Geoffrey Bartholomew - Manhattan Noir 2 - The Classics

Clark Howardis an Edgar Award winner (and eight-time finalist) and has also won the Derringer and five Ellery Queen Readers Awards. Although he has written novels and true crime books, the short story has always been his favorite form. He has two short story collections and has been included in dozens of anthologies since 1975.

Susan Isaacshas been called “Jane Austen with a schmear” ( Washington Post ) and a “witty, wry observer of the contemporary scene” ( New York Times ). She is chairman of the board of the literary organization Poets & Writers , a past president of Mystery Writers of America, and is a member of PEN, the National Book Critics Circle, the Authors Guild, and the International Association of Crime Writers. Although her work includes film ( Compromising Positions, Hello Again ) and nonfiction ( Brave Dames and Wimpettes: What Women Are Really Doing on Page and Screen ), she’s happiest working alone, writing novels. For more information, visit www.susanisaacs.com.

Barry N. Malzberg, one of science fiction’s most prolific writers, has written over seventy-five novels in the field, as well as novels of suspense, crime fiction, and dark humor, both under his own name and under a number of pseudonyms. He has also written over four hundred short stories, in similarly varied fields. As an editor, he was in charge of Amazing Stories, Fantastic, and other magazines, and has produced a number of anthologies. A winner of the John W. Campbell Award and the Locus Award, he has been nominated several times for the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and was the Shubert Foundation Playwriting Fellow at Syracuse University.

Jerrold Mundisis a novelist and nonfiction writer who came out of the Midwest to Manhattan as a young man and has lived there on-and-off (mostly on) for more than forty-five years. His best-known novels are Gerhardt’s Children and The Dogs. He enjoys Central Park and dogs and other elements that appear in his story in this volume. He has two grown sons, currently lives in Manhattan, and is generally in good spirits.

Joyce Carol Oatesis a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. Author of numerous works including the national best sellers We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde , and The Falls , which won the 2005 Prix Femina, Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

Edgar Allan Poe, arguably one of the greatest American poets, was born on January 15, 1809 in Boston. Poe was orphaned at the age of two after both of his parents died and was adopted by John Allan. Poe’s first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems was published in 1827. Nine years later, he and his family moved to New York. “The Raven” was published in 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror, and became his most famous poem. Poe died on October 7, 1849 and was inducted into the United States Hall of Fame in New York in 1910. His other works include The Raven and Other Poems (1845), The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe (1850), The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), and Tales by Edgar A. Poe (1845).

Irwin Shaw, born in the Bronx, New York in 1913 to Jewish immigrants from Russia, was a playwright, screenwriter, and author. His parents moved the family to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn and changed their name from Shamforoff to Shaw . Irwin Shaw attended Brooklyn College and wrote for the school newspaper. He graduated with a B.A. in 1934, and by age twenty-one was producing scripts for radio shows. He also wrote for magazines such as the New Yorker and Esquire . His works include the play Bury the Dead (1936), the short stories “The Sailor off the Bremen” (1939) and “Welcome to the City” (1942), and the film I Want You (1951).

Donald E. Westlakehas written over eighty novels under his own name and pseudonyms, including Richard Stark. He is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, a three-time Edgar Award winner, and an Academy Award nominee for his screenplay of The Grifters. Westlake was born in Brooklyn in 1933, grew up in Albany, attended the State University of New York from which he received an Honorary Doctorate in 1996, and served in the U.S. Air Force.

Edith Whartonwas born in New York during the “Old New York” era, when women were socially prepared for only marriage. She became one of America’s greatest writers and published over forty books in her lifetime. She was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (in 1920 for her novel The Age of Innocence ), an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Yale Academy, and full membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her works include Greater Inclination (1899), The Valley of Decision (1902), The House of Mirth (1905), and The Custom of the Country (1913).

Cornell Woolrich, born on December 4, 1903 in New York City, is known by many as the father of noir fiction. His first novel, Cover Charge (1926), was written while he attended Columbia University. He wrote suspense stories for the magazines Argosy, Black Mask, and Thrilling Mystery, and his story “Rear Window” (1954) was the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s film by the same name. His novels include Children of the Ritz (1927), The Time of Her Life (1931), The Bride Wore Black (1940), I Married a Dead Man (1948), Hotel Room (1958), and The Doom Stone (1960).