To Florence Hackett and her daughters Elinor and Louisa, Richard Baurie, a handsome young bookstore clerk and aspiring poet, seems a little odd but harmless enough. With his amusing conversation and his eager-to-please attitude, Richard works his way into the Hacketts’ confidence until he is almost one of the family. When he suggests they rent Wisteria Cottage, a charming seaside residence, it seems to promise a summer of pleasant companionship and fun. What the Hacketts don’t know is that Richard is a deeply troubled individual, recently released from a mental institution, and that their relaxing summer holiday will soon turn into a terrifying nightmare....  A brilliant psychological examination of criminal insanity, Robert M. Coates’s Wisteria Cottage (1948) earned rave reviews on its initial publication and was adapted for the 1958 film noir Edge of Fury. As Mathilde Roza writes in the introduction to this new edition, “the novel has lost nothing of its...

Considered by many to be one of the most unique, avant-garde works published by the Lost Generation, The Eater of Darkness is hailed as the first Dada novel published by an American. Previously out of print for more than fifty years, this new edition has been updated with a new introduction and contemporary material that pays homage to the groundbreaking life and career of author Robert M. Coates."One of the cleverest tours de force ever contrived by the pen of a wit." Young, charming, and fresh from a passionate jaunt in France, Charles Dograr leaves behind his French lover and returns to America to spend a year in New York City. Eager to make his year in New York one to remember, Charles leaves his boarding house room one night in search of an adventure. As he wanders, Charles stumbles into the living quarters of Picrolas, an eccentric, crazed scientist who refers to himself as "the Eater of Darkness." Picrolas reveals his prized...