At first glance the name James M. Cain may not mean much to most people, but when you take a look at his catalogue of written works the name suddenly becomes more recognizable. Cain, who authored such greats as Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, to name a few, is a classic hardboiled crime writer whose name is often spoken in the same breath as the greats in the noir genre.

With some 22 works to his name, we can now add one more as a lost novel has now been found and is soon to be released by our friends over at Hard Case Crime.

Details:

After more than 9 years of detective work and negotiation, we’ve tracked down a lost novel by James M. Cain, the author of the noir classics MILDRED PIERCE, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, and THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, and secured the rights for Hard Case Crime to publish the book.  The book is titled THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS and it has never been published before in any form.  We’ll be bringing it out in Fall 2012.

THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS is the story of beautiful young widow Joan Medford, whose husband died under suspicious circumstances.  Desperate to make ends meet after his death, Joan takes a job as a waitress in a cocktail lounge, where two new men enter her life: a handsome young schemer she falls for and a rich but unwell older man she marries.

Cain is considered one of the “big three” in hardboiled crime fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and a lost Cain novel is a major find.

This is exciting news for fans of the genre, as we are. Here’s a bit more on the release:

The Cocktail Waitress will be released initially in hardcover and e-book editions, with a paperback edition to follow in 2013.  Like all of Hard Case Crime’s titles, the book will feature a new cover painting in the classic pulp style.

You may be more familiar around these parts with Hard Case Crime and their association with The Outdoor Co-Ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society. What a winning pair!

Join us after the jump for some more appreciation of both topless women and pulp fiction novels, because today just feels like one of those days!

For an uncensored look, click here!

For more on Cain’s latest novel and other great works of fiction, check out Hard Case Crime!

There are very few things that come across my inbox that I can say I fully, wholeheartedly endorse. This, however, is something I can definitely get behind.

F-Listed community, I would like to introduce you to the Outdoor Co-Ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society. Yes, this is a society of topless women reading pulp fiction novels in public. Let that one sink in for a second.

Launched by the folks at Hard Case Crime, the Outdoor Co-Ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society, a group of six beautiful and topless ladies, met in Central Park this past Friday to read the new Lawrence Block novel Getting Off, which is set to be released on September 20. For those of you who love hardboiled crime fiction, written in the style of old 1940s pulp fiction novels, Getting Off is said to be one of the “dirtiest” books to be published in America in the past 40 years. That’s right up our alley!

More Photos>>>

If the pulp fiction doesn’t do it for you, how about some topless girls! Here is an account as written by one of the beautiful girls in attendance this past Friday:

We were like a scene from the movies. Six young, thin, pretty girls sunbathing in Central Park, with some goofy mom and dad figures to make it just wholesome enough for family viewing. Dad was telling stories about his job and Mom was snapping pictures.

And oh my God, I was topless. We were all topless, except Mom and Dad, who were actually just two good friends who liked to keep their tops on and helped us shoo away unwanted attention.

This is one of those cases where I wish I could have been in 10 places all at once! With those 10 places all being at Central Park on Friday. Here are a few more photos from the event.

For more on Hard Case Crime, click here.

For NSFW photos of these lovely ladies, click here.

Really? Do we still need to ask where President Obama’s birth certificate is? Don’t we already have the long-form birth certificate? Of course we do. But it’s a wonder why “Dr.” Jerome Corsi’s book, “Where’s the Birth Certificate? The case That Barack Obama is not Eligible to be the President,” is 38th among Amazon.com’s bestsellers. Yes, where is that rascally birth certificate after all? I should probably go waste some $15 on finding out the answers.

The great thing about this country is that you can write a piece of fiction, deem it nonfiction, have it 100% debunked, and still see it sell like hot-cakes. Amazing.

Unless, of course, this is a 3-page book and on the first page is the title, the second page is the actual birth certificate with a caption “oh, there it is!”, and the third page is the acknowledgements. If that’s the case, this book indeed does belong in the nonfiction bin. But, for those of you who are laughing off the Family Radio/Harold Camping end-of-the-world campaign, make sure you don’t currently own this book. “Dr.” Corsi’s pea and Camping’s pea seem to have dropped from the same pod.

On Tuesday, the “new ESPN book,” as it’s being dubbed, will be released and available for your consumption. Over the past week or so, we’ve been reading some leaked nuggets from Those Guys Have All The Fun. On the whole, there’s been nothing too damning, nothing we haven’t yet already heard.

Deadspin leaked a Michelle Beadle -Erin Andrews rift, but, again, nothing too wild. The stories about orgies and people “screwing in the hallway” are juicy, though nothing about some female intern and Mr. Met getting it on. There’s a lot of stuff in there about anchors not getting along, namely Chris Berman and Tony Kornheiser. We’ll read it, and we do look forward to doing so, but I think we were hoping to hear stories about Berman and Kornheiser high-fiving during a coke-fueled orgy. There doesn’t seem to be anything as damning in this book.

For more details on these rifts, check out the rundown by the team over at SportsGrid.

Q&A With Author James Andrew Miller (The Big Lead)

For The Sports Fan, This ESPN Book Has It All (Darren Rovell, CNBC)

Excerpt: Bill Simmons on Bristol, CT (Awful Announcing)

Hookers, Blow, ESPN and More! (Gothamist)

Yes, I know you’re still reeling from shock that someone would actually allow JWoww to contribute to the canons of American literature, but focus here people. The Jersey Shore star has some serious wisdom to impart on your dating and partying life. Check it out after the jump.

