Recommended reading - three books on movies, by George Stevens Jr:

Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute

By George Stevens Jr.

Published by Vintage.

Published 2007.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 1400033144

ISBN-13: 978-1400033140

Description:

“Impressive and entertaining … A sweeping and valuable compendium of picture-making and picture lore.” – Peter Bogdanovich, The Wall Street Journal.

The first book to bring together interviews of master moviemakers from the American Film Institute’s renowned seminars, Conversations with the Great Moviemakers, offers an unmatched history of American cinema in the words of its greatest practitioners.

Here are the incomparable directors Frank Capra, Elia Kazan, King Vidor, David Lean, Fritz Lang (“I learned only from bad films”), William Wyler, and George Stevens; renowned producers and cinematographers; celebrated screenwriters Ray Bradbury and Ernest Lehman; as well as the immortal Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini (“Making a movie is a mathematical operation. It’s absolutely impossible to improvise”). Taken together, these conversations offer uniquely intimate access to the thinking, the wisdom, and the genius of cinema’s most talented pioneers.

Conversations at the American Film Institute with the Great Moviemakers: The Next Generation

By George Stevens Jr.

Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Published 2014.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0307474984

ISBN-13: 978-0307474988

Description:

“Magnificent … A collection that is compendious, illuminating, and utterly indispensable.” – Director’s Guild of America Quarterly.

A rich companion volume to George Stevens, Jr.’s much admired book of American Film Institute seminars with the pioneering moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age, this time with a focus on filmmakers of the 1950s to present day.

The Next Generation brings together conversations with moviemakers at work from the 1950s – during the studios’ decline – to today’s Hollywood. Directors, producers, writers, actors, cinematographers, composers, film editors, and independent filmmakers appear within these pages, including Steven Spielberg, Nora Ephron, George Lucas, Sidney Poitier, Meryl Streep, David Lynch, Darren Aronofsky, and more. We see how the filmmakers of today and those of Hollywood’s Golden Age face the same challenges of both art and craft – to tell compelling stories on the screen. And we see the ways in which actors and directors work together, how each director has his or her own approach, and how they share techniques and theories.

“An entertaining in-depth look into the art, economics, and politics of filmmaking for those of us for whom film still has the impact of being struck by lightning … Essential reading … A sine qua non of film books, one that belongs on the shelf of every film student or serious fan.” – New York Journal of Books.

“Cuts across the spectrum of genres and artistic attitudes … A rare treat [and] an eclectic one … A treasure-trove to flip through and savor.” – Los Angeles Times.

My Place in the Sun: Life in the Golden Age of Hollywood and Washington

By George Stevens Jr.

Published by University Press of Kentucky.

Published 2022.

Hardcover.

ISBN-10: 0813195241

ISBN-13: 978-0813195247

Description:

The son of a celebrated Hollywood director emerges from his father’s shadow to claim his own place as a visionary force in American culture. George Stevens, Jr. tells an intimate and moving tale of his relationship with his Oscar-winning father and his own distinguished career in Hollywood and Washington. Fascinating people, priceless stories and a behind-the-scenes view of some of America’s major cultural and political events grace this riveting memoir.

George Stevens, Jr. grew up in Hollywood and worked on film classics with his father and writes vividly of his experience on the sets of A Place in the Sun (1951), Shane (1953), Giant (1956) and The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). He explores how the magnitude of his father’s talent and achievements left him questioning his own creative path. The younger Stevens began to forge his unique career when legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow recruited him to elevate the Motion Picture Service at the United States Information Agency in John F. Kennedy’s Washington. Stevens’ trailblazing efforts initiated what has been called the “golden era” of USIA filmmaking and a call to respect motion pictures as art. His appointment as founding director of the American Film Institute in 1967 placed him at the forefront of culture and politics, safeguarding thousands of endangered films and training a new generation of filmmakers. Stevens’ commitment to America’s cultural heritage led to envisioning the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors and propelled a creative life of award-winning films and television programs that heightened attention to social justice, artistic achievement, and the American experience.

