OTHER NOVELS

I’m not thrilled with that heading. Seems awfully vague, doesn’t it? I must say, though, that the alternatives all leave something to be desired. "Non-series novels" defines the books by saying what they aren’t. Might as well call the damn things "non-science fiction," or "non-romance." Publishing circles in the States tend to label such books as "stand-alones," while in the UK the prevailing term is "one-off."

Pfui. Call them what you will. Here they are---in alphabetical order:

 
AFTER THE FIRST DEATH. MacMillan, 1969. Alex Penn, recently freed from prison where he was doing life for killing a woman, comes out of an alcoholic blackout in a hotel room with a dead whore on the floor. Hey, who hasn't had a morning like that? The book is sometime seen as a forerunner of the Matthew Scudder series.

 
ARIEL. Arbor House, 1980. An adopted child in Charleston, South Carolina, slips into a spooky puberty. Generally considered a horror novel. What I like about it is the relationship between Ariel and her friend Erskine.
Lawrence Bl
ock
 

CINDERELLA SIMS First printing: Nightstand Books 1961. First hardcover edition: Subterranean Press 2003. Originally published in paperback as $20 Lust, this early pseudonymous novel of mine had its  true title restored for the Subterranean Press edition. It's a classic noir tale of counterfeiting and love gone wrong. Great cover art by Phil Parks, intro by Ed Gorman and an afterwards from me.
Lawrence Block

 

CAMPUS TRAMP. Nightstand, 1958. A classic on the campus of Antioch College, for some reason. There’s a nice edition newly available from Creepling Hemlock Press.

 
 
   
 

CINDERELLA SIMS  Nightstand Books, 1961. Originally published in paperback as $20 Lust, this early pseudonymous novel of mine had its  true title restored for the 2003Subterranean Press hardcover edition. It's a classic noir tale of counterfeiting and love gone wrong.

 
 
   
 
COWARD'S KISS. Fawcett Gold Medal (as Death Pulls a Doublecross), 1961. The first and last book about private eye Ed London, although three long-lost novelettes have been collected in One Night Stands & Lost Weekends.

 		  
 
DEADLY HONEYMOON. Macmillan, 1967. My first hardcover book. Virgin bride's raped on her wedding night, and the bridal couple, instead of reporting the incident, track the bad guys down. Basis of a really rotten film,  Nightmare Honeymoon.

 
A DIET OF TREACLE. Hard Case Crime, Jan. 2008. Originally published in 1961 by Beacon as Pads Are For Passion under the pseudonym Sheldon Lord, and out of print until this HCC reprint. A young girl encounters drugs, sex and disaffection in old Greenwich Village.

 
 
THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART.. Fawcett Gold Medal 1965, Hard Case Crime, 2005. Two con men with a real estate scam hook up with their target's scorned girlfriend/secretary.

 		  
   
 

GRIFTER’S GAME. Fawcett Gold Medal, 1961. The author's first book, then called MONA. In 2004, Hard Case Crime published it with LB’s original title restored, and that's their cover art you're seeing to the left.
 
 
   
     

KILLING CASTRO. Hard Case Crime December 2009.  LB's 1961 novel (as Lee Duncan). Originally published under the title FIDEL CASTRO ASSASSINATED.
 
 

 
LUCKY AT CARDS.  Once The Sex Shuffle, by Sheldon Lord; later reissued with new title and author’s real name by Hard Case Crime.

 
 
 
NOT COMIN' HOME TO YOU. Putnam, 1974. Originally published under the pen name Paul Kavanagh. The Putnam hardcover is one I almost never see at signings, and I suspect it's my rarest book. A fictional interpretation of the Starkweather murders in Nebraska two decades earlier.

 

 

RANDOM WALK. Tor, 1988. A bartender in Roseburg, Oregon, quits his job and walks across the Cascades. He keeps on walking, and other folks join in, and remarkable things happen. Meanwhile, a real estate guy in Kansas starts driving around the Midwest, killing young women at an astonishing pace. This is a book that some people don't get at all, while others tell me they read it seventeen times and it changed their lives.

 

 
RONALD RABBIT IS A DIRTY OLD MAN. Bernard Geis, 1971. A comic erotic epistolary novel. Isaac Asimov said it was either the funniest dirty book he ever read, or the dirtiest funny book. LB asked if he could have that as a blurb. “Over my dead body,” Isaac said. Well, there you go…
LAWRENCE BLOCK
 
SMALL TOWN. Morrow, 2003. A big multiple-viewpoint New York novel set in the ashes of 9/11.

 
THE SPECIALISTS. Fawcett Gold Medal, 1969. Five former Green Berets and their one-legged colonel knock off a mob-run bank in the aid of truth, justice, and the American way—not to mention a lot of cash.

 

 
SUCH MEN ARE DANGEROUS. MacMillan, 1969. The first book under the Paul Kavanagh pen name. That's also the name of the lead character, a burnt-out Special Ops guy who hijacks a shipment of sophisticated weapons. Very dark, very nasty.

 

 
THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL. World, 1971. Paul Kavanagh was the purported author, but the protagonist is Miles Dorn, a Middle European agent provocateur who assassinates a string of political figures in aid of a conspiracy to subvert the American government. But he has his own agenda. A few years ago, an ex-CIA type spotted the book on a shelf in LB’s Village apartment and commented on it. "My husband wrote it," LB’s wife told him. "Yeah, right," he said, rolling his eyes. "Listen, we know all about that book. Author used to be with the Company." "But my husband—" "Hey," he said, backing away, "if that's what he told you, fine."

 

 
YOU COULD CALL IT MURDER. Belmont, 1961. The paperback original was called Markham and was a tie-in with a Ray Milland TV series which had already been canceled by the time the book came out.
 
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A long list, but it only scratches the surface.  Through the miracle of eBooks and the powerful motivator of sweet avarice, LB has made almost all of his backlist eVailable, including  no end of pen name titles, some of which he’d never before been willing to acknowledge.

You can find them all on the About LB’s Fiction page of his blogsite—seven Jill Emerson titles, along with a sensitive lesbian novel by Lesley Evans, a romantic espionage novel by Anne Campbell Clark, three collaborative novels partnering LB with the legendary Donald E. Westlake, and five works of midcentury erotica, four by Sheldon Lord and one by Andrew Shaw. 

Don’t know where to begin? May we suggest you pick up Afterthoughts, LB’s piecemeal memoir of his early years? It’s composed of the afterwords he wrote for each of those early books, so it’s likely to steeer you in the right direction. And at a hot 99¢ it’s no strain on anybody’s budget. (That’s a Kindle link to Afterthoughts; here’s one for Nook.