Charles Willeford's Books

Understudy for Death

By: Charles Willeford

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Charles Willeford's legendary lost novel, unavailable since its original publication in 1961. AN UNFORGIVABLE CRIME. AN UNFORGETTABLE NOVEL. 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. On the 30th anniversary of the death of the masterful novelist the Atlantic Monthly called the "father of Miami crime fiction," Hard Case Crime is proud to present Charles Willeford's legendary lost novel, unavailable since its original publication by a disreputable paperback house in 1961. One of Willeford's rarest titles (copies of the original edition sell for hundreds of dollars), Understudy for Death still has the power to disturb, half a century after its debut.

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Page Count

199

Publisher

Titan Books (US, CA)

Published Date

ISBN 10

1785656902

ISBN 13

9781785656903

The Way We Die Now

By: Charles Willeford

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The Way We Die Now

By: Charles Willeford

When Miami Homicide Detective Hoke Moseley receives an unexplained order to let his beard grow, he doesn't think much about it. He has too much going on at home, especially with a man he helped convict ten years before moving in across the street. Hoke immediately assumes the worst, and considering he has his former partner, who happens to be nursing a newborn, and his two teenage daughters living with him, he doesn't like the situation on bit. It doesn't help matters when he is suddenly assigned to work undercover, miles away, outside of his jurisdiction and without his badge, his gun, or his teeth. Soon, he is impersonating a drifter and tring to infiltrate a farm operation suspected of murdering migrant workers. But when he gets there for his job interview, the last thing he is offered is work. In this final installment of the highly acclaimed Hoke Moseley novels, Charles Willeford's brilliance and expertise show on every page. Equally funny, thrilling, and disturbing, The Way We Die Now is a triumphant finish to one of the most original detective series of all time.

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Page Count

256

Publisher

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307492974

ISBN 13

9780307492975

Miami Blues

By: Charles Willeford

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Miami Blues

By: Charles Willeford

After a brutal day investigating a quadruple homicide, Detective Hoke Moseley settles into his room at the un-illustrious El Dorado 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 ten 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. But the pieces never quite add up to revenge, and the few clues he has keep connecting to a dimwitted hooker, and her ex-con boyfriend and the bizarre murder of a Hare Krishna pimp. Chronically depressed, constantly strapped for money, always willing to bend the rules a bit, Hoke Moseley is hardly what you think of as the perfect cop, but he is one of the the greatest detective creations of all time.

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208

Publisher

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307488217

ISBN 13

9780307488213

New Hope for the Dead

By: Charles Willeford

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New Hope for the Dead

By: Charles Willeford

Miami homicide detective Hoke Moseley is called to a posh Miami neighborhood to investigate a lethal overdose. There he meets the alluring stepmother of the decedant, and begins to wonder about dating a witness. Meanwile, he has been threatened with suspension by his ambitious new chief unless he leaves his beloved, if squalid, suite at the El Dorado Hotel, and moves downtown. With free housing hard to come by, Hoke is desperate to find a new place to live. His difficulties are only amplified by an assignment to re-investigate fifty unsolved murders, the unexpected arrival of his two teenage daughters, and a partner struggling with an unwanted pregnancy. With few options and even fewer dollars, he decides that the suspicious and beautiful stepmother of the dead junkie might be a compromised solution to all of his problems. Packed with atmosphere and humor, New Hope for the Dead is a classic murder mystery by one of the true masters of the genre. Now back in print, Charles Willeford’s tour de force is an irresistible invitation to become acquainted with one of the greatest detective characters of all time.

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Page Count

256

Publisher

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307488705

ISBN 13

9780307488701

Sideswipe

A Hoke Moseley Detective Thriller

By: Charles Willeford

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Sideswipe

A Hoke Moseley Detective Thriller

By: Charles Willeford

Hoke Moseley has had enough. Tired of struggling against alimony payments, two teenage daughters, a very pregnant, very single partner, and a low paying job as a Miami homicide detective, Hoke moves to Singer Island and vows never step foot on the mainland again. But on the street, career criminal Troy Louden is hatching plans of his own with a gang including a disfigured hooker, a talentless artist, and a clueless retiree. But when his simple robbery results in ruthless and indiscriminate bloodshed, Hoke quickly remembers why he is a cop and hurls himself back into the world he meant to leave behind forever. A masterly tale of both mid-life crisis and murder, Sideswipe is a page-turning thriller packed with laughs, loaded with suspense, and featuring one of the truly original detectives of all time.

