James Mallery explores the implications of such social constructs as gender, race, and class for the development of San Francisco from the gold rush through World War I.

Leading authors in the field of early modern studies explore a range of bad behaviours - like binge drinking, dicing, and procuring prostitutes at barbershops - in order to challenge the notion that early modern London was a corrupt city that ruined innocent young men.

In the 1890s, young cocksure Theodore Roosevelt, years before the White House, was appointed police commissioner of corrupt, pleasure-loving New York, then teeming with 40,000 prostitutes, illegal casinos and all-night dance halls. The Harvard-educated Roosevelt, with a reformer’s zeal, tried to wipe out the city’s vice and corruption. He went head-to-head with Tammany Hall, took midnight rambles looking for derelict cops, banned barroom drinking on Sundays and tried to convince 2 million New Yorkers to enjoy wholesome family fun. The city rebelled big time; cartoonists lampooned him on the front page; his own political party abandoned him but Roosevelt never backed down. Island of Vice delivers a rollicking narrative history of Roosevelt’s embattled tenure, pitting the seedy against the saintly, and the city against its would-be savior.

Carter 'Cash' Thompson is no longer a cop or a private investigator. After his partner's death, Carter is drinking constantly, and in debt for gambling. Now a night manager in a seedy motel in Bondi, Carter is friends with a drug dealer and protection man, Gerry Novak. Things change when a young girl, Andrea Huston, is found murdered in her apartment. Cash feels guilty for not helping her sister Sally when she asked him. With the help of his cop friend, James Roach, he searches for clues that could lead him to the killer. A heated race against time ensues, and in this game, only one man can win.