Armchair In Hell

When a lush brunette turns up unexpectedly dead in a stranger’s bed, and an antique dealer (who is “mostly legit”) settles down in an easy chair with a dagger in his back, and a big-time gambler drops all bets on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood—then Peter Chambers, fiction’s most eye-catching, hard-boiled private eye, finds himself staked out as victim number 4 in a high-priced game of death and international intrigue.

Peter Chambers is a private richard who has a real affinity for trouble. He hasn't any notion at all who polished off the nasty blonde with the round hole between her eyes—or the little man swinging by the neck from a bedroom window. Peter has strong incentives for finding out the answers—partly because the only thing he can do is break the case wide open before the going gets too rough; but mainly because his fee is Miami Moonbeam, six feet of ravishing, red-haired woman.

This collection of world's greatest western novels and stories include rip roarin' cowboy adventures, tales of the famous outcasts, the heroes of the Wild West, conniving villains and intriguing sagas: Introduction Story of the Cowboy Story of the Outlaw Novels & Stories Riders of the Purple Sage Saga (Zane Grey) Ohio River Trilogy Dan Barry Series (Max Brand) The Virginian (Owen Wister) Lin McLean Leatherstocking Series (James F. Cooper) Flying U Series (B. M. Bower) Cabin Fever Rimrock Trail (J. Allan Dunn) Breckinridge Elkins Series (Robert E. Howard) In a Hollow of the Hills (Bret Harte) Roughing It (Mark Twain) Outcasts of Poker Flat Call of the Wild (Jack London) Heart of the West (O. Henry) White Fang Wolf Hunters (James Oliver Curwood) Gold Hunters Last of the Plainsmen Border Legion Smoke Bellew Country Beyond Lone Star Ranger Ronicky Doone Trilogy Riders of the Silences Three Partners Man of the Forest Lure of the Dim Trails Tennessee's Partner Covered Wagon (Emerson Hough) Luck of Roaring Camp Rustlers of Pecos County Pike Bearfield Series O Pioneers! (Willa Cather) My Ántonia Log of a Cowboy (Andy Adams) Two-Gun Man (Charles Alden Seltzer) Short Cut (Jackson Gregory) Astoria (Washington Irving) Ungava (R.M. Ballantyne) Valley of Silent Men Black Jack Whispering Smith (Frank H. Spearman) A Texas Cow Boy (Charles Siringo) Trail Horde Golden Dream (Ballantyne) Blue Hotel (Stephen Crane) Long Shadow Girl from Montana (Grace Livingston Hill) Hidden Children (Robert W. Chambers) Where the Trail Divides Desert Trail (Dane Coolidge) Bride Comes to Yellow Sky Hidden Water...

This carefully edited collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Contents: Introduction Story of the Cowboy Story of the Outlaw Novels & Stories Riders of the Purple Sage Saga (Zane Grey) Ohio River Trilogy Dan Barry Series (Max Brand) The Virginian (Owen Wister) Lin McLean Leatherstocking Series (James F. Cooper) Flying U Series (B. M. Bower) Cabin Fever Rimrock Trail (J. Allan Dunn) Breckinridge Elkins Series (Robert E. Howard) In a Hollow of the Hills (Bret Harte) Roughing It (Mark Twain) Outcasts of Poker Flat Call of the Wild (Jack London) Heart of the West (O. Henry) White Fang Wolf Hunters (James Oliver Curwood) Gold Hunters Last of the Plainsmen Border Legion Smoke Bellew Country Beyond Lone Star Ranger Ronicky Doone Trilogy Riders of the Silences Three Partners Man of the Forest Lure of the Dim Trails Tennessee's Partner Covered Wagon (Emerson Hough) Luck of Roaring Camp Rustlers of Pecos County Pike Bearfield Series O Pioneers! (Willa Cather) My Ántonia Log of a Cowboy (Andy Adams) Two-Gun Man (Charles Alden Seltzer) Short Cut (Jackson Gregory) Astoria (Washington Irving) Ungava (R.M. Ballantyne) Valley of Silent Men Black Jack Whispering Smith (Frank H. Spearman) A Texas Cow Boy (Charles Siringo) Trail Horde Golden Dream (Ballantyne) Blue Hotel (Stephen Crane) Long Shadow Girl from Montana (Grace Livingston Hill) Hidden Children (Robert W. Chambers) Where the Trail Divides Desert Trail (Dane Coolidge) Bride Comes to Yellow Sky Hidden Water...

