Excerpt from The Rat Race: A Play in Three Acts To the right we look up at a roof with skylight and a series of windows which look onto it. Framed by her window, Mrs. Luigi Gallo, called soda because she is forever drinking it, sits and surveys the world. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

'Stephen Poliakoff's brilliant new play is a spiritual thriller for the 1990s - which certainly does not mean that once the 1990s are over it will be tired and dated.Sweet Panic will survive because of its intensity and perception' (Sunday Times) In Sweet Panic a child psychologist's understanding of contemporary life is brought into question when she finds herself is stalked by the mother of one of her young clients. 'Stephen Poliakoff's brilliant new play is a spiritual thriller for the 1990s - which certainly does not mean that once the 1990s are over it will be tired and dated.Sweet Panic will survive because of its intensity and perception.' (Sunday Times)'

A literary, psychological thriller set in 1951, reminiscent of The Great Gatsby.

With a reporter's keen eye for detail, award-winning journalist Zelnick conveys every emotion of the key players in this battle, presenting a rich, colorful tale that reads more like a fictional political thriller than the bizarre real-life drama it was--from election night through the U.S. Supreme Court's historic decision.

My Brother's Madness is based on the author's relationship with his brother—who had a psychotic breakdown in his late forties—and explores the unfolding of two intertwined lives and the nature of delusion. Circumstances lead one brother from juvenile crime on the streets of Brooklyn to war-torn Vietnam, to a fast-track life as a Hollywood publicist to owning and operating The Tin Palace, one of New York's most legendary jazz clubs, while his brother falls into, and fights his way back from, a delusional psychosis. My Brother's Madness is part thriller, part exploration that not only describes the causes, character, and journey of mental illness, but also makes sense of it. It is ultimately a story of our own humanity, and answers the question, Am I my brother's keeper?

This political thriller begins with the investigation by the police of a prostitute's murder in south London, and leads to the discovery of a trail of deception, personal ambition and favours called in that leads right to the heart of the government.

"Sanford is a supreme master at squeezing the last drop of terror and excitement out of a sordid, savage situation. The story sweeps along with an ugly force that will send sensitive souls in search of smelling salts." Pittsburgh Post-GazetteA trio of vicious World War One veterans descend on the farm in the Adirondack mountains where one of them grew up and his father now lives alone. They embark on happily wreaking drunken havoc at the old man's place and in the nearby town. But when a naive, mail-order bride arrives, she ignites a tinderbox of resentment, lust, and betrayal among the men that explodes in brutal depravity, bloody violence and shocking death.This hard-boiled, literary masterpiece, back in print for the first time in sixty years, includes a new introduction by Jack Mearns, author of John Sanford: An Annotated BibliographyPreviously published as The Hard Guys and filmed as the 1971 motion picture My Old Man's Place."Sanford, not to be confused with contemporary thriller writer John Sandford, was a writer of hard edged noirs that bristle with tension and the threat of violence, when that is unleashed it's brutal and shocking. A stark portrait of humanity at its lowest ebb and a menacing atmosphere pervades the novel. This is ice cold, easily as brutal as the best passages of Cain or Hemingway." Crimetime UK"Sanford's The Old Man's Place is a carefully designed character study bursting with tension and intrigue. I found myself so emotionally invested in these characters and their raw, primal instincts. Nothing short of extraordinary. It's darkly wonderful and honest, well ahead of its time considering the 1935 publication date. Sanford possesses a rare skillset that rivals some of the best noir authors of all-time." Paperback Warrior

Grover Graft, 29, investigative reporter for the Times-Herald of Albany, N.Y. is the chatty narrator-hero of this thriller -- which centers on a fiendish religious cult. Grover, despite resistance from his stodgy bosses at the "rag," keeps digging into the doings of a local cult called the Children of Abraham -- especially when a suburban couple begs him to search for their daughter, who disappeared after joining the cult's California branch. Undeterred by harassment by the cult, Grover is soon heading out to San Francisco -- where his sleuthing almost immediately seems to lead to the throat-cutting of an ex-cultist informer. Back east, the trail leads to a cult farm in Vermont -- where Grover catches a glimpse of his old flame Lisa Hurlbett, twin sister of his old pal Jim, who was recently found mutilated, pieces of the carefully dismembered body turning up at landfills across Vermont. After quitting his newspaper job, Grover goes it alone against the cult -- unmasking its shadowy guru, battling several crazies, surviving various ordeals and chases ... and exposing a lurid scheme involving lobotomy, incest, drugs, homosexuality, and blackmail.

