James M Cain

While searching for her real father, a runaway stumbles into a deadly mess in this gritty noir novel by the author of The Postman Always Rings Twice. With just seventy-four bucks in her pocket, Mandy packs her things and buys the bus ticket that will get her away from the stepfather who's been abusing her for years-and the mother who lets it happen. She plans to head to Baltimore and find her biological father-someone she hopes will finally stand...

Following her husband's death in a suspicious car accident, beautiful young widow Joan Medford is forced to take a job serving drinks in a cocktail lounge to make ends meet and to have a chance of regaining custody of her young son.
At the job she encounters two men who take an interest in her, a handsome young schemer
who makes her blood race and a wealthy but unwell older man who rewards her for her attentions with a $50,000...

In Mildred Pierce, noir master James M. Cain creates a novel of acute social observation and devasting emotional violence, with a heroine whose ambitions and sufferings are never less than recognizable.
Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness. She used those attributes to survive a divorce and poverty and to claw her way out of the lower middle class. But Mildred also had two weaknesses:...

"Vintage Cain . . . it's all here-the big money, the unusual circumstances, the spare, tight style, and the staccato dialogue." -The Miami Herald Since his father died, every Saturday night has been the same for Dave and his mother. She starts to talk, weaving aimless, weird fantasies about get-rich-quick schemes that never amount to anything. But when, finally, she is silent, Dave becomes afraid. Because his mother has a way of getting very close...

In this novel by "one of the greats of American noir," a starlet comes to Reno to start a new life-and end her old one forever (The Guardian). Sylvia Shoreham's Hollywood dreams came true long ago. Critically beloved for her beauty, talent, and style, she was on her way to international stardom when a bad contract committed her to seven years of trashy comedies and half-baked melodramas. Her marriage to her producer husband has become a rotten,...

A naïve young man follows a fallen woman to a Nevada mining town and risks his life to win her. Early in the Civil War, the Confederacy sends Roger Duval to Sacramento to keep an eye on the situation in California in hopes of turning the Western territory toward the Southern cause. It's a plush assignment, well out of the line of fire, but he hasn't been there long before he comes into mortal danger. Duval nearly drowns in the Sacramento River...

For the love of a beautiful waitress, a meat salesman will turn butcher in this crime thriller. Clay Lockwood. is a top distributing executive with Grant's Meats, and the contract with the Portico restaurant chain is only the latest in a long line of boardroom coups. He arrives at the Portico for lunch, and eats his fill of his company's beef, but leaves with an entirely different hunger gnawing at his gut, a volcanic passion that will tear him apart....

A down-on-his-luck boxing trainer finds a woman worth fighting for in this "assured" novel by an MWA Grand Master Award winner (Kirkus Reviews). It took some doing, but Duke Webster is out of prison. Val Valenty arranged the parole, and now the onetime prizefighter and boxing coach is his puppet, breaking his back on Valenty's farm in exchange for a pittance. But Valenty is about to find out that boxing men never take orders without a scrap. The...

From the author of “Double Indemnity”, a tale of an ambitious young waitress whose fairy-tale romance may have an unhappy ending... Carrie Selden is not at all like the woman you've read about in the papers. Though she spent time in an orphanage, she isn't an orphan. She didn't finish high school until she was nineteen, not because she struggled to make the grade but because she was waitressing to make the money she needed. And though Carrie...

The James M. Cain Collection is a captivating anthology that showcases the masterful storytelling of James M. Cain, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Known for his hard-boiled style and gripping narratives, Cain's short stories delve into the darker sides of human nature, exploring themes of desire, betrayal, and moral ambiguity. This collection includes some of his most notable short stories: "The Baby in the Icebox": A chilling...