Helen Plum Library

After her boss is gunned down at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Mae Pruett, a "black-bag" publicist working at LA's most powerful crisis PR firm protecting the rich and depraved, decides to investigate, running afoul of the whole system

The 1950s are on the horizon, and Archer is in dire need of a fresh start after a nearly fatal detour in Poca City. So Archer hops on a bus and begins the long journey out west to California, where rumor has it there is money to be made for someone who's hard-working, lucky, a criminal, or all three. Along the way, Archer stops in Reno, where a stroke of fortune delivers him a wad of cash and an eye-popping blood-red 1939 Delahaye convertible, plus...

Chances are, if you're a target of Billy Summers, two immutable truths apply: You'll never even know what hit you, and you're really getting what you deserve. He's a killer for hire and the best in the business--but he'll do the job only if the assignment is a truly bad person. But now, time is catching up with him, and Billy wants out. Before he can do that though, there's one last hit, which promises a generous payday at the end of the line even...

"Praise for Crush: "As slick as a switchblade with a pearl handle."--Lee Child, New York Times best-selling author Los Angeles bodyguard/bouncer Caleb Rush (Crush) is back in this second Crush novel. When Rachel Fury, a con-artist friend who'd vanished for a couple of years after a big scam, reappears in Hollywood under a new name as a glitzy movie star, she hires Crush as a bodyguard, and he quickly gets drawn into a criminal mess that requires all...

First published in 1925, "Manhattan Transfer" by American author John Dos Passos is an engrossing portrayal of urban life in New York City from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age. Critically acclaimed and widely considered to be his most important work, Dos Passos tells the story of the city as it grows and changes through the perspectives of many of its inhabitants. The city itself is a central character of the novel. It is exciting and glamorous, but...

"San Francisco, 1947. Bartender Sammy 'Two Toes' Tiffin and the rest of the Cookie's Coffee Irregulars, a ragtag bunch of working mugs last seen in Noir, are on the hustle: they're trying to open a driving school for Chinatown residents; shanghai an abusive Swedish stevedore; get Mable, the local madam, and her girls to a Christmas party at the State Hospital without alerting the overzealous head of the S.F.P.D. vice squad; all while Sammy's girlfriend,...

Examines the movies and artists of film noir, describing the social climate and artistic skills that contributed to the genre

"Based on the screenplay he developed for Twentieth Century Fox from his short story "Animal Rescue," New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane's The Drop follows a former criminal whose efforts to build a new life with his girlfriend and pit bull rescue puppy fall apart when he becomes mixed up in a robbery gone wrong; scheduled for release in Fall 2014, Fox's film of the same title stars James Gandolfini (in his final on-screen performance),...

Is someone systematically killing the judges of the B.C. bar? At least one has been, murdered and several have disappeared. Arthur Beauchamp returns from retirement once again to take on the case, this time defending his former nemesis, backwoods poet Cudworth Brown, and tracking down a mystery novel that Brown's unreliable former lawyer has been, writing, all this just as his own wife, Margaret, has announced her candidacy for the Green Party in...