John Steinbeck Books In Order

Cannery Row Books In Publication Order

  1. Cannery Row (1945)
  2. Sweet Thursday (1954)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Cup of Gold (1929)
  2. The Pastures of Heaven (1932)
  3. To a God Unknown (1933)
  4. The Red Pony (1933)
  5. Tortilla Flat (1935)
  6. In Dubious Battle (1936)
  7. Nothing So Monstrous (1936)
  8. Of Mice and Men (1937)
  9. The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
  10. The Forgotten Village (1941)
  11. The Wayward Bus (1947)
  12. The Pearl (1947)
  13. Burning Bright (1950)
  14. East of Eden (1952)
  15. The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957)
  16. The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)
  17. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976)
  18. The Gift (1992)

Plays In Publication Order

  1. The Moon is Down (1942)
  2. Zapata (1975)

Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order

  1. Flight (1938)
  2. The Vigilante (1938)
  3. Murder (2005)
  4. The Chrysanthemums (2007)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. The Harvest Gypsies (1936)
  2. Bombs Away (1942)
  3. A Russian Journal (1948)
  4. Sea of Cortez (1951)
  5. The Log from the ‘Sea of Cortez’ (1951)
  6. Once There Was a War (1958)
  7. Travels with Charley (1962)
  8. America and Americans (1966)
  9. In Touch (1969)
  10. Journal of a Novel (1969)
  11. On Writing (1988)
  12. Working Days (1989)
  13. Of Men and Their Making (2002)
  14. Steinbeck in Vietnam (2012)

Collections In Publication Order

  1. The Long Valley (1938)
  2. The Short Novels of John Steinbeck (1953)
  3. The Chrysanthemums and Other Stories (1979)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. 50 Great Short Stories (1952)
  2. 50 Great American Short Stories (1963)
  3. Win, Lose or Die (1996)
  4. The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century (2000)
  5. The Book of Spies: An Anthology of Literary Espionage (2003)

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Standalone Novels Book Covers

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John Steinbeck Books Overview

Cannery Row

Unburdened by the material necessities of the more fortunate, the denizens of Cannery Row discover rewards unknown in more traditional society. Henry the painter sorts through junk lots for pieces of wood to incorporate into the boat he is building, while the girls from Dora Flood’s bordello venture out now and then to enjoy a bit of sunshine. Lee Chong stocks his grocery with almost anything a man could want, and Doc, a young marine biologist who ministers to sick puppies and unhappy souls, unexpectedly finds true love. Cannery Row is just a few blocks long, but the story it harbors is suffused with warmth, understanding, and a great fund of human values. First published in 1945, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it is both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. John Steinbeck draws on his memories of the real inhabitants of Monterey, California, and interweaves their stories in this world where only the fittest survive creating what is at once one of his most humorous and poignant works. In Cannery Row, John Steinbeck returns to the setting of Tortilla Flat to create another evocative portrait of life as it is lived by those who unabashedly put the highest value on the intangibles human warmth, camaraderie, and love.

Sweet Thursday

In Monterey, on the California Coast, Sweet Thursday is what they call the day after Lousy Wednesday, which is one of those days that’s just naturally bad. Returning to the scene of Cannery Row, the weedy lots, junk heaps and flop houses of Monterey, Steinbeck once again brings to life the denizens of a netherworld of laughter and tears. The book is in many ways a statement about Steinbeck’s greatest theme: the common bonds of humanity and love which make goodness and happiness possible.

Cup of Gold

A STANDOUT in the Steinbeck canon, Cup of Gold is edgy and adventurous, brash and distrustful of society, and sure to add a new dimension to the common perception of this all American writer. Steinbeck?s first novel and sole work of historical fiction contains themes that resonate throughout the author?s prodigious body of work. From the mid 1650s through the 1660s, Henry Morgan, a pirate and outlaw of legendary viciousness, ruled the Spanish Main. He ravaged the coasts of Cuba and America, striking terror wherever he went. And he had two driving ambitions: to possess the beautiful woman called La Santa Roja, and to conquer Panama, the ?Cup of Gold.?

The Pastures of Heaven

Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. We have begun publishing his many works for the first time as blackspine Penguin Classics featuring eye-catching, newly commissioned art. This season we continue with the seven spectacular and influential books East of Eden, Cannery Row, In Dubious Battle, The Long Valley, The Moon Is Down, The Pastures of Heaven, and Tortilla Flat. Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readers-and to the many who revisit them again and again.

