The Rum Diary

The irreverent writer's long lost novel, written before his nonfiction became popular, chronicles a journalist's enthusiastic, drunken foray through 1950s San Juan.

The sultry classic of a journalist's sordid life in Puerto Rico, now a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp

I was thinking; my mind was running at top speed, scanning and sorting my options. They ranged all the way from Dumb and Dangerous to Crazy, Evil, and utterly wrong from the start . . . stand back. We are on the brink. Yes. I have an idea.' When Hunter S. Thompson has an idea, you just have to listen – and he shares many of his unique ideas in this collection of journalism, social commentary, short fiction and autobiography. Divided into sections by decade, Songs of the Doomed begins with a furious condemnation of the US justice system and ends with the author’s own version of the events that led to his extraordinary court case. Stopping off at the infamous summit conference in Elko, Illinois; Saigon in 1975 (the war zone Thompson was fired while en route to); and Palm Beach in the eighties for the Pulitzer divorce, here – in true Gonzo fashion – is the long strange trip from Kennedy to Nixon to Quayle. ‘Mr Thompson’s best work of the past three decades’ New York Times Book Review ‘There are many hideously funny stories in this collection. Thompson writing on mescalin, staying on for the fall of Saigon, explaining what it must be like to be a multimillionaire in Palm Beach . . .’ Independent on Sunday ‘Dead funny . . . That our guru has made it this far merits drinks and dynamite all round at the Woody Creek Road and Gun Club (and spiritually affiliated North London branches). That he is still alive, and at large, defies medical and legal beliefs’ Andy Kershaw, Literary Review ‘Proves that you can’t keep the old bastard quiet . . . a superb offering’ City Limits

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHNNY DEPP A screenplay based on the novel by Hunter S. Thompson It's 1960. In a highrise hotel not far from the beaches of San Juan, a man is recovering from an animal of a hangover. Paul Kemp is an alcoholic journalist who's barely seen better days, arriving at the only job he can get: writing horoscopes for failing rag The Daily Star. His fellow hacks are mostly crazy drunks on the verge of quitting, so Kemp fits in perfectly. But when he meets the impossibly gorgeous Chenault and her flashy boyfriend Sanderson, Kemp finds himself in way over his head - party to shady business deals, in hair-raising car chases with enraged Puerto Ricans, experimenting with a hitherto unknown hallucinogen - and finally discovers a mad, desperate devotion to the truth. Bruce Robinson brings Hunter S. Thompson's novel to the big screen with all the brilliance, wild humour and fierce energy associated with the acclaimed writer and director of Withnail & I and The Killing Fields.

An almost unnaturally poignant love story from the father of “Gonzo” journalism and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson. What makes the romantic short story Screwjack so touching, for all its queerness, is the aching melancholy in its depiction of the modern man's burden: that "we are doomed. Mama has gone off to Real Estate School...and after that maybe even to Law School. We will never see her again." Hunter S. Thompson’s most searing and unnaturally poignant love story, Screwjack is simultaneously eerie and feverish, debauched and affecting. Never before—and perhaps never since—has modern man’s melancholia been so vividly revealed in one powerful story.

An anthology of top-selected Rolling Stone articles offers insight into both the late Thompson's early career and the magazine's fledgling years, in a volume that includes the stories of his infamous Freak Party sheriff campaign and his observations about the Bush-versus-Kerry presidential rivalry.

From the king of “Gonzo” journalism and bestselling author who brought you Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas comes another astonishing volume of letters by Hunter S. Thompson. Brazen, incisive, and outrageous as ever, this second volume of Thompson’s private correspondence is the highly anticipated follow-up to The Proud Highway. When that first book of letters appeared in 1997, Time pronounced it "deliriously entertaining"; Rolling Stone called it "brilliant beyond description"; and The New York Times celebrated its "wicked humor and bracing political conviction." Spanning the years between 1968 and 1976, these never-before-published letters show Thompson building his legend: running for sheriff in Aspen, Colorado; creating the seminal road book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; twisting political reporting to new heights for Rolling Stone; and making sense of it all in the landmark Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. To read Thompson's dispatches from these years—addressed to the author's friends, enemies, editors, and creditors, and such notables as Jimmy Carter, Tom Wolfe, and Kurt Vonnegut—is to read a raw, revolutionary eyewitness account of one of the most exciting and pivotal eras in American history.

“Powerful…clever…astonishing…a delicious read.” —Detroit Free Press Rum Punch is classic Elmore Leonard—the electrifying thriller that served as the basis for the acclaimed film Jackie Brown by director Quentin Tarantino, starring Pam Grier, Robert DeNiro, and Samuel L. Jackson. Leonard’s story of a not-altogether-blameless flight attendant on the run from her vicious gun-running sometime employer who sees her as a troublesome loose end, Rum Punch is “the King Daddy of crime writers” (Seattle Times) at his sharpest and most ingeniously entertaining. In fact, People magazine calls it, “Leonard’s best work. He brilliantly reaffirms his right to the title of America’s finest crime fiction writer.” Enjoy this sensational noir winner from the creator of the character of U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, lately of TV’s hit series Justified, and see why the great Elmore Leonard stands tall in the company of America’s most legendary crime fiction masters: John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, et al.