by Vera Caspary
WORKS CITED
Babener, Liahna. 1994. “De-feminizing Laura,” in It’s a Print!: Detective Fiction from Page to Screen, ed. William Reynolds and Elizabeth Trembley. Bowling Green, OH: Popular Press.
Bakerman, Jane S. 1984. “Vera Caspary’s Chicago, Symbol and Setting,” in MidAmerica XI: The Yearbook of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, ed. by David D. Anderson. East Lansing, MI: Midwestern Press.
———. 1980. “Vera Caspary’s Fascinating Females: Laura, Evvie and Bedelia.” Clues 1.1: 46–52.
Caspary, Vera. 1941. “Laura.” [catalogued as “Untitled Murder Story”]. Box 11. The Vera Caspary Papers. Film and Manuscript Archive, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.
———. 1942 “Laura, 1942, Synopsis.” Box 5. The Vera Caspary Papers. Film and Manuscript Archive, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.
———. 2006. Bedelia. Philadelphia: Blakiston, 1945; New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York.
———. n.d. “General Correspondence January 1946–June 1962–March 1980.” Box 2. Folder 1. The Vera Caspary Papers. Film and Manuscript Archive, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.
———. Script of Recorded Interview [later used in The Boston Herald] by Dudley Fraser for Little, Brown & Company, 15 July 1950. Box 13. The Vera Caspary Papers. Film and Manuscript Archive, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theatre Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.
———. 1960. Letter to Joan Khan, December 31. “Correspondence from Readers 1957–58,” The Vera Caspary Papers. Film and Manuscript Archive, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.
———. 1971. “My ‘Laura’ and Otto’s.” Saturday Review, June 26.
———. 1978. “Mark McPherson.” In The Great Detectives, edited by Otto Penzler. Boston: Little, Brown.
———. 1979. The Secrets of Grown-Ups. New York: McGraw-Hill.
———. “Correspondence from Readers 1979–1981.” Box 28. Folder 5. The Vera Caspary Papers. Film and Manuscript Archive, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.
———. 2006. Laura. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1943; New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York.
———. n.d. “Discards and Rewritten Pages.” The Secrets of Grown-Ups. Box 29. Folders 4, 12. The Vera Caspary Papers. Film and Manuscript Archive, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.
———. n.d. “Draft Article.” Box 28. Folder 17. The Vera Caspary Papers. Film and Manuscript Archive, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.
———. n.d. “Screen Stories.” Box 9. The Vera Caspary Papers. Film and Manuscript Archive, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.
———. n.d. “Women in Crime.” Box 29. The Vera Caspary Papers. Film and Manuscript Archive, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.
———. n.d. “Working Draft 1927–1954.” The Secrets of Grown-Ups. Box 29. Folders 3. The Vera Caspary Papers. Film and Manuscript Archive, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.
Caspary, Vera and George Sklar. n.d. “The Exiles.” Box 10. The Vera Caspary Papers. Film and Manuscript Archive, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.
Caspary, Vera and George Sklar. 1945. Laura: A Play in Three Acts. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Emrys, A.B. 2005. “Laura, Vera and Wilkie: Deep Sensation Roots of a Noir Novel.” Clues 23: 5–13.
Jackson, Kevin. 1998. The Language of Cinema. New York: Routledge.
Maio, Kathi. 1980. “Rebel With A Cause.” Books. Sojourner, January 12.
McNamara, Eugene. 1996. Laura as Novel, Film, and Myth. Lewiston: Mellen.
Preminger, Otto. 1977. Preminger: An Autobiography. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Schloff, Linda Mack. 2003. “We Dug More Rocks: Women and Work.” In American Jewish Women’s History: A Reader, edited by Pamela S. Nadell. New York: New York University Press.
Warren, Ann L. 1988. Word Play: The Lives and Work of Four Women Writers in Hollywood’s Golden Age. Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California.
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Femme Fatales Series
Femmes Fatales restores to print the best of women’s writing in the classic pulp genres of the mid-twentieth century. From mystery to hard-boiled noir to taboo lesbian romance, these rediscovered queens of pulp offer subversive perspectives on a turbulent era.
SKYSCRAPER
Faith Baldwin
Afterword by Laura Hapke
eISBN: 9781558617872 | ISBN: 9781558614574
Lynn is an ambitious young woman who loves her job in a gleaming new Manhattan skyscraper. Soon, Lynn falls in love with Tom, the young clerk down the hall. They are so in love that if they don’t get married, something improper is bound to happen…. But her company has a strict new policy: Any woman who marries will be immediately fired. First published in 1931 as a serial in Cosmopolitan—the same year the Empire State Building opened its doors—Skyscraper marks the advent of a new kind of romance, and a new kind of heroine. This Sex in the City for its time was made into a pre-Code Hollywood movie starring Maureen O’Sullivan.
“With its sexual bargains and betrayals, insider trades and financial maneuvers, Skyscraper is pulp fiction at its best.”
—Maria Dibattista, author of Fast-Talking Dames
“A captivating and quietly subversive novel, featuring a spunky young working woman struggling to make it on her own. Skyscraper declares that despite all challenges, women should insist on their right to have it all.”
