Romance

Romance

Evan Hunter

Evan Hunter

It's not a mystery, it's a story of survival and triumph. That's what some people say about Romance, a would-be hit play about an actress pursued by a knife-wielding stalker. But isn't it romantic! Before the show can open, the leading lady is really attacked, outside the theater. And before the detectives of the 87th can solve that crime, the same actress is stabbed again. This time for keeps. A.D.A. Nellie Brand moves in for a murder conviction, but Detective Steve Carella is sure she's got the wrong guy, and wrestles for the case with Fat Ollie Weeks, Isola's foulest cop. While Bert Kling interviews witnesses and suspects ranging from the show's producers to the author - who has written novels about cops and knows how it's done - to the lead's lovely understudy, he can't keep his mind off what's happening to him. He's falling in love. With a doctor. Who happens to be a deputy chief surgeon. Who happens to be a black woman. In the city of Isola, nothing is black and white. In the play Romance, no one is guilty or innocent. And in the gritty reality of the 87th Precinct, everyone is in love with something - even if it's only murder.
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A Horse’s Head

A Horse’s Head

Evan Hunter

Evan Hunter

It’s a jacket; it’s a mattress; it’s a fortune! Mullaney staked his life on it. The way it all worked out was that Mullaney finally figured he had to take the big gamble; he’d never get rich selling encyclopedias. Consequently, he left his wife and went off to make a killing at cards, horses, dice — you name it. But here he is at the end of the year with a single subway token in his pocket and the hottest, sure-thing tip he’s ever heard on the second race at Aqueduct... So he’s standing at Fourteenth Street and Fourth Avenue wondering where he can promote some coin, who he can put the bite on, when this long black limousine pulls up and out hops a big guy with a beard and a gun and says, “Get in!” That’s how A Horse’s Head , Evan Hunter’s hugely funny new novel, starts. It never lets up as it races back and forth across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, diving into some very odd places indeed — such as the locked stacks of the Library’s Main Branch and an East Side cellar synagogue — and introducing some of the strangest gunsels, moon-struck kooks, and pliant lovelies in the entire metropolitan area. The laughs, the bodies, the girls come tumbling one on top of the other as Mullaney smooth-talks, wheedles and deals his way out of one dangerous situation into the next in his mad chase after the crummy, magical black jacket that doesn’t even fit him but which he’s sure is worth half a million dollars. Wild, wonderful, zany — A Horse’s Head is another surprise from the versatile author of The Paper Dragon, The Blackboard Jungle , and the 87th Precinct mysteries.
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Lizzie

Lizzie

Evan Hunter

Evan Hunter

Americas most celebrated murder case springs to astonishing and blazing life in the new novel by one of Americas premier storytellers. And the most famous quatrain in American folklore takes on an unexpected and surprising twist as. step by mesmerizing step, a portrait of a notorious woman unfolds with shocking clarity. In recreating the events of that fateful day. August 4. 1892. in Fall River. Massachusetts, and the extraordinary circumstances which led up to them. Evan Hunter spins a breathtakingly imaginative tale of an enigmatic spinster whose secret life would eventually force her to the ultimate confrontation with her stepmother and father. Here is Lizzie Borden freed of history and legend — a full-bodied woman of hot blood and passion. fighting against her prim New England upbringing. surrendering to the late-Victorian hedonism of London. Paris and the Riviera, yet fated to live out her meager life in a placid Massachusetts town. Seething with frustration and rage, a prisoner of her appetites, Lizzie Borden finally, on that hot August day... but how and why she was led into her uncompromising acts is at the heart of this enthralling, suspenseful work of the imagination. Alternating the actual inquest and trial of Lizzie Borden with an account of her head-spinning, seductive trip to Europe. Evan Hunter port rays with a master craftsmans art the agony of a passionate woman, the depths of a murdering heart.
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The Chisholms: A novel of the journey West

The Chisholms: A novel of the journey West

Evan Hunter

Evan Hunter

Hadley, the rattlesnake-toting patriarch who took his comfort where he found it — in the Bible, the bottle or the bed... Minerva, the lusty, stubborn woman he loved, shepherding her young through the harsh realities of the way west and the terrifying passions in their own hearts... Will, the brawling, hard-drinking sinner who sought salvation in the arms of a savage... Bobbo and Gideon, boys at the start of a journey, blood-stained men at the end... Bonnie Sue, too young to love, too ripe not to; a child forced to womanhood in the wilderness... Annabel, the youngest, whose quiet courage was tested in an act of unspeakable savagery. The Chisholms — a family as raw and unyielding as the soil of Virginia they left behind; as wild and enduring as the dream they pursued across the American continent.
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Find the Feathered Serpent (Winston Science Fiction)

Find the Feathered Serpent (Winston Science Fiction)

Evan Hunter

Evan Hunter

When the strange hourglass-shaped time machine crashed out of the twentieth century and into the Caribbean Sea of fourteen hundred years ago, Neil Falsen realized how unprepared he was to head the expedition that his father had organized back through time. Of the four men who had flown through centuries to solve the mystery of an ancient Mayan god, two had died in the shattering crash. Only Neil and ship's pilot Dave remained to cope with the language and customs of a people who had disappeared into the darkness of history.It was confusing enough not to know which century the machine had fallen into. But Neil was sure his eyes were playing tricks when he spotted a Norse ship cutting proudly through southern seas. How ancient Vikings, Mayas and two twentieth-century Americans met - and fought - amid the splendors of a civilization that today dots the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico with its ruins, makes a tale as unique in telling as it is in content.In scenes that throb with drama and thunder with excitement, Dave and Neil found frightening evidence of the approaching Mayan collapse. With a common modern device, Neil stepped into a tense religious ceremony to prevent human sacrifice. Without realizing it, he discovered the secret of the white god among the Mayan Indian dieties.One of history's most intriguing suppositions forms the basis for this tale of the secret behind the legend of a lost civilization. FIND THE FEATHERED SERPENT is a juvenile science fiction novel, published first in 1952 as one of the books in the Winston Science Fiction series.  The author, Evan Hunter, had a very successful writing career. He was also prolific and used a number of pen names. As Hunter, he wrote THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE, a novel dealing with juvenile crime and the New York City public school system. It and the 1955 movie based on the book were highly acclaimed. He also had a successful screenwriting career, producing scripts for movies and TV, including the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's film THE BIRDS (1963). However, he is probably best known for the crime fiction he wrote using the pen name Ed McBain.  His 87th Precinct series is often credited with inventing the "police procedural" genre of crime fiction. The books were turned into a number of movies and TV series.
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