Books by Vera Caspary
Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s (LOA #268): Laura / The Horizontal Man / In a Lonely Place / The Blank Wall (Library of America Women Crime Writers Collection)
by Dorothy B. Hughes, Vera Caspary, Helen Eustis, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
A landmark collection of four brilliant novels by the female pioneers of crime fiction—women who paved the way for Gillian Flynn, Tana French, and Lisa Scottoline
Though women crime and suspense writers dominate today’s bestseller lists, the extraordinary work of their mid-century predecessors is largely unknown. Turning from the mean streets of the hardboiled school, these groundbreaking female novelists found the roots of fear and violence in a quiet suburban neighborhood, on a college campus, or in a comfortable midtown hotel. Their work—influential in its day and still vibrant today—is long overdue for discovery.
Edited by The Real Lolita author Sarah Weinman, this collection gathers four classic crime novels from the 1940s: Vera Caspary’s famous career girl mystery, Laura; Helen Eustis’s intricate academic thriller, The Horizontal Man; Dorothy B. Hughes’s terrifyingly intimate portrait of a serial killer, In a Lonely Place; and Elizabeth Sanxay Holding’s The Blank Wall, in which a wartime wife is forced to take extreme measures when her family is threatened. Together, these underappreciated works reveal the vital and unacknowledged lineage of today’s leading crime writers.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
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Laura (Femmes Fatales)
by Vera Caspary
The greatest noir romance of all time, Laura won lasting renown as an Academy Award-nominated 1944 film: “an intriguing melodrama. . . . A top-drawer mystery.” (The New York Times)
A brutal murder. A tough detective. And a woman who kept men spellbound—even after her death.
Laura Hunt was the ideal modern woman: beautiful, elegant, highly ambitious, and utterly mysterious. No man could resist her charms—not even the hardboiled NYPD detective sent to investigate her murder. As this cop probes the mystery of Laura’s death, he finds himself drawn to the mere idea of her. As the circumstances surrounding her death become more intriguing, he comes to a startling realization—he’s in love with a dead woman.
But is she even dead?
Vera Caspary’s equally haunting novel is remarkable for its stylish, hardboiled writing, its electrifying plot twists, and its darkly complex characters—including a woman who stands as the ultimate femme fatale.
Femmes Fatales restores to print the best of women’s writing in the classic pulp genres of the mid-20th century. From mystery to hard-boiled noir to taboo lesbian romance, these rediscovered queens of pulp offer subversive perspectives on a turbulent era.
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The Man Who Loved His Wife (Femmes Fatales)
by Vera Caspary
When Fletcher marries Elaine, his second wife, nineteen years his junior, he can't imagine a more passionate union. Then an illness destroys his confidence, and all he can picture is her next affair. He keeps a secret diary of his fantasized suspicions, making his impending suicide look like murder...
With what Graham Greene once called her "devilish cunning," Vera Caspary reveals, with sure psychological insight, the strange desires that hide in the hearts of seemingly respectable people. Out of a web of love, jealousy, guilt, and hate, she has woven one of her most suspenseful thrillers.
Femmes Fatales restores to print the best of women's writing in the classic pulp genres of the mid-20th century. From mystery to hard-boiled noir to taboo lesbian romance, these rediscovered queens of pulp offer subversive perspectives on a turbulent era. Enjoy the series: Bedelia; Bunny Lake Is Missing; By Cecile; The G-String Murders; The Girls in 3-B; Laura; The Man Who Loved His Wife; Mother Finds a Body; Now, Voyager; Return to Lesbos; Skyscraper; Stranger on Lesbos; Stella Dallas; Women's Barracks.
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