Gangsters and G-Men on Screen

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Author :
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1442230762
Total Pages : 205 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (422 download)

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Book Synopsis Gangsters and G-Men on Screen by : Gene D. Phillips

Download or read book Gangsters and G-Men on Screen written by Gene D. Phillips and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-09-26 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the gangster film may have enjoyed its heyday in the 1930s and ’40s, it has remained a movie staple for almost as long as cinema has existed. From the early films of Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson to modern versions like Bugsy, Public Enemies, and Gangster Squad, such films capture the brutality of mobs and their leaders. In Gangsters and G-Men on Screen: Crime Cinema Then and Now, Gene D. Phillips revisits some of the most popular and iconic representations of the genre. While this volume offers new perspectives on some established classics—usual suspects like Little Caesar, Bonnie and Clyde, and The Godfather Part II—Phillips also calls attention to some of the unheralded but no less worthy films and filmmakers that represent the genre. Expanding the viewer’s notion of what constitutes a gangster film, Phillips offers such unusual choices as You Only Live Once, Key Largo, The Lady from Shanghai, and even the 1949 version of The Great Gatsby. Also included in this examination are more recent ventures, such as modern classics The Grifters and Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. In his analyses, Phillips draws on a number of sources, including personal interviews with directors and other artists and technicians associated with the films he discusses. Of interest to film historians and scholars, Gangsters and G-Men on Screen will also appeal to anyone who wants to better understand the films that represent an important contribution to crime cinema.

Gangsters & Grifters

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Author :
Publisher : Agate Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1572847441
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (728 download)

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Book Synopsis Gangsters & Grifters by : Chicago Tribune

Download or read book Gangsters & Grifters written by Chicago Tribune and published by Agate Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-17 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of some never-before-published vintage photos that “exposes Chicago’s underbelly . . . an era full of guns, gore and gangsters” (WGLT.org). Created from the Chicago Tribune's vast archives, Gangsters and Grifters is a collection of photographs featuring infamous criminals, small-time bandits, hoodlums, and more at shocking crime scenes. These vintage glass-plate and acetate negatives were taken from the early 1900s through the 1950s, and they have been largely unseen for generations. That is because most have never been published, only having been witnessed by the photographers and police in the moments after an arrest, crime, or even murder. Included are graphic crime scenes, raw evidence, and depictions of searing emotions, captured on film during a time when photographers were given unprecedented access alongside police. Some photographs resemble film noir movie stills. Some are cartoonish. All feature real people, real drama, and real crimes. Accompanying information about each is included wherever possible, often with archived news stories. Gangsters & Grifters is a powerful, visually stunning look back into the dark story of Chicago’s nefarious crime underworld. These fascinating, surprising, and entrancing photos reveal still-unsolved murder mysteries and portraits of notorious gang overlords like John Dillinger and Al Capone. This is a must-have for photography buffs, history lovers, and anyone curious about the seedy underbelly of early twentieth-century Chicago.

Gangsters & Grifters

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Author :
Publisher : Agate Pub Incorporated
ISBN 13 : 9781572841666
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (416 download)

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Book Synopsis Gangsters & Grifters by : Chicago Tribune

Download or read book Gangsters & Grifters written by Chicago Tribune and published by Agate Pub Incorporated. This book was released on 2014 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of vintage Chicago Tribune crime photographs, featuring infamous gangsters, small-time bandits, crooks, and wise guys.

The Grifters

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Publisher : Mulholland Books
ISBN 13 : 0316195936
Total Pages : 181 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (161 download)

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Book Synopsis The Grifters by : Jim Thompson

Download or read book The Grifters written by Jim Thompson and published by Mulholland Books. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jim Thompson's classic The Grifters is one of the best novels ever written about the art of the con, an ingeniously crafted story of deception and betrayal that was the basis for the critically acclaimed film by Stephen Frears and Martin Scorcese. To his friends, to his coworkers, and even to his mistress Moira, Roy Dillon is an honest hardworking salesman. He lives in a cheap hotel just within his pay bracket. He goes to work every day. He has hundreds of friends and associates who could attest to his good character. Yet, hidden behind three gaudy clown paintings in Roy's pallid hotel room, sits fifty-two thousand dollars — the money Roy makes from his short cons, his "grifting." For years, Roy has effortlessly maintained control over his house-of-cards life — until the simplest con goes wrong, and he finds himself critically injured and at the mercy of the most dangerous woman he ever met: his own mother.

