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Out of Sight by Elmore Leonard. New York. 1996. Delcorte Press. 0385308485. 296 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Artparts Studio.  

DESCRIPTION - Deputy U.S. marshal Karen Sisco is just stopping off to serve a summons and complaint on Florida's Glades Prison. She's all decked out in her black Chanel suit and heels, but ready with her pump-action shotgun when the breakout begins, minutes after she pulls into the prison parking lot. But she's not ready for Jack Foley, the celebrity con who disarms her, invites her to climb into the trunk of her own car, and then joins her as his pal Buddy guns the blue Caprice onto the highway, heading for freedom. Squeezed into a trunk littered with handcuffs and tactical gear, the escapee bank robber is a perfect gentleman who shares her passion for movies and wonders if it would be different if they'd met in a bar. Karen escapes and they do meet again. Only this time she's part of the federal task force hunting the escapees. This time she's sitting in the bar of the Detroit Westin, nursing a sour mash and watching a blizzard outside. This time Foley finds her. First come cocktails and conversation. Then Time Out. In Karen's suite. ‘You like taking risks,' she says. ‘So do I.' Next morning Foley's gone and Karen's out to get him. She cruises Detroit's mean streets and boxing hangouts looking for Foley, Buddy, and a hard case named Maurice, one step behind them as they plot the biggest heist of their careers - and a double cross that will leave only one man holding the goods. This time Karen means business as she races toward a hair-raising climax that careens pell-mell into suspense-writing history.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Elmore John Leonard Jr. (born October 11, 1925), better known as Elmore Leonard, is an American novelist and screenwriter. His earliest published novels in the 1950s were westerns, but Leonard went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into motion pictures. Among his best-known works are GET SHORTY, OUT OF SIGHT, HOMBRE, MR. MAJESTYK and RUM PUNCH, which was filmed as Jackie Brown. Leonard's short stories include ones that became the films 3: 10 to Yuma and The Tall T, as well as the current TV series on FX, Justified.

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City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit by Elmore Leonard. New York. 1980. Arbor House. 275 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Antler & Baldwin.

  
DESCRIPTION - Ride down Woodward Avenue into the Motor City, toward a deadly show-down between dedicated homicide detective Raymond Cruz and a psychopathic murderer, 'Oklahoma Wildman' Clement Mansell, who picked the wrong town to kill someone, even if it was only a crooked judge.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Elmore John Leonard Jr. (born October 11, 1925), better known as Elmore Leonard, is an American novelist and screenwriter. His earliest published novels in the 1950s were westerns, but Leonard went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into motion pictures. Among his best-known works are GET SHORTY, OUT OF SIGHT, HOMBRE, MR. MAJESTYK and RUM PUNCH, which was filmed as Jackie Brown. Leonard's short stories include ones that became the films 3: 10 to Yuma and The Tall T, as well as the current TV series on FX, Justified.

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In the Hat by Dannie Martin. New York. 1997. Simon & Schuster. 0684833352. 272 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by John Gall.  

DESCRIPTION - Dannie Martin went to the toughest writing school on the planet - jail. Now, he writes to tell us stories from that world he left behind, the hard but somehow brutally honest world of the career criminal. Martin offers the story of Vernon Coy, a pimp and small-time bank robber who's living the easy life with two girls and a rooster. Of course, the easy life never stays easy for long. What Vern doesn't know is that he's in the hat. There's a little ritual unique prison gangs. When someone crosses your gang, his name gets put in the hat with a bunch of blank slips of paper. Whoever draws the slip with the name on it is expected to make sure that this someone ends up dead before the next lockdown. Since Vern's on the outside, killing him won't be that simple or that quick, but if the Duboce White Boys have their way, it won't be long before Vern is just another body with tag on its toe.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Dannie "Red Hog" Martin wrote more than 50 dispatches about life behind bars for The Chronicle from 1986 to 1992, and then collaborated with his editor at the paper, Peter Sussman, on a best-selling book about his life as a convicted bank robber and their fight for his right to write. Mr. Martin and The Chronicle took a federal lawsuit all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in pursuit of a prisoner's journalistic rights and ultimately lost. But along the way, Mr. Martin gained worldwide support and picked up a slew of press awards. His reputation as a First Amendment figure was such that after he died of heart failure at home in Montgomery, Alabama on December 24, 2013 at age 74.

