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Raymond Chandler created the fast talking, trouble seeking
Californian private eye Philip Marlowe for his first great novel
The Big Sleep in 1939. Marlowe's entanglement with the Sternwood
family - and an attendant cast of colourful underworld figures - is
the background to a story reflecting all the tarnished glitter of
the great American Dream. The hard-boiled detective's iconic image
burns just as brightly in Farewell My Lovely, on the trail of a
missing nightclub crooner.
During a period of twenty years--from his start as a young writer
for H. L. Mencken's classic pulp magazine The Black Mask in the
early 1930s, through the publication of his novels The Big Sleep
and Farewell, My Lovely, to his career as a Hollywood screenwriter
in the 1940s--Raymond Chandler kept a series of private
notebooks.Drawn from those journals, The Notebooks of Raymond
Chandler offers an intimate view of the writer at work, revealing
early ideas, descriptions, and anecdotes that would later be used
in The Long Goodbye, The Blue Dahlia, and other classics.Filled
with both public and private writings, The Notebooks of Raymond
Chandler includes "Marlowesque" particulars such as pickpocket
lingo, San Quentin jailhouse slang, a "Note on the Tommygun," and
musings on "Craps." Here, too, are surprising, lesser known essays
on Hollywood, the mystery story, British and American writing, and
a wicked parody of Hemingway. This sampler--by turns whimsical,
provocative, irreverent, and fascinating--also contains a list of
possible story titles; "Chandlerisms;" and his short work "English
Summer: A Gothic Romance," which the writer viewed as a turning
point in his career.
Pearson English Readers bring language learning to life through the
joy of reading. Well-written stories entertain us, make us think,
and keep our interest page after page. Pearson English Readers
offer teenage and adult learners a huge range of titles, all
featuring carefully graded language to make them accessible to
learners of all abilities. Through the imagination of some of the
world's greatest authors, the English language comes to life in
pages of our Readers. Students have the pleasure and satisfaction
of reading these stories in English, and at the same time develop a
broader vocabulary, greater comprehension and reading fluency,
improved grammar, and greater confidence and ability to express
themselves. Find out more at english.com/readers
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The Big Sleep (Paperback)
Raymond Chandler; Introduction by Ian Rankin
1
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R270
R211
Discovery Miles 2 110
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'I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew
it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to
be. I was calling on four million dollars.' Los Angeles Private
Investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by wheelchair-bound General
Sternwood to discover who is blackmailing him. A broken, weary old
man, Sternwood just wants Marlowe to make the problem go away.
However, with Sternwood's two wild, devil-may-care daughters
prowling LA's seedy backstreets, Marlowe's got his work cut out.
And that's before he stumbles over the first corpse. The Big Sleep
is Raymond Chandler's first novel featuring laconic PI Philip
Marlowe. 'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards
others still try to attain' Sunday Times 'Chandler grips the mind
from the first sentence' Daily Telegraph 'One of the greatest crime
writers, who set standards others still try to attain' Sunday Times
'Chandler is an original stylist, creator of a character as
immortal as Sherlock Holmes' Anthony Burgess Discover the newest
addition to the inimitable Philip Marlowe series - Only to Sleep by
Lawrence Osborne - out 6 September 2018 in hardback and ebook from
Hogarth.
Creator of the famous Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler elevated the American hard-boiled detective genre to an art form. Chandler's last four novels, published here in one volume, offer ample opportunity to savor the unique and utterly compelling fictional world that made his works modern classics.
THE LADY IN THE LAKE moves Marlowe out of his usual habitat of city streets and into the mountains outside of Los Angeles in his strange search for a missing woman. THE LITTLE SISTER takes Marlowe to Hollywood, where he tries to find a sweet young thing's missing brother, uncovering on the way a little blackmail, a lot of drugs, and more than enough murder. In THE LONG GOODBYE, a case involving a war-scarred drunk and his nymphomaniac wife has Marlowe constantly on the move: a psychotic gangster's on his trail, he's in trouble with the cops, and more and more corpses keep turning up. PLAYBACK features a well-endowed redhead who leads Marlowe to the California coast to solve a tale of big money and, of course, murder.
