the complete hard case crime stephen king collection

In March, the publisher will release King’s Later, complete with the tagline, “Only the dead have no secrets.” PW’s review noted that “no good deed goes unpunished in this gruesome yet mesmerizing paranormal coming-of-age story.” Later is King’s third book for Hard Case Crime, preceded by 2005’s The Colorado Kid and 2013’s Joyland.

Hard Case Crime’s 2021 list is highlighted by the biggest name on its roster-Stephen King. No one needs to know what Sam Spade’s childhood was like-just get on with the story we’ve come to read.” “We still favor lean storytelling, with most of our books clocking in at 256 pages or less, featuring intense, focused stories. “In terms of the look and feel and storytelling style, we haven’t deviated one iota,” Ardai said. And though some elements of the books they’d loved have fallen by the wayside (such as the pocket format, due to the prohibitive economics of distributing mass market paperbacks), their spirit remains.

After a few years of getting the business organized, Ardai and Phillips released the first Hard Case Crime titles in 2004. They reminisced about pocket-size books with “luscious, painted covers and a tough, atmospheric prose style.” After the friends wondered why no one published those sort of books anymore, one of them mused that they should collaborate to start a new publishing imprint to fill the void. MacDonald, got more spirited, figuratively and literally, as the evening wore on and the bar tab grew. Their discussions of the paperback crime novels they remembered vividly from Gold Medal or Popular Library, by authors such as John D. Īrdai told PW that when he arranged to get together for drinks in 2001 with novelist and graphic designer Max Phillips, an old friend, he didn’t imagine where their casual conversation about the books they’d relished growing up would lead.

In fact, it’s how Hard Case Crime cofounder Charles Ardai, an Edgar Award–winning writer himself, described the circumstances of the imprint’s origins. It was the sort of idea that should have vanished with the sunrise, and the onset of sobriety.” That tantalizing line could have come from the opening of one of the more than 100 books published by Hard Case Crime, as a rueful narrator reflects on the offhand thoughts that led to trouble.

The complete hard case crime stephen king collection