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We are from the underworld, the howl of individual expression apart from the mainstream, no matter its genre, using whatever means necessary, affordable, convenient or possible.
Books are incendiary devices, messages in flaming bottles that ignite the soul, communicated in private, and their mercantile value has little to do with the echo in the canyon.
THE PLAGUE DITTIES by Jim Nisbet
A MOLOTOV ORIGINAL: NOW AVAILABLE IN TRADE PAPER
From noir master Jim Nisbet, novelist, essayist and poet, seminal figure in the West Coast Noir Renaissance.
Originally written and published to his mailing list during the Covid-19 pandemic, the manuscript was completed shortly before his death in 2022. Taken together , the poems in The Plague Ditties form a poetic diary of uncommon artistic, historic, and metaphysical resonance.
Collected here in their entirety for the first time.
Vintage Nisbet, written in diction both stark and elevated, alternately tender, fierce, sweet, frightening—and always keenly aware of human frailty in the face of the unknown.
ORDER INFORMATION: The Plague Ditties by Jim Nisbet. ISBN 978-194859601, $17.95. Trade paper, 1st edition. Order through your favorite bookseller, in person or online, or here, on AMAZON.
INTERNATIONAL PRAISE FOR JIM NISBET
"An unheralded masterpiece."- James Ellroy on Lethal Injection
"Genre-defying ... dark, cerebral, and harrowing, laced with humor ...Themes as wide-ranging as sailing, particle physics, mathematics, ancient Rome, modern jazz, and urban subculture.”San Francisco Chronicle
"Mixes the irony of Dantesque situations with lyric narration, and achieves a luxuriant cocktail that truly leaves the reader breathless. - Drood's Review
"Tough stuff, angry, sad, but also absurdly funny." Marcus Münterfering, Krimi-Welt & Der Spiegel
"Truly, hellishly gritty." - Los Angeles Times
"Erudite and hallucinogenic." Black Libelle
"Terrifying, sublime." Sabrina Champenois, Libération
"A catalytic crinkling that multiplies mental surfaces... poetic eloquence crosscut by irony." Poetry Flash
"An exhilarating and exciting literary madness!" Christope Dupuis, Le Nouvel Observateur
Selected Stories from The Molotov Newswire, featuring news and reviews on our own titles as wells as other stories from the literary underworld.
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THE SYNDICATE
CLARENCE COOPER, JR.
LOST CRIME CLASSIC, from a seminal writer in black crime fiction, first U. S. publication under Cooper's real name. Afterword by Gary Phillips (The Obama Inheritance) with fresh biographical material on Cooper. Hard-hitting, relentless story plunging into the psycho-sexual depths of a ruthless enforcer sent to retrieve syndicate money.
"One of the most underrated writers in America, a Richard Wright of the revolutionary era." Black World/Negro Digest
“The man who should have been the black William Burroughs.” GQ
“Not even Nelson Algren’s Man with the Golden Arm burned with [this] ferocious actuality.” New York Herald-Tribune
"The U. S. landscape as gangscape, littered with the twisted & damaged psyche of a game rigged to take out all its players. A perversely brilliant celebration of the long downhill slide." Peter Maravelis, City Lights. Editor of San Francisco Noir.
ORDER TRADE PAPER HERE (SORRY, Print Edition temporarily out of stock. Kindle and other e-book links directly belows)
ORDER E-BOOK HERE (Universal link to Kindle, B&N, Apple, Kobo, and most other e-book vendors)
NEWS:
The White Devil Awarded Hammett Prize.
The North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers is pleased to announce that The White Devil, by Domenic Stansberry (Molotov Editions), has been named the winner of the organization's annual HAMMETT PRIZE for a work of literary excellence in the field of crime writing . Keep Reading
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Molotov Editions E-Book
This neo-noir thriller stirred controversy when a dissenting judge on the Edgar Award Committee broke with tradition to condemn the selection of this "amoral" novel for Best Paperback Original.
The novel tells the story of a forensic psychologist accused of strangling his mistress—and does so through the unnerving, charming, intelligent, often unreliable voice of the accused himself.
Originally published in mass paper by Hard Case Crime, this e-book edition from Molotov Editions features a cover photo by Peter Rozovsky, author of the influential blog Detectives Beyond Borders.
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