Collections
Five stories: - Rear Window (Orig. It Had to Be Murder) - Post-Mortem - Three O'Clock - Change of Murder - Momentum
Short stores include "The Corpse in the Statue of Liberty", "Guillotine" and "The Moon of Montezuma", which were televised on the anthology program Thriller starring Boris Karloff.
Contains the stories: -The Moon of Montezuma -Somebody's Clothes--Somebody's Life -The Lamp of Memory -My Lips Destroy -The Number's Up -Music from the Dark
FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION, First Printing, Dell #6421, published May 1964. Original hardcover published by Dodd, Mead 1956. Cover illustration by H. Von Zeitzwitz. Part of Dells’ Great Mystery Library series. Original 60 cover price. Cornell Woolrich is a pseudonym of William Irish. Paperback, 19 cm.
10 Short -One Drop of Blood -Somebody on the Phone -Debt of Honor -The Man Upstairs -The Most Exciting Show in Town -The Night Reveals -Steps Going Up -The Hummingbird Comes Home -Adventures of a Fountain Pen -I Won't Take a Minute
This rare and vintage book is a perfect addition to any bibliophile's collection
Cornell Woolrich was a haunted man who lived a life of reclusive misery, but he was also a uniquely gifted writer who explored the classic noir themes of loneliness, despair and futility. His stories are masterpieces of psychological suspense and mystery, and they have inspired classic movies like Hitchcock's Rear Window and Truffaut's The Bride wore Black. This collection brings together twelve of his finest, most powerful and disturbing tales.
Contains the stories: - Johnny on the Spot - Waltz - The Book That Squealed - Meet Me by the Mannequin - Murder at Mother's Knee - Mind Over Murder (a.k.a. A Death is Caused) - Death Escapes the Eye - For the Rest of Her Life
“I wasn’t that good you know. What I was was a guy who could write a little publishing in magazines surrounded by people who couldn’t write at all. So I looked pretty good. But I never thought I was that good at all. All that I thought was that I tried to tell the truth.” Cornell Woolrich first perceived his personal truth in Mexico City at the age of eight when his maternal grandfather took him to see a traveling French company perform Madame Butterfly. He became aware of color, drama, tragedy and that someday, like Cio-Cio-San, he would have to die. His life and his writing were filled by the sense of doom that engulfed his young mind. “I had that trapped feeling,” he wrote in his autobiography, “like some sort of a poor insect that you’ve put inside a downturned glass, and it tries to climb up the sides, and it can’t, and it can’t, and it can’t.” This keen sense of futility permeated Woolrich’s life and stories. It was his special gift to be able to portray those individuals who lived on the edge of disaster and who were agonizingly aware that they did so. He did so. Steve Fisher used Woolrich as model for the brutal homicide detective in his 1941 novel I Wake Up Screaming. “He had red hair and thin white skin and red eyebrows and blue eyes. He looked sick. He looked like a corpse. His clothes didn’t fit him. . . . He was possessed with a macabre humor. His voice was nasal. You’d think he was crying.” The stories gathered here and arranged chronologically by the editors―“Kiss of the Cobra,” “Dark Melody of Madness” (also known as “Papa Benjamin” and “Music from the Dark”), “Speak to Me of Death,” “I’m Dangerous Tonight,” “Guns, Gentlemen” (also known as “The Lamp of Memory” and “Twice-Trod Path”), “Jane Brown’s Body,” “The Moon of Montezuma,” and “Somebody’s Clothes―Somebody’s Life,” (also known as “Somebody Else’s Life”)―refute Woolrich’s self-assessment. He was that good.
From 1934 until his death in 1968, CorÂnell Woolrich wrote dozens of tales of love and despairâ that chill the heart and display his mastery of the genre he all but created. In a title for a story he never wrote, he captured the essence of his tortured world: First you dream, then you die.â Â Introducing these 13 tales, Nevins deÂscribes the dark world Woolrich so vivÂidly creates. The dominant reality in his world is the Depression, and Woolrich has no peers when it comes to describing a frightened little guy in a tiny apartment with no money, no job, a hunÂgry wife and children, and anxiety eating him like a cancer. If a Woolrich protagoÂnist is in love, the beloved is likely to vanish in such a way that he not only canâ t find her but canâ t convince anyone she ever existed.â
Contains: -Blind Date with Death (1937) -The Living Lie Down with the Dead (1936) -Flowers from the Dead (1940) -The Riddle of the Redeemed Dips (1940) -The Case of the Maladroit Manicurist (1941) -Crazy House (1941) -If the Shoe Fits (1943) -Leg Man (1943) All stories originally published in Dime Detective Magazine.