What Every American Should Know About Who's Really Running the World

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 9780452286153
Total Pages : 452 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (861 download)

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Book Synopsis What Every American Should Know About Who's Really Running the World by : Melissa Rossi

Download or read book What Every American Should Know About Who's Really Running the World written by Melissa Rossi and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-11-29 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of us know the big players politically in the United States. But ever wonder who’s pulling their strings? Who the movers and shakers are around the globe? In sharp, witty prose, What Every American Should Know About Who’s Really Running the World spells out exactly who to watch and what they’ve done (and are still doing). Get the lowdown on: • Pfizer • Monsanto • Oprah Winfrey • WTO & IMF • Wal-Mart • Rupert Murdoch • Al Qaeda Filled with hard facts, global issues, and profiles of the heavy hitters, What Every American Should Know About Who’s Really Running the World is essential reading for all Americans who want a handle on the movers and shakers behind the headlines.

The Entertainer

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1594631883
Total Pages : 433 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (946 download)

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Book Synopsis The Entertainer by : Margaret Talbot

Download or read book The Entertainer written by Margaret Talbot and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the life and career of her father, writer Margaret Talbot tells the story of the rise of popular culture through a personal lens. The arc of Lyle Talbot's career is in fact the story of American entertainment. Born in 1902, Lyle left small-town Nebraska in 1918 to join a traveling carnival. From there he became a magician's assistant, an actor in a traveling theater troupe, a romantic lead in early talkies, then an actor in major Warner Bros. pictures, then an actor in cult B movies, and finally a part of the advent of television, with regular roles on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and Leave It to Beaver. In her impeccably researched narrative--a combination of Hollywood history, social history, and family memoir--Margaret Talbot conjures warmth and nostalgia for those earlier eras of '10s and '20s small-town America, '30s and '40s Hollywood.--From publisher description.

Can't Buy Me Love

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Author :
Publisher : Crown Archetype
ISBN 13 : 0307405494
Total Pages : 674 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Can't Buy Me Love by : Jonathan Gould

Download or read book Can't Buy Me Love written by Jonathan Gould and published by Crown Archetype. This book was released on 2007-10-02 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: That the Beatles were an unprecedented phenomenon is a given. In Can’t Buy Me Love, Jonathan Gould explains why, placing the Fab Four in the broad and tumultuous panorama of their time and place, rooting their story in the social context that girded both their rise and their demise. Nearly twenty years in the making, Can’t Buy Me Love is a masterful work of group biography, cultural history, and musical criticism. Beginning with their adolescence in Liverpool, Gould describes the seminal influences––from Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry to The Goon Show and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland––that shaped the Beatles both as individuals and as a group. In addition to chronicling their growth as singers, songwriters, and instrumentalists, he highlights the advances in recording technology that made their sound both possible and unique, as well as the developments in television and radio that lent an explosive force to their popular success. With a musician’s ear, Gould sensitively evokes the timeless appeal of the Lennon-McCartney collaboration and their emergence as one of the most creative and significant songwriting teams in history. Behind the scenes Gould explores the pivotal roles played by manager Brian Epstein and producer George Martin, credits the influence on the Beatles’ music of contemporaries like Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, and Ravi Shankar, and traces the gradual escalation of the fractious internal rivalries that led to the group’s breakup after their final masterpiece, Abbey Road. Most significantly, by chronicling their revolutionary impact on popular culture during the 1960s, Can’t Buy Me Love illuminates the Beatles as a charismatic phenomenon of international proportions, whose anarchic energy and unexpected import was derived from the historic shifts in fortune that transformed the relationship between Britain and America in the decades after World War II. From the Beats in America and the Angry Young Men in England to the shadow of the Profumo Affair and JFK’s assassination, Gould captures the pulse of a time that made the Beatles possible—and even necessary. As seen through the prism of the Beatles and their music, an entire generation’s experience comes astonishingly to life. Beautifully written, consistently insightful, and utterly original, Can’ t Buy Me Love is a landmark work about the Beatles, Britain, and America.