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Cage Five Is Going to Break by E. Richard Johnson. New York. 1970. Harper & Row. 149 pages. hardcover. Jacket photo by Vince Alosa.  

DESCRIPTION - His name was Stacy Tate, and he'd left a string at forty robberies around the country and had been convicted on only four of them, which had been enough to put him in Murphy Farm. Stacy was a solid-looking man, as hard and as tough as any man the steel-mill slums of Pittsburgh had ever put on the pistol circuit. He had the fight-scarred hands and snake-quick temper to prove it, and he'd had to prove it a few times during his first year at Murphy. That, plus his ability to keep his guts intact, had made him cage boss. A Yankee cage boss in a Southern prison. A prison that hadn't much going for it-cockroaches, bean fields, shotgun guards, and the ‘Smith & ‘Wesson Line.' And Captain Hans Hartmann and his Hundred - who were as tough as Stacy or tougher. In spite at which, Stacy had made a Plan . . . a plan that would, he hoped, get him out at Murphy Farm. Him and his five cell mates. He supposed that if everything worked right, absolutely right, all six of them might make it. But that was a pretty big ‘if' to be tossing around.  E. RICHARD JOHNSON, whose earlier novels have won him the respect of critics and the growing interest of readers across the country (and overseas), has written a rough, exciting novel which pulls the reader into and along with it-and which might just shake up a few people and places in our Southern prison system.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Emil Richard Johnson (born 1938 in Prentice, Wisconsin ; died December 1997 ) was an American writer of crime fiction. Johnson came from a large family; his ancestors were German immigrants. After graduating from the school in his hometown, he volunteered for the army . There he served in different positions at various locations and was eventually promoted to the rank of Sergeant. Johnson left the army in 1960, but had trouble integrating into civilian life. With no fixed abode, he entered into a life of crime. In 1962 during a robbery in Minnesota Johnson shot a security guard. He already had two convictions and as a result was sentenced to forty years in prison at the State Prison of Stillwater in Minnesota. In prison, Johnson began writing out of boredom. As a recreational hunter and angler he wrote articles about these topics, in addition to short stories and puzzles for children's magazines. His debut novel, Death on Silver Street ( Silver Street ), proved to be his literary breakthrough. Audiences and critics alike were enthusiastic, and the novel won an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America in 1969. He shared the prize with Dorothy Uhnak for the novel Murder girl with reservation ( The Bait ). His success as an author made Johnson wealthy. In the seventies however, he started taking drugs and stopped writing. In 1979 he had a number of overdoses, but survived and ended his dependence. He married and began to write again before he was pardoned in 1989. The marriage failed, and Johnson began to drink. He was found dead in his apartment on 18 December 1997.

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A Dog's Ransom by Patricia Highsmith. New York. 1972. Knopf. 0394480694. 275 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Wendell C. Minor.  

DESCRIPTION - A dog disappears. A ransom is demanded. The well-meaning, middle-aged New York couple - childless, generous - pay up. And pay again. The kidnapper - angry, perhaps psychotic - tricks them. The decent young policeman, obsessed with the case, falls deeper and deeper into involvement with the criminal, and with his victims. A ‘minor' crime inexorably grows into an agonizing and violent tragedy. This is the material from which the brilliant and subtle Patricia Highsmith has created another novel of psychological depth and tension. It confirms the judgment of her work expressed on the publication of her last book by The Times Literary Supplement: ‘She is the crime writer who comes closest to giving crime writing a good name.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921, Patricia Highsmith spent much of her adult life in Switzerland and France. Educated at Barnard College, where she studied English, Latin, and Greek, she had her first novel, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, published in 1950 and saw it quickly made into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock. Despite receiving little recognition in her native land during her lifetime, Highsmith, the author of more than twenty books, won the O. Henry Memorial Award, The Edgar Allan Poe Award, Le Grand Prix de LittErarure Policière, and the Award of the Crime Writers' Association of Great Britain. She died in Switzerland in 1995, and her literary archives are maintained in Berne.

