Month: June 2026

Lawrence Block – A Week as Andrea Benstock as Jill Emerson (epub)

General:

Name: Lawrence Block – A Week as Andrea Benstock as Jill Emerson (epub)
Format: epub
Size: 498.3 KB

Book:

Title: A Week as Andrea Benstock
Author: Lawrence Block
Language: English
Year: 2016
Subjects: Fiction, Literature
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 9788382340594
Total pages: 440 str.

Description:

I can trace the origin of A Week as Andrea Benstock to two distinct sources. The first inspired my attempting the book, while the second inspired its form.
The second first: In 1949, Belgian author Georges Simenon published a novel called Four Days in a Lifetime. Besides its title, all I remember of the book is its structure; each of its four parts takes place entirely within a single day of its protagonist’s life. And those four days are all you needed. They gave you the full picture of the man’s existence . . . or, at least, all Simenon felt like giving you.
I thought it was brilliant, and the device-if not the plot or characters-stayed in my mind.
If Simenon gave me the structure of Andrea Benstock, Peggy Roth pointed me at the book’s subject matter and made me believe I was good enough to write it.
Peggy was a highly-placed editor at Dell Publishing. My own editor there, Bill Grose, reported to her, and on one occasion in the early 1970s the three of us had lunch together. I’d written a batch of sex fact books for Dell, but at the time I don’t believe Dell had published any of my fiction. I don’t remember much about our lunch except that we all had a lot to drink. The conversation wandered all over the place, and at one point Peggy asked me who my favorite writer was. I replied (and would very likely still reply) that it was John O’Hara.
"Oh, you’re a much better writer than he ever was," Peggy Roth said.
Now that could only have been the martinis talking, and I’m sure I knew it at the time and surely know it now. She couldn’t possibly have believed it, and if she did, well, she was wrong. But her words, even if I recognized them as outrageous and alcohol-driven, nevertheless allowed me to believe that I might try to play in that league. I’d never get a Golden Glove or hit for the circuit, but I might be able to sit on the bench. Maybe pitch batting practice, say.
Then Peggy asked me about my background, and I said I’d grown up in a middle-class Jewish family in Buffalo, New York. "Then that’s what you should write about," she said.
I don’t think it had ever occurred to me that anyone would want to read a novel with such a setting or that I would ever want to write one. But Peggy Roth, a perceptive and intelligent woman, thought that was what I should write. That didn’t send me rushing to my desk, but it was something to think about.
I don’t remember when it all came together, but eventually I found I had a book in mind. Like Simenon’s novel, it would consist of scattered days in a life-not four but seven of them, the titular week in the protagonist’s life. And they’d be strewn over a decade, beginning with her wedding, when she takes her husband’s name and becomes Andrea Benstock. The days chosen wouldn’t necessarily be the days on which major events in her life happened but would rather be representative days. And there’d be no elaborate recapitulation of what had transpired in the months and years between one day and the next; we’d get that information, but only insofar as it would be apt to come to her mind at each present moment.
I don’t keep journals, so I can’t say just when I started work on the book or even when I finished it. It took a while. Because of its utterly episodic structure, it was easy to put it aside between sections and turn to something else, something with the promise of immediate income. I was married to my first wife when I began the book, and that marriage ended in the summer of 1973.
I moved into a studio apartment on West 58th Street, and that same year Peggy Roth died far too young of pneumonia. When I finished the book, she was one of its two dedicatees; the other was my stepfather,…

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Lawrence Block – A Strange Kind of Love as Sheldon Lord (epub)

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Name: Lawrence Block – A Strange Kind of Love as Sheldon Lord (epub)
Format: epub
Size: 420.45 KB

Book:

Title: A Strange Kind of Love
Author: Lawrence Block
Language: English
Year: 2018
Subjects: Fiction, Literature, Mystery
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 9781782137566
Total pages: 160 str.

Description:

