A Bright and Guilty Place
A Bright and Guilty Place

Author: Richard Rayner

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2010-06-01

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1400033586

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Best Book of the Year The Los Angeles Times • The Washington Post Los Angeles was the fastest growing city in the world, mad with oil fever, get-rich-quick schemes, and celebrity scandals. It was also rife with organized crime, with a mayor in the pocket of the syndicates and a DA taking bribes to throw trials. In A Bright and Guilty Place, Richard Rayner narrates the entwined lives of two men, Dave Clark and Leslie White, who were caught up in the crimes, murders, and swindles of the day. Over a few transformative years, as the boom times shaded into the Depression, the adventures of Clark and White would inspire pulp fiction and replace L.A.’s reckless optimism with a new cynicism. Together, theirs is the tale of how the city of sunshine went noir.

A Bright and Guilty Place
A Bright and Guilty Place

Author: Richard Rayner

Publisher: Constable Non-Fiction

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781849012058

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1920s Los Angeles was the fastest growing city in the world, mad with oil fever, get-rich-quick schemes, celebrity scandals, and religious fervor. It was also rife with organized crime, with a mayor and a DA in the pocket of the syndicates. Here, historian Richard Rayner narrates the entwined lives of two men, Dave Clark and Leslie White, who were caught up in the crimes, murders, and swindles of the day. Over a few transformative years, as the boom times shaded into the Depression, the adventures of Clark and White would inspire pulp fiction and replace L.A.'s reckless optimism with a new cynicism. Together, theirs is the tale of how the city of sunshine got noir. Key events include the theft of water from the Owens River Valley that let L.A grow, the Teapot Dome scandal, and the emergence of crime writers like Raymond Chandler who helped mythologize L.A.--From publisher description.

A Guilty Passion
A Guilty Passion

Author: Laurey Bright

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2014-05-27

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1497622387

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A contemporary romance of a widow’s grief, a new beginning, and a love that has blossomed in the shadows . . . After the sudden death of his brother, Ethan invites his lovely but shattered widow Celeste to his island home off the coast of Australia. He soon discovers that Celeste is nothing like the woman his brother described, an unrepentant flirt. Instead, she is a gentle but passionate woman who knows her own heart—a woman capable of resurrecting buried memories . . . For years, Ethan has fought the feelings that Celeste has stirred inside of him. Now is his chance to let go of his guilt, recognize the love shining in her eyes, and use their passion to repair past mistakes.

The Broken Places
The Broken Places

Author: Ace Atkins

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2013-05-30

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1101592702

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In the third gripping crime novel in Ace Atkins’s New York Times bestselling series, small town sheriff Quinn Colson takes on deadly criminals and even deadlier weather... A year after becoming sheriff of Tibbehah County, Mississippi, Quinn Colson is faced with a pardoned killer’s return to Jericho. Jamey Dixon now preaches redemption and forgiveness, but the family of the woman he was convicted of killing isn’t buying it. They warn Quinn that his sister’s relationship with Dixon could be fatal. Others don’t think the new preacher is a changed man, either—a couple of dangerous convicts who confided in Dixon about an armored car robbery believe he’s after the money they hid. So they do the only thing they can: break out and head straight to Jericho, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. Colson and his deputy, Lillie, have their work cut out for them. But they don’t count on one more unwelcome visitor: a tornado that causes havoc just as the manhunt heats up. Communications are down, the roads are impassable—and the rule of law is just about to snap.

The Story of Dan Bright
The Story of Dan Bright

Author: Dan Bright

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9781608011247

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Everybody knows New Orleans, but nobody knows this New Orleans. At sixteen years old, Dan Bright was the head of a New Orleans drug empire. As his operation grew, it was only a matter of time before he attracted the attention of the criminal justice system, which would stop at nothing--including framing Dan for murder--to get him off the streets. Dan's capital murder trial lasted only one day. The District Attorney's office used false testimony and fabricated evidence to lead the jury to their ultimate conclusion: Daniel Bright was guilty and deserved the death penalty. This incredible true story unflinchingly shows the injustice of the legal system, as well as the base corruption on display at Angola prison, where Dan spent ten years fighting his wrongful conviction and struggling for a right supposedly guaranteed to all Americans: a fair trial.