Throughout these masterpieces, Marlowe's wry humor and existential sense of his job prove yet again why he has become one of the most recognized and imitated characters in fiction.
The only complete edition of stories by the undisputed master of detective literature, collected here for the first time in one volume, including some stories that have been unavailable for decades.
When Raymond Chandler turned to writing at the age of forty-five, he began by publishing stories in pulp magazines such as Black Mask before later writing his famous novels. These stories are where Chandler honed his art and developed his uniquely vivid underworld, peopled with good cops and bad cops, informers and extortionists, lethally predatory blondes and redheads, and crime, sex, gambling, and alcohol in abundance. In addition to his classic hard-boiled stories—in which his signature atmosphere of depravity and violence swirls around the cool, intuitive loners whose type culminated in the famous detective Philip Marlowe—Chandler also turned his hand to fantasy and even a gothic romance. This rich treasury of 25 stories shows Chandler developing the terse, laconic, understated style that would serve him so well in his later masterpieces, and immerses the reader in the richly realized fictional universe that has become an enduring part of our literary landscape.
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The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler
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R520
Discovery Miles 5 200
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Elegantly designed and packaged in a mix of full color and black
and white comics, this trio of stories by Raymond Chandler that
have been adapted to the popular graphic novel format.
These two classic novels featuring private eye Philip Marlowe made Raymond Chandler's name synonymous with America's hard-boiled school of crime fiction. The Big Sleep was an instant success when first published in 1939. It centers around a paralyzed California millionaire with two psychopathic daughters; he involves Marlowe in a case of blackmail that turns into murder.
Farewell My Lovely, which Chandler regarded as his finest work, came out the following year. It has Marlowe dealing with the Los Angeles gambling circuit, a murder he stumbles upon, and three very beautiful but potentially deadly women. "Chandler writes like a slumming angel and invests the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence," said Ross Macdonald. And George V. Higgins wrote: "Chandler is fun to read. He's as bleak as tundra, and his dirtbag characters far outnumber his stellar citizens, but Philip Marlowe is a laconic tour guide through a zoo of truly interesting animals."
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The Little Sister (Paperback)
Raymond Chandler; Introduction by Val McDermid
1
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R311
R253
Discovery Miles 2 530
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'So you need help. What's your name and trouble?' Private
Investigator Philip Marlowe's latest client is Orfamay Quest. She's
come all the way from Manhattan, Kansas, to find her missing
brother Orrin. Or at least that's what she tells Marlowe, offering
him just twenty dollars for his trouble. Feeling charitable,
Marlowe accepts - though it's not long before he wishes he hadn't.
Soon the trail leads to a succession of Hollywood starlets, uppity
gangsters, suspicious cops and corpses with ice picks jammed into
their necks . . . The Little Sister is Raymond Chandler's fifth
novel featuring laconic PI Philip Marlowe. 'Marlowe remains the
quintessential urban private eye' Los Angeles Times 'Chandler grips
the mind from the first sentence' Daily Telegraph 'One of the
greatest crime writers, who set standards others still try to
attain' Sunday Times 'Chandler is an original stylist, creator of a
character as immortal as Sherlock Holmes' Anthony Burgess Discover
the newest addition to the inimitable Philip Marlowe series - Only
to Sleep by Lawrence Osborne - out 6 September 2018 in hardback and
ebook from Hogarth.
Raymond Chandler created the fast talking, trouble seeking Californian private eye Philip Marlowe for his first great novel The Big Sleep in 1939. Marlowe's entanglement with the Sternwood family - and an attendant cast of colourful underworld figures - is the background to a story reflecting all the tarnished glitter of the great American Dream. The detective's iconic image burns just as brightly in Farewell My Lovely, on the trail of a missing nightclub crooner. And the inimitable Marlowe is able to prove that trouble really is his business in Raymond Chandler's brilliant epitaph, The Long Goodbye.
