Bagels, bullies, and bad girls are only part of the chemistry of Hardboiled Brooklyn. An anthology of slash and burn short stories set in the Country of Kings, the collection boasts an all-star line up of today's hottest crime fiction writers, including Edgar winners S.J. Rozan and Peter Blauner, Shamus winners Ken Bruen and Peter Spiegelman, Gumshoe winner Jim Fusili, and Anthony/Barry winner, Jason Starr.
“One of the most remarkable prose stylists to emerge from the noir tradition in this century.” –Stephen King “Hard-boiled horror, pulp noir vampires, decaying urban souls– you’re gonna need a shower after this one. . . . [Huston] kicks down the door of horror.” –Fangoria, on Already Dead There’s only so much room on the Island, only so much blood, and Manhattan’s Vampyre Clans aren’t interested in sharing. So when the Vyrus-infected dregs of New York’s outer boroughs start creeping across the bridges and through the tunnels, the Clans want to know why. Bad luck for PI and general hard case Joe Pitt. See, Joe used to be a Rogue, used to work off his own dime, picked his own gigs, but tight times and a terminally ill girlfriend pushed him into the arms of the renegade Society Clan. Now he has all the cash and blood he needs, but at a steep price. The price tonight is crossing the bridge, rolling to Coney Island, finding the Freak Clan, and figuring out what’s driving that bunch of savages to scratch at the Society’s door. No need to look far. The answer lies around the corner in Gravesend. Convenient, all those graves. From uptown to the boardwalk, war drums are beating. Murderous family feuds and personal grudges are being drawn and brandished, along with the long knives. Blood will spill and, big surprise, Joe’s in the middle. But hey, why should this night be different from any other? Sunset to sunrise: put off a war, keep your head attached to your neck, and save your girl. Check. Joe’s on the case. Praise for Charlie Huston and his Joe Pitt novels “In conceiving his world (a New York City divided by vampire clans, each with different reasons to hate Pitt), Huston gives a fading genre a fresh afterlife. [Grade:] A.” –Entertainment Weekly “[Huston] creates a world that is at once supernatural and totally familiar, imaginative, and utterly convincing.” –The Philadelphia Inquirer
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A complusively readable riff on the classic detective novel from America's most inventive novelist. "A half-satirical cross between a literary novel and a hard-boiled crime story narrated by an amateur detective with Tourette's syndrome.... The dialogue crackles with caustic hilarity.... Unexpectedly moving." —The Boston Globe Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, Lionel Essrog is an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. Life without Frank Minna, the charismatic King of Brooklyn, would be unimaginable, so who cares if the tasks he sets them are, well, not exactly legal. But when Frank is fatally stabbed, one of Lionel's colleagues lands in jail, the other two vie for his position, and the victim's widow skips town. Lionel's world is suddenly topsy-turvy, and this outcast who has trouble even conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case while trying to keep the words straight in his head. Motherless Brooklyn is a brilliantly original, captivating homage to the classic detective novel by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation.
What are the ingredients of a hard-boiled detective story? "Savagery, style, sophistication, sleuthing and sex," said Ellery Queen. Often a desperate blond, a jealous husband, and, of course, a tough-but-tender P.I. the likes of Sam Spade or Philop Marlowe. Perhaps Raymond Chandler summed it up best in his description of Dashiell Hammett's style: "Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it....He put these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes." Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind, with over half of the stories never published before in book form. Included are thirty-six sublimely suspenseful stories that chronicle the evolutiuon of this quintessentially American art form, from its earliest beginnings during the Golden Age of the legendary pulp magazine Black Mask in the 1920s, to the arrival of the tough digest Manhunt in the 1950s, and finally leading up to present-day hard-boiled stories by such writers as James Ellroy. Here are eight decades worth of the best writing about betrayal, murder, and mayhem: from Hammett's 1925 tour de force "The Scorched Face," in which the disappearance of two sisters leads Hammett's never-named detective, the Continental Op, straight into a web of sexual blackmail amidst the West Coast elite, to Ed Gorman's 1992 "The Long Silence After," a gripping and powerful rendezvous involving a middle class insurance executive, a Chicago streetwalker, and a loaded .38. Other delectable contributions include "Brush Fire" by James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raymond Chandler's "I'll Be Waiting," where, for once, the femme fatale is not blond but a redhead, a Ross Macdonald mystery starring Macdonald's most famous creation, the cryptic Lew Archer, and "The Screen Test of Mike Hammer" by the one and only Micky Spillane. The hard-boiled cult has more in common with the legendary lawmen of the Wild West than with the gentleman and lady sleuths of traditional drawing room mysteries, and this direct line of descent is on brilliant display in two of the most subtle and tautly written stories in the collection, Elmore Leonard's "3:10 to Yuma" and John D. MacDonald's "Nor Iron Bars." Other contributors include Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain), Jim Thompson, Helen Nielsen, Margaret Maron, Andrew Vachss, Faye Kellerman, and Lawrence Block. Compellingly and compulsively readable, Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is a page-turner no mystery lover will want to be without. Containing many notable rarities, it celebrates a genre that has profoundly shaped not only American literature and film, but how we see our heroes and oursleves.