To a God Unknown

While fulfilling his dead father’s dream of creating a prosperous farm in California, Joseph Wayne comes to believe that a magnificent tree on the farm embodies his father’s spirit. His brothers and their families share in Joseph’s prosperity and the farm flourishes until one brother, scared by Joseph’s pagan belief, kills the tree and brings disease and famine on the farm. Set in familiar Steinbeck country, ‘To a God Unknown‘ is a mystical tale, exploring one man’s attempt to control the forces of nature and to understand the ways of God.

The Red Pony

The beautiful, spirited red pony is everything Jody ever dreamed of…
Raised on a ranch in northern California, Jody is well schooled in the hard work and demands of a rancher’s life. He is used to the way of horses, too; but nothing has prepared him for the special connection he will forge with Gabilan, the hot tempered pony his father gives him. With Billy Buck, the hired hand, Jody tends and trains his horse, restlessly anticipating the moment he will sit high upon Gabilan’s saddle. But when Gabilan falls ill, Jody discovers there are still lessons he must learn about the ways of nature and, particularly, the ways of man.

Tortilla Flat

Unabridged, 6 CDs, 7 hours Read by John McDonough ‘Steinbeck is an artist; and he tells stories of these lovable thieves and adulterers with a gentle and poetic purity of heart and of prose.’ New York Herald Tribune Adopting the structure and themes of the Arthurian legend, Steinbeck created a Camelot on a shabby hillside above the town of Monterey, California, and peopled it with a colorful band of knights. At the center of the tale is Danny, whose house, like Arthur’s castle, becomes a gathering place for men looking for adventure, camaraderie, and a sense of belonging men who fiercely resist the corrupting tide of honest toil and civil rectitude. As Steinbeck chronicles their deeds their multiple lovers, their wonderful brawls, their Rabelaisian wine drinking he spins a tale as compelling and ultimately as touched by sorrow as the famous legends of the Round Table, which inspired him.

In Dubious Battle

Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. We have begun publishing his many works for the first time as blackspine Penguin Classics featuring eye catching, newly commissioned art. This season we continue with the seven spectacular and influential books East of Eden, Cannery Row, In Dubious Battle, The Long Valley, The Moon Is Down, The Pastures of Heaven, and Tortilla Flat. Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readers and to the many who revisit them again and again.

Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men was John Steinbeck’s first masterpiece. Originally published in 1937, it’s the timeless story of George Milton and Lennie Small, ranch hands who drift from job to job, always one step ahead of the law and a few dollars from the poorhouse. George is small, wiry, sharp tongued and quick tempered; slow witted Lennie is his opposite an immense man, brutishly strong but naturally docile, a giant with the mind of a child. Despite their difference, George and Lennie are bound together by a shared vision: their own small farm, where they’ll raise cows, pigs, chickens, and rabbits, where they’ll be their own bosses and live off the fat of the land. When they find work on a ranch in California’s Salinas Valley, the dream at last seems within reach. If they can just save up a little money…
. But their hopes, like ‘the best laid schemes Of Mice and Men,’ begin to go awry. The story unfolds with the power and inevitability of a Greek tragedy, as Lennie commits an accidental murder, and George, in a riveting, deeply moving finale, must do what he can to make things turn our right.

The Grapes of Wrath

One of the greatest and most socially significant novels of the twentieth century, Steinbeck’s controversial masterpiece indelibly captured America during the Great Depression through the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads. Intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, tragic but ultimately stirring in its insistence on human dignity, The Grapes of Wrath 1939 is not only a landmark American novel, but it is as well an extraordinary moment in the history of our national conscience. Dorothy Allison on John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath: ‘ ‘John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is a novel completely of it’s time but that time is as much the concrete nineties as the dust bowl thirties. With language that echoes the poetry of the gospels and characters who cling to simple human decency under the most horrific assaults, it is both a work of social criticism and a celebration of the American character. The Joad family speaks to us of all the homeless and displaced families on our streets today, and to the fears and prejudices that tempt so many of us to close our eyes or look away. In telling the story of the Joads, John Steinbeck has retold the story of this nation. We are not a small mean people, Steinbeck’s work proclaims, and to prove it he showed us the courage and grace in the poorest of us.’