In her writing debut The Rules According to JWOWW, the reality star gives readers a treasure trove of useful (or at least entertaining) information about dating, sex, partying and everything in between. For instance:

Stop Drinking If You Vomit

If you puke it up, don’t put more in. Vomiting is a signal that your body can’t take the amount of alcohol that you have consumed. Call it quits for the evening and go clean yourself up at home.

and of course

You Don’t Need Some Fancy Guy’s Name On Your Ass

By this, I mean don’t be a slave to name brands. A lot of girls will only buy an outfit if it has a fancy designer label attached to it. That’s fucking ridiculous. Guidoa, as I mentioned, are famously brand-conscious, but that’s only for themselves. They generally don’t give a shit what designer a girl is wearing – they can’t tell the difference. You think a guy is checking out the name on your jeans back pocket … or how sexy your ass looks? I rest my case.

How I made it through college without JWoww, I’ll never know.

Via: Gawker

We all have that one friend. The one that you love for some strange reason, but aren’t oblivious to the fact that, dammit, they’re kind of creepy sometimes. If you know a creeper, we have the perfect gift to show your affection. Check out Creepiosity after the jump.

Creepiosity details the incredibly strange from hairless cats to used Band-Aids and everything in between. This 190-page book provides readers with any and everything in the world of creepy in a humorous and light-hearted way. Hey, for six bucks, I think it might be worth a trip to Barnes and Noble.

Via: Uncrate

Congratulations Rowan Somerville! Your book The Shape of Her has been recognized with the Bad Sex in Fiction prize by the Literary Review. You must be so very proud of yourself. Find out how Rowan was able to out bad sex the competition after the jump.

Wondering what goes into formulating the year’s worst literary sex scene. I think you can get a pretty good idea from these excerpts:

‘I want to suck you,’ she said, descending … She loosed his trousers, pulled away his underwear and gripped him with fingers tender enough to hold a tiny bird.

As he felt her mouth’s engulfment, he acquiesced, disappointment melting like ice in hot cream.

Naked from waist to toe, a faint wedge of paleness from a few hours of sun, streaked with shadows in the candlelight; the triangle of pubic hair, blond, a thin line bunched darkly, like desert vegetation following an underground stream. He placed his hand on the concave stretch that was her belly, letting two fingers rest in the yawn of her navel. He slipped downwards, grazing the tight skin of her waist with his fingertips. He reached her hair line and the muscles of her belly hardened as she raised herself up onto her elbows. She stayed his hand and drew him, yanked him, into a smothering kiss. She released his hair from her fingers and twisted onto her belly like a fish flipping itself, her movement so brusque his chin bounced off her head.

The wet friction of her, tight around him, the sight of her open, stretched around him, the cleft of her body, it tore a climax out of him with a final lunge. Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.

And what was Rowan’s reaction to the award:

“There is nothing more English than bad sex, so on behalf of the entire nation I would like to thank you.”

I guess we know where never to go on vacation.

Via: Gawker

Via: Guardian

Feeling like you’re a terrible person today? No sweat! Just check out “The Book of Bastards” and you will assuredly feel better about yourself. Find out more after the jump.

For just $10 how can you possibly say no to a collection of this great nation’s most outstanding scandals from the last 234 years. Everyone from President Warren G. Harding to traitors like General Wilkinson are included in what is sure to become a literary classic.

Via: Uncrate

Binge reading is the classiest way to get hammered ever. Find out more about this unique marriage of activities after the jump.

Why no one thought about combining the alcoholic libations of a pub and the intellectual capacity of a library until now, I have no idea. Well, maybe the fact that most times the room is spinning a little too fast to catch that metaphor in the last stanza could be a good reason. But nonetheless, a pub outside Budapest decided to test out their bar-brary idea and so far it seems to be going over pretty well:

“I come in, grab a book and just read into it for an hour or two, depending on how much time I have,” one customer said.

“I have a cool drink, I see a bunch of colleagues sitting around, so I join them by the table and read a bit. It’s good.”

Wow, now this is one idea I think would really take off among the college set. Just image how many kids would haul it to the library if they could grab a 50 cent beer while they were at it. Reading Rainbow and LaVar Burton don’t have anything on this library idea.

Via: Reuters

Oh Brett Ratner, you make us giggle. Check out his penchant for the junk in the trunk after the jump.

X-men director Brett Ratner just couldn’t keep his hands away from the luscious derrieres featured in the aptly named new release ‘The Big Butt Book.’ But luckily the only photos to come out of the event weren’t just of Brett looking with schoolboy glee at the mostly naked behinds. There was also an image of the cover artists’ muse, adult actress Alexis Texas.

If it’s not clear what the book is about already (hint: it’s about a$$), here is a little more of a description about the inspiration behind this soon-to-be classic, courtesy of Taschen Books:

“Curiously, its primary purpose is functional rather than aesthetic: butts balance our bodies while running, according to biologists. But ask any pygophiliac—as fundament fans are clinically termed—and you’ll get the same answer: female hindquarters exist to please the eye, the hands, and parts south.”

By George, I think that could be another book idea right there! Body parts that work in tandem with the booty. Can we get Alexis and a couple of her co-worker hotties to help out?

Via: The Huffington Post