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Killer in the Rain (Paperback)
Raymond Chandler; Introduction by Peter Robinson
2
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R357
R295
Discovery Miles 2 950
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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From the creased pages of 1930s pulp magazines Black Mask and Dime
Detective come eight of Raymond Chandler's finest short stories:
KILLER IN THE RAIN, THE MAN WHO LIKED DOGS, THE CURTAIN, TRY THE
GIRL, MANDARIN'S JADE, BAY CITY BLUES, THE LADY IN THE LAKE and NO
CRIME IN THE MOUNTAINS Set against a Southern Californian backdrop,
the stories are rich with suspense, violence and tragedy, and each
comes laced with booze, bullets and a detective with an eye for a
damsel in distress and an even keener eye for justice . . . Readers
will also recognize episodes, characters and flashbacks from the
Marlowe novels that made Chandler the undisputed master of his
genre. 'Anything he writes about grips the mind from the first
sentence. It is a spare, finished performance: full of life and
character: as tense as a tiger, springing into action' Daily
Telegraph 'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards
others still try to attain' Sunday Times 'Chandler is an original
stylist, creator of a character as immortal as Sherlock Holmes'
Anthony Burgess
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The Long Good-bye (Paperback)
Raymond Chandler; Introduction by Jeffery Deaver
1
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R328
R217
Discovery Miles 2 170
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A classic novel by Raymond Chandler, the master of hard-boiled
crime, The Long Good-Bye is the sixth novel featuring laconic PI
Philip Marlowe Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his
millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he
turns to his only friend in the world: Philip Marlowe, Private
Investigator. He's willing to help a man down on his luck, but
later, Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn
nasty. Marlowe finds himself drawn into a sordid crowd of
adulterers and alcoholics in LA's Idle Valley, where the rich are
suffering one big suntanned hangover. Marlowe is sure Lennox didn't
kill his wife, but how many more stiffs will turn up before he gets
to the truth? 'Anything Chandler writes about grips the mind from
the first sentence' Daily Telegraph 'One of the greatest crime
writers, who set standards others still try to attain' Sunday Times
'Chandler is an original stylist, creator of a character as
immortal as Sherlock Holmes' Anthony Burgess
Marlowe befriends a down on his luck war veteran with the scars to prove it. Then he finds out that Terry Lennox has a very wealthy nymphomaniac wife, who he's divorced and re-married and who ends up dead. and now Lennox is on the lam and the cops and a crazy gangster are after Marlowe.
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The Lady in the Lake (Paperback)
Raymond Chandler; Introduction by Jonathan Kellerman
1
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R281
R160
Discovery Miles 1 600
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'Everything was quiet and sunny and calm. No cause for excitement
whatever. It's only Marlowe, finding another body. He does it
rather well by now. Murder-a-day Marlowe, they call him . . .'
Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is hired to find a missing
woman. Derace Kingsley's wife ran away to Mexico to get a divorce
and marry a hunk named Chris Lavery. Or so the note she left her
husband says. Trouble is, when Philip Marlowe asks Lavery about it
he denies everything. But when Marlowe next encounters Lavery, he's
denying nothing - on account of the two bullet holes in his heart.
Now Marlowe's on the trail of a killer, who leads him out of smoggy
Los Angeles all the way to a murky mountain lake . . . The Lady in
the Lake is Raymond Chandler's fourth novel featuring laconic PI
Philip Marlowe. 'Chandler's best novels carry the crime story to
levels of artistry that have rarely been matched' Daily Mail
'Chandler grips the mind from the first sentence' Daily Telegraph
'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards others still
try to attain' Sunday Times 'Chandler is an original stylist,
creator of a character as immortal as Sherlock Holmes' Anthony
Burgess
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Farewell, My Lovely (Paperback)
Raymond Chandler; Introduction by Colin Dexter
1
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R282
R184
Discovery Miles 1 840
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'I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a
vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a
hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room' Cynical Los
Angeles Private Investigator Philip Marlowe always falls for a sob
story. Eight years ago Moose Malloy and cute little redhead Velma
were getting married - until Malloy was framed for armed robbery.
Now he's out and he wants Velma back. Marlowe meets Malloy one hot
day in Hollywood and, out of the generosity of his jaded heart,
agrees to help. Dragged from one smoky bar to another, Marlowe's
search for Velma turns up plenty of gangsters with a nasty habit of
shooting first and talking later. And soon what started as a search
for a missing person becomes a matter of life and death . . .
