Dorothy B Hughes
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An escapee from a Spanish prison hunts for his best friend's killer in New York For more than a year, Kit McKittrick languishes in a Fascist prison, his days spent in darkness and his nights tortured by fear of his limping jailer, whose name he never learns. He escapes Spain with the help of Louie Lepetino, a childhood friend who came with him to fight on behalf of the Republican cause. Back in the United States, Kit heads out West to recover from...
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When Con Satterlee picked up the half-intoxicated blonde in the Bamboo Bar, Griselda was annoyed. When he walked out with the blonde, leaving Griselda flat, she was furious. She was frightened, too, returning alone to the isolated, ramshackle beach cottage. And this was to have been their second honeymoon!
Con came back rattling a handful of shells which he said he had taken from the blonde's revolver. But the blonde didn't come back. The police found...
3) Johnnie
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Lost in New York, a GI stumbles upon a nest of peculiar Germans Private First Class Johnnie Brown has only two days to spend in New York before he ships out to fight the Nazis. While his fellow soldiers amuse themselves at the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, and the night clubs of Times Square, Johnnie has a humbler wish: to ride the subway. But no sooner has he paid his nickel than he detects something peculiar: a stout, mysterious...
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In El Paso, a ranch hand falls for a dangerous gringa Jose Aragon looks like a cowboy and, to his disgust, smells like one too. In El Paso between jobs, he's standing outside the Chenoweth Hotel, praying for a room, a shower, and a couple of ice cold beers. Instead, he finds a woman: a sandy-haired, wealthy beauty named Dulcinda Farrar. Mistaking him for ordinary border-town trash, she offers him a few bucks to pick up a package for her. Jose plays...
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Los Ángeles de finales de los años cuarenta es una ciudad de promesas y prosperidad, excepto para el expiloto de aviones de combate Dix Steele, cuya existencia es un oasis de tedio en comparación con «la sensación de poder, euforia y libertad que le producía surcar los cielos en solitario». Steele pasa las noches merodeando, entre paradas de autobús vacías y playas en penumbra, en busca de mujeres jóvenes y solitarias. Apenas tiene...
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Handed a mysterious package, a woman finds herself caught in a deadly game Her name is not Eliza Williams. A fashionable young woman with a taste for adventurous men, she made the mistake of falling in love with Towner Clay-a New York City playboy whose international jetsetting conceals dangerous secrets. On Towner's behalf, she has spent six months pretending to be Eliza Williams, a dowdy Midtown secretary. It's dull work until the day Gavin Keane,...
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Julie Guilles has escaped to New York from Nazi-occupied France. But that doesn't mean she's safe. The German invasion put an end to her glamorous, sheltered life in Paris three years ago, and because she entered America illegally, she has to live in the shadows, a refugee without papers, never quite sure whom she can trust.
When an old acquaintance is gunned down in front of her apartment building, Julie worries she could be next. To evade the NYPD,...
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To stop a Communist plot, a secretive man searches Los Angeles for a confidential report When bad weather forces his flight to Los Angeles to land outside of town, Steve Wintress agrees to share a car with three of his fellow travelers: a timid young soldier, a powerful Justice Department official, and a taciturn Hollywood beauty. They don't know it yet, but all four strangers have something in common-and one of them might kill to get it. A Communist...
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To prevent another war, a diplomat hides from enemies of peace Twelve years after the Second World War ended, America's war efforts have been replaced by those of the Peace Department, whose chief responsibility is to oversee the police force that governs Germany. On the eve of the biennial Peace Conclave in New York, rumors are swirling that the force may be withdrawn, and the Germans allowed free reign once again. Only the secretary of peace stands...
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The Expendable Man is the second thriller published by Persephone Books (our first was the very successful The Blank Wall). But it is far more than a crime novel. Just as Hughes's earlier books had engaged with the political issues of the 1940s – the legacy of the Depression, and the struggles against fascism and rascism – so The Expendable Man, published in 1963 during John F. Kennedy's presidency and set in Arizona, evokes the emerging racial,...