I’d no sooner finished CARLA, my first book for Midwood Tower, than Harry Shorten asked for another. I’d just returned to Antioch College, where after two years as an undistinguished student I’d dropped out for a year to hang on to a summer job at Scott Meredith’s literary agency and bucket shop. It was wonderful training, but after a year there I decided I should go back to school, where I had a chance to assume the editorship of the school newspaper. So there I was in Yellow Springs, Ohio, taking a batch of English courses, and I had a publisher who wanted me to write a book. What’ll it be, Larry-a paper on Tobias Smollett and the Great Chain of Being, or 50,000 words of soul-searching and sex for Harry Shorten? 50,000 words for which I’d be paid $600?
No contest, really.
The story concern a has-been writer trying to get back in the game, and all these years later I find it interesting that this young wannabe was already picturing himself on the way down and out.
A fellow named Craig said some nice things in his review, so I’ll excerpt it here: "The protagonist Dan Larkin is an aspiring author, like Block himself, and it’s downright eerie how many aspects of Dan’s fictional life would end up paralleling the arc of Block’s own life over the next 25 years: the progression from obscure pulp writer to eventual best-seller stardom, the women, the binge drinking, and the eventual spiral into alcoholism. . .
"There are flashes of some really good writing. The narrator’s voice resembles shades of Matt Scudde at times. There is a very funny chapter detailing a ten-day drinking binge that presages passages in After the First Death and When the Sacred Gin Mill Closes. There’s a memorable scene of frank and unexpected violence during an encounter with an older woman. Above all, the author’s young-eyed enthusiasm for the publishing industry and the life of being a professional writer shines through despite an affected veneer of world-weariness."
My guess is that some of the writing stuff is interesting. Interesting, too, is the title-which was not my idea, in case you were wondering. I have no idea what title I hung on it, but Harry or one of his elves went for A STRANGE KIND OF LOVE. Meanwhile, my very first novel, a sensitive lesbian coming-of-age effort which I’d called SHADOWS, was in the process of being accepted over at Fawcett Books for their Crest imprint. (They were the first publisher to see it, and in fact had it in hand before I wrote the opening sentence of CARLA, but Harry could commission two books and publish them both in less time than Fawcett could read a manuscript and reach a decision.) And when they did say yes to it, and when I’d revised it to their satisfaction, they changed my pen name (from Rhoda Moore to Lesley Evans, for reasons no one ever explained) and my title from SHADOWS to STRANGE ARE THE WAYS OF LOVE.
A STRANGE KIND OF LOVE and STRANGE ARE THE WAYS OF LOVE? Really? I don’t think I’ve ever used the word "strange" in a title since, and doubt I ever shall. Unless, of course, I were to write a politically incorrect novel of a young gay man’s coming out, but I don’t think so. Besides, STRANGE FRUIT only works if you can get Billie Holiday to sing it.
The cover is by Rudy Nappi (1923-2015), who was for 20 years the principal cover artist for the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries. The rumor that his cover for A STRANGE KIND OF LOVE was adapted from a rejected Nancy Drew cover strikes me, I have to say, as fanciful. But what do I know?
This ebook of A STRANGE KIND OF LOVE includes as a bonus the opening chapter of Book #7 in the Collection of Classic Erotica, CAMPUS TRAMP.

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Lawrence Block – A Madwoman’s Diary as Jill Emerson (epub)

General:

Name: Lawrence Block – A Madwoman’s Diary as Jill Emerson (epub)
Format: epub
Size: 421.76 KB

Book:

Title: A Madwoman’s Diary
Author: Lawrence Block
Language: English
Year: 2016
Subjects: Fiction, Literature
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 9780881455960
Total pages: 114 str.

Description:

After spending her girlhood writing gentle and thoughtful novels of the lesbian experience (SHADOWS, WARM AND WILLING, ENOUGH OF SORROW), Jill Emerson reinvented herself in the early 1970s, just when contemporary literature was experiencing an enormous flowering of sexuality. Even as the whole culture rocked with the sexual revolution, popular fiction echoed this change with a flinging off of censorship and a surge of sexual candor.
And Jill wrote three books for Berkley.
The first, THIRTY, was in the form of a diary, piling incident upon incident as the diarist, a woman in her thirtieth year, fled her safe suburban marriage and went off in search of her real self.
The second, THREESOME, took the form of a collaborative novel in which the three participants in a menage a trois wrote a book together to chronicle their own experience-an experience that continued to evolve as each read what the others had written.
A MADWOMAN’S DIARY, you won’t be surprised to learn, is a return to the diary form. Once again the diarist is a young woman, seeking a richer and more fulfilling life in and out of bed. But the book owes its storyline to more than Jill Emerson’s imagination. Interestingly enough, it grows out of a psychosexual case history previously reported by John Warren Wells.
Jill, having read JWW’s book in manuscript, couldn’t get one particular case out of her head. It was, she thought, a perfect springboard for fiction. And the next thing she knew she was typing away, entirely caught up in the woman’s story as it spooled itself out of her typewriter.
John Warren Wells was unlikely to object. He and Jill, always friends, occasionally lovers, were comfortable sharing their work, and not infrequently would dedicate their books to each other. And, even if JWW found Jill’s decorous plagiarism unsettling, what could he possibly do about it?
Both he and Jill are in fact pen names-or, if you prefer, alternate selves-of author Lawrence Block. So they have all the reason in the world to get along.
This ebook edition of A MADWOMAN’S DIARY includes as a bonus the opening chapter of the seventh Jill Emerson novel, THE TROUBLE WITH EDEN.