Stevens provides a rare look at a pioneering American family spanning five generations in entertainment: from the San Francisco stage in the 19th century to silent screen comedies, Academy Award-winning films, Emmy Award-winning television programs and a Broadway play in the 21st century. He reveals the private side of the dazzling array of American presidents, first ladies, media moguls, and luminaries who cross his path, including Elizabeth Taylor, Sidney Poitier, the Kennedys, Yo-Yo Ma, Cary Grant, James Dean, Bruce Springsteen, Barack and Michelle Obama, and many more.

In My Place in the Sun, George Stevens, Jr. shares his lifelong passion for advancing the art of American film, enlightening audiences, and shining a spotlight on notable figures who inspire us. He provides an insightful look at Hollywood’s Golden Age and an insider’s account of Washington spanning six decades, bringing to life a sparkling era of American history and culture.

Recommended reading - Sleeping Beauty, by Ross Macdonald (1973):

Sleeping Beauty

By Ross Macdonald.

Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

First published 1973.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0375708669

ISBN-13: 978-0375708664

Description:

# 17 of the Lew Archer Series.

"Ross Macdonald is either part or wholly wizard. . .conjuring the magic of real mystery. . . . A masterpiece." – Chicago Tribune Book World.

"Sleeping Beauty is particularly complex and satisfactory. . . . It is a marvelous formula that Macdonald has found; the wonder is that he keeps improving it." – Newsweek.

"Ross Macdonald remains the grandmaster, taking the crime novel to new heights by imbuing it with psychological resonance, complexity of story, and richness of style that remain inspiring." – Jonathan Kellerman.

In Sleeping Beauty, Lew Archer finds himself the confidant of a wealthy, violent family with a load of trouble on their hands – including an oil spill, a missing girl, a lethal dose of Nembutal, a six-figure ransom, and a stranger afloat, face down, off a private beach. Here is Ross Macdonald's masterful tale of buried memories, the consequences of arrogance, and the anguished relations between parents and their children. Riveting, gritty, tautly written, Sleeping Beauty is crime fiction at its best.

If any writer can be said to have inherited the mantle of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, it is Ross Macdonald. Between the late 1940s and his death in 1983, he gave the American crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity that his predecessors had only hinted at. And in the character of Lew Archer, Macdonald redefined the private eye as a roving conscience who walks the treacherous frontier between criminal guilt and human sin.

Recommended reading - The Underground Man, by Ross Macdonald (1971):

The Underground Man

By Ross Macdonald.

# 16 in the Lew Archer series.

Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

First published 1971.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0679768084

ISBN-13: 978-0679768081

Description:

"There are certain books that bide their time, like plants, waiting decades to flower.... If a copy of The Underground Man, a novel from 1971, by Ross Macdonald, has been sitting on your shelf for ages, unread and barely noticed, try opening it now. Suddenly it's a book in full bloom." – Anthony Lane, The New Yorker.

"A more serious and complex writer than Chandler and Hammett ever were." – Eudora Welty.

"Ross Macdonald is an important American novelist!" – San Francisco Chronicle.

"I should like to venture that Ross Macdonald is a better novelist than either...Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler." – Anthony Boucher, The New York Times Book Review.

As a mysterious fire rages through the hills above a privileged town in Southern California, Archer tracks a missing child who may be the pawn in a marital struggle or the victim of a bizarre kidnapping. What he uncovers amid the ashes is murder – and a trail of motives as combustible as gasoline. The Underground Man is a detective novel of merciless suspense and tragic depth, with an unfaltering insight into the moral ambiguities at the heart of California's version of the American dream.

If any writer can be said to have inherited the mantle of Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler, it was Ross Macdonald.  Between the late 1940s and his death in 1983, he gave the American crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity that his predecessors had only hinted at.  And in the character of Lew Archer, Macdonald redefined the private eye as a roving conscience who walks the treacherous frontier between criminal guilt and human sin.

Recommended reading - After Midnight, by Helen Nielsen (1966):

After Midnight

by Helen Nielsen.

ASIN: B0007E0IM4

Published by Morrow.

First published 1966.

First Edition.