Vast and diverse, Brooklyn is often portrayed in literature as a place of traditional community values and face-to-face relations, distinct from anonymous, capital-driven Manhattan. Brooklyn Fictions discovers what such representations of the New York borough can teach us about diversity and the individual, the local and the global. Combining analysis of popular texts such as Sister Souljah's The Coldest Winter Ever with more canonical novels such as Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude, this study draws on the work of a variety of theorists on community and globalization and uses Brooklyn as a case study for an exploration of the complex relationship between romantic ideals of community and global economic forces. With cites often depicted as sites of conflict and fear, this is a crucial contribution to our understanding of the contemporary urban community and the ethical issues involved in conceptualizing and portraying it in literature.
Understanding Jonathan Lethem is a study of the novels, short fiction, and nonfiction on a wide range of subjects in the arts by American novelist Jonathan Lethem, who is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for Motherless Brooklyn, a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, and the Locus Award for Best First Novel for Gun, with Occasional Music. Matthew Luter explores the key contemporaries of and influences on Lethem, who is the Roy Edward Disney Professor of Creative Writing at Pomona College. Luter begins this volume by explaining how Lethem's innovative and provocative essay on creative appropriation, "The Ecstasy of Influence," differs from other writing about influence, suggesting an artistic mode that celebrates thoughtful borrowing. Readings of Lethem's three major novels follow: taken together, Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, and Chronic City present a novelist coming to terms with the joys and downsides of artistic influence. Luter concludes the edition with an examination of Lethem's third collection, Lucky Alan: And Other Stories. Borrowing openly and promiscuously from earlier traditions both high and low (experimental fiction, comic books, art film, detective novels), Lethem displays a career-long interest in questioning what literary originality might mean in a postmodern age. Some suggest that such borrowings indicate a literary well that has run dry, making writers such as Lethem mere patchwork artists. Luter argues instead that Lethem's propensity for wearing his influences and obsessions on his sleeve encourages new thought about originality itself. Out with "it's all been done" and in with "look at all that's been done, and all that we can still do with it!"
The creators of this beloved Brooklyn eatery share seventy-five simple, sophisticated, and thoroughly satisfying recipes in this charmingly illustrated cookbook. Until it closed its doors in 2017, Saltie was one of the most beloved eateries in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Created by three pioneers of the Brooklyn food scene, it won droves of devotees with its magnificent sandwiches, soups, egg bowls, drinks, and sweets. This cookbook features seventy-five recipes for all of these favorite foods, plus more than fifty color photographs and ten humorous drawings by Elizabeth Schula that capture the sense of commitment, locality, and belonging that this famed eatery cultivated. Full of surprising visuals, great recipes, and colorful storytelling, Saltie is at once a unique cookbook and a guide to good eating.
Brooklyn Brew Shop’s Beer Making Book takes brewing out of the basement and into the kitchen. Erica Shea and Stephen Valand show that with a little space, a few tools, and the same ingredients breweries use, you too can make delicious craft beer right on your stovetop. Greenmarket-inspired and seasonally brewed, these 52 recipes include Everyday IPA and Rose Cheeked & Blonde for spring; Grapefruit Honey Ale and S’More Beer for summer; Apple Crisp Ale and Peanut Butter Porter for fall; Chestnut Brown ale and Gingerbread Ale for winter; and even four gluten-free brews. You’ll also find tips for growing hops, suggestions for food pairings, and recipes for cooking with beer. Brooklyn Brew Shop’s Beer Making Book offers a new approach to artisanal brewing and is a must-own for beer lovers, seasonally minded cooks, and anyone who gets a kick out of saying “I made this!”
