Howard Fast

Four children of immigrants grow up together in the back alleys of New York City's tenements, under the looming shadow of racism Ishky is Jewish; Marie and Shomake are Irish; Ollie is Italian. All children of immigrants, they are confronted daily by the prejudice that rules in one of the world's greatest urban centers: New York City. Living in slums, they must rely on each other to overcome hunger, disease, violence, and the bigotry of those who arrived...

Howard Fast's controversial essay on the proper role of literature, offering insight into his life and works In this 1950 essay, Howard Fast argues that all writers have a duty to reflect the truth of the world in their works, particularly regarding social justice. Fast's treatise on literary criticism allows for a fuller understanding of his early novels, in which his political beliefs remain inseparable from his writing.   Literature and Reality,...

A New York detective's investigation of a Catholic priest's murder leads him to a shocking drug plot that reaches the highest seats of American power Detective Mel Freedman's life changes forever the day Joe Cullen walks into his New York City office to confess to murder. Cullen, a pilot and Vietnam veteran, has come to admit his guilt in the murder of an American priest, thrown from a helicopter to his death in the jungles of El Salvador 800 feet...

Hours away from execution, Sacco and Vanzetti relive the twists of fate that led to their condemnation Seven years, two trials, and three appeals after their arrest for robbery and murder in 1920, anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti await execution in their prison cells. Supporters around the world have passionately argued their innocence, particularly when Celestino Madeiros, a young mobster, confesses to the murders along with other...

A dog's murder leads detective Masuto to a most unusual poisoning case In Beverly Hills, murder has suddenly gone out of style. For five weeks, the head of the city's tiny homicide squad, Zen detective Masao Masuto, has worked only robbery investigations. But after more than a month without a corpse, this dry spell is about to end.   The dead woman is Ana Fortez, a Chicana whose death was originally classified as terminal food poisoning brought on...

Two scientists-one American and one Russian-form a pact for nuclear disarmament that threatens to bring civilization to its knees The physicists met during a nuclear conference in London. Wanting to hurry America and the Soviet Union into nuclear non-proliferation, they each construct a crude atomic bomb, hiding one in New York and one in Moscow, and then they disappear. The United States and the USSR have forty days to renounce nuclear weapons, or...

Japanese-American Beverly Hills homicide detective Masao Masuto is a karate expert, a devotee of roses, and a Zen Buddhist. He does his job with a cool, caustic wit-and with surprising force when necessary. He possesses a singular sense of justice, taking action on his own and occasionally pushing the boundaries of the law… The Case of the Sliding Pool: After a decades-old hidden grave is uncovered by a rainstorm, Detective Masuto must look into...

A freak subway accident traps a New York architect in a deadly conspiracy that will threaten what he loves most John T. Camber is waiting on an uptown subway platform the moment his life changes forever. It happens quickly, when a haggard elderly man utters a sudden plea for help before falling on the tracks in front of an oncoming train. Reeling from the accident, Camber flees the station, only to be accosted by a brass-knuckled thug who believes...

When a starry-eyed model walks off with a powerful woman's mink coat and diamond bracelet, New York City's police race to find her-before gangsters get her first Margie Beck has always been a magnet for calamity. When she accidentally walks off with a $17,000 mink coat and the $90,000 bracelet contained within it, she finds herself again at the center of an exciting-and possibly deadly-criminal plot.   As the city's police search for Margie, its...

A pair of imaginative science fiction story collections from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Spartacus, Freedom Road, and the Immigrants saga. Over his long and illustrious career, New York Times–bestselling author and prolific novelist Howard Fast proved himself a master of any literary genre, from historical fiction in Spartacus to family generational drama in his bestselling Immigrants saga. Although his output in fantasy and science...