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Lawrence Block – [Chip Harrison 01] – No Score (epub)

General:

Name: Lawrence Block – [Chip Harrison 01] – No Score (epub)
Format: epub
Size: 372.61 KB

Book:

Title: No Score
Author: Lawrence Block
Language: English
Year: 2007
Subjects: N/A
Publisher: Signet
ISBN: 9780451187963
Total pages: 127 str.

Description:

Reacquaint yourself with Lawrence Block’s most endearing character, Chip Harrison, an affable, no-nonsense, man-about-town with a knack for finding mystery and mayhem wherever he goes. In his first wayward adventure, an adolesscent Chip unsuccessfully attempts to fulfill his dreams of desire–and finds instead that staying alive is the real difficulty. Original.

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Lawrence Block – [Bernie Rhodenbarr 10] – The Burglar on the Prowl (epub)

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Name: Lawrence Block – [Bernie Rhodenbarr 10] – The Burglar on the Prowl (epub)
Format: epub
Size: 741.99 KB

Book:

Title: The Burglar on the Prowl
Author: Lawrence Block
Language: English
Year: 2004
Subjects: Fiction, Thrillers, General, Suspense, Mystery & Detective, Detective and Mystery Stories, New York (N.Y.), Thieves, Library, Rhodenbarr; Bernie (Fictitious character)
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 9781844571789
Total pages: 127 str.

Description:

Amazon.com Review
Bernie Rhodenbarr, burglar with a heart of gold, returns for this 10th installment in a reliable Burglar on the Prowl, Bernie is recruited by an old friend to burgle the home of a crooked plastic surgeon, removing some off-the-books cash from a wall safe. A simple enough job, but Bernie complicates matters by going "on the prowl" one restless evening―-randomly cruising for an easy job. While he’s pawing through a woman’s empty apartment, she returns home; Bernie hides hastily, only to overhear an act of violence that draws him into a hunt for the perpetrator and a deepening role in the victim’s life.
Lawrence Block’s prose is merely serviceable, but his plotting and storytelling are first-rate. He constructs a complex puzzle, yet weaves in each new development so seamlessly that you almost don’t see it happen. Like its Bernie predecessors, The Burglar on the Prowl is droll and charming, and at times you can feel Block trying a bit too hard with the charm. However, a few truly horrific bad guys and some ugly violence keep the sweetness from cloying. And it’s impossible not to like Bernie, a gentleman criminal with few peers in contemporary fiction. –Nicholas H. Allison

From Publishers Weekly
You’d think that Block, with more than 50 books to his credit, would run out of ideas, but as this 10th in his Burglar series shows (after 1999’s The Burglar in the Rye), he’s as fresh, witty and inventive as ever. The author builds his plot on stupefying coincidences, but not to worry-everything eventually meshes. A friend asks Bernie Rhodenbarr, confirmed New Yorker, used-book dealer and gentleman burglar, to rob a mob-connected plastic surgeon who stole the friend’s mistress. He agrees, and cases the doctor’s house in Riverdale, the Bronx. But Bernie is restive and, uncharacteristically (because he plans carefully), he breaks into a Manhattan apartment on a whim and almost gets caught, hiding under the bed while a woman is date-raped. Next day a customer is shot near his bookstore, a mysterious émigré couple is murdered, a former Latvian war criminal is reported in New York and Bernie’s apartment is ransacked. These crimes seem unrelated in such a large city, but Bernie finds a common thread. In the end, Bernie assembles 22 people (including lawmen) in the surgeon’s living room and, Charlie Chan style, explains each participant’s role and, where appropriate, crime. Lesser hands would not bring off this breathtaking performance, but in Block’s it’s seamless and hilarious. Quirky characters like Bernie’s pals Carolyn Kaiser, the dog groomer, and cop Ray Kirschmann; an insider’s love of New York; and a slew of wonderful puns add to the fun.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Lawrence Block – [Bernie Rhodenbarr 09] – The Burglar in the Rye (epub)

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Name: Lawrence Block – [Bernie Rhodenbarr 09] – The Burglar in the Rye (epub)
Format: epub
Size: 390.22 KB

Book:

Title: The Burglar in the Rye
Author: Lawrence Block
Language: English
Year: 2007
Subjects: mystery, crime, caper, humor
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780060872892
Total pages: 127 str.