The Forgotten Village

The novelist who wrote The Grapes of Wrath and the director who produced Crisis and Lights Out in Europe combined their superb talents to tell the story of the coming of modern medicine to the natives of Mexico. There have been several notable examples of this pen camera method of narration, but The Forgotten Village is unique among them in that the text was written before a single picture was shot. The book and the movie from which it was made have, thus, a continuity and a dramatic growth not to be found in the so called ‘documentary’ films. The camera crew that, headed by Kline and with Steinbeck’s script at hand, recorded this narrative of birth and death, of witch doctors and vaccines, of the old Mexico and the new, spent nine months off the trails of Mexico. They traveled thousands of miles to find just the village they needed; they borrowed children from the government school, took men from the fields, their wives from the markets, and old medicine woman from her hut by the side of the trail. The motion picture they made for release in 1941 is 8000 feet long. From this wealth of pictures 136 photographs were selected for their intrinsic beauty and for the graceful harmony with which they accompany Steinbeck’s text. This new script photograph technique of narration conveys its ideas with unexcelled brilliance and immediacy. In the hands of such master story tellers as Steinbeck and Kline, it makes the reader catch his breath for the beauty and the truth of the tale.

The Wayward Bus

Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. Over the next year, his many works, beginning with the six shown here, will be published as black spine Penguin Classics for the first time and will feature eye catching, newly commissioned art. Of this initial group of six titles, The Wayward Bus is in a new edition. An imaginative and unsentimental chronicle of a bus traveling California s back roads. This allegorical novel of pilgrimage includes a new introduction by Gary Scharnhorst. Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readers and to the many who revisit them again and again.

The Pearl

A classic novella about the fallacy of the American dream, The Pearl is Steinbeck’s flawless parable about wealth and the evil it can bring. When Kino, an Indian pearl diver, finds ‘The Pearl of the world’ he believes that his life will be magically transformed. He will marry Juana in church and their little boy, Coyotito, will be able to attend school. Obsessed by his dreams, Kino is blind to the greed, fear and even violence The Pearl arouses in him and his neighbours. Written with haunting and lyrical simplicity, The Pearl sets the values of the civilized world against those of the primitive and finds them tragically inadequate.

Burning Bright

‘A man can’t scrap his bloodline, can’t snip the thread of immortality.’ Such is the strength of Joe Saul’s desperate longing for a child, that he feels as if a dark curse is upon him after three unfruitful years of marriage. Yet unbeknown to him, he is sterile. His beautiful, young, devoted wife loves him so much that she secretly conceives the child of another man. But when Joe discovers her deception, his anguish is greater than ever before…
This is a powerful, tragic and deeply moving tale.

East of Eden

Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. We have begun publishing his many works for the first time as blackspine Penguin Classics featuring eye catching, newly commissioned art. This season we continue with the seven spectacular and influential books East of Eden, Cannery Row, In Dubious Battle, The Long Valley, The Moon Is Down, The Pastures of Heaven, and Tortilla Flat. Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readers and to the many who revisit them again and again.

The Short Reign of Pippin IV

A work of antic political satire from an American master In The Short Reign of Pippin IV, John Steinbeck turns the French Revolution upside down as amateur astronomer Pippin H ristal is drafted to rule the unruly French. Steinbeck creates around the infamous Pippin the most hilarious royal court ever: Pippin’s wife, Queen Marie, who ‘might have taken her place at the bar of a very good restaurant’; his uncle, a man of dubious virtue; his glamour struck daughter and her beau, the son of the so called ‘egg king’ of Petaluma, California; and a motley crew of courtiers and politicians, guards and gardeners.

The Winter of Our Discontent

From a swashbuckling pirate fantasy to a meditation on American morality two classic Steinbeck novels make their black spine debutsIN AWARDING John Steinbeck the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Nobel committee stated that with The Winter of Our Discontent, he had resumed his position as an independent expounder of the truth, with an unbiased instinct for what is genuinely American. Ethan Allen Hawley, the protagonist of the novel, works as a clerk in a grocery store that his family once owned. With the decline in their status, his wife is restless, and his teenage children are hungry for the tantalizing material comforts he cannot provide. Then one day, in a moment of moral crisis, Ethan decides to take a holiday from his own scrupulous standards.

