'When the Devil laughs the whole damn world laughs with Him'A mind-bending thriller blending hard-boiled detective fiction, supernatural horror, and metaphysical noir that takes readers on a macabre journey into the occult, from the East Coast to Paris to the Vatican, as private investigator Harry Angel, seeking both answers about his true identity and revenge, hunts down Satan himself. Here is the stunning sequel to the Edgar-nominated novel Falling Angel, the basis for the classic cult film Angel Heart, which also stands alone as a masterwork of noir suspense fiction.Praise for Falling Angel'A terrific book...I've never read anything remotely like it. Trying to imagine what might have happened if Raymond Chandler had written the Exorcist is as close as I can come' - Stephen King'Brilliant and frightening' - Thomas McGuane'Masterfully shocking' - Observer'One of the...

Confident and robust, Jubilee Hitchhiker is an comprehensive biography of late novelist and poet Richard Brautigan, author of Troutfishing in America and A Confederate General from Big Sur, among many others. When Brautigan took his own life in September of 1984 his close friends and network of artists and writers were devastated though not entirely surprised. To many, Brautigan was shrouded in enigma, erratic and unpredictable in his habits and presentation. But his career was formidable, an inspiration to young writers like Hjortsberg trying to get their start. Brautigan’s career wove its way through both the Beat-influenced San Francisco Renaissance in the 1950s and the “Flower Power” hippie movement of the 1960s; while he never claimed direct artistic involvement with either period, Jubilee Hitchhiker also delves deeply into the spirited times in which he lived.As Hjortsberg guides us through his search to uncover Brautigan as...

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini team up to search for a literary-minded killer It is 1923 and a beautiful young woman has just been found outside a tenement, bones crushed, head ripped from her shoulders. A few stories above, her squalid apartment has been ransacked, and twenty-dollar gold pieces litter the floor. The window frame is smashed. She seems to have been hurled from the building by a beast of impossible strength, and the only witness claims to have seen a long-armed ape fleeing the scene. The police are baffled, but one reporter recognizes the author of the bloody crime: the long-dead Edgar Allan Poe.   A psychopath is haunting New York City, imitating the murders that made Poe's stories so famous. To Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the killing spree is of purely academic interest. But when Poe's ghost appears in Doyle's hotel room, the writer and the magician begin to suspect that the murders may hold a clue to understanding death itself.   This...

Unrest simmers in a dystopian future where disembodied brains are kept alive in tanks, waiting to earn a new body At twelve years old, Skeets Kalbfleischer is returning from a ski vacation when a lightning strike knocks his plane out of the sky, killing everyone else on board. Although his body is destroyed, a radical procedure preserves Skeets's brain, which spends twenty-five years in a fish tank before mankind realizes the implications of his second life. A key to immortality has been found.   Four centuries later, it has become commonplace for the minds of the dead to be preserved. While warehoused in a massive storage facility tended by robots, the brains pass time watching old film clips, learning about bees, and meditating their way to a higher state of being. But for the facility's overseers, Skeets presents a problem. A twelve-year-old for all eternity, their most famous resident still wants to be a cowboy. To remedy this embarrassment, his handlers concoct a solution...

Confident and robust, Jubilee Hitchhiker is an comprehensive biography of late novelist and poet Richard Brautigan, author of Troutfishing in America and A Confederate General from Big Sur, among many others. When Brautigan took his own life in September of 1984 his close friends and network of artists and writers were devastated though not entirely surprised. To many, Brautigan was shrouded in enigma, erratic and unpredictable in his habits and presentation. But his career was formidable, an inspiration to young writers like Hjortsberg trying to get their start. Brautigan's career wove its way through both the Beat-influenced San Francisco Renaissance in the 1950s and the ?Flower Power” hippie movement of the 1960s; while he never claimed direct artistic involvement with either period, Jubilee Hitchhiker also delves deeply into the spirited times in which he lived.As Hjortsberg guides us through his search to uncover Brautigan as a man the reader is pulled deeply into the writer's world. Ultimately this is a work that seeks to connect the Brautigan known to his fans with the man who ended his life so abruptly in 1984 while revealing the close ties between his writing and the actual events of his life. Part history, part biography, and part memoir this etches the portrait of a man destroyed by his genius.

From Publishers WeeklyOriginally published in 1978, Hjortsberg's debut mystery was the basis for the film Angel Heart. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review"Terrific...One of a kind...I've never read anything remotely like it." --Stephen King "A near-perfect book...Not since_ Psycho_ changed the bathing habits of thousands has a novelist so completely turned preconceptions inside out." --_Los Angeles Times_ "A compelling, page-turning story in the best private-eye tradition, with brilliantly nightmarish scenes of black magic and voodoo." --_Washington Post_ "A tight, suspenseful story...Not for the timid." --_Miami Herald_