Hardcover.

Description:

A beautiful suspect with an intense desire to kill. The murder of Roger Warren seemed like an open-and-shut case.The evening before, Roger and his dazzling wife Wanda had moved from one bar to another, fighting loudly and publicly. The next morning, the dead figure of Roger was slumped in a living room chair … while Wanda lay sleeping in bed, a bloodied knife on the pillow beside her. At the District Attorney’s office, the bereaved beauty could remember nothing . . . except an intense desire to kill.

Recommended reading - The Goodbye Look, by Ross Macdonald (1969):

The Goodbye Look

By Ross Macdonald.

Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

First published 1969.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0375708650

ISBN-13: 978-0375708657

Description:

"The American private eye, immortalized by Hammett, refined by Chandler, brought to its zenith by Macdonald." – The New York Times Book Review.

In The Goodbye Look, Lew Archer is hired to investigate a burglary at the mission-style mansion of Irene and Larry Chalmers. The prime suspect, their son Nick, has a talent for disappearing, and the Chalmerses are a family with money and memories to burn. As Archer zeros in on Nick, he discovers a troubled blonde, a stash of wartime letters, a mysterious hobo. Then a stiff turns up in a car on an empty beach. And Nick turns up with a Colt .45. In The Goodbye Look, Ross Macdonald delves into the world of the rich and the troubled and reveals that the past has a deadly way of catching up to the present.

If any writer can be said to have inherited the mantle of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, it is Ross Macdonald. Between the late 1940s and his death in 1983, he gave the American crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity that his pre-decessors had only hinted at. And in the character of Lew Archer, Macdonald redefined the private eye as a roving conscience who walks the treacherous frontier between criminal guilt and human sin.

Recommended reading - Unknown Man #89, by Elmore Leonard (1977):

Unknown Man #89

By Elmore Leonard.

Published by Mariner Books.

First published 1977.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 006218928X

ISBN-13: 978-0062189288

Description:

“The greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever!” – The New York Times Book Review.

“An absolute master.” – The Detroit News.

“No one is Leonard’s equal,” declares the Chicago Tribune – and anyone who might doubt it would only have to read Elmore Leonard’s riveting noir classic, Unknown Man #89, to become a true believer.

Detroit process server Jack Ryan has a reputation for being the best in the business at finding people who don't want to be found. Now he's looking for a missing stockholder known only as "Unknown Man No. 89." But his missing man isn't "unknown" to everyone: a pretty blonde hates his guts and a very nasty dude named Royal wants him dead in the worst way. Which is very unfortunate for Jack Ryan, who is suddenly caught in the crossfire of a lethal triple-cross and as much a target as his nameless prey.

The twisty tale of a Detroit process server whose search for a missing stockholder leads him into more serious peril than he ever imagined possible, Unknown Man #89 is a gourmet stew of mystery, suspense, and double and triple cross, peppered with the razor-sharp dialogue for which Grand Master Leonard is justifiably famous.

Exhilarating old-school crime fiction that the late, great John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Robert Parker would have been proud to call their own, Unknown Man #89 is a gem – nothing less than we’d expect from the man who created the incomparable U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens of the hit TV series Justified.

Recommended reading - The Instant Enemy by Ross Macdonald (1968):

The Instant Enemy

By Ross Macdonald.

Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

ASIN: B07R5PYF7Q

Published by Alfred A. Knopf.

First published 1968.

First Edition.

Hardcover.

Description:

“Moves fast and is full of surprises. . . . The best work Macdonald has done in years.” – The New York Times.

“A more serious and complex writer than Chandler and Hammett ever were.” – Eudora Welty.

“Archer has seldom been in better form, and neither has his estimable creator.” – The New Yorker.

“Lew Archer is back, careening down the bloody trail of women who were beaten to death, a murdered cop, and a dead hobo who is the key to a 15-year-old family secret that won't die. "(The) American private eye, immortalized by Hammett, refined by Chandler, brought to its zenith by Macdonald". – New York Times Book Review.