The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

A modern retelling of the legendary Arthurian tales from one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers Morte d Arthur was one of the first books that John Steinbeck enjoyed reading as a child, and it became a favorite story to read to his own children. Here now is Steinbeck s only work of fantasy literature his modernization of Malory s adventures of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, who together took the oath of knightship, swearing never to use violence without good purpose, to be merciful, to protect women, and never to fight for an unjust cause or personal gain. Here are the iconic and legendary tales of King Arthur, Guinevere, Sir Lancelot, Merlin, and Morgan le Fay. Christopher Paolini, author of the 1 New York Times bestselling novels Eragon and Eldest, has written a new foreword offering a fresh and young perspective on this classic. This is a book sure to capture the attention and imagination of a wide audience, including the legions of Steinbeck fans, those who love the legendary adventures of King Arthur and his Knights, as well as the countless fans of science fiction and fantasy literature, and everyone who loves Paolini s bestselling novels.

The Moon is Down

Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. We have begun publishing his many works for the first time as blackspine Penguin Classics featuring eye catching, newly commissioned art. This season we continue with the seven spectacular and influential books East of Eden, Cannery Row, In Dubious Battle, The Long Valley, The Moon is Down, The Pastures of Heaven, and Tortilla Flat. Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readers and to the many who revisit them again and again.

Zapata

A new volume which includes the original screenplay, with its copious director’s notes, and the narrative this has followed on from a previously undiscovered manuscript by Steinbeck being found in the UCLA Research Library the narrative treatment of the story on which he based his screenplay.

The Harvest Gypsies

Recently listed in the Top 100 List of the Century’s Best American Journalism Gathered in this important volume are seven newspaper articles on migrant farm workers that John Steinbeck wrote for ‘The San Francisco News’ in 1936, three years before _The Grapes of Wrath_. With the inquisitiveness of an investigative reporter and the emotional power of a novelist in his prime, Steinbeck toured the squatters’ camps and Hoovervilles of California. Here he found once strong, independent farmers the backbone of rural America so reduced in dignity, beaten in spirit, sick, sullen, and defeated that they had been ‘cast down to a kind of subhumanity.’ He contrasts their misery with the hope offered by government resettlement camps, where self help committees, child nurseries, quilting and sewing projects, and decent sanitation were restoring dignity and indeed saving lives. _The Harvest Gypsies_ gives us an eyewitness account of the horrendous Dust Bowl migration, a major event in California history, and provides the factual foundation for Steinbeck’s masterpiece, _The Grapes of Wrath_. Included are twenty two photographs by Dorothea Lange and others, many of which accompanied Steinbeck’s original articles.

Bombs Away

A magnificent volume of short novels and an essential World War II report from one of America’s great twentieth century writers

On the heels of the enormous success of his masterwork The Grapes of Wrath and at the height of the American war effort John Steinbeck, one of the most prolific and influential literary figures of his generation, wrote Bombs Away, a nonfiction account of his experiences with U.S. Army Air Force bomber crews during World War II. Now, for the first time since its original publication in 1942, Penguin Classics presents this exclusive edition of Steinbeck’s introduction to the then nascent U.S. Army Air Force and its bomber crew the essential core unit behind American air power that Steinbeck described as ‘the greatest team in the world.’

A Russian Journal

Just after the iron curtain fell on Eastern Europe John Steinbeck and acclaimed war photographer, Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union to report for the ‘New York Herald Tribune’. This rare opportunity took the famous travelers not only to Moscow and Stalingrad now Volgograd but through the countryside of the Ukraine and the Caucasus. A ‘Russian Journal’ is the distillation of their journey and remains a remarkable memoir and unique historical document. Steinbeck and Capa recorded the grim realities of factory workers, government clerks, and peasants, as they emerged from the rubble of World War II. This is an intimate glimpses of two artists at the height of their powers, answering their need to document human struggle.

Sea of Cortez

The collaboration of two friends one a novelist, one a novelist, one a marine biologist produced a volume in which fascinating popular science is woven into a narrative of man’s dreams, his ideals, and his accomplishments through the centuries. Sea of Cortez is one of those rare books that are all things to all readers. Actually the record of a brief collecting expedition in the lonely GUlf of California, it will be science to the scientist, philosophy to the philosopher, and to the average man an adventure in living and thinking. Sea of Cortez is a book to be read and remembered on two levels. It is a journey through a remote and beautiful corner of the world, a diary filled with the daily excitements and triumphs of skillful and energetic men. It is also an invitation to see the world anew from a fresh vantage point and perhaps with a broader and more understanding spirit.

