Classic Noir

Noir - as a style, movement, or sensibility - has its roots in hardboiled detective fiction by writers like Chandler and Hammett, and films adapted from their novels were among the first called "film noir" by French cineastes. But film isn't the only medium with a taste for a dark story. Hundreds of noir dramas have been produced for television, featuring detectives and femmes fatales, gangsters, and dark deeds, continuing week after week, with a new disruption of the social order. In TV Noir, television historian Allen Glover presents the first complete study of the subject.

To Florence Hackett and her daughters Elinor and Louisa, Richard Baurie, a handsome young bookstore clerk and aspiring poet, seems a little odd but harmless enough. With his amusing conversation and his eager-to-please attitude, Richard works his way into the Hacketts' confidence until he is almost one of the family. When he suggests they rent Wisteria Cottage, a charming seaside residence, it seems to promise a summer of pleasant companionship and fun.

Navigating her way through nightmarish lands devoid of sunlight, Eyelet Elsworth races to free her beloved Urlick Babbit, the first person to understand and accept her - differences and all. Framed for murder and sentenced to execution, Urlick is running out of time. And the Commonwealth's tyrannical new ruler, Penelope Rapture, is strangely eager to speed up the clock.

Der in Prag aufgewachsene Karl Rossmann wird im Alter von sechzehn Jahren von seinen Eltern nach Amerika geschickt. Auf seiner unfreiwilligen Reise durch das Land trifft er Heizer, Bankiers und Senatoren, trunkene Maschinenschlosser, Liftboys, einsame Mädchen, Studenten und Laufburschen. Wie ein Blatt im Wind wird der junge Karl durch alle Gesellschaftsklassen Amerikas geweht, immer abwärts geht die Reise.

For Arthur Rowe the charity fête was a trip back to childhood, to innocence, a welcome chance to escape the terror of the Blitz, to forget 20 years of his past and a murder. Then he guesses the weight of the cake, and from that moment on he's a hunted man, the target of shadowy killers, on the run and struggling to remember and to find the truth.

L'histoire, racontée à la première personne, est l'autobiographie d'un cheval nommé Prince Noir qui commence sa vie poulain dans une ferme anglaise. Le roman raconte les mésaventures de ce cheval, vendu par ses premiers propriétaires, jusqu'à devenir cheval de fiacre dans les rues de Londres. Tout au long de l'histoire, Prince Noir est confronté à la cruauté ou la sympathie des hommes, et continue à faire le travail qu'on lui demande avec courage.

A society matron's life is threatened after she engineers the theft of her own priceless jewelry to pay off a gambling debt. Only a debonair connoisseur of crime can save her and recover her gems. For a price.

‘The perfect murder must be so simple that no one would suspect it to be murder.’ This Way Out Philip Marshall is locked in a long and hellish marriage with his wife Cora, with divorce not an option. Cora delights in tormenting Philip, ready to pour bile in his ear at the slightest provocation; complaining of “his weaknesses…his failure as a money-maker…his deficiencies as a lover” to almost anyone who will listen. Home life is so unpleasant that their son John has moved out, telling his landlady he is an orphan. By chance, Philip meets young Mary Grey and finds the warmth and ...

Le Chat noir (The Black Cat), publié en 1843, est une autre des nouvelles emblématiques d'Edgar Allan Poe. Comme dans Le Cœur révélateur, cette histoire plonge dans les thèmes de la folie, de la culpabilité et de la violence, tout en explorant les conséquences de l'alcoolisme et du mal-être psychologique. C’est un récit d’horreur qui examine la dégradation d’un homme sous l’influence de ses obsessions et de ses vices.

Broadway Can Be Murder started out to be a novel based on Johnny Midnight, a TV series which everyone has long since forgotten. Except, of course, that nothing manages to be forgotten in the Internet Age. I, whose job it was to knock out 50,000 words of Johnny Midnightish prose and dialogue, had forgotten when it ran and who was in it, but Google took no time at all to remind me that the title role was played by Edmund O’Brien, and that the series ran during the first nine months of 1960. I was in New York, newly married, living at 110 West 69th Street.

