Cockfighter

Author

J.G. Ballard

On a day in April, just after three o'clock in the afternoon, Robert Maitland's car crashes over the concrete parapet of a high-speed highway onto the island below, where he is injured and, finally, trapped. What begins as an almost ludicrous predicament in Concrete Island soon turns into horror as...

Author

Horace McCoy

Horace McCoy’s 1935 novel They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? contains one of the bleakest lines in all of literature. It’s where Gloria, who dances in the marathon dance, asks without a trace of irony or black humor, ”Why are these high-powered scientists always screwing around trying...

Author	George V. Higgins
ISBN	1841192627

Eddie Coyle works for Jimmy Scalisi, supplying him with guns for a couple of bank jobs. But a cop named Foley is on to Eddie and he's leaning on him to finger Scalisi, a gang leader with a lot to hide. And then there's Dillon-a full-time bartender and part-time contract killer--pretending to be Eddie's...

Author	William Lindsay Gresham
ISBN	1590173481

Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a freak-show geek—alcoholic and abject and the object of the voyeuristic crowd’s gleeful disgust and derision—going about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low....

Author	V. Vale
ISBN	1889307017

This classic guide to little-known films neglected by the film-criticism establishment features interviews with Herschell Gordon Lewis, Russ Meyer, Ray Dennis Steckler, Ted V. Mikels, Larry Cohen, and others who dared to make independent feature films their way, without bowing to a committee...

Author	Jim Thompson
ISBN	0316403784

Nick Corey is a terrible sheriff on purpose. He doesn't solve problems, enforce rules or arrest criminals. He knows that nobody in tiny Potts County actually wants to follow the law and he is perfectly content lazing about, eating five meals a day, and sleeping with all the eligible women.

Still,...