In this classic noir tale of blurred guilt and flawed innocence, a cynical lawyer uncovers the desperate lives of a group connected only by a gruesome murder. Eric Meecham is not an optimistic sort. An old-before-his-time lawyer, scratching out a living in courts and jail houses, he is no stranger to desperate cases and has little faith in anything or anyone. But his brand of existential nihilism isn’t without curiosity, and when he gets a chance to represent a local society woman who’s been arrested for murder under very scandalous circumstances, well, even he can’t help but be engaged. Cold, austere, and used to having her way, Mrs. Hamilton is more than a little upset at having to travel 40 miles west of Detroit, in the dead of winter, to the small city of Arbana. But her careless daughter Virginia has landed herself in trouble again and Mrs. Hamilton will do anything to keep the family name out of a scandal. But she little understands the gravity of her daughter’s arrest. Virginia was found drunk and underclad in the midst of a white-out snow storm. She was also covered in blood. In a cottage not too far away a married man, father of two, lay brutally stabbed to death. Earl Loftus is the definition of a hard luck case. Broke and terminally ill, Earl’s life has been one tragedy after another. But the spark of a thoughtful intellect still gleams in his eyes and when Loftus comes forward to confess to the crime that Virginia is accused of, Eric Meecham is instantly skeptical. Could a man like Loftus actually commit such an act? The more Meecham interviews Loftus, the less he thinks it’s possible.
This volume includes five of Millar’s novels of the 1950s, among her best-known works of literary suspense as well as some of the most compulsively readable, please-leave-a-light-on thrillers ever put to paper.
As the book begins, the string of unsolved disappearances that has haunted the town is once again thrust into the spotlight when journalist Landon West, who was staying at the inn to investigate the story of the vanishing trail, then ...
Hailed as one of the greatest psychological mysteries ever written and winner of the 1956 Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Novel, Beast in View remains as freshly sinister today as the day it was first published.
As the book begins, the string of unsolved disappearances that has haunted the town is once again thrust into the spotlight when journalist Landon West, who was staying at the inn to investigate the story of the vanishing trail, then ...
California cultists, duplicitous damsels in distress, and dangerously high stakes conspire against Joe Quinn, a private eye who is beginnnig to feel more like a knight-errant Joe Quinn is cut adrift.
Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes ...
All of an Instant is a groundbreaking SF novel that chronicles the discovery of a medium of existence outside of time--the Instant--from which one can influence all past and future history.
A sudden draft rippled the moted shafts of sunlight, and a woman's voice called out from the back door, “Mack. Here, Mack. Come on, boy. Time for your run.” At the first word Gill had risen expectantly, but as the woman continued to ...
And then, scientists from a mysterious government agency arrived. Determined not to become research subjects of strange experiments, the residents of Fogg Lake blamed their “hallucinations” on food poisoning, and the story worked.
This is a story about the end of the world—but it is also about the beginning of something entirely new.