—Alicia Daly, Ms.
FAITH BALDWIN (1893–1978) was one of the most prolific mid-twentieth century authors of popular fiction. She published eighty-five books between 1921 and 1977, many of them focused on women juggling family and career, including White Collar Girl, Men Are Such Fools!, and An Apartment for Peggy, which was made into a Hollywood film in 1948.
BEDELIA
Vera Caspary
Afterword by A. B. Emrys
eISBN: 9781558616486 | ISBN: 9781558615076
Long before Desperate Housewives, there was Bedelia: beautiful and “adoring as a kitten.” An ideal housekeeper and lover, she wants nothing more than to please her insecure new husband, who can’t believe his luck. But is Bedelia too good to be true? A mysterious new neighbor turns out to be a detective on the trail of a picture-perfect wife with a string of dead husbands in her wake. Caspary builds this story to a peak of psychological suspense when her characters are trapped together in a blizzard. The true Bedelia—the woman who escaped a life on the street—is revealed.
“You must read Bedelia to see just how slick Miss Caspary’s technique of soft-shoe terror can be—how frightening she can make the chatter at an innocent dinner party, the lure of a lady’s deshabille, the glimpse of a black pearl in a dresser drawer.”
—New York Times
“A
sinister entertainment, especially for admirers of the psychological horror story.”
—New Yorker
“Vera Caspary’s gift is perhaps more subtle and deadly than Jim Thompson’s, David Goodis’s, and Charles Willeford’s.”
—Robert Polito, author of Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson
“A tour de force of psychological suspense, Desperate Housewives meets Double Indemnity in Caspary’s Bedelia.”
—Liahna Armstrong, President Emerita, Popular Culture Association
LAURA
Vera Caspary
Afterword by A. B. Emrys
ISBN: 9781558615052 (print only)
Meet Laura Hunt, a “modern woman” —ravishing, elegant, ambitious, and utterly unknowable. No one can resist her charms, not even cynical NYPD detective Mark McPherson sent to track down the killer who has turned Laura into a faceless corpse. By day McPherson interrogates the men who loved her; by night, he combs her apartment for clues, gazing at her portrait, smelling her lingering scent. One stormy night, the door opens to an electrifying plot twist.
Laura is a work of riveting psychological suspense, earning Otto Preminger’s 1944 film adaptation an Academy Award, and lasting renown as one of the greatest film noirs.
“An intriguing melodrama . . . A top-drawer mystery.”
—New York Times
“Everyone loves the movie, of course, but it is now possible again to read this stunning novel with one of the great surprise moments in the history of mystery fiction. Brava!”
—Otto Penzler, owner, The Mysterious Bookshop
“Laura continues to weave a spell . . . achieving a kind of perfection in its balance between low motives and high style.”
—Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times
“Laura will beguile and unsettle readers: a love story with a sinister underside . . . it remains a compelling original.”
—Liahna Armstrong, president emerita, Popular Culture Association
VERA CASPARY is the author of many books, plays, and screenplays. Her film credits include The Blue Gardenia and A Letter to Three Wives.
THE BLACKBIRDER
Dorothy B. Hughes
Afterword by Amy Villarejo
eISBN: 9781558617742 | ISBN: 9781558614680
For three years Julie Guilles, the daughter of wealthy American expats, has navigated Nazi-occupied Paris as an agent of the French Resistance. Caught in a web of political intrigue, Julie flees to New York in secret, where an acquaintance from the old world turns up dead on her doorstep. Once a sheltered socialite, Julie must rely on raw nerve and a smuggled diamond necklace to find the legendary Blackbirder, a trafficker who flies refugees to freedom across the Mexican border.
“One of crime fiction’s finest writers of psychological suspense.”
—Marcia Muller, author of the Sharon McCone novels
“Dorothy B. Hughes was such a mistress of dark suspense, I always had to read the end of her books first to keep from biting off all my fingernails.”
—Margaret Maron, author of the Deborah Knott novels
IN A LONELY PLACE
Dorothy B. Hughes
Afterword by Lisa Maria Hogeland
eISBN: 9781558617223 | ISBN: 9781558614550
Postwar Los Angeles is a lonely place where a strangler is preying on young women. Dix Steele, a cynical vet with a chip on his shoulder, is the LAPD’s top suspect. Dix knows enough to watch his step, especially since his best friend is on the force, but when he meets the sultry Laurel Gray, something begins to crack. Hughes’s brilliant portrayal of American masculinity and the fine line between danger and desire became the classic film noir by Nicholas Ray, starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame. In a Lonely Place is an unforgettable thriller.
“If you wake up in the night screaming with terror, don’t say we didn’t warn you.”
—New York Times Book Review
“A tour de force laying open the mind and motives of a killer with extraordinary empathy. The structure is flawless, and the scenes of postwar LA have an immediacy that puts Chandler to shame. No wonder Hughes is the master we keep turning to.”
