A collection of 25 hard boiled detective stories celebrating the genre.

An omnibus edition of The Plutonium Blonde and The Doomsday Brunette Double your pleasure, double the laughs with this omnibus edition featuring Zachary Nixon Johnson, the last freelance PI on Earth. It's 2057, and Zach is partnered with an experimental A.I. named HARV. In what is both an homage to and parody of the great heyday of pulp fiction, they solve cases involving androids, future tech wizards, and of course, the occasional nuclear-powered, genocidal fembot...

Prepared by renowned Howard scholar Paul Herman with the assistance of Glenn Lord, this is the first new bibliography of Robert E. Howard since 1976. This massive volume contains more than twice as much information as the preceding biblio, The Last Celt. Robert E. Howard is considered the Godfather of Sword and Sorcery, and the creator of the international icon, Conan the Cimmerian, yet wrote successfully in numerous genres. The Neverending Hunt lists every story, poem, letter and publication in which a Howard work has appeared. It's more than you might think . . .

A roleplaying game of mystery and hardboiled action in a city that never sleeps. I woke with a start, my mouth tasting like an old glove and my head pounding from the events of the previous evening, though I wasn't sure if it was the beating from Benny's boys or the half bottle of drugstore whiskey that had done the most damage. I lifted my eyelids like stubborn blinds to find my gaze fall on a dame with a hundred-dollar purse in one hand and a cheap bean-shooter in the other. I groaned and cursed myself for ever getting involved in this mess... In Hard City, character creation is swift and simple, generating competent yet flawed individuals and focusing on what sets them apart as they walk the fine line between right and wrong. Fast action resolution places the emphasis on the momentum of the plot, while the sandbox setting provides evocative hooks for adventures – fight crooks, rescue the innocent, thwart blackmail plots (or start them!), or uncover corruption in the Mayor's office. Stalk the mean streets of a world filled with two-bit thugs, hard-nosed gumshoes, intrepid reporters, gangsters, and femme fatales, all doing what they must to survive in the concrete jungle. With trouble around every corner, a secret on every lip, and a gun in every pocket, danger is never far away in the hard city.

“Gems fascinate me . . . the way women do. Like women, each gem is different. Each has its own individual coloring and shape. It can be a glittering thing, full of fire–or it can be cold and forbidding.” Mike Sloan, most-wanted jewel thief and respectable jeweler on the side, was an expert with both gems and women. He could always get a beautiful woman to front for him. But tonight was his biggest and most dangerous job–and it would take more than a beautiful woman to keep Mike Sloan warm . . . and alive! He’s a tough-guy with elegance, style and a romantic weakness for dolls. Gems and dames—a deadly combination!

The hard-boiled style of detective fiction emerged in America in the years after the First World War. In the late 1940s, following the Depression, the New Deal, and the Second World War, a new generation of young writers revisited the conventions governing the fictional private eye, and began to move him (the tough detective was still always male) and his world in new directions. This book examines the work of the four most important writers of this second generation of hard-boiled fiction. It offers the first substantial literary analysis of the Max Thursday novels of Wade Miller and the Carney Wilde novels of Bart Spicer, and it develops new perspectives on the well-known Mike Hammer novels of Mickey Spillane and the Lew Archer novels of Ross Macdonald. A particular focus is upon the theme of the detective's status as a loner who succeeds in discovering truth and achieving justice because he works outside organized social structures.

Her name was Tessie Cullen and she was beautiful… and she shook the dice in a joint in Coalfield–the most sinful city south of Chicago. The hoods owned Coalfield, owned its corrupt, neon body and soul and they had a lease on Tessie, too. A short-term lease, maybe, but it kept her in line. But they never figured on Tessie’s falling in love. They never figured on Hally Harper, the crusading young lawyer who came to Coalfield to blow the lid off it and its jungle of rackets. The odds were all on murder. Tessie’s. Coalfield’s most popular event, The Sparrow Hawk Derby, is the backdrop for intrigue, deception and greed. It seems the Big Boys from Chicago have a personal interest in the Derby, knowing much dough can be made from all that betting. Harper has an interest, as well. He’s actually a federal narcotics agent on the trail of a huge shipment of opium that’s gone missing. What he doesn’t expect to find is murder. Tessie knows just enough to get herself killed by