epics inscribed on various outhouse walls. He picked up his coffee cup and drained it, then set down the cup and got another cigarette starte

You might be surprised to learn that back in 1961 Nightstand Books published an inquiry into the heartbreak of scoliosis, but-oh, hang on a minute. You say the title refers to characters who are not spinally but psychosexually bent?Oh.Well, never mind.Dave and Nancy Grantland look for all the world like happy couple leading a comfortable suburban lifestyle. And Lucy King, the regular babysitter for the Gavilans next door, looks for all the world like a normal teenager.But Dave's lost interest in sex with his wife, as he increasingly becomes obsessed with the desire for a much younger partner. Not a Lolita, exactly, but someone a few years under the age of consent.And Nancy's recalling her college days as what we've since learned to call a LUG. (That's Lesbian Until Graduation. But you knew that, right?)And Lucy's ready for sexual experience, but with whom? Someone more knowledgable than her oafish boyfriend?Dave finds a café in the West 20s where a man named Hassan can supply anything he wants. Nancy finds a job working for a woman named Bobbie, who can supply anything she wants. Lucy finds a man who'll teach her what she wants to learn-and what she doesn't.Can you see where this is going? Well, along the way you'll get to look over Dave's shoulder as he watches a pornographic movie, courtesy of Hassan. I'm not sure which book was the first in which I employed this device, but the editors at Nightstand thought it was a great way to spice up the books, and I was encouraged to include such scenarios in future books. Well, you know, you didn't have to tell me twice...A Google search advises me that in 1959, two years before this book appeared, Gold Medal published Marijane Meaker's suspense novel, The Twisted Ones, under her pen name of Vin Packer. My guess is that it's a better book than mine, but who's to say you won't enjoy them both?

Five-time Edgar winner and MWA Grand Master Lawrence Block wrote a monthly column for Writers Digest Magazine for fourteen years. The Liar's Bible consists of previously uncollected columns, chosen to illuminate the often dimly-lit path of the writer of fiction.Here's what one reviewer said on Goodreads: "I am fascinated by the creative process and there are few excellent examples of this that I have found - there is Koestler's The Act of Creation insightful in a general way- but I have found only two worth their salt about working creators - Trauffaut's interviews with Hitchcock collected in Trauffaut/Hitchcock and Thomas Hoving's two interviews with Andrew Wyeth - published as Autobiography and Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth - but reading Lawrence Block's collected columns on writing from Writer's Digest I have discovered outstanding examples of this somewhat mysterious creative process."Now I am anxious to read his other collected columns - Block of course writes so fluidly that, as one Stephen King fan commented, I would probably read his grocery list - but he also asks brilliant questions of himself and does a terrific job answering and commenting on these."This is a must read for anyone intrigued by writers, artists, the creative process or those eager to write whether already published or hoping to be soon."And here's another: "What an absolute treat it is to re-read these columns, nearly 30 years after I first read many of them in the pages of Writer's Digest. I first started reading WD in high school, and subscribed for years, mostly for Lawrence Block's fiction-writing columns. This book collects all of his pieces from that era. Sure, a few pieces of advice -- mostly related to the marketplace for fiction -- have since become, oh, just slightly dated, but most of the wisdom still applies, not just for fiction writers but for all writers. These columns were, indeed, my bible in the early stages of my writing life. I owe a lot to Block, and I'm glad to have the chance to reflect back on how his writing influenced not just my own wordsmithing but also my life

17-year-old Johnny Wells was a very handsome young man, and you'd have called him a babe magnet, but I'm afraid they didn't have that phrase back in 1961. He decided to capitalize on his looks and the response they earned from women, invested in a haircut and a good wardrobe, moved out of his slum apartment and into a budget hotel, and reinvented himself as a gigolo.The life transformed him. He took up reading, became devoted to it, and educated himself. His new contacts provided him with polish and sophistication. He moved to a good hotel, put money in the bank. And then an out-of-the-blue bout of impotence left him unfit for his profession.Next up, true love-and another transformation. Before you know it he's an advertising copywriter, a rising star on Madison Avenue. A family man.But fate's not done dealing, and the next card he draws is down and dirty...Gigolo Johnny Wells was published by Nightstand Books in 1961, and elicited a surprising response from whoever was serving as editor at the time. (Harlan Ellison, I've been told, but maybe not. And, really, who cares?) Whoever it was, he loved the book and asked for more. I must have written one, but efforts to find it have failed. And, really, who cares?A note on the name: Several years later, I needed a pen name for a work described as a cross-cultural survey of comparative sex techniques. I'd by then long since forgotten having used the name Johnny Wells in this book (which Nightstand had titled "Lover") and the name I stuck on Eros & Capricorn was John Warren Wells, a name I was to go on using on almost two dozen books of sexually-oriented nonfiction. Let me assure you that Johnny Wells and John Warren Wells are not related.

The Master Returns--With Never-Before-Collected Tales of Murder and DesireOne of the most highly acclaimed novelists in the crime genre, Lawrence Block is also a master of the short story, with award-winning work ranging from the macabre to the slyly comic, from heart-stopping tales of revenge to memorable explorations of lust and greed, all told in Block's unforgettable style. The sixteen stories (and one stage play!) collected here feature appearances by some of Block s most famous characters, including gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr and alcoholic private detective Matt Scudder, as well as glimpses into the minds of a rogue's gallery of frightening killers, dangerous sociopaths, crooked cops, and lost souls whose only chance to find themselves may be on the wrong side of a gun.You'll meet a compulsive hoarder whose towering piles of trash and treasures hide disturbing secrets...a beautiful young tennis star with a rather too possessive secret admirer...a dealer in stolen art who is unwilling to part with his most prized possession at any price...poker players with agendas that have nothing to do with the cards in their hands...and a catch-and-release fisherman whose preferred catch walks on two legs.Terror and passion, cruelty and vindication--it's all here, in a collection that will thrill you, scare you, and remind you why Lawrence Block is still the best there is at what he does.This is the book that led Publishers Weekly's reviewer to enthuse, "If Block were a serial killer instead of one of the best storytellers of our time, we'd be in real trouble."