AMERICA’S MOST COLD-BLOODED! In the horrifying annals of American crime, the infamous names of brutal killers such as Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy, and Berkowitz are writ large in the imaginations of a public both horrified and hypnotized by their monstrous, murderous acts. But for every celebrity psychopath who’s gotten ink for spilling blood, there’s a bevy of all-but-forgotten homicidal fiends studding the bloody margins of U.S. history. The law gave them their just desserts, but now the hugely acclaimed author of The Serial Killer Files and The Whole Death Catalog gives them their dark due in this absolutely riveting true-crime treasury. Among America’s most cold-blooded you’ll meet • Robert Irwin, “The Mad Sculptor”: He longed to use his carving skills on the woman he loved—but had to settle for making short work of her mother and sister instead. • Peter Robinson, “The Tell-Tale Heart Killer”: It took two days and four tries for him to finish off his victim, but no time at all for keen-eyed cops to spot the fatal flaw in his floor plan. • Anton Probst, “The Monster in the Shape of a Man”: The ax-murdering immigrant’s systematic slaughter of all eight members of a Pennsylvania farm family matched the savagery of the Manson murders a century later. • Edward H. Ruloff, “The Man of Two Lives”: A genuine Jekyll and Hyde, his brilliant scholarship disguised his bloodthirsty brutality, and his oversized brain gave new meaning to “mastermind.” Spurred by profit, passion, paranoia, or perverse pleasure, these killers—the Witch of Staten Island, the Smutty Nose Butcher, the Bluebeard of Quiet Dell, and many others—span three centuries and a host of harrowing murder methods. Dramatized in the pages of penny dreadfuls, sensationalized in tabloid headlines, and immortalized in “murder ballads” and classic fiction by Edgar Allan Poe and Theodore Dreiser, the demonic denizens of Psycho USA may be long gone to the gallows—but this insidiously irresistible slice of gothic Americana will ensure that they’ll no longer be forgotten.

Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho is one of the most controversial and talked-about novels of all time. A multi-million-copy bestseller hailed as a modern classic, it is a violent and outrageous black comedy about the darkest side of human nature. With an introduction by Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting. I like to dissect girls. Did you know I'm utterly insane? Patrick Bateman has it all: good looks, youth, charm, a job on Wall Street, and reservations at every new restaurant in town. He is also a psychopath. A man addicted to his superficial, perfect life, he pulls us into a dark underworld where the American Dream becomes a nightmare . . . Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.

Philip L. Simpson provides an original and broad overview of the evolving serial killer genre in the two media most responsible for its popularity: literature and cinema of the 1980s and 1990s. The fictional serial killer, with a motiveless, highly individualized modus operandi, is the latest manifestation of the multiple murderers and homicidal maniacs that haunt American literature and, particularly, visual media such as cinema and television. Simpson theorizes that the serial killer genre results from a combination of earlier genre depictions of multiple murderers, inherited Gothic storytelling conventions, and threatening folkloric figures reworked over the years into a contemporary mythology of violence. Updated and repackaged for mass consumption, the Gothic villains, the monsters, the vampires, and the werewolves of the past have evolved into the fictional serial killer, who clearly reflects American cultural anxieties at the start of the twenty-first century. Citing numerous sources, Simpson argues that serial killers’ recent popularity as genre monsters owes much to their pliability to any number of authorial ideological agendas from both the left and the right ends of the political spectrum. Serial killers in fiction are a kind of debased and traumatized visionary, whose murders privately and publicly re-empower them with a pseudo-divine aura in the contemporary political moment. The current fascination with serial killer narratives can thus be explained as the latest manifestation of the ongoing human fascination with tales of gruesome murders and mythic villains finding a receptive audience in a nation galvanized by the increasingly apocalyptic tension between the extremist philosophies of both the New Right and the anti-New Right. Faced with a blizzard of works of varying quality dealing with the serial killer, Simpson has ruled out the catalog approach in this study in favor of in-depth an analysis of the best American work in the genre. He has chosen novels and films that have at least some degree of public name-recognition or notoriety, including Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, Manhunter directed by Michael Mann, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer directed by John McNaughton, Seven directed by David Fincher, Natural Born Killers directed by Oliver Stone, Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates, and American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.

“A dark acid curio, brisk, fast, memorable, a rare improvisational duet from two of our best.”—Greg Bear “Alfred Bester was one of the handful of writers who invented modern science fiction.” —Harry Harrison, author of Adventures of the Stanless Steel Rat “Let there be light, and let there always be Roger Zelazny.”—Philip José Farmer, author of To Your Scattered Bodies Go From Publishers Weekly: This odd novel, left incomplete when Bester died in 1987, was finished by Zelazny, who himself died in 1995. In his introduction, Bear refers to Bester (The Deceivers) and Zelazny (Donnerjack) as masters of SF jazz, geniuses of improvisation, and the book has that feel to it. The plot is full of bizarre twists and turns. Neat ideas surface and disappear in an eyeblink and characters transform radically from one page to the next. Alf Noir, an investigative reporter, is sent to Rome to look into the mysterious Black Place of the Soul-Changer and its enigmatic proprietor, Adam Maser. Alf discovers that Maser is a Psychbroker, a sort of pawnbroker of the spirit, dealing in emotions, talents and psychological traits. Want more courage, the ability to see into the infrared, an understanding of ancient Persian? Maser will trade it to you for your mind-reading ability, or a rare coin, or perhaps for the secret of the collective unconscious. Alf discovers that Maser isn't human, but a highly evolved cat from the far future. Nothing is what it seems and no one can be trusted, not even Maser's sexy assistant, an evolved snake with whom Alf has an affair. There's much fun to be had here, but the book doesn't represent either writer in top form. Bester's style in the first part of the novel seems dated, and things don't gel until Zelazny takes over halfway through the book. Vintage has brought Bester's finest work back into print, and for this it deserves praise, but this novel is most likely to appeal to Zelazny's much larger readership.

In "The Moment of Psycho," film critic David Thomson situates "Psycho" in Alfred Hitchcock's career, recreating the mood and time when the seminal film erupted onto film screens worldwide. Thomson brilliantly demonstrates how Hitchcock's creation represented all America wanted from a film--and still does.

Set in New York City's Upper East Side, this book tells the story of the thrills and spills of its richest and most beautiful teenage residents. These girls are smart, good-looking and know how to party, It's a luxorious life but someone's got to live it!

Arthur Simon is an ambitious young man struggling with hedonistic tendencies that threaten to derail his promising career as a music writer in New York City. His girlfriend is an alcoholic who taunts and belittles him as much as she tries to revive their dying connection. His peers are transplants from the Midwest who worship and idolize him as much as they wish for his downfall. With an appetite for cocaine as voracious as his hunger for success, Arthur Simon hurdles past all warning signs towards the collapse of everything he's worked for, at the exact moment it seems his dreams are coming true. A tale of sex, drugs, violence, revenge, and betrayal, Black American Psycho is an explosive reveal about the fickle nature of friendship, love, and celebrity in the age of flare-up fame. The first novel from controversial writer Ernest Baker, Black American Psycho is a coming-of-age epic for the Twitter generation.