The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and Selected Stories: Introduction by Robert Polito-Fast Shipping

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These three classics from the master of the noirnovel, along with five otherwise unavailable short stories, are electric with thetaut narrative voice, the suspense, and the explosive violence and eroticism thatwere James M. Cain’s indelible hallmarks.

The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cain’sfirst 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, intoan erotic obsession, and into a murder. Double Indemnity–which followed Postman soquickly, Cain’s readers hardly had a chance to catch their breath–is a tersely narratedstory of blind passion, duplicity, and, of course, murder. Mildred Pierce, a workof acute psychological observation and devastating emotional violence, is the taleof a woman with a taste for shiftless men and an unreasoned devotion to her monstrousdaughter. All three novels were immortalized in classic Hollywood films. Also includedhere 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.