The Collaborators

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0593296648
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis The Collaborators by : Ian Buruma

Download or read book The Collaborators written by Ian Buruma and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-03-07 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ian Buruma’s spellbinding account of three near-mythic figures—a Dutch fixer, a Manchu princess, and Himmler’s masseur—who may have been con artists and collaborators under Japanese and German rule, or true heroes, or something in between. On the face of it, the three characters in this book seem to have little in common—aside from the fact that each committed wartime acts that led some to see them as national heroes, and others as villains. All three were mythmakers, larger-than-life storytellers, for whom the truth was beside the point. Felix Kersten was a plump Finnish pleasure-seeker who became Heinrich Himmler’s indispensable personal masseur—Himmler calling him his “magic Buddha.” Kersten presented himself after the war as a resistance hero who convinced Himmler to save countless people from mass murder. Kawashima Yoshiko, a gender-fluid Manchu princess, spied for the Japanese secret police in China, and was mythologized by the Japanese as a heroic combination of Mata Hari and Joan of Arc. Friedrich Weinreb was a Hasidic Jew in Holland who took large amounts of money from fellow Jews in an imaginary scheme to save them from deportation, while in fact betraying some of them to the German secret police. Sentenced after the war as a con artist, he was regarded regarded by supporters as the “Dutch Dreyfus.” All three figures have been vilified and mythologized, out of a never-ending need, Ian Buruma argues, to see history, and particularly war, and above all World War II, as a neat story of angels and devils. The Collaborators is a fascinating reconstruction of what in fact we can know about these incredible figures and what will always remain out of reach. What emerges is all the more mesmerizing for being painted in chiaroscuro. In times of life-and-death stakes, the truth quickly gets buried under lies and self-deception. Now, when demagogues abroad and at home are assaulting the truth once more, the stories of the collaborators and their lessons are indispensable.

The Annotated Big Sleep

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Author :
Publisher : Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
ISBN 13 : 0804168881
Total Pages : 514 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis The Annotated Big Sleep by : Raymond Chandler

Download or read book The Annotated Big Sleep written by Raymond Chandler and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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

Gangsters vs. Nazis

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Publisher : Citadel
ISBN 13 : 0806541806
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (65 download)

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Book Synopsis Gangsters vs. Nazis by : Michael Benson

Download or read book Gangsters vs. Nazis written by Michael Benson and published by Citadel. This book was released on 2024-07-23 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in paperback! The stunning true story of the rise of Nazism in America in the years leading to WWII—and the fearless Jewish gangsters and crime families who joined forces to fight back. With an intense cinematic style, acclaimed nonfiction crime author Michael Benson reveals the thrilling role of Jewish mobsters like Bugsy Siegel in stomping out the terrifying tide of Nazi sympathizers during the 1930s and 1940s. As Adolph Hitler rose to power in 1930s Germany, a growing wave of fascism began to take root on American soil. Nazi activists started to gather in major American cities, and by 1933, there were more than one-hundred anti-Semitic groups operating openly in the United States. Few Americans dared to speak out or fight back—until an organized resistance of notorious Jewish mobsters (Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Red Levine, and others) waged their own personal war against the Nazis in their midst, gangland-style . . . Packed with surprising, little-known facts, graphic details, and unforgettable personalities, Gangsters vs. Nazis chronicles the mob’s most ruthless tactics in taking down fascism—inspiring ordinary Americans to join them in their fight. The book culminates in one of the most infamous events of the pre-war era—the 1939 Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden—in which law-abiding citizens stood alongside hardened criminals to fight against the Nazis for the soul of America. This is the story of the mob that’s rarely told—one of the most fascinating chapters in American history and American organized crime.

Hard-Boiled

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Publisher : Temple University Press
ISBN 13 : 1592139116
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (921 download)

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Book Synopsis Hard-Boiled by : Erin Smith

Download or read book Hard-Boiled written by Erin Smith and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-07 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the culture that produced and supported pulp-fiction.

Rogues

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Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0385548524
Total Pages : 386 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis Rogues by : Patrick Radden Keefe

Download or read book Rogues written by Patrick Radden Keefe and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the award-winning author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing—and one of the most decorated journalists of our time—twelve enthralling true stories of skulduggery and intrigue "An excellent collection of Keefe's detective work, and a fine introduction to his illuminating writing." —NPR “Fast-paced...Keefe is a virtuoso storyteller." —The Washington Post Patrick Radden Keefe has garnered prizes ranging from the National Magazine Award to the Orwell Prize to the National Book Critics Circle Award for his meticulously-reported, hypnotically-engaging work on the many ways people behave badly. Rogues brings together a dozen of his most celebrated articles from The New Yorker. As Keefe says in his preface “They reflect on some of my abiding preoccupations: crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial.” Keefe brilliantly explores the intricacies of forging $150,000 vintage wines, examines whether a whistleblower who dared to expose money laundering at a Swiss bank is a hero or a fabulist, spends time in Vietnam with Anthony Bourdain, chronicles the quest to bring down a cheerful international black market arms merchant, and profiles a passionate death penalty attorney who represents the “worst of the worst,” among other bravura works of literary journalism. The appearance of his byline in The New Yorker is always an event, and collected here for the first time readers can see his work forms an always enthralling but deeply human portrait of criminals and rascals, as well as those who stand up against them.