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Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. New York. 1981. Putnam. 039912442x. 349 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Ron Walotsky.  

DESCRIPTION - In the realm of psychological suspense, Thomas Harris stands alone. exploring both the nature of human evil and the nerve-racking anatomy of forensic investigation, Harris unleashes a frightening vision of the dark side of our well-lighted world. In this extraordinary tale  - which preceded The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, Harris introduced the unforgettable character Dr. Hannibal Lecter. And in it, Will Graham  - the FBI man who hunted Lecter down  - risks his sanity and his life to duel a killer called . . . The Red Dragon A quiet summer night.a neat suburban house.and another happy family is shattered  - the latest victims of a grisly series of hideous sacrificial killings that no one understands, and no one can stop. Nobody lives to tell of the unimaginable carnage. Only the blood-stained walls bear witness. All hope rests on the Special Agent Will Graham, who must peer inside the killer's tortured soul to understand his rage, to anticipate and prevent his next vicious crime. Desperate for help, Graham finds himself locked in a deadly alliance with the brilliant Dr. Hannibal Lecter  - the infamous mass murderer who Graham put in prison years ago. As the imprisoned Lecter tightens the reins of revenge, Graham's feverish pursuit of the Red Dragon draws him inside the warped mind of a psychopath,, into an unforgettable world of demonic ritual and violence, beyond the limits of human terror.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Thomas Harris (born April 11, 1940) is an American author and screenwriter, best known for a series of suspense novels about his most famous character, Hannibal Lecter. All of his works have been made into films, the most notable being the multi-Oscar winning The Silence of the Lambs, which became only the third film in Academy Award history to sweep the Oscars in major categories.

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The Hoke Moseley novels of Charles Willeford

Miami Blues by Charles Willeford. New York. 1984. St Martin's Press. 0312531710. 191 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Walter Harper.  

DESCRIPTION - Career criminal ‘Junior' Frenger has just flown into Miami Airport on his stolen credit cards and vanished - leaving a corpse in the V.I.P. lounge. All of Miami, from beachfront hotels to ethnic slums, is now a network of hidey-holes for the psychopathic Frenger. Inspired liar, a chameleon who can pass for a policeman and then blend in among the citizens he preys on, Frenger remains unpredictable and elusive - until he comes after homicide detective Hoke Moseley with Hoke's own gun. MIAMI BLUES is a gritty suspense story by a veteran author whom Erskine Caldwell has praised for ‘the powerful sensation of a violent life in the characters he has created.'

New Hope For the Dead by Charles Willeford. New York. 1985. St Martin's Press. 0312567618. 244 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Walter Harp.

DESCRIPTION - Charles Willeford won remarkable acclaim for MIAMI BLUES, his thriller about Sergeant Hoke Moseley's war with a ‘blithe psychopath' who turned Miami upside down. Now Hoke is back, impeded in his pursuit of a new Miami killer by orders to take on the ‘cold case' files - seemingly insoluble crimes that are keeping his boss from a promotion. Then, on Hoke's doorstep: a surprise from his ex-wife to complicate his affairs. From Hoke's Cuban partner, Ellita Sanchez: tearful news that puts his diplomatic skills to the test. From the sensuous young stepmother of the boy whose death Hoke is investigating: a surprising offer that Hoke accepts at his peril, then turns to unexpected advantage. Syncopated by Charles Willeford's unpredictable dark humor, pulsing with street talk and street violence, New Hope for the Dead is a stunner by a unique talent whom The New Yorker calls ‘extraordinarily winning.'

