Automat Press: 9 books

She was a perfectly nice girl, this Maria Dugan—though possibly a little too attractive for her own good. Craving a vacation that would really furnish thrills and excitement, she decided to treat herself to a couple of weeks in fabled Miami. There she soon learned that the only way to interest a...

Death is a Lovely Dame is a collection of all the best lines from the Golden Era of hardboiled crime fiction. It includes quotes from such great authors as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Jim Thompson, Gil, Brewer, Charles Willeford, Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald, Lawrence Block,...

Bill Brown is a savvy, mostly honest L. A. cop who flees to Dallas after an investigation into corruption targets some of his off-duty organized crime gambling buddies. When his life is threatened to keep him quiet, Bill buys a bus ticket, and stumbles onto a kidnapping/murder plot of a young girl...

If a mutant offspring of Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith had written fortune cookies, the result would be Verse Noir. The original edition, published in 2010, was a minimalist masterpiece. Its 77 brief poems—the shortest was only three words long—delivered concentrated doses of sex, violence,...

HE HAD COMMITTED THE PERFECT MURDER AND NOW … Hunched on the elevator floor, caged in his mechanical prison, Julien tried to sort out his thoughts. How long would he have to stay here? His brain ground out the answer he'd been avoiding. A day and two nights. Thirty-six hours. Monday morning...

Flight to Darkness I murdered my brother with a sculptor's mallet. But it was only a dream. It was a dream I always had. I hated my brother. I was going home to see him now, get it out of my system, and then spend the rest of my life hunting Leda. She was my wife and she belonged to me. All...

Gus Robinson is washed up on Spanish Cay in the Bahamas after his sloop sinks and is taken in by a lovely widow. It isn't long before the widow, Clare Loomis, realizes that the shipwrecked sailor is the perfect candidate to carry out the murder of the one person standing between her and an inherited...

HALF THE LOOT was Police Detective Bonner’s price for masterminding the bank robbery. Bonner couldn’t keep a gorgeous young chick like Peg on his lousy cop’s salary. And he had to have Peg. That’s why the deal to knock over the Second City National Bank. Seven minutes was all it would. take....

Dangerous Johnny Maguire of The Chinese Keyhole is back in a hurricane of guys, gals and guns. This will keep you on the edge all the way. More than 6 million copies in print!