Lew Archer is hired by Keith Sebastian, a Los Angeles business executive, to find his daughter Sandy, a high-school senior who has run off with a homeless boy. Sebastian and his wife, living on the on the edge of affluent bankruptcy, seem unable to communicate with their daughter. Archer finds the runaways easily enough, but before he can return Sandy to her parents, she has participated in a violent crime. Archer’s efforts to save the girl from the consequences of her actions, and to understand those actions, involve him in a savage plot twisting deep into the past. At least one old murder and some new ones confound him and the police. Archer himself is very nearly killed by an ex-cop who wants to keep the case closed, but he finally manages to open it and let some daylight in. The Instant Enemy is Lew Archer at his toughest, and Ross Macdonald at his most trenchant in his observations of California society.

Recommended reading – The Owl: Justice Never Sleeps & The Owl: Scarlet Serenade:

The Owl: Justice Never Sleeps

By Bob Forward.

First published in 1984.

Republished in 2014.

Published by Brash Books.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 1941298052

ISBN-13: 978-1941298053

Description:

Justic never sleeps.

Alexander L’Hiboux is a man who lives on the streets, who never sleeps, who never stops hunting his lawless prey… he is The Owl.

The most daring and original hero in crime fiction… in a debut novel that’s a relentless, pure-adrenaline rush.

It’s the mid-1980s. Crime in Los Angeles is running rampant. When the law can’t help you, there is one man who can: Alexander L’Hiboux, whose ability to sleep was destroyed in the ghastly tragedy that cost him his family. Now he’s justice-for-hire, prowling the streets and solving crimes with deadly finality. A desperate, grief-stricken shipping magnate hires The Owl to find the scum who brutalized his daughter…a quest that uncovers a shocking conspiracy that will rock the city.

“Mike Hammer is a wimp compared to The Owl,” – Bill Crider, author of Outrage at Blanco and the bestselling Sheriff Dan Rhoades mysteries.

----------

The Owl: Scarlet Serenade

By Bob Forward.

First published in 1990.

Republished in 2014.

Published by Brash Books.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 1941298214

ISBN-13: 978-1941298213

Description:

Alexander L’Hiboux is a man who lives on the streets, who never sleeps, who never stops hunting his lawless prey. He is…

THE OWL

Haunted. Lethal. Unstoppable. Justice incarnate.

The most daring and original hero in crime fiction in a scorching, action-packed adventure.

SCARLET SERENADE

It’s the mean-streets of L.A. in the mid-1980s. When The Owl rescues a young punk-rock starlet from being kidnapped, he considered it just a minor good deed with a few dead bodies left scattered around. But he soon discovers that she’s the target of a gangland conspiracy that has half of the city’s underworld after her. Now the only thing between her and certain death is The Owl.

“Exhilarating! A pure action high unlike anything I’ve ever read before. The Owl is a cross between Batman and The Terminator…but he’s even more deadly and relentless,” –  Lee Goldberg, New York Times bestselling author of The Chase.

“It starts off over the top and builds from there. There’s action aplenty. The Owl absorbs more punishment than any two or three or four people in other novels,” – Bill Crider, author of Outrage at Blanco.

Recommended reading - Archer in Hollywood, by Ross MacDonald (1967):

Archer in Hollywood

By Ross MacDonald.

Published by Knopf.
Published 1967.
First edition.
Hardcover.
ISBN-10: 9997402529
ISBN-13: 978-9997402523

Description:

Anthology of three of Ross MacDonald’s novels, featuring the character private detective Lew Archer: The Moving Target; The Way Some People Die; The Barbarous Coast.

Recommended reading - Making Movies, by Sidney Lumet (1996):

Making Movies

By Sidney Lumet.

Published by Vintage.

Published 1996.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0679756604

ISBN-13: 978-0679756606

Description:

Why does a director choose a particular script? What must they do in order to keep actors fresh and truthful through take after take of a single scene? How do you stage a shootout – involving more than one hundred extras and three colliding taxis – in the heart of New York’s diamond district? What does it take to keep the studio honchos happy? From the first rehearsal to the final screening, Making Movies is a master’s take, delivered with clarity, candor, and a wealth of anecdote.