Sideswipe by Charles Willeford. New York. 1987. St Martin's Press. 293 pages. Jacket design by Walter Harper. 0312001886. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Hoke Moseley, the leisure-suited Miami homicide detective introduced in MIAMI BLUES and NEW HOPE FOR THE DEAD, finally shows the world around him what a real ‘burned out’ cop does - he stops working, stops talking, stops thinking. and sits unseeing in his chair with a complete crime-induced breakdown of the highest order. In another part of the state: Career criminal Troy Louden - amoral, alias many other names, and reminiscent of certain reptiles - has arrived to upset the balance of nature on the city streets of south Florida. SIDESWIPE, like its predecessors, is distinguished by Hoke Moseley's utterly original way of doing business on his beat, and by a blithe and pitiless killer as fascinating as any antagonist in police fiction. Here two sets of lives that should have absolutely nothing to do with each other collide in a spectacular and violent supermarket robbery that shouldn't have happened, but did. Syncopated by Charles Willeford's unpredictable dark humor, pulsating with street talk and street violence, SIDESWIPE careens through a multiethnic, tropical antiparadise that is, writes the Miami Herald, ‘neither the Oz/ Miami of the travel posters nor the Inferno/ Miami of the media, but a full-color map of a place where some people actually live. ’ Entertaining, gruesome, surprising, convincing - this impressive novel is everything to be hoped of a new addition to the popular Hoke Moseley crime canon.

The Way We Die Now by Charles Willeford. New York. 1988. Random House. 0394565258. 247 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by George Corsillo.  

DESCRIPTION - Hoke Moseley was really getting into the ‘cold cases' he'd been assigned - and then Commander Bill Henderson dropped into Hoke's office and told him to let his beard grow for a couple of days. Henderson couldn't say why, only that Major Willie Brownley, the division chief, had something up his sleeve. Hoke went back to puzzling out what an electronic garage door opener might have to do with a three-year-old murder. But the major's request nagged at him. What was secret? And on top of that, when he got home he discovered that the man who just bought the house across the street was a fellow he had put away for murder - and there he was, out on parole, sitting on his lawn staring at Hoke's house. Hoke soon found out what the beard was for - at least as much as the major wanted to tell him. At a ramshackle crossroads south of Miami, Hoke was stripped of all identification - money, wallet, gun and even his false teeth - and sent south to the migrant farms where rumors of slavery and murder had become impossible to ignore. From this point on, the bizarre and brutal story Charles Willeford unfolds will literally blow away any reader lucky enough to pick up THE WAY WE DIE NOW. As KIRKUS said of an earlier Willeford book, ‘A nasty crime comedy that's full of casual violence, outrageous coincidence and hilariously rude dialog. . . . Willeford has a marvelously deadpan way with losers on both sides of the law.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Charles Ray Willeford III (January 2, 1919 - March 27, 1988) was an American writer. An author of fiction, poetry, autobiography, and literary criticism, Willeford is best known for his series of novels featuring hardboiled detective Hoke Moseley. The first Hoke Moseley book, MIAMI BLUES (1984), is considered one of its era's most influential works of crime fiction. Film adaptations have been made of three of Willeford's novels: COCKFIGHTER, MIAMI BLUES, and THE WOMAN CHASER.

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The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. New York. 2003. Penguin Books. Translated From The French & With An Introduction By Robin Buss. 1276 pages. The cover shows a detail of 'Smugglers Landing in a Storm' by Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg. 0140449264.

DESCRIPTION - Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas' epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it was first serialized in the 1840s. Robin Buss' lively translation is complete and unabridged, and remains faithful to the style of Dumas' original. This edition includes an introduction, explanatory notes and suggestions for further reading.

 Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870), one of the most popular writers of all time, is the author of THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO and THE THREE MUSKETEERS), along with dozens of other works of every genre. His remains were recently removed to the Pantheon, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a French writer.

Julie Rose’s many translations include an acclaimed version of Racine’s PHÈDRE, as well as works by Paul Virilio, Jacques Rancière, Chantal Thomas, and many others. Rose was recently awarded the New South Wales Premier’s Translation Prize and the PEN medallion for translation.

Lorenzo Carcaterra is the author of STREET BOYS and SLEEPERS, among other books. He lives in New York.

