The postman always rings twice - James M Cain

These three classics from the master of the noir
novel, along with five otherwise unavailable short stories, are electric with the
taut narrative voice, the suspense, and the explosive violence and eroticism that
were James M. Cain's indelible hallmarks.

The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cain's
first novel-the subject of an obscenity trial in Boston, the inspiration for Camus's
The Stranger-is the fever-pitched tale of a drifter who stumbles into a job, into
an erotic obsession, and into a murder. Double Indemnity-which followed Postman so
quickly, Cain's readers hardly had a chance to catch their breath-is a tersely narrated
story of blind passion, duplicity, and, of course, murder. Mildred Pierce, a work
of acute psychological observation and devastating emotional violence, is the tale
of a woman with a taste for shiftless men and an unreasoned devotion to her monstrous
daughter. All three novels were immortalized in classic Hollywood films. Also included
here are five masterful stories-"Pastorale," "The Baby in the Icebox," "Dead Man,"
"Brush Fire," "The Girl in the Storm"-that have been out of print for decades.