James M Cain

A rerelease of a classic tale by the New Yorker journalist and author of The Postman Always Rings. Following her husband's death in a suspicious car accident, beautiful young widow Joan Medford is forced to take a job serving drinks in a cocktail lounge to make ends meet and to have a chance of regaining custody of her young son. At the job she encounters two men who take an interest in her, a handsome young schemer who makes her blood race and a...

"When Frank, an amoral young drifter, gets thrown off a hay truck in the California desert, he ends up at a diner run by Cora and her inconvenient husband, Nick. This chance meeting puts them all on a sure path to perdition. First published in 1934 and banned in Boston for its explosive mixture of violence and eroticism, The Postman Always Rings Twice is a classic of the roman noir. It established James M. Cain as a major novelist with an unsparing...

A twisted tale of heinous crimes and hidden motives by the legendary author of Double Indemnity. Graham meets Sonya outside of his real estate office. She is sixteen, beautiful, and drops a bombshell-she's there because Graham's half-brother, Burl, raped her, leaving her frightened, pregnant, and very much alone. All she wants is the $1,111 it will cost to hide out for the next few months in a convalescent home before she gives the baby up for...

A collection of stories, both early and late, that show how James M. Cain made his name There is a hungry tiger loose in the house, and that is not good news for anyone. A jealous husband let the animal out of his cage hoping he would eat his wife alive, but tigers aren't used to taking orders. This jungle cat will get his meal, and he doesn't care where it comes from. "The Baby in the Icebox" begins with a murdered wildcat and ends with a dead human-and...

THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE: Cain's first novel - the subject of an obscenity trial in Boston and the inspiration for Camus's The Stranger - is the fever-pitched tale of a drifter who stumbles into a job, into an erotic obsession, and into a murder; MILDRED PIERCE: Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness and determination. She used those attributes to survive a divorce in 1940s America with two...

Steamy tale of a drifter offered a job at a roadside diner by the owner, an easy-going older man. When the drifter and the owner's voluptuous wife fall in love, they plot to kill her husband and run away together.

Mildred Pierce is a woman who will do anything to satisfy the demands of her spoiled daughter Veda, including divorce, opening her own business, and possibly murder.