Why would a happily married Florida housewife pick up her husband's .22 caliber Colt Woodsman semi-automatic pistol and use it to kill her two young children and herself? Cynical newspaper reporter Richard Hudson is assigned to find out - and the assignment will send him down a road of self-discovery in this incisive, no-holds-barred portrait of American marriage in the Mad Men era.

This reissue of Willeford's 1963 pulp classic is a timely reminder that madness is truly the dark heart of politics. Written at a time when people still had faith in their elected leaders, Willeford's book laid bare the American dream. There is an almost Chekhovian wistfulness in the treatment of his stories, which belies their considerable - and still relevant - impact.

Lash by bloody lash, the she-devil from Dallas would get her revenge.

Richard Hudson, woman chaser and used-car salesman, has a pimp's awareness of the ways women (and men) are most vulnerable. One day Richard decides to make an ambitious film, which turns into a fiasco. Enraged, he exacts revenge on all who have crossed him.

This funny, rich, raunchy autobiography re-creates the adventures of a very young soldier in the US Army at the height of the Depression. Charles Willeford was 16 in 1935 when he signed up and was sent to the Philippines. And the Philippines of those days was like a place out of another century. Willeford’s job was to fuel aircraft whose pilots treated him and his buddies almost like slaves. At night, however, he was a lord, fully exploring a great, timeless, and sensual city with a multitude of women available - even on a private’s pay.

Charles Willeford was a man of letters in all senses of the word. Poet, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and raconteur, his early paperback novels with their existential/immobilized heroes were the creations (to paraphrase Chandler) of a man not himself immobilized - a man who, instead, with his trademark black-humored prose, doggedly examined the mind-thrumming banalities of our materially sated but intellectually befuddled postwar world, crafting a body of work that is only now, 50-some years after his first appearance in print, beginning to be widely appreciated.

Jake Blake is a private detective short on cash when he meets a rich and beautiful young woman looking to escape her father’s smothering influence. Unfortunately for Jake, the smothering influence includes two thugs hired to protect her - and the woman is in fact not the daughter of the man she wants to escape, but his wife. Now Jake has two angry thugs and one jealous husband on his case. As Jake becomes more deeply involved with this glamorous and possibly crazy woman, he becomes entangled in a web of deceit, intrigue - and multiple murders.

The unblinking story of two lost and self-destructive drifters - a failed painter working as a counterman in a cheap diner and a woman in flight from domestic violence - trying to find a place for themselves in the back streets of San Francisco, Pick-Up is hardboiled writing at its nihilistic best.

She was leaning against the door. Her smile was a sickly twisted grimace; the sort a prisoner gives a judge when he's asked if he has anything to say before he's sentenced. Russell Haxby is a ruthless used-car salesman obsessed with manipulating and cavorting with married women. In this classic of hard-boiled fiction, Charles Willeford crafts a wry, sardonic tale of hypocrisy, intrigue, and lust set in San Francisco in the early '50s.

The Black Mass of Brother Springer tells the story of Sam Springer, a drifter novelist who meets Jack Dover, the retiring Abbot of the Church of God's Flock. Dover's final official act is to ordain Springer and send him off to serve as pastor of an all-Black church in Jacksonville, Florida. Springer soon becomes entangled in the city's growing civil rights movement...and with the church deacon's earthy young wife, Merita.

A former professional boxer, actor, horse trainer and radio announcer, Charles Willeford is best known for his Miami-based crime novels featuring hard-boiled detective Hoke Moseley, including Miami Blues and Sideswipe. Of Cockfighter, Harry Crews said, “Charles Willeford renders the sport with such knowledge and attention to detail that...had the almost inexpressible impression of being on my knees again beside the great fighting pits of the southern circuit.