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Page Count

240

Publisher

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307490947

ISBN 13

9780307490940

Charles Willeford Omnibus

By: Charles Willeford

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Charles Willeford Omnibus

By: Charles Willeford

A collection of three stories by one of America's best crime writers. 'The Pope of psycho-pulp' - Time Out 'No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford' - Elmore Leonard

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602

Published Date

ISBN 10

1874061394

ISBN 13

9781874061397

The Woman Chaser

By: Perseus

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The Woman Chaser

By: Perseus

Richard Hudson, woman chaser and used car salesman, possesses a pimp's understanding of the ways in which women and men are most vulnerable. By day, he works his crooked car lot; by night he returns to a family of misfits. One day Richard decides to make an ambitious film, which turns into a fiasco. Enraged, he exacts revenge on all who have crossed him.

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Page Count

192

Publisher

Carroll & Graf

Published Date

ISBN 10

1568582099

ISBN 13

9781568582092

Pick-Up

A Library of America eBook Classic

By: Charles Willeford

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Pick-Up

A Library of America eBook Classic

By: Charles Willeford

This underground classic of hard-boiled noir fiction follows two addiction-addled drifters as they struggle to make ends meet in the streets of 1950s California First published as an unheralded paperback original, Pick-Up is an authentic underground classic, an explosive bulletin from the urban underbelly of mid-1950s America. It was Charles Willeford’s second novel, after a rough and wandering earlier life that had taken him from Depression-era hobo camps and soup kitchens to wartime battlefields. 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: Willeford’s preferred title for the book was Until I Am Dead. Its bleak vision of life beyond the edge is haunted by rape, racism, alcoholism, suicide, and inescapable poverty, yet shot through with a tenderness and compassion sustained against all odds in a society offering few breaks to its outcasts and misfits. Pick-Up’s many twists and violent turns culminate in an ending that continues to surprise, confirming it as what critic Woody Haut has called “a razor-sharp narrative that rips open the genre.”

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178

Publisher

Library of America

Published Date

ISBN 10

1598535722

ISBN 13

9781598535723

The Shark-Infested Custard

By: Charles Willeford

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The Shark-Infested Custard

By: Charles Willeford

From the master of Miami noir comes this tale of four regular guys living in a singles apartment building who experience firsthand that there's more than one type of heat in Miami. 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. They are all regular guys who like to drink, play cards, meet broads, and shoot a little pool. But 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.

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Page Count

274

Publisher

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307490858

ISBN 13

9780307490858

Sideswipe

A Hoke Moseley Detective Thriller

By: Charles Willeford

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Sideswipe

A Hoke Moseley Detective Thriller

By: Charles Willeford

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Page Count

242

Publisher

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

Published Date

ISBN 10

1400032482

ISBN 13

9781400032488

The Way We Die Now

By: Charles Willeford

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The Way We Die Now

By: Charles Willeford

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256

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Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307492974

ISBN 13

9780307492975

The Woman Chaser

By: Charles Willeford

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The Woman Chaser

By: Charles Willeford

Richard Hudson, an inveterate woman-chaser and gifted used car salesman, finds that life is not all that it should be. Disgusted by his job in the car business, he decides to try his hand at something more creative - an ambitious and risk-laden project in the art world. 'Experts' are enlisted and, like a ringleader engineering a crime, he moves forward with a volatile and unyielding energy. But forces beyond his control reject and destroy his work and enraged and humiliated he embarks on an odyssey of revenge. 'The pope of psycho pulp' - Time Out

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192

Publisher

No Exit Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1842430017

ISBN 13

9781842430019

The Burnt Orange Heresy (Movie Tie-In Edition)

A Novel

By: Charles Willeford

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The Burnt Orange Heresy (Movie Tie-In Edition)

A Novel

By: Charles Willeford

A driven art critic’s plan to steal a painting leads to murder in this classic neo-noir novel by the author of the Hoke Moseley series. 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? Crossing the art world with the underworld, Willeford creates a novel of dark hue and high aesthetic polish. The Burnt Orange Heresy—the 1970s crime classic now back in print—has lost none of its savage delights as it re-creates the making of a murderer, calmly and with exquisite tension, while satirizing the workings of the art world as the ultimate con. Now a major motion picture starring Donald Sutherland and Mick Jagger Praise for The Burnt Orange Heresy “Stunning . . . A novel full of genuine fun that also manages to make a level statement about the art world and its hermetic credulities.” —New Yorker