—Sara Paretsky, author of the V.I. Warshawski novels
“A superb novel by one of crime fiction’s finest writers of psychological suspense . . . What a pleasure it is to see this tale in print once again!”
—Marcia Muller, author of the Sharon McCone novels
“This lady is the queen of noir, and In a Lonely Place is her crown.”
—Laurie R. King, author of the Mary Russell novels
DOROTHY B. HUGHES (1904–1993) was the author of several crime novels, many of which were made into major motion pictures. Her books include The Blackbirder, In a Lonely Place, Ride the Pink Horse, and The Fallen Sparrow.
BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING
Evelyn Piper
Afterword by Maria Dibattista
eISBN: 9781558617759 | ISBN: 9781558614741
Blanche Lake, a young mother, arrives to pick up her daughter at nursery school. But Bunny Lake has vanished, and soon everyone suspects that she is merely a figment of her mother’s female imagination. Searching desperately for her daughter, with no help from the police, Blanche needs every trick in the book to navigate a world that distrusts and disowns her. This psychological thriller was made into a classic motion picture in 1965 by Otto Preminger.
“The distraught, gutsy, and hip mother I played in Bunny Lake Is Missing is my all-time favorite role.”
—Carol Lynley
“A brilliant tale of psychological suspense, Bunny Lake is Missing is a classic thriller—a riveting revisit to the dark side of the 50s, where the tension beneath the calm surface has an undertow that drags the reader into its grip. Prime pulp—pure pleasure.”
—Linda Fairstein, author of The Bone Vault
“A beautiful job . . . Frantic scenes of action, contagious terror, and near hysteria.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
EVELYN PIPER was the pseudonym of Merriam Modell (1908–1994), whose novels include The Lady and Her Doctor, Hanno’s Doll, and The Nanny (1965), which was made into a film starring Bette Davis.
NOW, VOYAGER
Olive Higgins Prouty
Afterword by Judith Mayne
eISBN: 9781558616332 | ISBN: 9781558614765
A soaring romance and one of the greatest makeover stories in literature, Now, Voyager, first enthralled readers in 1941 and became a screen phenomenon the following year. Bette Davis triumphantly portrayed heroine Charlotte Vale, the shy, dowdy Boston heiress who blossoms into a defiant, sexually liberated woman. After a nervous breakdown releases her from the tyranny of her mother and blueblood society, Charlotte embarks on an ocean cruise where her fabulous new wardrobe and burgeoning charm lead to a love affair with a married man. Charlotte’s transformation has just begun. . . .
“At last we have the moon and the stars: at last, that is, the public can read the novel on which one of Hollywood’s most stirring melodramas is based.”
—Tania Modleski, author of Loving With a Vengeance
“Like the film it inspired, Olive Higgins Prouty’s Now, Voyager is as striking for the conventions it bucks as for the ones it embraces: a vivid reminder of a time when people crossed the ocean in liners and wore hats, and a hymn to an American ideal of social, moral, and emotional independence.”
—David Leavitt, author of The Man Who Knew Too Much
OLIVE HIGGINS PROUTY (1882–1974) is the author of many books including Stella Dallas (1923), which was adapted into three films and a long-running radio serial. Later in her life, Prouty became patron and mentor to Sylvia Plath, and the inspiration for Philomena Guinea, the meddlesome character in Plath’s The Bell Jar.
THE G-STRING MURDERS
Gypsy Rose Lee
Afterword by Rachel Shteir
eISBN: 9781558617612 | ISBN: 9781558615038
A mystery set in the underworld of burlesque theater in 1941, The G-String Murders
draws from the larger-than-life experiences of the legendary queen of the striptease. When one performer is found strangled with a g-string, no one is above suspicion. The cops face off with the theater’s tough-talking guys, and it’s clear that Gypsy will have to crack the case herself. The basis of the 1943 film Lady of Burlesque starring Barbara Stanwyck, The G-String Murders was the first of two murder mysteries written by Gypsy Rose Lee.
“Recommended for the readers who feel better when their eyebrows are raised.”
—New Yorker
“A rich and lusty job, brimming over with infectious vitality and a hilarious jargon of her own.”
—Life
“Lurid, witty. . . rich show business vocabulary and stage door gags make her book almost a social document. The G-String Murders builds up to a hair-raising climax.”
—Time
MOTHER FINDS A BODY
Gypsy Rose Lee
Foreword by Erik Lee Preminger
eISBN: 9781558618022 | ISBN: 9781558618015
A sexy, hard-boiled murder mystery by America’s most famous burlesque entertainer, this steamy sequel to The G-String Murders, Gypsy Rose Lee’s noir thriller, reads as if it’s ripped from her own diary pages. When her mother finds a dead body in Gypsy’s honeymoon trailer, Gypsy realizes that no one is who they seem to be and everyone is worthy of suspicion.
“Pure ozone to those tired of ordinary oxygen.”
—New Yorker
“One of the greatest mysteries ever written.”
—Philadelphia Daily News
“Our most famous burlesque queen may raise the temperature with a strip tease, but she chills the blood when she goes into her detective routine.”