For in this book, Sidney Lumet, one of our most consistently acclaimed directors, gives us both a professional memoir and a definitive guide to the art, craft, and business of the motion picture. Drawing on forty years of experience on movies that range from Long Day’s Journey into Night to Network and The Verdict – and with such stars as Katharine Hepburn, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, and Al Pacino – Lumet explains how painstaking labor and inspired split-second decisions can result in two hours of screen magic.

“Film would be a better place if every director were required to share with other romancers of film his process. It is a gift to us all that it is Sidney Lumet, one of American’s greatest filmmakers, who is sharing his point-of-view.” – Stephen Spielberg.

“Invaluable. . . . I am sometimes asked if there is one book a filmgoer could read to learn more about how movies are made and what to look for while watching them. This is the book.” – Roger Ebert, The New York Times Book Review.

“Remarkable . . . . as dignified as the movies [Lumet] has made and yet deeply felt and very moving. . . . Anyone who truly loves movies ought to read what he has to say about them. . . . Delightfully engrossing.” – Los Angeles Times.

“The film bible from a master. It tells in meticulous detail the step-by-step process of making a movie. You feel you’re on the set. A must.” – Quincy Jones.

“Full of energy, enthusiasm and wisdom. . . . It’s all engrossing because [Lumet] speaks so fervently and opinionatedly about matters on which he has earned the right to opinions.”  - The New Republic.

Recommended reading - Black Money, by Ross Macdonald (1966):

Black Money

By Ross Macdonald.

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard.

Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

First published 1966.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0679768106

ISBN-13: 978-0679768104

Description:

“A Beautiful job … rich in plot and character…. The denouement is both surprising and shocking and the whole is up to Mr. Macdonald’s extraordinarily high standards.” – The New York Time Book Review.

When Lew Archer is hired to get the goods on the suspiciously suave Frenchman who's run off with his client's girlfriend, it looks like a simple case of alienated affections. Things look different when the mysterious foreigner turns out to be connected to a seven-year-old suicide and a mountain of gambling debts. Black Money is Ross Macdonald at his finest, baring the skull beneath the untanned skin of Southern California's high society.

“It was not just that Ross Macdonald taught is how to write; he taught us how to read, and how to think about life, and maybe in some small but mannered way, how to live.” – Robert B. Parker.

If any writer can be said to have inherited the mantle of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, it was Ross Macdonald. Between the late 1940s and his death in 1983, he gave the American crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity that his predecessors had only hinted at. And in the character of Lew Archer, Macdonald redefined the private eye as a roving conscience who walks the treacherous frontier between criminal guilt and human sin.

Recommended reading - In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing (2001):

In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing

By Walter Murch.

Foreword by Francis Ford Coppola.

Published by Silman-James Press.

2nd edition.

Published 2001.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 1879505622

ISBN-13: 978-1879505629

Description:

In the Blink of an Eye is celebrated film editor Walter Murch's vivid, multifaceted, thought -- provoking essay on film editing. Starting with what might be the most basic editing question -- Why do cuts work? -- Murch treats the reader to a wonderful ride through the aesthetics and practical concerns of cutting film. Along the way, he offers his unique insights on such subjects as continuity and discontinuity in editing, dreaming, and reality; criteria for a good cut; the blink of the eye as an emotional cue; digital editing; and much more. In this second edition, Murch reconsiders and completely revises his popular first edition's lengthy meditation on digital editing (which accounts for a third of the book's pages) in light of the technological changes that have taken place in the six years since its publication.

Recommended reading - The Best American Mystery Stories of the 19th Century (2014):

The Best American Mystery Stories of the 19th Century

By Otto Penzler.

The Best American Series.

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Published 2014.

Hardcover.

ISBN-10: 0544302222

ISBN-13: 978-0544302228

Description:

An unparalleled treasury of crime, mystery, and murder from the genre’s founding century.

