Showing results by author "Lawrence Block" in All Categories

Lawrence Block, writing as John Warren Wells, introduces you to men and women who are trying every possible kind of sexual combination to make marriage work in bold new ways. Threesomes. Open adultery. Swapping. Group marriage. And a hundred variants of every possible sexual experiment within the marital relationship, surpassing the most erotic fiction.

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.

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.

"You Can Call Me Lucky" first appeared in Indian Country Noir, edited by Liz "Bootsie" Martinez and Sarah Cortez, and published by Akashic Books as part of their Noir series. Bootsie is a good friend of mine, and I had a hard time saying no when she beseeched me for a story. I felt unqualified, having minimal acquaintance with American Indians and their habitat. Then I thought of Indian casinos. And I remembered my nameless girlfriend, who'd thus far brightened Hell's Kitchen and Riverdale with her presence. No reason why she had to stay in the five boroughs of New York. Suppose she turned ...

In her fifth appearance, “Waitress Wanted,” Kit Tolliver had to leave Phoenix in a hurry. She’d had sex with her boss, and that sealed his fate; the guy had about as much survival potential as a male Black Widow spider. Now she’s in Washington State, renting a room in a comfortable suburban house, and ready to hook up with one of the men on her list. A Chicagoan, he slept with her a couple of years ago in New York, and got out of town before she could seal the deal. And now he’s right here in Kirkland, and he doesn’t know it, but he’s about to get lucky. Except the clown ...

It is Kit Tolliver's oft-repeated role in life to hook up with a suitable male, go home with him, have richly satisfying and often inventive sex with him, and then kill him and take his money. She'd done so in three stories ("If You Can't Stand the Heat", set in Hell's Kitchen, "Rude Awakening," set in the Bronx, and "You Can Call Me Lucky," set in an Indian casino in Michigan) and, while I knew her like a sister, I still didn't know her name or her backstory or why she was doing these terrible things. Then Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin invited me to contribute a story to a cross-...

There's no glass slipper in this fairy tale - just a damsel in distress, a bag of cash, and a whole lot of dead bodies. Reporter Ted Lindsay is trying to forget his ex-wife, and New York City's tough streets are just what the doctor ordered. They're also filled with alluring women, but only one catches Ted's eye. Cinderella Sims is not only beautiful, she's on the run and she needs Ted's help. She's got a bag full of cash and some very angry people staking out her apartment.

Jeff Flanders has a perfectly good life. Until Candace Cain sashays into it, and turns it upside-down. Jeff’s got a good-looking wife; he loves her, and she loves him. He’s got a job, swinging a desk at a semi-shady finance company, signing off on usurious loans to losers; he doesn’t love it and it doesn’t love him, but it’s easy work and it pays the bills. Until a girl called Candy applies for a $1000 loan - with no job, no bank account, no security.

Sheesh. What a lousy title. Flesh Mob was published by Midnight Reader, a fellow imprint of Nightstand Books, in 1962. I can tell at a glance that it’s my work, although I don’t specifically recall writing it. And I must have put a title on it, but I an assure you that it wasn’t Flesh Mob. It could only have been the inspiration of some editor in Illinois. Several notables filled that role over the years, including Earl Kemp, A. J. Budrys, and Harlan Ellison, but it’s hard to imagine any of those three making a eureka moment of Flesh Mob. For years it struck me as merely a bad title...

Struggling folksinger Ellen Cameron can't believe her luck. Not only is the State Department sponsoring her trip to West Berlin, but her agent has arranged for her to tour Ireland. It's just the break she needs. And better yet, she's meeting the friendliest and most interesting people on her trip, from a kind priest on the plane to a handsome American studying abroad.

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.

“She was just a little freshman / Victim of Admission’s whim / Then she met an upperclassman—we won’t name him— / And she had a child by him. / Now he’s off in New York City / Rescued by the co-op plan. / While she walks the streets of Yellow Springs, Ohio, / Looking for another man.” Ah, they don’t write ‘em like that anymore, and it’s not hard to see why. And the sad story recounted in the song is not entirely unlike that of Linda Shepard, titular (so to speak) heroine of Campus Tramp.

MWA Grand Master Lawrence Block presents 23 stories, all of them on the dark side, and all of them set in the city that never sleeps.

In Mike Nichols' extraordinary film, The Graduate, Anne Bancroft's Oscar-nominated performance as Mrs. Robinson added that character's name to our emotional vocabulary. As the older woman in Dustin Hoffman's life, Bancroft epitomized a phenomenon, at once seductive and predatory. Women like Mrs. Robinson have always been with us. Nowadays they call them Cougars. John Warren Wells spotted the phenomenon early on, and presents revealing interviews with 11 women who fit the job description with a purr and a growl. Here are four of them: MELANIE—One younger man was not enough. She could take ...

Turning 29 years old, Janet Giddings Kurland starts a journal and records her comfortably routine suburban lifestyle. But when she rolls the dice with her friend's husband, she starts down a path that will lead her to the hip streets of Greenwich Village. Amidst the sexually free, Janet blossoms and her housewife's journal turns into a sex diary filled with unexpected encounters, dangerous partners, and drug-fueled sexual escapades.

Is he an out-and-out mincing homosexual? Or a closet queen? A transvestite masquerading in full make-up and dress as a woman? A muscle-bound stud? Or is he just your normal American boy who happens to be in the business for himself, selling desirable merchandise--his body--at prices the market will bear? In THE MALE HUSTLER John Warren Wells talks frankly and at length to seven male prostitutes. They tell exactly what they do for a living; how they find their clients, what they think about their clients--and themselves; they talk about money, about men, about women. This book is a ...

In “Clean Slate” (Kit Tolliver #4) Kit found her mission in life. There were five men who once slept with her and lived to tell the tale, and she’s determined to hunt them down and wipe them off the board of life. So far, so good. But what do you do when all you know about a guy is the name he gave you? She’d met him in Philadelphia, but he was in town on business, so all she really knew was that he was from someplace else. Good old Sid from Philadelphia, except he wasn’t from Philadelphia, and his name wasn’t Sid. Want to give that a whirl out on Google? Then Rita told her ...

When we first met Kit Tolliver, in “If You Can’t Stand the Heat,” we didn’t know her name. She walked into a bar in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, where a slightly sinister gentleman picked her up, took her home, and took her to bed. She had a good time. Then she killed him, took his money, and went on her way. In her fourth appearance, “Clean Slate,” we found out more about Kit. Her name, and how she got this way. And she in turn finds her mission in life. There were five men who slept with her and lived to tell the tale, and she’s determined to hunt them down and wipe them ...

KEPT So you’re unemployed, fresh off a construction crew in Albany, and standing on a Thruway ramp trying to thumb a ride, and a babe in a Cadillac convertible stops for you. Hey, these things happen. They never happened to me, but never mind. For you it's different. You’re Mark Taggert and you’ve got the good sense to get in the car, and it changes your life. The girl’s Elaine Rice, and she’s gorgeous and sexy, and you wind up in her Park Avenue apartment, and you go to bed, and the chemistry is right, and there’s only one problem. She’s rich. Too rich for you to be ...

Lawrence Block on PASSION NIGHTMARE: “In July of 1959 I left Yellow Springs, Ohio, where I had just put in a third year at Antioch College. I’d spent one trimester editing the school’s weekly newspaper, with mixed results, and the other two largely neglecting some academic courses. “It did not go well. I’d dropped out of school a year previously, to keep and extend a summer job at a New York literary agency. By the time I got back to Antioch I’d written and sold a dozen stories and a couple of novels, and that’s what I was interested in, along with strong drink and illegal ...