Megan Abbott Books In Order

Die a Little

How does a respectable young woman fall into Los Angeles’ hard boiled underworld? Shadow dodging through the glamorous world of 1950s Hollywood and its seedy flip side, Megan Abbott’s debut, Die a Little, is a gem of the darkest hue. This ingenious twist on a classic noir tale tells the story of Lora King, a schoolteacher, and her brother Bill, a junior investigator with the district attorney’s office. Lora’s comfortable, suburban life is jarringly disrupted when Bill falls in love with a mysterious young woman named Alice Steele, a Hollywood wardrobe assistant with a murky past. Made sisters by marriage but not by choice, the bond between Lora and Alice is marred by envy and mistrust. Spurred on by inconsistencies in Alice’s personal history and possibly jealous of Alice’s hold on her brother, Lora finds herself lured into the dark alleys and mean streets of seamy Los Angeles. Assuming the role of amateur detective, she uncovers a shadowy world of drugs, prostitution, and ultimately, murder. Lora’s fascination with Alice’s ‘sins’ increases in direct proportion to the escalation of her own relationship with Mike Standish, a charmingly amoral press agent who appears to know more about his old friend Alice than he reveals. The deeper Lora digs to uncover Alice’s secrets, the more her own life begins to resemble Alice’s sinister past and present. Steeped in atmospheric suspense and voyeuristic appeal, Die a Little shines as a dark star among Hollywood lights.’Ellen Archer takes Meghan Abbott’s stylish exercise in noir and delivers a dynamite performance.’ AudioFile Magazine

The Song Is You

On October 7, 1949, dark haired starlet Jean Spangler kissed her five year old daughter good bye and left for a night shoot at a Hollywood studio. ‘Wish me luck,’ she said as she crossed her fingers, winked, and walked away. She was never seen again. The only clues left behind: a purse with a broken strap found in a nearby park, a cryptic note, and rumors about mobster boyfriends and ill fated romances with movie stars.

Drawing on this true life missing person case, Megan Abbott’s The Song Is You tells the story of Gil ‘Hop’ Hopkins, a smooth talking Hollywood publicist whose career, despite his complicated personal life, is on the rise. It is 1951, two years after Jean Spangler’s disappearance, and Hop finds himself unwillingly drawn into the still unsolved mystery by a friend of Jean who blames Hop for concealing details about Jean’s whereabouts the night she vanished. Driven by guilt and fear of blackmail, Hop delves into the case himself, feverishly trying to stay one step ahead of an intrepid female reporter also chasing the story. Hop thought he’d seen it all, but what he uncovers both tantalizes and horrifies him as he plunges deeper and deeper into Hollywood’s substratum in his attempt to uncover the truth.

In the tradition of James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia and Joyce Carol Oates’s Blonde, The Song Is You conjures a heady brew of truth and speculation, of fact and pulp fiction, taking the reader on a dark tour of Tinseltown, from movie studios, gala premieres, and posh nightclubs to gangsters, blackmailing B girls, and the darkest secrets that lie behind Hollywood’s luminous fa ade. At the center of it all is Hop, a man torn between cutthroat ambition and his own best intentions.

Queenpin

A young woman hired to keep the books at a down at the heels nightclub is taken under the wing of the infamous Gloria Denton, a mob luminary who reigned during the Golden Era of Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano. Notoriously cunning and ruthless, Gloria shows her eager young prot g e the ropes, ushering her into a glittering demimonde of late night casinos, racetracks, betting parlors, inside heists, and big, big money. Suddenly, the world is at her feet as long as she doesn’t take any chances, like falling for the wrong guy. As the roulette wheel turns, both mentor and prot g e scramble to stay one step ahead of their bosses and each other.

Bury Me Deep

In Bury Me Deep, Megan Abbott delivers. She is simply one of the most exciting and original voices of her generation Laura Lippman, New York Times bestselling author of What the Dead Know. Edgar Award winner: With her first three novels, megan Abbott has been a two time nominee for crime writing’s top honor, the edgar Award, and now a winner for her third novel, Queenpin. The prize has cemented Abbott s place as the reigning crown princess of noir Booklist. Jazz age caper: Synonymous with the rise of modern style corruption and louche social mores, the Jazz Age is one of the most colorful periods in American history, times notorious for inciting scandalous crimes. Steeped in authentic period detail, Bury Me Deep resounds to the present day with echoes of doomed love and the tragedy it wrought. The trunk murderess : Bury Me Deep turns on the indelible details of a double murder whose victims are dismembered and concealed in trunks bound by train for Los Angeles. As a portrayal of an accused murderess dubbed Tiger Woman, The Blonde Butcher and The Velvet Tigress trapped by circumstance of gender, class, and, most of all, the blindness of passion, the novel is an astounding feat of suspense and intrigue.

The End of Everything

Thirteen year old Lizzie Hood and her next door neighbor Evie Verver are inseparable. They are best friends who swap bathing suits and field hockey sticks, and share everything that’s happened to them. Together they live in the shadow of Evie’s glamorous older sister Dusty, who provides a window on the exotic, intoxicating possibilities of their own teenage horizons. To Lizzie, the Verver household, presided over by Evie’s big hearted father, is the world’s most perfect place. And then, one afternoon, Evie disappears. The only clue: a maroon sedan Lizzie spotted driving past the two girls earlier in the day. As a rabid, giddy panic spreads through the Midwestern suburban community, everyone looks to Lizzie for answers. Was Evie unhappy, troubled, upset? Had she mentioned being followed? Would she have gotten into the car of a stranger? Lizzie takes up her own furtive pursuit of the truth, prowling nights through backyards, peering through windows, pushing herself to the dark center of Evie’s world. Haunted by dreams of her lost friend and titillated by her own new power at the center of the disappearance, Lizzie uncovers secrets and lies that make her wonder if she knew her best friend at all.

The Street Was Mine

This book considers a recurrent figure in American literature: the solitary white man moving through urban space. The descendent of 19th century frontier and western heroes, the figure reemerges in 1930s 50s America as the tough guy. The Street Was Mine looks to the tough guy in the works of hardboiled novelists Raymond Chandler The Big Sleep and James M. Cain Double Indemnity and their popular film noir adaptations. Focusing on the way he negotiates racial and gender otherness, this study argues that the tough guy embodies the promise of an impervious white masculinity amidst the turmoil of the Depression through the beginnings of the Cold War. The book concludes with an analysis of Chester Himes, whose Harlem crime novels For Love of Imabelle unleash a ferocious revisionary critique of the tough guy tradition.

A Hell of a Woman

Original female noir stories by Lynne Barrett, Charlotte Carter, Christa Faust, Alison Gaylin, Sara Gran, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Vicki Hendricks, Naomi Hirahara, Annette Meyers, Donna Moore, Vin Packer, Rebecca Pawel, Cornelia Read, Lisa Respers France, S. J. Rozan, Sandra Scoppettone, Zo Sharp, Sarah Weinman, Ken Bruen, Stona Fitch, Allan Guthrie, Charlie Huston, Eddie Muller, Daniel Woodrell. Introduction by Val McDermid.