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A Childhood by Harry Crews. New York. 1978. Harper & Row. 171 pages. Jacket design by Honi Werner. 0060109327. October 1978. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - A CHILDHOOD is the unforgettable memoir of Harry Crews's earliest years, a sharply remembered portrait of the people, locales, and circumstances that shaped him - and destined him to be a storyteller. Crews was born in the middle of the Great Depression, in a one-room sharecropper's cabin at the end of a dirt road in rural south Georgia. If Bacon County was a place of grinding poverty, poor soil, and blood feuds, it was also a deeply mystical place, where snakes talked, birds could possess a small boy by spitting in his mouth, and faith healers and conjure women kept ghosts and devils at bay. At once shocking and elegiac, heartrending and comical, A CHILDHOOD not only recalls the transforming events of Crews's youth but conveys his growing sense of self in a world 'in which survival depended on raw courage, a courage born out of desperation and sustained by a lack of alternatives.'

And, in an illustrated edtion by University of Georgia Press:

Crews, Harry. A Childhood. Athens. 1995. University Of Georgia Press. 0820317594. Illustrated by Michael McCurdy. 192 pages. hardcover.

Harry Eugene Crews (7 June 1935 – 28 March 2012) was an American novelist, playwright, short story writer and essayist. He was born in Bacon County, Georgia in 1935 and served in the Marines during the Korean War. He attended the University of Florida on the GI Bill, but dropped out to travel. Eventually returning to the university, Harry finally graduated and moved his wife, Sally, and son, Patrick Scott, to Jacksonville where he taught Junior High English for a year. Crews returned to Gainesville and the university to work on his master's in English Education. It was during this period that he and Sally divorced for the first time. Harry continued his studies, graduated, and – denied entrance into UF's Creative Writing program – took a teaching position at Broward Community College in the subject of English. It was here in south Florida that Harry convinced Sally to return to him, and they were re-married. A second son, Byron, was born to them in 1963. He returned to University of Florida in 1968 not as a student, but as a member of the faculty in Creative Writing. Crews formerly taught in the creative writing program at the University of Florida. In 1964, Patrick Scott drowned in a neighbor's pool. This proved to be too heavy a burden on the family, and Harry and Sally were once again divorced. His first published novel, The Gospel Singer, appeared in 1968. His novels include: A Feast of Snakes, The Hawk is Dying, Body, Scar Lover, The Knockout Artist, Karate Is A Thing of the Spirit, All We Need of Hell, The Mulching of America, Car, and Celebration. He published a memoir in 1978 titled A Childhood: The Biography of a Place. Crews wrote essays for Esquire, Playboy, and Fame. He had a column in Esquire called ‘Grits’ for fourteen months in the 1970s, where he covered such topics as cockfighting and dog fighting. Harry had a tattoo on his right arm which said: ‘How do you like your blue eyed boy Mr. Death’ (from the poem Buffalo Bill's by e.e. cummings) beneath a skull. The University of Georgia acquired Harry Crews's papers in August 2006. The archive includes manuscripts and typescripts of his fiction, correspondence, and notes made by Crews while on assignment. He died 28 March 2012, from complications of neuropathy.

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 Black Looks: Race & Representation by bell hooks. Boston. 1992. South End Press. 200 pages. Cover design by Julie Ault and G. Watkins.

 DESCRIPTION - In these twelve new essays, feminist theorist and cultural critic bell hooks digs ever deeper into the personal and political consequences of contemporary representations of black women and men within our white supremacist culture. Taking on popular music, advertising, literature, television, historical narrative, and, most importantly, film, hooks consistently demonstrates the incisive intelligence and passion for justice that prompted Publishers Weekly to dub her 'one of the foremost black intellectuals in America today.'

Gloria Jean Watkins (September 25, 1952 – December 15, 2021), better known by her pen name bell hooks, was an American author, professor, feminist, and social activist. The name "bell hooks" is borrowed from her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks. The focus of hooks' writing was the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she described as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination. She published more than 30 books and numerous scholarly articles, appeared in documentary films, and participated in public lectures. Her work addressed race, class, gender, art, history, sexuality, mass media, and feminism. Also an academic, she taught at institutions including Stanford University, Yale University, and The City College of New York, before in 2004 joining Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, where a decade later she founded the bell hooks Institute.

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