A noir classic back in print for the first time in over 65 years.
Lee Burke carried the hell of war back to Carmel, California with him...and everyone he touched him felt his torment. Except, perhaps, for Sharon, a wealthy, hard-partying widow, who married him and tried to battle his brutal, insatiable demons with all of her love and money until they became her own, too. Now they're trapped in a passionate struggle that could destroy them both, body and soul.
"Although the story is more thoughtful than the average noir novel, its typically simple prose and fast pace are likely to please fans of the genre." Reading California Fiction
Upon its release in 1957, "Take It Out in Trade" was immediately declared “objectionable” by the Roman Catholic Church’s National Office of Decent Literature. Now the incendiary novel is finally back after over sixty years... and you can decide if it is irredeemable trash, or pulpy, harmless entertainment…or even genuine literature.
The first time Britt saw Marcy, the girl in the tight, thin dress, he knew damn well that he was going to have her, or go to hell trying. But he hadn’t reckoned on Rigger, the girl’s husband, a sadistic runt of a guy who’d smash in a man’s skull as happily as blink at him. And he hadn’t reckoned on Newt, the lecherous, broken man who lusted after his brother's wife. As the three men fight for Marcy, human emotions are swept up, tossed in the harsh, bitter winds of the Texas panhandle, and shattered into dust.
Young, sexy, unhappy Mamie works at a diner on a desolate highway outside of Sacramento....where she has a hot, satisfying physical relationship with a rouastabout without any real financial prospects. So when Karl Brandon, a local rancher nearly twice her age, proposes marriage, she accepts, trading money and security over passion and love. But she soon realizes that the comforts of a fine home and the life of a homemaker aren't enough to make her happy...or to satisfy her aching needs, which grow more insistent with each passing day. A chance meeting with a former lover ignites Mamie's desperate hunger, sweeping them both up in a torment of lust and looming tragedy.
She Made It Her Business to Get What She Wanted... and She Never Stop Wanting. 
"Every man ever caught, or yet to be caught, in a female tug-of-war will appreciate this lusty, fast-paced, action-packed book." Joel Raleigh, The Lowdown