THESE MEAN STREETS, DARKLY the prequel to the cyberpunk detective series, Liquid Cool. It’s a world of colossal skyscrapers. Hovercars fly above in the dark, rainy skies and gray people walk below on the grimy, hard streets in the “Neon Jungle.” Uber-governments and megacorporations fight for control of the supercity, but so does crime. An average woman, Carol—hardworking and decent in every way— loses her daughter to the psycho Red Rabbit. Can Police Central find the girl in time—alive? And is it really a random, senseless kidnapping in the fifty-million-plus city? There are a million victims and perpetrators in this High-Tech, Low-Life World. This is one of those stories…before we meet our private eye (and unlikely hero), Cruz, in the debut novel, Liquid Cool!

A Cyber-Noir Thriller Series To Keep You on the Edge of Your Seat! "It's Blade Gunner Meets The Maltese Falcon." Liquid Cool is the action-packed (and funny), cyberpunk/sci-fi detective series. Over 1000 pages includes These Mean Streets, Darkly (prequel), Liquid Cool (Book 1), Blade Gunner (Book 2) and NeuroDancer (Book 3)! In the sci-fi/cyberpunk detective series, author Austin Dragon shows why you never want to meet a cyborg in a dark alley. There is plenty of gritty action, suspense, thrills, and even a few laughs. It’s cyberpunk reimagined—an ever-rainy world of colossal skyscrapers, hovercars, flashy neon streets, and futuristic mechanization. Metropolis isn’t a bad place, but it isn’t a good one either. Uber-governments and megacorporations fight for control of the fifty-million-plus supercity, but so does crime. We meet Cruz, our private eye (and unlikely hero), in this super-city with a million victims and perpetrators. Watch out for tech-tricksters, analog hustlers, and digital gangsters—psychos, samurais, and cyborgs aplenty. Visitors have a way of becoming permanent attractions. Welcome to the high-tech, low-life world of Liquid Cool.

Women. Crime. Justice. At least the search for it. On the mean streets, the back allies, the dark corners. These are stories of tough women in hard places. The nights are long, the women are fast, and danger is always a short block or quick minute away. Edited by award winning author/editors J.M. Redmann and Greg Herren, Women of the Mean Streets is an anthology of some of the top, tough women crime writers today, noir stories with a lesbian twist.

Classic study of a filmmaker's career, now including every Mann film. Back in print—new and expanded edition. Director of such often-revived films as Winchester '73, The Glenn Miller Story, and El Cid, Anthony Mann enjoyed a lasting and important career as one of Hollywood's premier filmmakers. Mann's Westerns, noir pictures, and epics are admired and studied by fans and scholars alike, and he was an expert in the fundamental elements of cinema (movement and placement of the camera, composition in the frame, and careful editing). Jeanine Basinger's Anthony Mann, which places the director's visual style at the center of its analysis, was among the first formal studies of any filmmaker, and it set a standard in the field over twenty-five years ago. Long out of print and much in demand, this pioneering book is now available again, featuring complete coverage of those Mann films not discussed in the original work, as well as over fifty rare film stills. Wesleyan is proud to issue this expanded edition of an essential text, making it available to new generations of filmgoers and readers.

Noir has always been one of the most popular—and darkest—sub-genres of the mystery field. Following in the footsteps of such masters of the form as James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett, some of the top writers of gay mystery explore this territory of amoral tough guys with a cynical view of the world by giving classic noir a gay twist. Edited by award winning author/editors Greg Herren and J.M. Redmann, Men of the Mean Streets changes the face of gay mystery—and the reader may never look at gay life and culture in the same way again.

Classic film noir was Hollywood's 'dark cinema' of crime and corruption; a genre underpinned by a tone of existential cynicism which stripped bare the myth of the American Dream and offered a bleak, nightmarish vision of a fragmented society that rhymed with many of the social realities of forties and fifties America. Mean Streets and Raging Bulls explores how, since its apparent demise in the late fifties, the noir genre has been revitalized during the post-studio era. The book is divided into two sections. In the first, the evolution of film noir is contextualized in relation to both American cinema's industrial transformation and the post-Depression history of the United States. In the second, the evolution of neo-noir and its relation to classic film noir is illustrated by detailed reference to representative texts including Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974), Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975), Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976), Blood Simple (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1984), After Hours (Martin Scorsese, 1985), Sea of Love (Harold Becker, 1989), Resevoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992), and Romeo is Bleeding (Peter Medak, 1994).

Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, Fred takes on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D--which Arctor takes in massive doses--gradually splits the user's brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn't realize he is narcing on himself. Caustically funny, eerily accurate in its depiction of junkies, scam artists, and the walking brain-dead, Philip K. Dick's industrial-grade stress test of identity is as unnerving as it is enthralling.