Farewell, My Lovely is Raymond Chandler's second novel featuring
laconic PI Philip Marlowe. 'Chandler grips the mind from the first
sentence' Daily Telegraph 'One of the greatest crime writers, who
set standards others still try to attain' Sunday Times 'Chandler is
an original stylist, creator of a character as immortal as Sherlock
Holmes' Anthony Burgess Discover the newest addition to the
inimitable Philip Marlowe series - Only to Sleep by Lawrence
Osborne - out 6 September 2018 in hardback and ebook from Hogarth.
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Playback (Paperback)
Raymond Chandler; Introduction by Kathy Reichs
1
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R306
R247
Discovery Miles 2 470
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Playback is Raymond Chandler's gripping last full-length novel
featuring laconic PI Philip Marlowe. 'Chandler invented a new way
of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to
us since' Paul Auster Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is mixing
business with pleasure - he's getting paid to follow a lovely
mysterious redhead called Eleanor King. And wherever Miss King
goes, trouble is sure to follow. But she's easy on the eye and
Marlowe's happy to do as he's told. But one dead body later and
what started out as a lazy afternoon's snooping soon becomes a
deadly cocktail of blackmail, lies, mistaken identity - and murder
. . . 'Chandler grips the mind from the first sentence' Daily
Telegraph 'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards
others still try to attain' Sunday Times 'Chandler is an original
stylist, creator of a character as immortal as Sherlock Holmes'
Anthony Burgess
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The High Window (Paperback)
Raymond Chandler; Introduction by Mark Billingham
1
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R281
R171
Discovery Miles 1 710
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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A CLASSIC NOVEL BY THE MASTER OF HARD-BOILED CRIME, THE HIGH WINDOW
IS RAYMOND CHANDLER'S THIRD STORY FEATURING LACONIC PI PHILIP
MARLOWE. 'He lay crumpled on his back. Very lonely, very dead. The
safe door was wide open. A metal drawer was pulled out. It was
empty now. There may have been money in it once.' Los Angeles PI
Philip Marlowe's on a case: his client, a dried-up husk of a woman,
wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon,
missing from her late husband's collection. That's the simple part.
It becomes more complicated when Marlowe finds that everyone who
handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up
dead. That's also unlucky for a private investigator, because
leaving a trail of corpses around LA puts cops' noses seriously out
of joint. If Marlowe doesn't wrap this one up fast, he's going to
end up either in jail or in a wooden box in the ground . . .
'Chandler's books should be read and judged, not as escapist
literature, but as works of art' W.H. Auden 'Chandler grips the
mind from the first sentence' Daily Telegraph 'One of the greatest
crime writers, who set standards others still try to attain' Sunday
Times 'Chandler is an original stylist, creator of a character as
immortal as Sherlock Holmes' Anthony Burgess
Philip Marlowe, the original hard-boiled private eye, returns to walk the mean streets of the American underworld again in these three classic novels. In The Lady in the Lake a business tycoon sets Marlowe on the hunt for some very important lost property - a flighty young wife, who proves murder to find. A wealthy widow sends the wisecracking detective on another trail in The High Window, this time to find a jinxed gold Doubloon. The Little Sister is Chandler's late, great story of a seemingly prim young woman who proves that trouble can come in the most innocent of guises, and who has Marlowe hooked on one of his most beguiling cases.
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The Big Sleep (Paperback)
Raymond Chandler; Introduction by Ian Rankin
1
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R277
R225
Discovery Miles 2 250
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Hard-boiled detective fiction at its best: Raymond Chandler's best
loved novel, The Big Sleep, published as a Penguin Essential for
the first time. 'I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't
care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private
detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.' Los
Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is hired by wheelchair-bound General
Sternwood to discover who is indulging in some petty blackmail. A
weary, old man, Sternwood just wants the problem to go away. But
Marlowe finds he has his work cut out just keeping Sternwood's
wild, devil-may-care daughters out of trouble as they prowl LA's
dirtiest and darkest streets. And pretty soon, he's up to his neck
in hoodlums and corpses . . .
A movie starlet with a gangster boyfriend and a pair of siblings with a shared secret lure Marlowe into the less than glamorous and more than a little dangerous world of Hollywood fame. Chandler's first foray into the industry that dominates the company town that is Los Angeles.
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