Cornell Woolrich published his first novel in 1926, and throughout the next four decades his fiction riveted the reading public with unparalleled mystery, suspense, and horror. America's most popular pulp magazines published hundreds of his stories. Classic films like Hitchcock's Rear Window, Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black, and Tournier's Black Alibi came chillingly to the screen from his work. And novels like Deadline at Dawn, Rendezvous in Black, and Night Has a Thousand Eyes gained him the epithet "father of noir." Now with this new centenary volume of previously uncollected suspense fiction edited by Francis M. Nevins--recipient of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for criticism in the mystery field--a whole new generation of mystery readers, as well as his countless fans who have long loved his work, can thrill to the achievement of Cornell Woolrich, the writer deemed to be the Edgar Allan Poe of the twentieth century.
A collection of noir suspense tales by the late mid-twentieth century writer includes nine pieces written during the late 1950s and 1960s, two excerpts from an autobiographical manuscript, and five chapters from his unfinished novel.
Francis M. Nevins describes the 11 crime novels written in the 1940s by Cornell Woolrich as "the finest group of suspense novels ever written." Before he became famous for classics such as Deadline at Dawn, Woolrich was already developing his themes in sharply observed stories of romance and mischief. Here, collected for the first time, are 15 page-turners by a master craftsman. With an Introduction and notes by two-time Edgar-winner Nevins.
Literary Noir: A Series of Suspense is a collection of some of the finest short stories and novellas Cornell Woolrich wrote throughout his career. Some of the titles within this collection are well known amongst pulp-fiction and noir fans, while some have not been published in decades. Many of these titles have been made into television shows and feature films throughout the 40s, 50s, and 60s, and were the inspiration for many thrillers in the following years. Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich (4 December 1903 – 25 September 1968) is one of America's best crime and noir writers, and sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms William Irish or George Hopley. He invented and mastered the genre of "Pulp-Fiction" and wrote hundreds of short stories, novellas and full length novels. One of his most famous stories is It Had to be Murder which was adapted into the classic Alfred Hitchcock film Rear Window in 1954. Each Volume within this series was curated thematically to give the reader a straightforward, no-nonsense Woolrich experience. Read at your own risk. Volume Three of Literary Noir contains eight of the greatest short stories he ever wrote: - The Book that Squealed - Momentum - Three O’Clock - The Dancing Detective - Mannequin - For the Rest of Her Life - Penny-A-Worder - Death Sits in the Dentist’s Chair Follow this title with Literary Noir Volume One: Rave Against the Clock / Whodunit?, and Literary Noir Volume Two: Out of This World! Countless other Woolrich Novels, Novellas and Short Stories are also available as EBooks from the Estate of Cornell Woolrich and Renaissance Literary & Talent.
An Obsession with Death and Dying is a dual-volume collection of some of the most macabre short stories Cornell Woolrich ever wrote, many of which haven’t seen print for decades. In honor of the 50th anniversary of his death, we are resurrecting these thrillingly gruesome tales and reintroducing them to a new generation of noir, horror and mystery fans. Each story within these volumes contains some variant of the words “death” or “dying” in their titles, of which there are over 40 in the extensive pantheon of Woolrich’s short fiction. The idea of death was a constant existential thundercloud that loomed over this tortured writer’s head. He had a fascination with it, a lifelong obsession, one that bled through into his writing and motivated his characters to do some truly horrifying things. Let this master of suspense take you along for a deathly ride in An Obsession with Death and Dying on the 50th anniversary of his death. “Death Lies in Wait” (Volume One) features stories that will transport you to another place, dazzle you with performances or bewitch you with some wild or supernatural force before unleashing the horror of death upon you. The glitter and gold can only hide death for so long -- in a Woolrich story, death always lies in wait. That is true for these ten terrifying tales: -If the Dead Could Talk -Death at the Burlesque -Flowers from the Dead -Preview of Death -The Street of Jungle Death -Speak to Me of Death -A Death is Caused -Men Must Die -Death in the Yoshiwara -The Death Rose For something that thrusts you right into the physical grotesqueries of death, venture into “Death Waits No More” (Volume Two). Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich (4 December 1903 – 25 September 1968) is one of America's best crime and noir writers, and sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms William Irish or George Hopley. He invented and mastered the genre of "pulp-fiction" and wrote hundreds of short stories, novellas and full length novels. One of his most famous stories was “It Had to be Murder,” which was adapted into the classic Alfred Hitchcock film Rear Window in 1954.