All is not well in the Big Smoke...When a shadowy cat-burglar called 'Fingers' starts nicking rocks from London's celebrities, Macaulay Lewis, a misfit news-hound, scents opportunity. If he can unmask the thief, he might just stand a chance of holding down his job with the paper. His ex-girlfriend might fancy him again. He might even get snapped by the odd celeb magazine himself. Fame glitters. But is all that glitters really worth the cab ride home? Overexposure is arch farce and rollicking thriller rolled into one, with unforgettable characters, brilliant dialogue and laugh-out-loud quips. Expose yourself to the flashiest, edgiest comedy of modern life in recent years.

WHEN IT'S A MUSLIM, IT'S A TERRORIST. WHEN IT'S AN IRISH NATIONALIST, IT'S A FREEDOM FIGHTER! That at least was the attitude of the American judge who refused to extradite Sean Murphy to stand trial for planting a bomb in a London shopping mall that killed an Indian doctor and a three-year-old kid. Now Murphy is dead and 23-year-old American medical student Justine Levy is on trial in New York for his murder - conducting her own defense and resisting all offers of help from her young, black standby-counsel. But the evidence is circumstantial and the beautiful but vulnerable Justine remains tight-lipped. Was she a vigilante or was it personal? Did she know the child or the Indian doctor? Is she guilty? For her lawyer it IS personal because he is falling for her. But who will ultimately decide her fate? The jury? The ruthless gunman who has come to New York to kill her? Or another man who has come in pursuit of the gunman with a ruthlessness equal to that of Justine? David Kessler's first thriller doesn't just excite and mystify, it also asks some tough questions about vigilante justice and the rights of the victim.

It's Christmas Eve, 2017. A philosophy professor is on her way to celebrate with her family when she is hauled out of a taxi and bundled into an interrogation room. Opposite her, the senior officer is cynical, smart and relentless. Incriminating evidence has been found against her. Or has it? Is a terrorist attack imminent or is this a case of state paranoia? The clock ticks. Played out in real time, this riveting thriller pits two powerful antagonists head to head. Both think they are saving their country. Only one of them will win. Daniel Kehlmann's Christmas Eve , translated by Christopher Hampton, premiered at the Ustinov Theatre, Bath, in October 2017.

Erast Fandorin, our erstwhile gentleman sleuth and hero has gone off to serve in the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78) so as to forget his personal sorrows. Captured by the Turks, Fandorin wins his freedom by beating his captor at backgammon. He then encounters a naive, young "progressive" Russian woman trying to join her "husband" at the Russian headquarters. It's here where the action really takes off. Fandorin is requested to investigate certain devious goings-on, and he eventually exposes a well-known French journalist as a Turkish agent (who was one of the children raised by Lady Astair's establishments in The Winter Queen). The new Fandorin thriller is another compelling page-turner from Boris Akunin.