Villainy in Western Culture

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Author :
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476625336
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (766 download)

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Book Synopsis Villainy in Western Culture by : M. Gregory Kendrick

Download or read book Villainy in Western Culture written by M. Gregory Kendrick and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every society has its lineup of wicked, unethical characters--real or fictional--who are regarded as villainous. This book explores how Western societies have used villains to sort insiders from outsiders and establish behavioral norms to support harmony and well-being. There are three parts: nature and "barbarians" as sinister "others" bent on destroying Western civilization; tyrants, traitors and "femmes fatales" as challenges to ideals of legitimate governance, patriotism and gender roles; and gangsters, grifters and murderers as models of evil or unprincipled behavior. The author also discusses two related phenomena: the dramatic paring down of what is considered villainous in the West, and the proliferation of over-the-top villains in pop culture and mass media. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Tomorrow City

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1472849590
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (728 download)

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Book Synopsis Tomorrow City by : Nathan Russell

Download or read book Tomorrow City written by Nathan Russell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-01-25 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dieselpunk roleplaying game of action, mystery and mad science! Tomorrow City was one of the cities of the future, built to usher in a new age of prosperity, seizing upon scientific achievements at the dawn of the twentieth century. Then came the War. Radium-powered soldiers assembled, diesel-fuelled nightmares rolled off production lines, city fought city, and the world burned in atomic fire. We survived, barely. Tomorrow City still stands, an oil-stained beacon of hope, part-refuge, part-asylum. Beset by dangers from both within and without, a secret war now rages on its streets. Diesel-born monstrosities stalk the alleyways, air pirates strike from the wastelands, mad scientists continue their dark work, occultists manipulate the city's strange geometry, and secret societies plot in the shadows. Tomorrow City is a roleplaying game of dark science and dieselpunk action. Swift and simple character creation and an easy-to-learn dice pool system places the emphasis on unique personalities and the momentum of the plot. Join the Underground and fight the crime and corruption at the heart of the city. Sell your dieselpunk tech, occult knowledge, and sheer grit as troubleshooters for mysterious paymasters. Hunt down spies, saboteurs, and science-run-amok. As weary sky rangers, fringe scientists, and radium-powered veterans, you might be all that stands between a better tomorrow and no tomorrow at all.

A Ferrie Tale

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Author :
Publisher : Archway Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1480865354
Total Pages : 500 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (88 download)

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Book Synopsis A Ferrie Tale by : David T. Beddow

Download or read book A Ferrie Tale written by David T. Beddow and published by Archway Publishing. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What a long, strange trip it was. Through the night after JFK was assassinated, a quirky New Orleans man named David Ferrie drove from the Big Easy, rain beating on his windshield, to a deserted ice skating rink in Houston, arriving at three fifteen in the morning. After nervously making several payphone calls then and the next day from the rink, Ferrie turned around and headed home, where he was immediately arrested for conspiring to murder the president. Why? And why, thirty-nine months later, on the verge of being rearrested for the same crime, did he suddenly and suspiciously die? A Ferrie Tale paints a picture of the life of this complex man—commercial pilot, amateur Catholic priest, weekend scientist, hypnotist, detective, pianist, practicing psychologist, criminal. Appearing throughout the mosaic of his improbable story are the likes of mobster Carlos Marcello, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, a crafty Cuban exile named Sergio Arcacha Smith, cancer researcher Dr. Mary Sherman, DA Jim Garrison. Strippers. Gamblers. Popping in and out is an unlikely trio bound together by their tangled connections to JFK—Frank Sinatra, Chicago kingpin Sam Giancana, and JFK girlfriend Judith Campbell. The seductive and decadent city of New Orleans, the most unique and operatic city in America, provides the beat to this tale. Over time New Orleans’s citizens have been suffused with an amuse-yourself attitude—sometimes reasonable, sometimes not—that affected events in Ferrie’s life. “In this town,” as Ferrie was wont to say, “the craziest things make perfect sense.” David Ferrie was a conflicted figure who would’ve been remarkable even had he not been involved in a plot to assassinate President Kennedy. But his long tumble into this plot made him, as Orleans Parish DA Garrison publicly announced, “one of history’s most important individuals.”