Larry Dolman is a rather literal-minded ex-cop who now works private security. Eddie Miller is an airline pilot who's studying to get his real estate license. Don Luchessi is a silver salesman who's separated from his wife, but too Catholic to get a divorce. Hank Norton is a drug company rep who gets four times as many dames as any of the other guys. When a friendly bet goes horribly awry, they find themselves with two dead bodies on their hands and a homicidal husband in the wings - and acting more like hardened criminals than upstanding citizens.

Fast-talking, backstabbing, womanizing, and fiercely ambitious art critic James Figueras will do anything - blackmail, burglary, and beyond - to make a name for himself. When an unscrupulous collector offers Figueras a career-making chance to interview Jacques Debierue, the greatest living - and most reclusive - artist, the critic must decide how far he will go to become the art-world celebrity he hungers to be. Will Figueras stop at the opportunity to skim some cream for himself or push beyond morality's limits to a bigger payoff?

In this new collection of short stories, vignettes, and autobiographical sketches - many previously unpublished - Charles Willeford, author of Miami Blues and The Burnt Orange Heresy creates a mosaic of the absurdities of life in the 20th century. From a malicious grandmother to prophetic depictions of the power of reality television, with his wry humor and sudden shifts to violence, he seduces, amuses, and repeatedly surprises you.

After a brutal day investigating a quadruple homicide, Detective Hoke Moseley settles into his room at the un-illustrious Eldorado Hotel and nurses a glass of brandy. With his guard down, he doesn't think twice when he hears a knock on the door. The next day, he finds himself in the hospital, badly bruised and with his jaw wired shut. He thinks back over 10 years of cases, wondering who would want to beat him into unconsciousness, steal his gun and badge, and most importantly, make off with his prized dentures.

Three friends from small-town Pennsylvania set out to conquer Denali, North America's highest peak, but only two come down alive. On the mountain, their grand adventure unravels into a harrowing tale of survival, betrayal, and the haunting consequences of ambition pushed too far. For fans of Into Thin Air, Touching the Void, and 127 Hours, Denali has a full cast, jaw-dropping twists, and immersive sound design that will transport you to one of the most extreme environments on earth.

Two little girls stand with their heads bowed in my living room. I’m told they’re my granddaughters. Daisy is nine, and Alice seven. Daisy is the spitting image of her mother. This is the first time I’ve met them since my daughter and I fell out after she married that waste of space, Vince. They’ve come to live with me because their mother — my daughter — was murdered. In her own home while they slept close by. I think Vince killed her. But the police can’t prove it. I’ve always known he was no good. He treated my daughter like dirt. I said he’d cheat on her — but she wouldn’t listen.

Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family."

You think you know the truth about the people you love. But one discovery can change everything.... Eight-year-old Billy goes missing one day, out flying his kite with his sister Rose. Two days later he is found dead. Sixteen years on, Rose still blames herself for Billy's death. How could she have failed to protect her little brother? Rose has never fully recovered from the trauma, and one of the few people she trusts is her neighbour Ronnie, who she has known all her life.

Johnnie Rico never really intended to join up—and definitely not the infantry. But now that he’s in the thick of it, trying to get through combat training harder than anything he could have imagined, he knows everyone in his unit is one bad move away from buying the farm in the interstellar war the Terran Federation is waging against the Arachnids. Because everyone in the Mobile Infantry fights. And if the training doesn’t kill you, the Bugs are more than ready to finish the job.

As the days grow shorter and the temperature drops, Halloween approaches. Come, brave listener, pull up a chair, and spend some time with master storyteller Stephen Fry as he tells us some of his favourite ghost stories of all time, in truly terrifying spatial audio. From the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow to the tortured spirits of M.R. James, from Edgar Allan Poe’s terrifying tale of a doppelganger to Charlotte Riddell’s Open Door that should definitely stay shut, join Stephen as he tells you some truly terrifying tales.

As Charly struggles to recover from her brain injury, she begins to realize that the events of that fateful night are trapped in the damaged right side of her brain. Now, she must put the jigsaw pieces together to discover the identity of the man who tried to kill her...before he finishes the job he started.