FAITH BALDWIN (1893–1978) was one of the most prolific mid-twentieth century authors of popular fiction. She published eighty-five books between 1921 and 1977, many of them focused on women juggling family and career, including White Collar Girl, Men Are Such Fools!, and An Apartment for Peggy, which was made into a Hollywood film in 1948.

BEDELIA

Vera Caspary

Afterword by A. B. Emrys

eISBN: 9781558616486 | ISBN: 9781558615076

Long before Desperate Housewives, there was Bedelia: beautiful and “adoring as a kitten.” An ideal housekeeper and lover, she wants nothing more than to please her insecure new husband, who can’t believe his luck. But is Bedelia too good to be true? A mysterious new neighbor turns out to be a detective on the trail of a picture-perfect wife with a string of dead husbands in her wake. Caspary builds this story to a peak of psychological suspense when her characters are trapped together in a blizzard. The true Bedelia—the woman who escaped a life on the street—is revealed.

“You must read Bedelia to see just how slick Miss Caspary’s technique of soft-shoe terror can be—how frightening she can make the chatter at an innocent dinner party, the lure of a lady’s deshabille, the glimpse of a black pearl in a dresser drawer.”

—New York Times

“A sinister entertainment, especially for admirers of the psychological horror story.”

—New Yorker

“Vera Caspary’s gift is perhaps more subtle and deadly than Jim Thompson’s, David Goodis’s, and Charles Willeford’s.”

—Robert Polito, author of Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson

“A tour de force of psychological suspense, Desperate Housewives meets Double Indemnity in Caspary’s Bedelia.”

—Liahna Armstrong, President Emerita, Popular Culture Association

LAURA

Vera Caspary

Afterword by A. B. Emrys

ISBN: 9781558615052 (print only)

Meet Laura Hunt, a “modern woman” —ravishing, elegant, ambitious, and utterly unknowable. No one can resist her charms, not even cynical NYPD detective Mark McPherson sent to track down the killer who has turned Laura into a faceless corpse. By day McPherson interrogates the men who loved her; by night, he combs her apartment for clues, gazing at her portrait, smelling her lingering scent. One stormy night, the door opens to an electrifying plot twist.

Laura is a work of riveting psychological suspense, earning Otto Preminger’s 1944 film adaptation an Academy Award, and lasting renown as one of the greatest film noirs.

“An intriguing melodrama . . . A top-drawer mystery.”

—New York Times

“Everyone loves the movie, of course, but it is now possible again to read this stunning novel with one of the great surprise moments in the history of mystery fiction. Brava!”

—Otto Penzler, owner, The Mysterious Bookshop

“Laura continues to weave a spell . . . achieving a kind of perfection in its balance between low motives and high style.”

—Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times

“Laura will beguile and unsettle readers: a love story with a sinister underside . . . it remains a compelling original.”

—Liahna Armstrong, president emerita, Popular Culture Association