With stories by Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, L. Frank Baum, Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, and Jack London, The Best American Mystery Stories of the Nineteenth Century is an essential anthology of American letters. It’s a unique blend of beloved writers who contributed to the genre and forgotten names that pioneered the form, such as Anna Katharine Green, the godmother of mystery fiction, and the African-American writer Charles W. Chesnutt. Of course, Penzler includes “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” recognized as the first detective story, and with thirty-three stories spanning the years 1824–1899, nowhere else can readers find such a surprising, comprehensive take on the evolution of the American mystery story.

Recommended reading - The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir, by Foster Hirsch (2008):

The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir

By Foster Hirsch.

Published by Da Capo.

2nd edition.

Published 2008.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0306817721

ISBN-13: 978-0306817724

Description:

Foster Hirsch's Dark Side of the Screen is by far the most thorough and entertaining study of the themes, visual motifs, character types, actors, directors, and films in this genre ever published. From Billy Wilder, Douglas Sirk, Robert Aldrich, and Howard Hawkes to Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski, and Paul Schrader, the noir themes of dread, paranoia, steamy sex, double-crossing women, and menacing cityscapes have held a fascination. The features that make Burt Lancaster, Joan Crawford, Robert Mitchum, and Humphrey Bogart into noir heroes and heroines are carefully detailed here, as well as those camera angles, lighting effects, and story lines that characterize Fritz Lang, Samuel Fuller, and Orson Welles as noir directors.For the current rediscovery of film noir, this comprehensive history with its list of credits to 112 outstanding films and its many illustrations will be a valuable reference and a source of inspiration for further research.

“Wonderfully readable: Hirsch is clear, knowledgeable, and concise….[The Dark Side of the Screen] is a visual as well as literary pleasure.” – Martin Jackson, Cineaste.

“There has been no extended work as good as Foster Hirsch’s The Dark Side of the Screen, a well-written, imaginatively illustrated book that sees the brief, true heyday as between Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) and his Sunset Boulevard (1950), but looks at the prelude and the aftermath, and sets the genre in its larger social and cultural context.” – Philip French, The Observer (London).

“An important examination of what film noir is…The 264-page treatise is not a review source; rather, Hirsch’s academic work delves deeply with a scholarly but not dry approach.” – Skyscraper, Spring 2009.

Recommended reading - Gold Coast, by Elmore Leonard (1980):

Gold Coast

By Elmore Leonard.

Published by MarinerBks.

First published 1980.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0062206095

ISBN-13: 978-0062206091

Description:

“Lean, mean, darkly funny.” – Boston Globe.

“A zingy thriller by the master of hard-boiled suspense.” – Dallas Morning News.

Just follow the Grand Master of mystery and suspense to Florida’s Gold Coast and you’ll quickly discover that it’s so. In this classic Elmore Leonard thriller, a beautiful mafia widow stands to lose everything her late mob boss husband left her if she succumbs to her desire for an attractive Detroit ex-con – so the two conspire to outwit the thugs the dead capo assigned to make sure she stays chaste. Superior crime fiction in the vein of John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Robert Parker – chock full of the eccentric characters, black humor, and razor-sharp dialogue for which the acclaimed creator of U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (of TV’s Justified) is justifiably famous – Gold Coast is gold standard Leonard.

Recommended reading - Crawlspace, by Herbert Lieberman (1971):

Crawlspace

By Herbert Lieberman.

Published by Pocket.

First published 1971.

First Edition.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0671775324

ISBN-13: 978-0671775322

Description:

In this novel of mounting suspense from award-winning author Herbert Lieberman, a terrifying surprise waits beneath a couple’s New England home. Albert and Alice Graves live a normal, if monotonous, domestic life. They never had children; they spend their days tending to their home and enjoying their time together.

One day, when the oil man, Richard, is refilling their furnace, Alice invites him to dinner, never suspecting that a casual act of charity will lead to a horrifying, morbid discovery in the crawlspace underneath their beloved house.

The Graves take Richard into their lives, becoming attached to his presence as though to the son they never had. Their town, though, is not nearly so welcoming. When the locals lash out against the Graves and their strange houseguest, the contented household is irrevocably drawn into a darkness they could not have imagined.

