Four full classic noir novels about artists trapped in a spiral of crime, betrayal, sex and suspsense.
Ride the Nightmare by Ward Greene
A tense and electric tragedy. What emerges from this novel is one of the most singular and compelling characters in American literature.” Los Angeles Record
Southerner Jake Perry is a successful, married comicbook artist living the good life in New York in the 1930s. But, bored and restless, he falls under the sway of Bellerophon Cawdor, a ‘Bohemian love-cultist’ in Greenwich Village, and the sadistic, erotic world he offered. Jake can’t let go, pulling his dutiful high-society wife, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy family, into his tragic obsession with forbidden pleasures, trapping them both in a whirlpool that could destroy their lives.
By Flesh Alone by March Hastings
This is the story of Lila, who has been married for some years…to a man who doesn’t seem to desire her. In frustration, and desperate for physical release, she leaves her husband, turning first to a woman who was once her lover. Her lesbian passions reawakened, she leaves her old lover and seeks new excitement, and a fullfilling relationship, with another woman, a bold, self-confident, moody painter. But to Lila’s surprise, despite her love and attraction to the passionate artist, she still feels a deep, emotional pull to her husband.
The Serpent Woman by John B. Thompson
Tom’s marriage to blue-blooded and frigid Bertha was arranged by his high-society New York family and has been a farce for years. So he begins a hot romance with beautiful Iris, a notorious painter with “bohemian” habits that tears his world apart. But he’s not alone in breaking bonds. Bertha soon discovers her own raging, insatiable passions…and that morality is a horrible hindrance to freedom. The three of them become helplessly trapped in the web of their seething desires…and there is no escape.
Any Man’s Playmate by James Rubel
A pulp noir classic, declared obscene in 1960, now back in print for the first time in decades.
When beautiful abstract artist Nicolette Starmont took rough-and-tumble law student Mel Corbin to her bed as her model and gigolo, he considered himself very lucky. She loved sex, which inspired her art, but it also filled an aching, insatiable hunger for her that no man alone could satisfy. He soon discovered that the hot, carefree eighteen-year-old was already a widow, and that she’d eagerly satisfy her needs with men or women, depending upon who was handly, willing and had the necessary stamina. But as she rises in the art world and he becomes a criminal defense lawyer, their unusual, years-long, purely sexual arrangement takes a horrific turn, shattering their world and forcing Mel into the fight of his life.
Previously published as Any Two Can Play, the book was declared as obscene and unmailable by the U.S. Postal Service in October 1960, along with eighteen other novels, including Demands of the Flesh and Fear of Incest (aka Design for Debauchery) by March Hastings and First Person, Third Sex by Sloane Britain, all republished by Cutting Edge.
James Rubel, John B. Thompson, March Hastings, Ward Greene /
Anthologies, Crime Fiction, Sexy Fiction