The Log from the ‘Sea of Cortez’

The collaboration of two friends one a novelist, one a novelist, one a marine biologist produced a volume in which fascinating popular science is woven into a narrative of man’s dreams, his ideals, and his accomplishments through the centuries. Sea of Cortez is one of those rare books that are all things to all readers. Actually the record of a brief collecting expedition in the lonely GUlf of California, it will be science to the scientist, philosophy to the philosopher, and to the average man an adventure in living and thinking. Sea of Cortez is a book to be read and remembered on two levels. It is a journey through a remote and beautiful corner of the world, a diary filled with the daily excitements and triumphs of skillful and energetic men. It is also an invitation to see the world anew from a fresh vantage point and perhaps with a broader and more understanding spirit.

Once There Was a War

Nobel laureate John Steinbeck’s bracing from the frontlines account of World War II now with a new cover and introduction In 1943 John Steinbeck was on assignment for The New York Herald Tribune, writing from Italy and North Africa, and from England in the midst of the London blitz. In his dispatches he focuses on the human scale effect of the war, portraying everyone from the guys in a bomber crew to Bob Hope on his USO tour and even fighting alongside soldiers behind enemy lines. Taken together, these writings create an indelible portrait of life in wartime.

Travels with Charley

In 1960, when he was almost sixty years old, John Steinbeck set out to rediscover his native land. He felt that he might have lost touch with its sights, sounds and the essence of its people. Accompanied only by his dog, Charley, he travelled all across the United States in a pick up truck. His journey took him through almost forty states, and he saw things that made him proud, angry, sympathetic and elated. All that he saw and experienced is described with remarkable honesty and insight.

America and Americans

There is no writer more quintessentially American than John Steinbeck. More than thirty years after his death, he remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. Yet his nonfiction the writings in which he spoke directly about his world has often been overlooked. Now, Steinbeck’s last published book is available again, along with a collection of his finest reportage, including the newspaper articles that inspired his masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath. For thirty years, Steinbeck pursued a parallel career as a journalist, even as he won fame as a novelist. In America and Americans, Susan Shillinglaw and Jackson J. Benson offer a brilliant selection of his finest nonfiction. Here are Steinbeck’s writings about Salinas, San Francisco, Monterey, and Sag Harbor; his moral and political commentary; his coverage from the battlefronts of World War II and Vietnam; his literary criticism; and his reflections on friends, Henry Ford, Robert Capa and Ed Ricketts. And most important of all is the primary text, America and Americans an extended look at the nation he loved and criticized all his life. This remarkable volume offers a portrait of the artist as citizen deeply engaged in the world around him.

Journal of a Novel

This collection of letters forms a fascinating day by day account of Steinbeck’s writing of ‘East of Eden’, his longest and most ambitious novel. The letters, ranging over many subjects textual discussion, trial flights of workmanship, family matters provide an illuminating perspective on Steinbeck, the creative genius, and a private glimpse of Steinbeck, the man.

Working Days

The journal John Steinback kept between June and October of 1938 when he wrote The Grapes of Wrath. It is a tale of determination and inspiration; it also chronicles his self doubt and personal difficulties. With a fascinating cast of characters, Working Days records in intimate detail the conception and genesis of an American masterpiece.

Of Men and Their Making

Steinbeck’s writing was fuelled by a need to observe things firsthand, whether as a journalist or novelist. The huge success of ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ enabled him to travel the world, ceaselessly writing about the great events of each decade. This collection brings together the greatest of those dispatches from countries as diverse as Vietnam, Britain, Morocco and Italy. In addition, it reproduces ‘America and the Americans’, a gripping account of the US in the 1960s based on Steinbeck’s observations on racism, moral decline & the environment. The extremely enjoyable book makes an important point about Steinbeck’s oeuvre, showing just how important journalism was to his career as a writer.