A Sad Song Singing

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Author :
Publisher : Wildside Press LLC
ISBN 13 : 1479437018
Total Pages : 171 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (794 download)

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Book Synopsis A Sad Song Singing by : Thomas B. Dewey

Download or read book A Sad Song Singing written by Thomas B. Dewey and published by Wildside Press LLC. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The girl had lost her guitar-playing boyfriend, but he had left her the most deadly legacy of all -- fear. And now it was up to me to protect her from the gun-carrying thugs who were relentlessly tracking her down. Hoodlums, hootenannies, and homicide! #10 in the Mac detective series! "Mac is one of our best private eyes." -- San Francisco Chronicle "Thomas B. Dewey is one of detective fiction's severely underrated writers!" -- Bill Pronzini "Mac has been called one of the most believable and humane PI's in crime fiction. He is reluctant to use either his gun or his fists, but will do so when the situation demands it, or in self-defense; he doesn't merely solve his clients' cases, but provides moral support and sympathy as well; and perhaps most notable of all, Mac feels, and is not afraid to show itópain, loss, sorrow, loneliness." --thrillingdetective.com

Tiger Rag

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Author :
Publisher : Dial Press
ISBN 13 : 0679645349
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (796 download)

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Book Synopsis Tiger Rag by : Nicholas Christopher

Download or read book Tiger Rag written by Nicholas Christopher and published by Dial Press. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed author of Veronica and A Trip to the Stars returns with a dazzling new novel based on one of the great legends of musical history. New Orleans, 1900. The virtuoso cornet player Charles “Buddy” Bolden invents jazz, but after a life consumed by tragedy, the groundbreaking sound of his horn vanishes with him. Rumors persist, though, that Bolden recorded a phonograph cylinder, and over the course of a century it evolves into the elusive holy grail of jazz. Florida, the present day. Dr. Ruby Cardillo’s life is falling apart. Her husband, a prominent cardiologist, has left her for a twenty-six-year-old. Her daughter, Devon, a once promising jazz pianist, has recently finished an enforced stint picking up trash along the interstate after a drug conviction. Ruby’s estranged mother has just died, but not before conjuring up ghosts that Ruby thought she had put behind her long ago. After a long career as a well-respected anesthesiologist, Ruby suddenly jumps the tracks, forgetting to eat and sleep, indulging her every whim, wearing only purple, consuming only bottles of 1988 Château Latour. Then Ruby enlists Devon to accompany her on an impulsive road trip to New York, and both mother and daughter get more than they bargained for, discovering that their own shrouded family history is connected to the tantalizing search for Buddy Bolden’s long-lost cylinder. Ranging from turn-of-the-century Louisiana to Roaring Twenties Chicago to contemporary Manhattan, Tiger Rag is at once a moving story of loss and redemption and an intricate historical mystery from one of our most brilliant storytellers. Praise for Tiger Rag “The structure here is like a long and complex jazz arrangement. There is a comparatively simple theme set up against what might be thought of as distinctive chord changes. And then, against this main story, the author sets up what might be seen as highly individualistic solos. The themes of the male performers and the female audiences come together, separate, then come together again. If you love the world of jazz, if it’s a little like a religion to you, you’ll love this ambitious, thoughtful novel.” —The Washington Post “Describing music in a book is a bit like trying to describe color to a blind person; it rarely goes well. The opening stretch of Nicholas Christopher’s latest novel Tiger Rag, however, paints a picture of a jazz recording session so vividly that the reader might want to keep a towel handy for mopping his brow James Brown-style.” —GQ.com “Nicholas Christopher's new novel, Tiger Rag, is a New Year's treat that lovers of good music and good writing should not deny themselves. . . . Nicholas is a master at building a rich story populated with vivid characters on the bare foundation of historical record. Although no recording of Bolden and his band has yet surfaced, his sideman Willy Cornish, a trombone player, died claiming a recording session took place. Nicholas has imagined a satisfying and engrossing tale about what might have happened. He has fleshed out the lives touched by the wax cylinders that stored three versions of “Tiger Rag.” From the musicians who played with or followed Bolden, to the recording engineer and his assistant at the fateful recording session, Nicholas has created a colourful cast whose stories draw readers into their lives. . . . Nicholas is a poet as well as a novelist, and the book sings, thanks to his compelling descriptions and use of imagery. . . . [C]ompulsively readable.” —The Toronto Star