Recommended reading - The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023 (2023):

The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023

By Lisa Unger and Steph Cha.

Published by Mariner Books.

Published 2023.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0063315815

ISBN-13: 978-0063315815

Description:

"In this selection of tales exploring crime-sparking marginalization and thwarted desires, guest editor Alafair Burke and debut series editor Steph Cha have created a powerful vehicle for processing 2020’s volatility...Cha and Burke have curated a magical collection that serves as a master class in suspense writing." – Booklist.

"To Cha’s great credit, along with her guest editor, novelist Alafair Burke, this year’s edition...not only features many women and writers of color, but also pairs household names like Alex Segura, Lisa Unger and Laura Lippman...with top up-and-comers to paint a clear picture of the genre in 2021." – USA Today.

A collection of the year’s best mystery and suspense short fiction selected by New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger and series editor Steph Cha.

“This form has a special kind of magic, the ability to transport you quickly, intensely, to capture character, time, place, and story with immediacy,” writes guest editor Lisa Unger in her introduction. The transporting stories in this year’s The Best American Mystery and Suspense are populated by those who exist on the fringe of our society and want more than what life has dealt them: A haunted veteran turned career criminal is on the run. An injured fighter turned bouncer seeks vengeance for his lost love. An assassin on his last job finds himself questioning his life choices and breaks all the rules to understand his final victim. By turns thrilling and enlightening, each story, according to Unger, “will have you holding your breath, flipping the pages, will leave you thinking about people and why they do the dark, dangerous, frightening things that they do.”

Recommended reading - TCM Underground: 50 Must-See Films from the World of Classic Cult and Late-Night Cinema (2022):

TCM Underground

50 Must-See Films from the World of Classic Cult and Late-Night Cinema

By Millie De Chirico & Quatoyiah Murry.

Foreword by Patton Oswalt.

Turner Classic Movies (TCM).

Published by Running Press Adult.

Published 2022.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0762480009

ISBN-13: 978-0762480005

Description:

With knowledge, humor and an appropriately twisted perspective, [the authors] give readers a fuller realization of what late-night cinema offers. With a foreword by Patton Oswalt, this celebration of strangeness is well worth exploring. – Pop Culture Classics.

Based on the Turner Classic Movies series, TCM Underground is the movie-lover's guide to 50 of the most campy, kitschy, shocking, and weirdly wonderful cult films you need to see.

In the pages of this book, you'll explore this unique order of films – primarily from the 1960s, '70s, and '80s – with insightful reviews, behind-the-scenes stories, subgenre sidebars, and full-color and black-and-white photography throughout. Go along for the ride with new takes on crime films, including The Honeymoon Killers and The Harder They Come. Witness one-of-a-kind horror in Bill Gunn's landmark vampire film Ganja and Hess and Nobuhiko Obayashi’s infamous and indescribable Hausu. Absorb the boundary-pushing documentary-style trilogy The Decline of Western Civilization, which throws you into indelible moments in the punk and metal music scenes. And marvel at pure '80s oddities like Mac and Me and The Garbage Pail Kids.

From Possession to Polyester and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls to Xanadu, no two films are alike in this compendium. Just sit back and prepare to be surprised, amused, and entertained by this celebration of the stars, filmmakers, and stories behind fifty of the most beguiling and unforgettable movies ever to hit the screen.

Recommended reading - The Big Bounce by Elmore Leonard (1969):

The Big Bounce

By Elmore Leonard.

Published by Mariner Books.

First published 1969.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0062184288

ISBN-13: 978-0062184283

Description:

Jack Ryan always wanted to play pro ball. But he couldn't hit a curveball, so he turned his attentions to less legal pursuits. A tough guy who likes walking the razor's edge, he's just met his match – and more – in Nancy. She's a rich man's plaything, seriously into thrills and risk, and together she and Jack are pure heat ready to explode. But when simple housebreaking and burglary give way to the deadly pursuit of a really big score, the stakes suddenly skyrocket. Because violence and double-crosses are the name of this game – and it's going to take every ounce of cunning Jack and Nancy possess to survive . . . each other.