It Began As a Burglary – And Ended As a Nightmare. When Lee Scarborough came upon the brunette sunbathing topless in her back yard, getting involved in a heist was the last thing on his mind. But somehow that’s where he found himself – sneaking through a stranger’s house, on the hunt for $120,000 in embezzled bank funds. It looked like an easy score. But one thing stood between...
A classy blond, a beautiful yacht, an island in the Bahamas - every man's dream. But for Ingram it's a nightmare.
It starts when he agrees to help find Dragoon, a vanished schooner. The money isn't much - but the statuesque blond who hires him is!
Now it looks like he's going to get deep-sixed. Run hard aground, pinned down by rifle fire and sitting on top of a bilge full of...
Noir believes in love at first sight—or at least that men are capable of love at first sight—or at least that men are capable of lust at first sight, which they convince themselves is love. Case in point: Charles Williams’ All the Way, in which narrator Jerry Forbes falls at once for Marian Forsyth, allowing her to manipulate him as she sees fit. As is often the case, readers will...
A sailor stranded in the Pacific Ocean finds there are a million ways to die.
His life in pieces, Harry Goddard buys a thirty-two-foot sloop and sets out to sail the Pacific. He is a thousand miles from anywhere when his craft strikes an unseen object, and begins taking water. For all his desperate efforts, he cannot save her, and Harry is forced into his life raft, to drift...
Her husband in jail, a desperate young woman takes refuge among sharecroppers.
Once, Cass Neely’s farm stretched across the entire valley, but decades of bad decisions and rotten luck have forced him to sell off nearly every inch. He and his son farm the meager remains of a once-great property, living in a grim downward spiral—until Cass’s daughter-in-law, Joy, moves in. She’s...
John and Rae Ingram are alone on their honeymoon yacht in the Pacific, becalmed. It shoud be idyllic...but it's not. On the near horizon a ship is sinking. They rescue its lone passenger, a young man who claims he buried his wife and another couple, dead from food poisoning. But suspicion gnaws at Ingram, a suspicion only too soon justified. Soon Ingram and his wife are nearly...
Barney Godwin has a rich and jealous wife, a fishing equipment shop, and an ambition to change his life. He discovers that a local swamp rat has lucked into the proceeds of an infamous back robbery, and he schemes to make the money his own. But when it all gets too much, his life really changes.
An engineer battles a small town to see his sister released from prison.
It takes Reno three days to get from Peru to the Gulf Coast, and when he gets to Waynesport he has only one stop to make: the city jail, where his sister is being held on a murder rap. The way Vickie tells it, she saw her husband having a drink with another woman, they quarreled, and she went to the...
Originally published in hardback as Scorpion Reef.
An American tanker, finds a small, abandoned boat drifting in the Gulf of Mexico. On the boat, a coffee pot is still warm. Clearly, the boat has not been abandoned for long. But what has happened to its occupants? The answer lies in a log book in which our protagonist, Bill Manning, has written his story.
The Hot Spot. "When you break the law, you can forget about playing the averages because you have to win all the time." Madox wasn't all bad. He was just half-bad. But trap a man like Madox in a dead-end job in a nowhere town, mix in a femme fatale like the Harshaw woman, give him a shot at a fast $15,000 in a bank just begging to be knocked over.and his better nature doesn't...
It was obvious she had nothing on beneath the old cotton dress and that she didn't give a damn.
Lee was just looking at her. She could see what he wanted. I could feel the collar of my shirt choking me.
"She ought to be against the law," Lee said slowly and shakily.
"She is," I said. "And her father would kill you."
A son searches for the men who killed his mysterious father.
Even at sixty-six, Gunnar Romstead was a tough old salt. It took several men to bring him down, and even after they'd bound his feet and hands he was still a threat. But finally the man who'd survived waterfront brawls, World War II, and countless stormy nights at sea died on his knees-shot through the back of the head....
Pursued by the police, a desperate man fights to stay free — and stay alive. It's raining hard when the man leaps off the train. He lands safely and creeps into town, praying he will find someplace to hide. It's nearly daylight, and the police are not far behind. He breaks into an unoccupied seaside cottage, and is overjoyed to find coffee, whiskey, and cigarettes. But before...
Utterly beautiful, smart as a whip, and crooked down to her slightly round heels, here is the most fascinating confidence woman in suspense fiction, as portrayed by one of the classic masters of the form-Charles Williams. Welcome to the roller-coaster world of professional con men - and the one wild beauty who can out-swindle and outwit them all. Utterly beautiful, smart as a...
Now here is Charles Williams' River Girl, in every way a giant of a book-the story of a man and a woman who met and knew instantly that not all the world would tear them apart. River Girl, first published in 1951 as "The Catfish Triangle," is a book that shares some similarities with Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice. Down in swamp country a deputy sheriff meets and falls...
Stranded in a small town, a stranger falls for a suspected murderess.
Bored, divorced, and unemployed, Chatham is on his way to the Gulf of Mexico when he passes through a small town by the river. It's a miserable little burg-four stoplights and not much else-and he's almost escaped it when a drunk's car darts out in front of him, causing a nasty fender-bender. The thought of...
A car accident ended John Harlan's pro football career. But maybe it wasn't such a disaster after all.
For Harlan knows something about the accident that no one else does. And there's a lovely, calculating lady who will give him a hundred grand if he promises not to tell.
There's only one problem - at football he'd been a pro, but at blackmail he's strictly an amateur. And...
The Diamond Bikini (1956) is a backwoods-themed novel taking place in the Texas hill country and uses a wonderful supporting cast that includes an uncle building an ark and an uncle making leather hides to sell. The kid narrator, Billy Noonan, tells everything in a wide-eyed wonder, but you just know it's the author's tongue-in-cheek. Not knowing anyplace wholesome, Billy’s...
Charles Williams’ The Long Saturday Night was published by Gold Medal in 1962. It would turn out to be his last for the publisher. It’s about John D. Warren, a real estate broker from Carthage, Alabama. When he arrives early to visit to the private duck-hunting club early on Friday morning, he doesn’t realize what the weekend holds in store for him. First, he’s accused of...
The man nobody knew much about was buried at sea. He had been middle-aged, an almost professional sailor, and he had suffered a heart attack. There was nothing in his personal effects to suggest that he might have possessed a fortune.
Of the two men who had been aboard with him, one was dead two days after the small ketch reached port. Dead by murder. The other man, captain and...
The late Charles Williams is perhaps best known as a writer of taut action-adventure novels usually with a nautical tie in (Dead Calm, Scorpion Reef, etc). He also wrote the very compelling noir masterpiece entitled The Hot Spot. The Wrong Venus therefore represents a 180 degree departure from William's usual literary fare. It's an over-the-top comedy about Americans in Paris....
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