"From high society cocktail parties to wild bashes on Fire Island, this is how the beautiful people live. But for Julene Krebs, all the money in Manhattan can't protect her from a menace lurking just beneath the surface, a mistake from her past from which she cannot escape. Only charming but self-centered ad man Win Canard and brilliant scientist Nick Franklyn, both haunted by their own dark secrets, can save her. But, even as they fight each other, they must face off against a raging hurrican and an insane genius obsessed with just one thing... New York City, 1959. A picture of a place and time now past, where evil is not much different than our own. A psychological thriller in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock" --

Now available as a New Directions paperbook, Love and Terror, William Herrick's second novel with ND, both reflects and anticipates today's headlines. Terrorist kidnappings, hijackings, and dramatic rescues all form a part of the plot, but Herrick's interest lies less in tension-filled heroics than in the human cost of flawed idealism. Through the notebook of the principal terrorist, Viktor X, the complex characters of Viktor and Gabriele, for whom love and terrorism are intertwined and inseparable, are revealed. And in a series of interviews with a nameless reporter, the lives of three disillusioned revolutionaries--"the old ones," now hostages to a new brand of revolution--gradually and movingly unfold. In his earlier Shadows and Wolves (New Directions, 1980), Herrick showed us the possibility of human solutions that transcend politics. In Love and Terror he shows us why any ideology, inflexibly adhered to, makes such solutions necessary.

"When Vice President Vandercleve dies unexpectedly, the president's staff decides to postpone the announcement for political reasons." --

Vera Caspary, the famed author of Laura , gives us another gripping crime drama, told through shifting points of view. John Ansell, young and idealistic editor of Truth and Crime magazine, wants to breathe new life into the stale and formulaic publication. Instead of rehashing a story that's already been proven popular elsewhere, he finds a fresh one: the murder of Warren G. Wilson, famed figurehead of a correspondence course. The murder itself isn't too remarkable--just a bullet in the back--but the victim is another case, as it becomes apparent that despite having a household name, nothing is known about him. Perhaps even more peculiar is how Ansell's boss absolutely refuses to run the story and, soon thereafter, Ansell is poisoned. Caspary masterfully allows the truth to slowly untangle in this incredibly woven mystery, finally available as an ebook.

Mikki is a psychic. At least that's what the people who listen to his radio show think. Other people think he's a fake. Like the parapsychology researcher who's about to expose him. Until he's murdered. Which makes Mikki the prime suspect.

LOOK BEHIND YOU, LADY What a pickup line! Bruce Flemish is getting ready for his magic act at the Hotel China Seas in Macao when the girl sits down next to him at the bar and offers her room number. But this casual meeting is anything but. Donna Van Deerlin is looking for a hero. Her father was killed trying to get information to Hong Kong about a local opium ring. Donna has her father's notes in code. But getting them out of Macao will take courage. Bruce is sure she must have the wrong guy--he's just an itinerant magician. But before long Donna is working her magic on him, and Bruce is trying to stay one step ahead of a gang of murderers who want to get their hands on the notes as well. THE VENETIAN BLONDE Skelly stumbles into Venice with a gangster on his tail and his card dealing confidence blown to hell. He feels washed up. That's when he runs into Viola, a young blonde in a black swimsuit sitting at the end of the bar. He can't shake her. And he needs to, because Skelly is in town to hit up his old friend Rinny Jim for some quick cash. Instead he finds Rinny's beautiful wife Maggie, and a very sweet deal--a million-dollar con to bring a rich dame's nephew back from the dead. Now he's got two women after him, and all that sweet green tempting him to one last score. Skelly's problems have only begun.

A diabolically versatile serial killer is targeting talk show hosts for extinction. The industry is in panic, their revenues threatened, their very existence under attack, not only from the killer, but from certain sectors of society who, in some ways, side with the killer's grievances. To him talk show hosts are the sleazy practitioners of the art of destroying people's lives before a television audience. As New York City police detectives Charlie Marchetti, nighttime alcoholic, and his partner Angela Buonfiglio set out as lead investigators assigned to catch the assassin his tally of victims keeps steadily rising. The pressures on them from above to solve the case intensify. Then, in his twisted contempt for Marchetti, the killer begins writing letters to the detective--his way of upping the stakes in his insatiable thirst for gamesmanship, knowing that Charlie will never figure out the meanings behind his messages. The killer is too clever for any mere civil servant detective. Or is he? Charlie and Angela find out the hard way as they come face to face with a murderer determined to add them to his list of victims.