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Page Count

188

Publisher

Abrams

Published Date

ISBN 10

1647001897

ISBN 13

9781647001896

Miami Blues

By: Charles Willeford

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Miami Blues

By: Charles Willeford

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208

Publisher

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307488217

ISBN 13

9780307488213

The Burnt Orange Heresy (Movie Tie-In Edition)

A Novel

By: Charles Willeford

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The Burnt Orange Heresy (Movie Tie-In Edition)

A Novel

By: Charles Willeford

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188

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Abrams

Published Date

ISBN 10

1647001897

ISBN 13

9781647001896

Pick-Up

A Library of America eBook Classic

By: Charles Willeford

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Pick-Up

A Library of America eBook Classic

By: Charles Willeford

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178

Publisher

Library of America

Published Date

ISBN 10

1598535722

ISBN 13

9781598535723

Ending the U.S. War in Iraq

The Final Transition, Operational Maneuver, and Disestablishment of United States Forces-Iraq

By: Richard R. Jr. Brennan,Charles P. Ries,Larry Hanauer,Ben Connable,Terrence K. Kelly

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Ending the U.S. War in Iraq

The Final Transition, Operational Maneuver, and Disestablishment of United States Forces-Iraq

By: Richard R. Jr. Brennan,Charles P. Ries,Larry Hanauer,Ben Connable,Terrence K. Kelly

Ending the U.S. war in Iraq required redeploying 100,000 military and civilian personnel; handing off responsibility for 431 activities to the Iraqi government, U.S. embassy, USCENTCOM, or other U.S. government entities; and moving or transferring ownership of over a million pieces of property in accordance with U.S. and Iraqi laws, national policy, and DoD requirements. This book examines the planning and execution of this transition.

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Page Count

635

Publisher

Rand Corporation

Published Date

ISBN 10

0833080482

ISBN 13

9780833080486

The Mystery Readers' Advisory

The Librarian's Clues to Murder and Mayhem

By: John Charles,Joanna Morrison,Candace Clark

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The Mystery Readers' Advisory

The Librarian's Clues to Murder and Mayhem

By: John Charles,Joanna Morrison,Candace Clark

Three librarians from Scottsdale, Arizona provide library staff with an introduction to the mystery genre and offer tips and techniques for providing advice to mystery readers in the library. They include some of their own bibliographies, but refer readers elsewhere for fuller ones. They also include a brief history of the genre to pass on to readers new to it.

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244

Publisher

American Library Association

Published Date

ISBN 10

083890811X

ISBN 13

9780838908112

Death Comes Too Late

By: Charles Ardai

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Death Comes Too Late

By: Charles Ardai

CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF HARD CASE CRIME – 20 UNFORGETTABLE STORIES BY HARD CASE CRIME FOUNDER CHARLES ARDAI “A MASTER OF THE SHORT STORY.” – STEPHEN KING Since debuting 20 years ago, Hard Case Crime has won acclaim for publishing the best in hardboiled crime fiction – not least of all the work of founding editor Charles Ardai, which has won the Edgar, Shamus and Ellery Queen Awards, been selected for ‘Best of the Year’ anthologies, and earned praise from everyone from the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune to Megan Abbott and Stephen King. Collected here for the first time anywhere are the author’s 20 finest stories, including his Edgar-winning “The Home Front,” about death and repentance during World War II; the Shamus Award finalist “Nobody Wins,” about a brutal gangland enforcer searching for the woman he loves; and year’s-best selections such as “A Bar Called Charley’s,” about a traveling salesman’s most grueling night on the road. From Brazil at Carnival to Times Square at midnight, from Tijuana, Mexico to history’s first gunshot in 11th-century China, Ardai will take you to some of the most dangerous places in the world – and the darkest corners of the human heart.

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Page Count

379

Publisher

Titan Books (US, CA)

Published Date

ISBN 10

1803366273

ISBN 13

9781803366272

Ten Years of Currency Revolution

1922-1932

By: Charles Morgan Webb

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Ten Years of Currency Revolution

1922-1932

By: Charles Morgan Webb

Originally published in 1935, this book charts the revolution from a banking to an industrial conception of currency which took place between 1922 and 1932. Having failed to stabilise the purchasing power of gold, General Strong stabilised the purchasing power of the dollar, an idea which was revived on an international scale by the Ottawa Conference of 1932. The stabilisation of purchasing power, independently of gold, was subsequently adopted as the keystone of British currency policy.