The Long Valley

Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. We have begun publishing his many works for the first time as blackspine Penguin Classics featuring eye catching, newly commissioned art. This season we continue with the seven spectacular and influential books East of Eden, Cannery Row, In Dubious Battle, The Long Valley, The Moon Is Down, The Pastures of Heaven, and Tortilla Flat. Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readers and to the many who revisit them again and again.

The Short Novels of John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath is generally considered Steinbeck’s masterpiece, but the short novel was the form he most frequently turned to and most consciously theorized about, and with constant experimentation he made the form his own. Much of the best and the worst of his writing appears in his short novels. This collection reviews what has been categorized as the good and the bad, looking beyond the careless labeling that has characterized a great deal of the commentary on Steinbeck s writing to the true strengths and weaknesses of the works. The contributors demonstrate that even in the short novels that are most often criticized, there is more depth and sophistication than has generally been acknowledged.
The essays examine the six most popular short novels Tortilla Flat, The Red Pony, Of Mice and Men, The Moon Is Down, Cannery Row, and The Pearl in addition to the three usually thought of as less successful Burning Bright, Sweet Thursday, and The Short Reign of Pippin IV. Because most of Steinbeck s short novels were adapted and presented as plays or screenplays, many of the essays deal with dramatic or film versions of the short novels as well as with the fiction. The collection concludes with a comprehensive checklist of criticism of the short novels.

Contributors. Richard Astro, Jackson J. Benson, Carroll Britch, John Ditsky, Joseph Fontenrose, Warren French, Robert Gentry, Mimi Reisel Gladstein, William Goldhurst, Tetsumaro Hayashi, Robert S. Hughes Jr., Howard Levant, Clifford Lewis, Peter Lisca, Anne Loftis, Charles R. Metzger, Michael J. Meyer, Robert E. Morsberger, Louis Owens, Roy S. Simmonds, Mark Spilka, John Timmerman

50 Great Short Stories

50 Great Short Stories is a comprehensive selection from the world’s finest short fiction. The authors represented range from Hawthorne, Maupassant, and Poe, through Henry James, Conrad, Aldous Huxley, and James Joyce, to Hemingway, Katherine Anne Porter, Faulkner, E.B. White, Saroyan, and O Connor. The variety in style and subject is enormous, but all these stories have one point in common the enduring quality of the writing, which places them among the masterpieces of the world s fiction.

The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century

In The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century, best selling author Tony Hillerman and mystery expert Otto Penzler present an unparalleled treasury of American suspense fiction that every fan will cherish. Offering the finest examples from all reaches of the genre, this collection charts the mystery’s eminent history from the turn of the century puzzles of Futrelle, to the seminal pulp fiction of Hammett and Chandler, to the mystery story’s rise to legitimacy in the popular mind, a trend that has benefited masterly writers like Westlake, Hunter, and Grafton. Nowhere else can readers find a more thorough, more engaging, more essential distillation of American crime fiction. Penzler, BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES series editor, and Hillerman, whose Leaphorn/Chee novels have won him multiple Edgar Awards and millions of devotees, winnowed this select group out of a thousand stories, drawing on sources as diverse as ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE and ESQUIRE, COLLIER’S and THE NEW YORKER. Giants of the genre abound Raymond Chandler, Stephen King, Dashiell Hammett, Lawrence Block, Ellery Queen, Sara Paretsky, and others but the editors also unearthed gems by luminaries rarely found in suspense anthologies: William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Damon Runyon, Harlan Ellison, James Thurber, and Joyce Carol Oates. Mystery buffs and newcomers alike will delight in the thrilling stories and top notch writing of a hundred years’ worth of the finest suspense, crime, and mystery writing.

The Book of Spies: An Anthology of Literary Espionage

A collection of work from some of the finest novelists of the 20th century. Inspired by the politics of tyranny or war, each of these writers chose the basic elements of highly evolved spy fiction as the framework for a literary novel. The book offers a diverse array of selections that combine raw excitement & intellectual sophistication in an expertly guided tour of the dark world of clandestine conflict. We meet diplomats, political police, agents, provocateurs, resistance fighters, & assassins players in the Great Game, or victims of the Cold War. The authors include: Eric Ambler, Anthony Burgess, Joseph Conrad, Maxim Gorky, Graham Greene, John le Carre, W. Somerset Maugham, Charles McCarry, Baroness Orczy, John Steinbeck, & Rebecca West.

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