Manhattan Noir 2, The ClassicsTABLE OF CONTENTSPART I: THE OLD SCHOOLEDITH WHARTON, Greenwich Village, Mrs. Manstey’s View, 1891STEPHEN CRANE, East 40s, A Poker Game, 1902O. HENRY, Lower West Side, The Furnished Room, 1906IRWIN SHAW, West Village, Sailor off the Bremen, 1939CORNELL WOOLRICH, East 37th Street, New York Blues, 1970PART II: THE POETS EDGAR ALLAN POE, West 84th Street, The Raven, 1845HORACE GREGORY, Chelsea, Selections from Chelsea Rooming House, 1930GEOFFREY BARTHOLOMEW, East Village, Selections from The McSorley Poems, 2001PART III: DARKNESS VISIBLEJERROLD MUNDIS, Central Park, The Luger Is a 9mm Automatic Handgun with a Parabellum Action, 1969BARRY N. MALZBERG, Upper West Side, The Interceptor, 1972CLARK HOWARD, Sixth Avenue, Crowded Lives, 1989JEROME CHARYN, Lower East Side, Young Isaac, 1990DONALD E. WESTLAKE, Wall Street, Love in the Lean Years, 1992JOYCE CAROL OATES, Central Park South, A Manhattan Romance, 1997LAWRENCE BLOCK, Eighth Avenue, In for a Penny, 1999SUSAN ISAACS, Murray Hill, Two Over Easy, 2008Lawrence Block has won most of the major mystery awards and has been called the quintessential New York writer. His series characters—Matthew Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbarr, Evan Tanner, Chip Harrison, and Keller—all live in Manhattan; like their creator, they would not really be happy anywhere else.From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. While Akashic's original city-themed anthologies tend to be hit or miss, its third reprint volume (after Brooklyn Noir 2 and D.C. Noir 2) offers 17 sure winners by such literary heavyweights as Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, O. Henry, Damon Runyon, Donald E. Westlake and Joyce Carol Oates. The tales range in time from 1891 to 2008, giving the book a variety some others in the series have lacked. Block makes a persuasive case in his introduction for including Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, written in 1845 on what would become Manhattan's Upper West Side, as well as poetic selections by Horace Gregory and Geoffrey Bartholomew, whose works are set respectively in a Chelsea rooming house and McSorley's bar in the East Village. If one had to choose the single story that epitomizes noir, the honors would go to Cornell Woolrich's New York Blues, a bleak tale of love and loneliness, madness and death. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.