This carefully edited collection of world's most admired westerns will take you on a roller coaster ride through the plains of Wild West, the old trails, gold rush adventures, frontier sagas and more! Introduction The Last American Frontier – History of the 'Far West', of the Pioneers & Trailblazers Story of the Cowboy Story of the Outlaw Novels & Stories Riders of the Purple Sage Saga (Zane Grey) Ohio River Trilogy Dan Barry Series (Max Brand) The Virginian (Owen Wister) Lin McLean Leatherstocking Series (James F. Cooper) Flying U Series (B. M. Bower) Cabin Fever Rimrock Trail (J. Allan Dunn) Bucky O'Connor (William M. Raine) Breckinridge Elkins Series (Robert E. Howard) In a Hollow of the Hills (Bret Harte) Wolf Hunters (James Oliver Curwood) Gold Hunters Last of the Plainsmen Border Legion Smoke Bellew Country Beyond Lone Star Ranger Ronicky Doone Trilogy Riders of the Silences Three Partners Man of the Forest Lure of the Dim Trails Tennessee's Partner Covered Wagon (Emerson Hough) Luck of Roaring Camp Rustlers of Pecos County Pike Bearfield Series Hopalong Cassidy (Clarence E. Mulford) O Pioneers! (Willa Cather) My Ántonia Roughing It (Mark Twain) Outcasts of Poker Flat Call of the Wild (Jack London) Heart of the West (O. Henry) White Fang Log of a Cowboy (Andy Adams) Two-Gun Man (Charles Alden Seltzer) Short Cut (Jackson Gregory) Astoria (Washington Irving) Ungava (R.M. Ballantyne) Valley of Silent Men Black Jack Bull Hunter "Drag" Harlan (Charles Alden Seltzer) Wyoming: A Story of the Outdoor West Sheriff's Son Whispering Smith (Frank H. Spearman) A Texas Cow Boy (Charles Siringo) Boss of the Lazy Y Trail Horde Rider of Golden Bar (William P. White) Buck Peters, Ranchman Tangled Trail Golden Dream (Ballantyne) Gun-Brand (James B. Hendryx) Blue Hotel (Stephen Crane) Long Shadow Girl from Montana (Grace Livingston Hill) Hidden Children (Robert W. Chambers) Where the Trail Divides Iron Trail (Rex Beach) Desert Trail (Dane Coolidge) Bride Comes to Yellow Sky ...

Peter Bogdanovich, known primarily as a director, film historian and critic, has been working with professional actors all his life. He started out as an actor (he debuted on the stage in his sixth-grade production of Finian’s Rainbow); he watched actors work (he went to the theater every week from the age of thirteen and saw every important show on, or off, Broadway for the next decade); he studied acting, starting at sixteen, with Stella Adler (his work with her became the foundation for all he would ever do as an actor and a director). Now, in his new book, Who the Hell’s in It, Bogdanovich draws upon a lifetime of experience, observation and understanding of the art to write about the actors he came to know along the way; actors he admired from afar; actors he worked with, directed, befriended. Among them: Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, John Cassavetes, Charlie Chaplin, Montgomery Clift, Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, Ben Gazzara, Audrey Hepburn, Boris Karloff, Dean Martin, Marilyn Monroe, River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier, Frank Sinatra, and James Stewart. Bogdanovich captures—in their words and his—their work, their individual styles, what made them who they were, what gave them their appeal and why they’ve continued to be America’s iconic actors. On Lillian Gish: “the first virgin hearth goddess of the screen . . . a valiant and courageous symbol of fortitude and love through all distress.” On Marlon Brando: “He challenged himself never to be the same from picture to picture, refusing to become the kind of film star the studio system had invented and thrived upon—the recognizable human commodity each new film was built around . . . The funny thing is that Brando’s charismatic screen persona was vividly apparent despite the multiplicity of his guises . . . Brando always remains recognizable, a star-actor in spite of himself. ” Jerry Lewis to Bogdanovich on the first laugh Lewis ever got onstage: “I was five years old. My mom and dad had a tux made—I worked in the borscht circuit with them—and I came out and I sang, ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?’ the big hit at the time . . . It was 1931, and I stopped the show—naturally—a five-year-old in a tuxedo is not going to stop the show? And I took a bow and my foot slipped and hit one of the floodlights and it exploded and the smoke and the sound scared me so I started to cry. The audience laughed—they were hysterical . . . So I knew I had to get the rest of my laughs the rest of my life, breaking, sitting, falling, spinning.” John Wayne to Bogdanovich, on the early years of Wayne’s career when he was working as a prop man: “Well, I’ve naturally studied John Ford professionally as well as loving the man. Ever since the first time I walked down his set as a goose-herder in 1927. They needed somebody from the prop department to keep the geese from getting under a fake hill they had for Mother Machree at Fox. I’d been hired because Tom Mix wanted a box seat for the USC football games, and so they promised jobs to Don Williams and myself and a couple of the players. They buried us over in the properties department, and Mr. Ford’s need for a goose-herder just seemed to fit my pistol.” These twenty-six portraits and conversations are unsurpassed in their evocation of a certain kind of great movie star that has vanished. Bogdanovich’s book is a celebration and a farewell.