No magician has captured the imagination of the world as did Harry Houdini, his very name a byword for stunning, amazing escapes. In this authoritative biography, acclaimed author and noted psychic skeptic, William Lindsay Gresham details the life of the great man. The strands of Houdini’s life are chronicled in rich detail; the stage illusions and their invention, his private life as he traveled the world, and Houdini’s passion for exposing the frauds and scams of the ‘psychic’ world. Hou...

No Magician has captured the imagination of the World as did Harry Houdini, his very name become a byword for stunning, amazing escapes.In this authoritative biography, acclaimed author and noted psychic sceptic, William Lindsay Gresham details the life of the great man. The strands of Houdini's life are chronicled in rich detail; the stage illusions and their invention, his private life as he travelled the world and Houdini's passion for exposing the frauds and scams of the 'psychi...

Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a freak-show geek—alcoholic and abject and the object of the voyeuristic crowd’s gleeful disgust and derision—going about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low. There’s no way in hell, he vows, that anything like that will ever happen to him.And since Stan is clever and ambitious and not without a useful streak of ruthlessness, soon enough ...

Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls by William Lindsay Gresham is a captivating biography of the legendary magician and escape artist Harry Houdini. Gresham paints a vivid and intimate portrait of Houdini, tracing his journey from humble beginnings as Erik Weisz, a Hungarian immigrant, to becoming one of the most famous and enigmatic performers in the world. The book explores Houdini’s extraordinary feats of escape, his relentless pursuit of fame, and his obsession with debunking spi...

Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham is a dark, psychological noir novel that delves into the seedy underworld of carnival life and the human psyche. The story follows the rise and fall of Stanton "Stan" Carlisle, an ambitious and cunning carnival worker who begins as a small-time hustler but quickly rises to become a successful and manipulative mentalist. Stan's ability to read and exploit people’s deepest fears and desires propels him to fame and fortune, but as he becomes more ent...

Stanton Carlisle is smart, good-looking and ambitious. Among the outcasts, freaks and geeks of the Ten-in-One sideshow, he learns that the public is there to be gulled, and he learns how to do it. Amoral and brilliant, he aims for the brighter lights of vaudeville before a much bigger coup faking spiritualism for the rich. But his own dark fears haunt him, and he is not the only one taking advantage of terror and desire. Published in 1946, Nightmare Alley is a noir classic at once a vivid ...

One of the twentieth century's most darkly beautiful works of crime fiction—a story of carny life, spiritualism, and a con man of merciless resolve.Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a freak-show geek—alcoholic and abject and the object of the voyeuristic crowd's gleeful disgust and derision—going about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low. There's no way i...

A fascinating portrait of mid-1950s America by the iconic Charles BeaumontHe was a leader of men, but he was evil. He was a stranger, but he brought lust and love, rape and hate to this quiet southern town. He was … the intruder.It was a sleepy southern town with nice folks and good schools. Then the intruder arrived from the North. With him came trouble, fear, and hate so vicious it could turn neighbor against neighbor, child against child, white against black—and destroy ...

A work of dangerous and haunting beauty by America's last real literary outlaw.Under Tiberius is a thrilling story of crime and deceit involving the man who came to be called Jesus Christ. Deep in the recesses of the Vatican, Nick Tosches unearths a first-century memoir by Gaius Fulvius Falconius, foremost speechwriter for Emperor Tiberius. The codex is profound, proof of the existence of a Messiah who was anything but the one we've known -- a shabby and l...

From Donald Ray Pollock, author of the highly acclaimed The Devil All the Time and Knockemstiff, comes a dark, gritty, electrifying (and, disturbingly, weirdly funny) new novel that will solidify his place among the best contemporary American authors.It is 1917, in that sliver of border land that divides Georgia from Alabama. Dispossessed farmer Pearl Jewett ekes out a hardscrabble existence with his three young sons: Cane (the eldest; handsome; i...

A dark and comic novel, Congratulations On Everything tracks the struggles, frailties, and cruelly pyrrhic victories of the middle-aged owner of a bar-restaurant and a 30ish lunch-shift waitress.Jeremy has bought into the teachings of an empowerment and success guru, hook, line, and sinker. A Toronto service industry lifer, he’s risen through the ranks until he finally takes the keys to his destiny and opens his own place, The Ice Shack.Everyone assumes Ice Shack d...

Horatio Leavenworth is a New York merchant whose material wealth is matched by his eminence in the community and reputation for good works. He is also the guardian of two striking nieces who share his Fifth Avenue mansion. Mary, her uncle's favorite, is to inherit his fortune at his death.As this mystery opens, that lamentable event has just occurred: Leavenworth has been shot to death, and circumstances point to one of his young wards. But is that the trail to follow?This ...