First edition. Illustrated biography of this famous escape artist. Houdini was also a book collector. Jacket worn. xii, 306 pages. cloth, dust jacket.. 8vo..

Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls

Biographies & Memoirs

GRESHAM,William Lindsay

Arts & Literature

HOLT.

Hanging around a traveling carnival, Stan Carlisle develops a mentalist act which gradually leads to his ruin

Nightmare Alley

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Carroll & Graf Pub.

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. Houdini's legendary illusions are explained and give a fascinating insight into their construction, created with simplicity that is the essence of true genius.

lulu.com

OUT NOW IN CINEMAS AND NOMINATED FOR FOUR OSCARS\nA cool, cruel, rediscovered classic of American noir adapted for cinemas by Guillermo del Toro, starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara\n'Read and shudder. And relish' Guardian\n'A creepy, all-too-harrowing masterpiece' Washington Post\nStanton Carlisle, employed as a carny at a travelling circus watches their freak-show geek - an abject alcoholic, the object of the voyeuristic crowd's gleeful disgust and derision - and 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.\nUnlike the tragic figure he sees before him, Stan is young, clever and ambitious and quick to learn from the other carnival acts. Initially teaming up with a beautiful but vulnerable woman as part of a double act in which he mesmerises her, Stan soon leaves his circus days behind him, becoming a successful spiritualist who exploits the weak and the wealthy.\nBut even the very best con-men can meet their match....\nWith a new introduction from James Smythe, Nightmare Alley is a forgotten classic of Depression-era America: a brilliant, horrifying, compulsive journey into the true darkness of the human mind.

Nightmare Alley: Film Tie-in

Raven Books

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 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 he’s going places. Onstage he plays the mentalist with a cute bimbo (before long his harried wife), then he graduates to full-blown spiritualist, catering to the needs of the rich and gullible in their well-upholstered homes. It looks like the world is Stan’s for the taking. At least for now.

Nightmare Alley (New York Review Books (Paperback))

United States

NYRB Classics

Nightmare Alley follows the exploits of Stanton Carlisle, a ruthless hustler who learns the tricks of the carny trade and uses them to prey on the wealthy and the weak. Carlisle's determined rise to power and inevitable plunge into depravity is more than great drama, it is an evisceration of the postwar American dream. An essay by Bret Wood explores the novelist's fascination with carnivals, magic, and spiritualism.

Centipede Press

Whether writing for the detective pulps, sci-fi digests, or lowbrow men's magazines, William Lindsay Gresham indulged his fascination with crime, psychology, magic, and spiritism. This book unearths twenty-four of Gresham's most fascinating short stories and essays, most of which have never been reprinted, and provides a comprehensive view of one of pulp fiction's most enigmatic figures.

Grindshow: The Selected Writings of William Lindsay Gresham

Centipede Pr

Soon to be a major motion picture from Academy Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro and starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, and Toni Collette. Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a carnival-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 he's going places. Onstage he plays the mentalist with a cute assistant (before long his harried wife), then he graduates to full-blown spiritualist, catering to the needs of the rich and gullible in their well-upholstered homes. It looks like the world is Stan's for the taking. At least for now.

Nightmare Alley: Movie tie-in edition (New York Review Books (Paperback))

“The most important collection of crime fiction ever published in the United States.” — Ed Gorman Evolving out of the terse and violent style of the pulp magazines, noir fiction expanded over the decades into a varied, innovative and profoundly influential body of writing. The eleven novels in The Library of America’s adventurous two-volume collection taps deep roots in the American literary imagination, exploring themes of crime, guilt, deception, obsessive passion, murder, and the disintegrating psyche. With visionary and often subversive force they create a dark and violent mythology out of the most commonplace elements of modern life. James M. Cain’s pioneering novel of murder and adultery along the California highway, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), shocked contemporaries with its laconic toughness and fierce sexuality. Horace McCoy’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1935) uses truncated rhythms and a unique narrative structure to turn its account of a Hollywood dance marathon into an unforgettable evocation of social chaos and personal desperation. In Thieves Like Us (1937), Edward Anderson vividly brings to life the dusty roads and back-country hideouts where a fugitive band of Oklahoma outlaws plays out its destiny. The Big Clock (1946), an ingenious novel of pursuit and evasion by the poet Kenneth Fearing, is set by contrast in the dense and neurotic inner world of a giant publishing corporation under the thumb of a warped and ultimately murderous chief executive. William Lindsay Gresham’s controversial Nightmare Alley (1946), a ferocious psychological portrait of a charismatic carnival hustler, creates an unforgettable atmosphere of duplicity, corruption, and self-destruction. I Married a Dead Man (1948), a tale of switched identity set in the anxious suburbs, is perhaps the most striking novel of Cornell Woolrich, who found in the techniques of the gothic thriller the means to express an overpowering sense of personal doom. Disturbing, poetic, anarchic, punctuated by terrifying bursts of rage and paranoia and powerfully evocative of the lost and desperate sidestreets of American life, these are underground classics now made widely and permanently available. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s: The Postman Always Rings Twice / They Shoot Horses, Don't They? / Thieves Like Us / The Big Clock / ... / I Married a Dead Man (Library of America)

James M. Cain

Robert Polito

McCOY, Horace

Fearing, Kenneth

Woolrich,Cornell

Edward Anderson

Library of America

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by GRESHAM,William Lindsay. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by GRESHAM,William Lindsay

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by GRESHAM,William Lindsay. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls

Nightmare Alley

Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls

Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls

Nightmare Alley: Film Tie-in

Nightmare Alley (New York Review Books (Paperback))

Nightmare Alley

Grindshow: The Selected Writings of William Lindsay Gresham

Nightmare Alley: Movie tie-in edition (New York Review Books (Paperback))

Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s: The Postman Always Rings Twice / They Shoot Horses, Don't They? / Thieves Like Us / The Big Clock / ... / I Married a Dead Man (Library of America)