The Blue Suit
The Blue Suit

Author: Richard Rayner

Publisher: Odyssey Editions

Published: 2013-10-25

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 162373018X

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Richard Rayner had a peripatetic childhood, and it seemed he found some sense of place when he attended Cambridge University. The study of philosophy combined with an obsession with books, however, served as the catalyst for a bizarre life of crime. Mounting debts propelled the author into a series of adventures, as he plundered bookstores for elusive first editions, forged checks, and acted as an accomplice in a Keystone Kops-like attempted bank robbery. In a memoir that's "compelling, edgy, painfully alive" (Times Literary Supplement), like "stripped-down Dostoevsky" (Time), this is the personal story, both tragic and comic, of an absence of identity and a long checkered past of crimes and misdemeanors.

The Annotated Big Sleep
The Annotated Big Sleep

Author: Raymond Chandler

Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

Published: 2018-07-17

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 0804168881

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The first fully annotated edition of Raymond Chandler’s 1939 classic The Big Sleep features hundreds of illuminating notes and images alongside the full text of the novel and is an essential addition to any crime fiction fan’s library. A masterpiece of noir, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep helped to define a genre. Today it remains one of the most celebrated and stylish novels of the twentieth century. This comprehensive, annotated edition offers a fascinating look behind the scenes of the novel, bringing the gritty and seductive world of Chandler's iconic private eye Philip Marlowe to life. The Annotated Big Sleep solidifies the novel’s position as one of the great works of American fiction and will surprise and enthrall Chandler’s biggest fans. Including: -Personal letters and source texts -The historical context of Chandler’s Los Angeles, including maps and images -Film stills and art from the early pulps -An analysis of class, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity in the novel

Poetry Los Angeles
Poetry Los Angeles

Author: Laurence Goldstein

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2014-03-12

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 0472052241

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A look at the poetry of one of America’s most populous and fascinating cities, with poems spanning from 1942 to 2012

Los Angeles Without a Map
Los Angeles Without a Map

Author: Richard Rayner

Publisher: Odyssey Editions

Published: 2013-10-25

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 1623730171

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Barbara, a Playboy bunny, is delectable. Richard loves her. He abandons his life in London, a steady girlfriend, and a job, and flies to Los Angeles in search of Barbara and the romanticized America he's seen only in the movies. Richard obsessively pursues Barbara through a series of misadventures that take him from photography sessions in the desert to encounters with men in gorilla suits and "surf Nazis." Eventually he succeeds in wooing her, and they marry, bathed in the neon lights of Las Vegas. But their happiness unravels, and Barbara skips out. Richard determines to win her back; then he, too, takes flight, as the happy ending he had envisioned for their lives fades to black in the film capital of the world. Brilliantly candid and comedic, Richard Rayner's ironic first book is a cult favorite—later filmed starring David Tennant, Julie Delpy and Johnny Depp—and a dazzling travelogue of love, loss, and all destinations in between.

Hollywood Horrors
Hollywood Horrors

Author: Andrea Van Landingham

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-11-01

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1493060082

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The name “Hollywood” conjures up fantastical images of bright lights, glamorous dreams, and impossible riches. From its humble beginnings as a ranch sprawling northwest of Los Angeles in the late 1800s, Hollywood has spanned lifetimes as a factory of dreams, a dazzling place where all things are possible. This collection of stories takes you on a journey into the golden age, illuminating the space between the airy fantasy and the gritty reality of life in Hollywood. In a transient city where nothing lasts, thousands of stories have taken place in their time here. From the offscreen debauchery of the silent era, to countless dramatic and mysterious deaths, to the sinister past lives of world-famous LA landmarks, vestiges of Hollywood’s checkered past can still be found all over the city. With generations of Tinseltown’s luminaries living and working under the sunny guise of paradisal prosperity, their real stories reveal the sordid underbelly lurking directly beneath the surface. A dangerous collusion between the studios, the press, the mob, and the LAPD forms an impenetrable behind-the-scenes network of corruption, power and control, where the truth is always up for sale. A network in which the most glamorous and well-known figures are merely players in this elaborate charade. It’s magical and gritty, it’s ugly and dirty, it’s the land of dreams...it’s Hollywood.