Frankie Machine (Sinatra), a recovering heroin addict and illegal card dealer, returns home to his squalid neighborhood in Chicago after six months in prison. He is hoping to go straight and find a job as a drummer, but when both his ex-drug pusher, Louie, and his ruthless former employer, Schwiefka, show up, Frankie is in trouble.

La Perle Noire de Victorien Sardou est une œuvre captivante qui mêle mystère, romance et drame dans un décor somptueux de l'Europe du XIXe siècle. Ce récit enchanteur tourne autour d'une perle noire mystérieuse, un symbole de richesse et de secrets cachés, qui devient le pivot d'intrigues complexes et de relations tumultueuses. À travers des personnages profondément humains et des rebondissements inattendus, Sardou explore des thèmes intemporels tels que la cupidité, l’amour et la quête de vérité.

Charlie Rutland, a womanizing journalist, is found brutally murdered. He worked for a muck-raking gossip magazine and therefore had many enemies. Detective Crow is assigned to Yorkshire where he must eliminate a long list of suspects. And where does the German businessman Conrad Gunther fit in? Mysterious lights at Lockyer Tarn, a homeless man hiding out on the Yorkshire Dales, a stolen Volvo, and a former Gestapo officer are all seemingly linked in some manner. And then the British spy services get involved....

Le Chat noir relate l'implacable chute d'un homme. C'est l'une des nouvelles qui ont assuré la célébrité d'Edgar Poe, et ont décidé Charles Baudelaire...

Film noir is a genre that reached its peak in the 1940s and 1950s. Characterized by dark lighting and inspired by crime fiction, it often features characters such as a tough-guy hero, mysterious beauties who may or may not be on the level, and prominent people with crimes to hide.The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) is a beloved film in this exciting genre, and in this audio adaptation you will experience the same thrill, as the characters come alive in your mind as you hear their voices from the original motion picture.

The 1960s' toughest, brainiest, sexiest, and most compassionate spy, is back in print! Meet McHugh America's#1 Secret Agent a combination of Mickey Spillaine's Mike Hammer and Ian Flemming's James Bond. In this first book in the series, McHugh takes a leave of absence from his spy work to help out his lover's sister who has found a dead Mafioso in her apartment, her boyfriend missing, and half San Francisco's mobsters after her.

The classic horror story of dual personalities gone too far, this full-cast narration explores the attempts of Utterson, a London lawyer, to investigate the strange occurrences surrounding his friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the shocking discoveries he makes along the way. The impact of this story has been so strong that "Jekyll and Hyde" has become part of our vernacular, referring to those who are outwardly good but inwardly evil.

"L'ho scarabocchiato col sangue - la tua vita dipende dal restare nascosto." "Forse il vocabolo fiction trova qui una delle massime espressioni proprio perché la genialità di Edgar Allan Poe, lo scrittore, sta nell'affidare al giovane Arthur Gordon Pym il resoconto di una vicenda che il signor Arthur Gordon Pym affida al signor Edgar Allan Poe (quello dentro il romanzo) per renderla, da un certo punto in avanti, credibile al grande pubblico. […]

Natalia ha diciassette anni, studia al liceo, è una ragazza graziosa, con una vita normale. Ma il dolore bussa alla sua porta: il padre, un medico di Lugano, muore d'infarto e lei, per affrontare il lutto, si rifugia con la madre nella loro casa di Corvesco, tra le montagne del Canton Ticino. E lì un delitto sconvolge il suo già difficile equilibrio. Natalia, di colpo, smette di parlare. I suoi ricordi sono confusi, forse ha visto qualcosa, ma non riesce a esprimersi: lo shock le ha chiuso la bocca.

Nella sala d'aspetto dell'aeroporto di Francoforte, un gruppo di viaggiatori attende di partire per Londra. Tra costoro c'è anche Sir Stafford Nye, un diplomatico inglese noto soprattutto per il suo spirito caustico e i suoi atteggiamenti stravaganti. Mentre si guarda intorno in cerca di un diversivo, una giovane donna gli si avvicina e gli chiede di cederle mantella e passaporto: potrà così imbarcarsi al suo posto, per sfuggire a un misterioso assassino.