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The Golden Gizmo
''The Golden Gizmo'' is a 1954 novel by the thriller writer Jim Thompson. Plot Toddy Kent, a former con-artist with a rap sheet in a dozen cities is now working as a door to door gold-buyer in Los Angeles for Milt Vonderheim's jewelry shop. Despite his disreputable line of work, he is able to keep a low profile in fear of the police digging into his criminal past. He lives in a hotel with his wife Elaine. Elaine spends most of Toddy's money on booze, and is a regular in the drunk tank. Their relationship is toxic but Toddy can't bring himself to leave Elaine, despite his friends urging him to. Milt has been a fatherly figure and a good friend to Toddy and Elaine. Toddy conceptualizes he has carried a "gizmo," a G.I. G.I. are initials used to describe the soldiers of the United States Army and airmen of the United States Air Force and general items of their equipment. The term G.I. has been used as an initialism of "Government Issue", "General Issue", or " ... term for an un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jim Thompson (writer)
James Myers Thompson (September 27, 1906 – April 7, 1977) was an American prose writer and screenwriter, known for his hardboiled crime fiction. Thompson wrote more than thirty novels, the majority of which were original paperback publications, published from the late-1940s through mid-1950s. Despite some positive critical notice—notably by Anthony Boucher in ''The New York Times''—he was little-recognized in his lifetime. Only after death did Thompson's literary stature grow. In the late 1980s, several of his novels were re-published in the '' Black Lizard'' series of re-discovered crime fiction. His best-regarded works include ''The Killer Inside Me'', ''Savage Night'', '' A Hell of a Woman'' and '' Pop. 1280.'' In these works, Thompson turned the derided crime genre into literature and art, featuring unreliable narrators, odd structure, and the quasi-surrealistic inner narratives of the last thoughts of his dying or dead characters. A number of Thompson's books were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crime Novel
Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, often a murder. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as historical fiction or science fiction, but the boundaries are indistinct. Crime fiction has multiple subgenres, including detective fiction (such as the whodunit), courtroom drama, hard-boiled fiction, and legal thrillers. Most crime drama focuses on crime investigation and does not feature the courtroom. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre. History The ''One Thousand and One Nights'' (''Arabian Nights'') contains the earliest known examples of crime fiction. One example of a story of this genre is the medieval Arabic tale of "The Three Apples", one of the tales narrated by Scheherazade in the ''Arabia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lion Books (publisher)
Martin Goodman (born Moe Goodman; January 18, 1908 – June 6, 1992)City of New York, Department of Health Certificate and Record of Birth, January 18, 1908, No. 3268, lists name as "Moe". Bell and Vassallo list his name as "Moses", citing U.S. Census records, Birth year given as 1910, Brooklyn, in Bell, Vassallo note (p. 290), "Daniels's book gets several facts [about Goodman] wrong, including Goodman's date of birth, the name of his very first pulp, and the name of his first publishing company." Birth year also appears as 1910 at Birthdate is given as January ''8'', likely a typographical error, at was an American publisher of pulp magazines, Mass market paperback, paperback books, men's adventure magazines, and comic books, launching the company that would become Marvel Comics. Biography Moe Goodman, who would later adopt the name Martin, was the oldest son of 17 recorded children of Isaac Goodman (b. 1872) and Anna Gleichenhaus (b. 1875). His parents were Jewish immig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Printing
Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The earliest known form of printing as applied to paper was woodblock printing, which appeared in China before 220 AD for cloth printing. However, it would not be applied to paper until the seventh century.Shelagh Vainker in Anne Farrer (ed), "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas", 1990, British Museum publications, Later developments in printing technology include the movable type invented by Bi Sheng around 1040 AD and the printing press invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century. The technology of printing played a key role in the development of the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses. History Woodblock printing Woodblock p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hachette Book Group
Hachette Book Group (HBG) is a publishing company owned by Hachette Livre, the largest publishing company in France, and the third largest trade and educational publisher in the world. Hachette Livre is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lagardère Group. HBG was formed when Hachette Livre purchased the Time Warner Book Group from Time Warner on March 31, 2006. Its headquarters are located at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Hachette is considered one of the big-five publishing companies, along with Holtzbrinck/ Macmillan, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. In one year, HBG publishes approximately 1400+ adult books (including 50-100 digital-only titles), 300 books for young readers, and 450 audio book titles (including both physical and downloadable-only titles). In 2017, the company had 167 books on the ''New York Times'' bestseller list, 34 of which reached No. 1. History The earliest publisher to eventually become part of the H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1954 American Novels
Events January * January 1 – The Soviet Union ceases to demand war reparations from West Germany. * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York, at the head office of IBM. * January 10 – BOAC Flight 781, a de Havilland Comet jet plane, disintegrates in mid-air due to metal fatigue, and crashes in the Mediterranean near Elba; all 35 people on board are killed. * January 12 – 1954 Blons avalanches, Avalanches in Austria kill more than 200. * January 15 – Mau Mau rebellion, Mau Mau leader Waruhiu Itote is captured in Kenya. * January 17 – In Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia, Milovan Đilas, one of the leading members of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, is relieved of his duties. * January 20 – The US-based National Negro Network is established, with 46 m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels By Jim Thompson
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels About Smugglers
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