Description:

Amazon.com Review
Lawrence Block is such a gifted writer that even a native New Yorker will be fooled into thinking that the Paddington Hotel, described in the opening pages of Burglar in the Rye, is a real institution. Block’s descriptions of this enclave of artists, writers, and rock musicians is thoroughly convincing–although in actuality, the Paddington is a combination of the real-life Chelsea Hotel and Block’s outrageous imagination.
This is Bernie Rhodenbarr’s ninth heist. Bernie is a gentleman burglar who runs a used bookstore in between criminal acts, steals mostly from the rich, and only hurts people when it becomes absolutely necessary.
The Paddington is where Bernie goes to liberate the letters of a reclusive writer named Gulliver Fairborn from a literary agent. Fairborn’s resemblance to J.D. Salinger and, of course, the fact that the woman who hired Bernie to steal the letters had an affair with Fairborn when she was a teenager, no doubt lend the book its title. But by the time Bernie gets to the Paddington, the agent has been shot, the letters already liberated–and a cop in the lobby recognizes our favorite burglar from a previous encounter.
Now all Bernie has to do is find out who else wanted those letters badly enough to kill for them. In typical Rhodenbarr tradition, the plot is less interesting than the trappings: the books Bernie reads, the fascinating objects he picks up along the way. The reader also learns about some mind-expanding facts, such as the existence of a tiny South American fish that swims up a man’s urine stream and lodges in his private parts! Or did Block make that up, too?
Other Bernie picks include: , and . –Dick Adler

From Publishers Weekly
Block’s addictive series about bookseller/burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr (The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian, etc.) continues as our hero invades the hotel suite of an aged literary agent in search of a cache of letters, by a respected and reclusive writer, that are wanted by people both legitimate and not. As he usually does, Bernie finds a corpse on the other side of the locked door he so neatly opens, and he is immediately suspected of murder by his nemesis, sticky-fingered Ray Kirschmann of the NYPD. More murder ensues before Bernie, with the help of his lesbian buddy Carolyn, can get a handle on the proceedings. But when he does, and has gathered all the principals into a room for the inevitable explanatory/accusatory windup ("I suppose you’re wondering why I summoned you all here," he gets to say, to his and the reader’s delight, time and again), he hits on a solution that fingers a most unlikely suspect, satisfies all the claimants to the letters and leaves him (and Ray) richer. Block’s effortless mastery of his material, his relaxed ease, are as pleasurable as always, and he has some splendid fun with an author not unlike J.D. Salinger. This is the prolific Block’s only new novel of the year, and it’s a steal at any price. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Lawrence Block – [Bernie Rhodenbarr 08] – The Burglar in the Library (epub)

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Name: Lawrence Block – [Bernie Rhodenbarr 08] – The Burglar in the Library (epub)
Format: epub
Size: 365.14 KB

Book:

Title: The Burglar in the Library
Author: Lawrence Block
Language: English
Year: 2007
Subjects: mystery, crime, caper, humor
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 9780060872878
Total pages: 127 str.

Description:

SUMMARY: Bookseller and New-Yorker-to-the-bone, Bernie Rhodenbarr rarely ventures out of Manhattan, but he’s excited about the romantic getaway he has planned for himself and current lady love Lettice at the Cuttleford House, a remote upstate b&b. Unfortunately, Lettice has a prior engagement-she’s getting married . . . and not to Bernie-so he decides to take best buddy Carolyn instead. A restful respite from the big city’s bustle would be too good to waste. Besides, there’s a very valuable first edition shelved in the Cuttleford’s library that Bernie’s just itching to get his hands on. Did we neglect to mention that Bernie’s a burglar? But first he’s got to get around a very dead body on the library floor. The plot’s thickened by an isolating snowstorm, downed phone lines, the surprise arrival of Lettice and her reprehensible new hubby, and a steadily increasing corpse count. And it’s Bernie who’ll have to figure out whodunit . . . or die.

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Lawrence Block – [Bernie Rhodenbarr 07] – The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart (epub)

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Name: Lawrence Block – [Bernie Rhodenbarr 07] – The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart (epub)
Format: epub
Size: 424.25 KB

Book:

Title: The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart
Author: Lawrence Block
Language: English
Year: 2007
Subjects: mystery, crime, caper, humor
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 9780060872793
Total pages: 127 str.

Description:

SUMMARY: Bookseller Bernie Rhodenbarr’s in love-with an exotic Eastern European beauty who shares his obsession with Humphrey Bogart movies. He’s in heaven, munching popcorn with his new amour every night at a Bogart Film Festival-until their Casablanca-esque idyll is cut short by his other secret passion: burglary. When he’s hired to pilfer a portfolio of valuable documents from a Park Avenue apartment, Bernie can hardly refuse. But the occupant’s early return forces Bernie to flee empty-handed-and he soon finds himself implicated in a murder. Before you can say "who stole the strawberries?" he’s hunting for a killer, up to his neck in the outrageous intrigues of a tiny Balkan nation . . . and menaced by more sinister fat men and unsavory toadies than the great Bogie himself butted heads with in pursuit of that darn bird!

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