Showing results by author "Lawrence Block" in All Categories

For 14 years, five-time Edgar winner and MWA grandmaster Lawrence Block wrote a monthly column on fiction for Writers Digest magazine. These columns yielded four books regarded as classics: Telling Lies for Fun & Profit, Spider Spin Me a Web, The Liar's Bible, and now, The Liar's Companion. Listen to The Liar's Companion and gain inspiration to create outstanding fiction.

I wrote three paperback original novels for Berkley under the pen name Jill Emerson, two of them in diary form, the third a presumed collaborative novel written in concert by the three viewpoint characters. These were fun to do and worked out well, and they led to Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man. I riffed on the experience of my friend George Dickerson, who, like the novel's protagonist, had the magazine he was editing folded out from under him.

An MWA Grand Master and a multiple winner of the Edgar, Shamus, and Maltese Falcon awards, Lawrence Block’s reflections and observations come from over a half century as a writer of best-selling crime fiction. Several of his novels have been filmed, most recently A Walk Among the Tombstones, starring Liam Neeson.

Five-time Edgar winner and MWA grand master Lawrence Block wrote a monthly column for the Writers Digest magazine for 14 years. The Liar's Bible consists of previously uncollected columns, chosen to illuminate the often dimly-lit path of the writer of fiction.

The craft of writing is a lot like spinning a web: You take threads and weave them skillfully together, and only you know where this intricate network of twists and turns begin and how it will end. Now, with Lawrence Block's expert advice, you can learn this art of entrapping your reader in a maze of fascinating fiction. Spider, Spin Me a Web is the perfect companion volume to Block's previous book on writing, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, which Sue Grafton noted "should be a permanent part of every writer's library".

From the revered The New York Times best-selling author comes a touching, insightful, and humorous memoir of an unlikely racewalker and world traveler. Lawrence Block is the author of bestselling novels featuring unforgettable characters such as the hit man Keller, private investigator Matthew Scudder, burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, and time traveler Evan Tanner. But much before he became an author, he was a walker.

Der Spitzel und Kleingauner Jake "Schnipser" Jablon macht sich eine Menge neuer Feinde, als er die Laufbahn wechselt und von Informant auf Erpresser umsattelt. Früher oder später, vermutet er, wird einer seiner neuen Kunden handgreiflich werden, und wen wird das kümmern? Er sitzt an einem Tisch mit Matthew Scudder, schnipst einen Silberdollar an und lässt ihn auf dem Tisch kreiseln. Schließlich ist das die Gewohnheit, die ihm seinen Spitznamen eingebracht hat. Dann heuert er Scudder an, einen Mord aufzuklären, der sich noch nicht ereignet hat.

Die Sünden der Väter" stellt Matthew Scudder vor, jenen New Yorker Privatdetektiv, der von Liam Neeson in "Ruhet in Frieden" auf der Leinwand verkörpert wurde. Eine junge Prostituierte wurde getötet und der mutmaßliche Mörder hat sich in seiner Gefängniszelle erhängt. Auf der Suche nach Antworten wendet sich der Vater des toten Mädchens an Scudder. Dieser erste Band der preisgekrönten Reihe wurde ursprünglich 1976 veröffentlicht, die deutsche Ausgabe ist aber bereits seit vielen Jahren vergriffen.

Hollywood vs. The Author is a collection of non-fiction anecdotes by authors who’ve had the pleasure of experiencing the development room firsthand - some who have successfully managed to straddle the two worlds, seeing their works morph into the kinds of feature films and TV shows that make them proud, and others who stepped blindsided into that room after selling their first or second novels. All the stories in this collection illustrate the great divide between the world of literature and the big or small screen.

When Joyce Kendall arrives in New York, fresh out of Clifton College in Iowa, she has a job and an apartment waiting for her. The job's as a first reader for Armageddon Publications. The apartment's at 21 Gay Street, and the small Federal-period house is already home to a lesbian couple, Jean Fitzgerald and Terri Leigh, and an out-of-work newspaperman, Pete Galton. The relationships of these four people under one roof add up to a fast-paced story that is not only satisfying fiction but a rare window on Bohemian life in the late 1950s.

O Rose thou art sick. /The invisible worm, /That flies in the night /In the howling storm: /Has found out thy bed /Of crimson joy: /And his dark secret love / Does thy life destroy. Those eight lines constitute the complete text of “The Sick Rose,” published by William Blake in Songs of Experience in 1794. I took to Blake early on, and thought Of Crimson Joy would make a dandy title. I accordingly fastened it on this novel when I sent the manuscript to Harry Shorten at Midwood.

Lawrence Block's new collection assembles seven works of fiction produced over a period of 60 years.

The Adulterers features George and Mona Sutton, a sexually incompatible couple on their way to a Mexican divorce. But they meet a helpful guide named Ernesto, and that changes everything. Ernesto took George to a live sex show, and it made an impression on the fellow. And, not too long afterward, Mona drank enough rum and Coca-Cola to float a light cruiser, and wound up as the sex slave of El Tigre.

One morning in the spring of 1958 I woke up in my room at the Hotel Alexandria with a paralyzing hangover (which was not unusual) and an idea for a book (which was). I sat in front of my typewriter, and within a few hours I had produced a chapter-by-chapter outline of a novel. I had all the characters sketched out and knew how they'd relate to one another, and how the rather elementary storyline would resolve itself. I even had a title: Shadows.

Four Lives at the Crossroads is the latest addition to the Collection of Classic Erotica. But it came very close to being shoehorned instead into the Classic Crime Library. Back in the late 1950s and early '60s, when I was finding myself as a writer and producing a great quantity of books under pen names, some of the books I wrote were as much crime fiction as they were erotica.

When a man called Bill spots a sign in a restaurant window, he grabs his carry-on and gets off his bus. Within an hour he's got himself a job as a short-order cook, and a start on a whole new life in Cross Creek, Montana. Things just fall into place. He applies for a library card, and the next thing you know he's having dinner with the librarian. One thing leads to another, and he can see a whole new life stretching out before him.

Florida private eye Doak Miller agreed to help the local cops by posing as a hit man to catch a woman looking to get rid of her husband. But then he met the wife - and fell, hard. Now he's plotting with her to commit a murder that could net them millions of dollars and the chance to be together. But to pull it off under the watchful eyes of the police, it'll have to be the perfect crime....

Hard Case Crime, die außergewöhnliche Krimi-Reihe als exklusive und ungekürzte Hörbuchproduktionen: Willkommen in einer Welt, in der die Sonne nur scheint, um tiefe Schatten zu werfen und in den Augen verkaterter, übernächtigter Männer zu brennen. Einer düsteren, brutalen Welt der Ganoven und Huren, in der die scheinbar ehrbaren Bürger moralisch verkommen sind, die Polizisten sowieso.

Sie ist ein einziger Traum - für einen Mann aber wird sie zum Albtraum. Johnny Hayden und Doug Rance wollen Immobilienunternehmer Wallace Gunderman um sein gesamtes Vermögen bringen...

Karen Winslow is starting over. But she's not sure how to move forward when her deepest secret haunts her and keeps her from enjoying her carefree youth. She's a sweet but troubled young thing, and not until she meets Rae, a confident young lesbian, does she realize what she's been missing. Meanwhile, she's also intrigued by a man and can't help but wonder if a normal life will put an end her sorrows for good.