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Page Count

270

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1351262114

ISBN 13

9781351262118

The Chicken Book

By: Page Smith,Charles Daniel

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The Chicken Book

By: Page Smith,Charles Daniel

Liberating today's chicken from cartoons, fast food, and other demeaning associations, The Chicken Book at once celebrates and explains this noble fowl. As it traces the rise and fall of Gallus domesticus from the jungles of ancient India to the assembly-line hatcheries sprawled across modern America, this original, frequently astounding book passes along a trove of knowledge and lore about everything from the chicken's biology and behavior to its place in legend and mythology. The book includes lively discussions of the chicken's role in literature and history, the cruel attractions of cockfighting, the medicinal uses of eggs and chicken parts, the details of the egg-laying process, the basics of the backyard coop, recipes, and much more. Entertaining and insightful, The Chicken Book will change the way we regard this too often underappreciated animal.

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Page Count

398

Publisher

University of Georgia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

082032213X

ISBN 13

9780820322131

Hegel's Recollection

A Study of Images in the Phenomenology of Spirit

By: Charles Howard Candler Professor of Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy Donald Phillip Verene,Donald Phillip Verene

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Hegel's Recollection

A Study of Images in the Phenomenology of Spirit

By: Charles Howard Candler Professor of Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy Donald Phillip Verene,Donald Phillip Verene

Donald Phillip Verene has advanced a completely new reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. He shows that the philosophic meaning of this work depends as much on Hegel's use of metaphor and image as it does on Hegel's dialectical and discursive descriptions of various stages of consciousness. The focus is on Hegel's concept of recollection (Erinnerung). Consciousness confronts itself with the aim of achieving absolute knowing. This is the first commentary to regard metaphor, irony, and memory as keys to the understanding of Hegel's basic philosophical position.

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Page Count

172

Publisher

SUNY Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0887060110

ISBN 13

9780887060113

Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-In Near You

The Shadow Cinema of the American '70s

By: Charles Taylor

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Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-In Near You

The Shadow Cinema of the American '70s

By: Charles Taylor

“Movie criticism's Dostoyevsky . . . Taylor reveals a national identity forged from the innocence we claim to have lost but never had in the first place.” --Steve Erickson, author of Zeroville When we think of '70s cinema, we think of classics like The Godfather, Taxi Driver, and The Wild Bunch . . . but the riches found in the overlooked B movies of the time, rolled out wherever they might find an audience, unexpectedly tell an eye-opening story about post-Watergate, post-Vietnam America. Revisiting the films that don't make the Academy Award montages, Charles Taylor finds a treasury many of us have forgotten, movies that in fact "unlock the secrets of the times." Celebrated film critic Taylor pays homage to the trucker vigilantes, meat magnate pimps, blaxploitation "angel avengers," and taciturn factory workers of grungy, unartful B films such as Prime Cut, Foxy Brown, and Eyes of Laura Mars. He creates a compelling argument for what matters in moviemaking and brings a pivotal American era vividly to life in all its gritty, melancholy complexity.

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209

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

1632868172

ISBN 13

9781632868176

The Tree of Good and Evil

Or, Violence by the Law and against the Law

By: Charles K. Bellinger

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The Tree of Good and Evil

Or, Violence by the Law and against the Law

By: Charles K. Bellinger

There is a common way of thinking that distinguishes between the regular law-abiding citizens and the “criminals.” The many high-profile killings committed by police officers in recent years, with the George Floyd case being the most famous, have served to render this simplistic way of thinking highly problematic. It is more realistic, in terms of cultural understanding, to see violence as a dialectic; it can come from the direction of “law and order” or from the direction of the violation of law. Employing the thought of René Girard, Søren Kierkegaard, and others, this book provides a framework for understanding this dialectic. Drawing on examples from slavery, lynching, the killing of unarmed Black persons by police, and the death penalty, the theme of violence coming from the direction of “law and order” is vividly illustrated, with Girard’s thought being employed to formulate a deeply rooted theoretical understanding. There is also extensive attention paid to many examples of mass shootings and terrorist attacks—violence that is intentionally immoral and illegal. A psychological taxonomy is employed that comprehends such violence under the headings of the psychopathic, the psychotic, the traumatized, and the ideological actor.

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Page Count

159

Publisher

Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1666759058

ISBN 13

9781666759051

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