MAY 17 UPDATE! YOUR RESPONSE TO THIS OFFER WAS WAY BEYOND EXPECTATIONS, SO WE LET IT RUN A COUPLE OF EXTRA DAYS. BUT NOW, AS OF THIS AFTERNOON, OUR SPECIAL PROMOTION IS FINISHED…AND ALL TWELVE BOOKS ARE NOW PRICED AT $6.99.
YOU MAY NOT WANT TO SCOOP UP THE WHOLE DOZEN AT THAT PRICE—BUT LOOK THEM OVER…
A Dozen Lawrence Block eBooks at a Bargain Price!
David Trevor here for Lawrence Block. And I’ll be brief and to the point. I suggested to the Great Man that we raise ebook prices on some of his early titles. (They’re mostly $4.99 or $5.99, and I think they all ought to be $6.99.)
“Lower them,” he said.
I’ll spare you the back and forth, but he said everybody’s in quarantine and times are uncertain, and yes the books should be priced at $6.99, but for now CUT the prices to $2.99 a book, and let all our friends know, and then a week from now after we’ve given you guys a chance to stock up at a low price, THEN boost everything to $6.99.
I asked him how many titles, and which ones, and for how long. Just in Amazon? Or other platforms as well?
“I don’t care,” he said. “You decide.”
Here’s what I decided. First of all, we’re just making the change on Amazon, because it’s too complicated moving prices around on the other platforms. So if you don’t have a Kindle or a Kindle app on your phone or toaster, I’m sorry, but this won’t work for you.
Second, I picked a dozen titles. Three are from the Collection of Classic Erotica, two are John Warren Wells titles, five are by Jill Emerson, and two are from the Classic Crime Library. Besides all being by The Master Himself, they have one other thing in common. I’ll tell you in a minute.
Before I do, let me go through the list and describe the books—although you’ll get a better description (and occasionally some information on how the book came to be written) on each book’s Amazon product page.
The three entries from the Collection of Classic Erotica are Of Shame and Joy, 21 Gay Street, and The Adulterers. The former is set in Provincetown, Massachustetts, at the eastern edge of Cape Cod, and concerns two women, Sheila and Madelaine, and—as an Amazon reviewer notes—“the paths of the two women cross–and cross 
again. Well written, with a good narrative flow, the story is more upbeat than many demimonde tales of the time.”
21 Gay Street takes place at that address in Greenwich Village, with the various tenants of the townhouse serving as the book’s characters, and very much of its time. From an Amazon review: “There’s a smoky jazz club full of junkies, one-night flings in a fog of marijuana, and an orgy fueled by aphrodisiacs and bongo drums. But there’s workaday normality and an all-too-human struggle for simple happiness.Well written, with an easy flow, the book succeeds in being 
what it was meant to be–pulp sleaze, light on plot and heavy on erotic description.”
The Adulterers is set in a Mexican border town, and the book description on the Amazon page discusses LB’s research, if you want to call it that. Here’s what one reader had to say: “Great example of the explicit dime store novels. The pulpy writing really pops off the page, and even if some of the conclusions are amusing to a modern reader, you need to take this book as a relic of its time. As that, it’s awesome.”
John Warren Wells is the name LB used for his nonfiction 
books on sexual behavior, and some of the case histories are more fact-based than others, and I’m not convinced his memory is up to the task of sorting them out. Of Wide Open: New Modes of Marriage, one reviewer writes “This is a series of interviews and observations and case stories of many couples and other groups of people living in non-monogamous relationships in the 1970s. It includes promiscuity and swinging and open marriage and triads and group marriages. It is a must read for those interested in this subject.” Another adds “Pretty good read. Wish I could get my wife to read it, but she is not open to anything.” Hey, my sympathies, dude.
3 is Not a Crowd is specifically about threesomes, or throuples, or whatever you want to call it. Here’s an Amazon rave from a reader in the UK: “I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book as it’s different from other Block books. It’s excellent, the participants are very revealing in what they are discussing and make for an interesting read.”
The first three Jill Emerson titles, Shadows, Warm & Willing, and Enough of Sorrow, are all sensitive novels of the lesbian experience. Thirty is a change 
of pace, written when sexual candor was beginning to emerge in contenporary fiction; it’s in diary form, and documents a trapped housewife’s flight from the suburbs to fulfill her erotic destiny. Or, you know, something like that.
Threesome is one LB describes as a tour de force, and was evidently great fun to write; premise is the two women and one man of the title decide to aim at the bestseller list by writing up their own history as a novel, and the story evolves in the course of their telling it. There’s a wonderful long review on the Amazon site and you ought to go there and read it yourself, but here’s one paragraph of it: “I 
count twenty-five passages that I underlined on my Kindle while reading. Some because they were laugh-out-loud funny, some because of clever wording, and some because they were insightful. Yes, I said insightful, and I meant it. It feels really odd (embarrassing?) to admit that one of my most highlighted books on my Kindle is an erotic pulp novel, but there you are. The funny is what surprised me the most. Threesome is downright hilarious, not because of the subject matter, but because of how witty Block is. His writing style is wonderful.”
That’s ten. The other two are in LB’s Classic Crime Library, although the first—Four Lives at the Crossroads—was originally included in the erotica collection. First published by Nightstand Books in 1962 under LB’s Andrew Shaw pen name, it’s a multiple-viewpoint heist novel that’s been well received now as crime fiction. From a five-star review: “The characters are well drawn and believable, the premises are not outlandish and the book is literally a page turner. I stayed up very late reading this one and immediately ordered another in the series. If you’re an LB fan and you like your stories on the hard-boiled side, treat yourself to this one!”
Ariel is harder to categorize. It’s sometimes listed as horror fiction, sometimes as crime. The setting is Charleston, and the title character is a prepubescent adopted girl who composes weird melodies on her flute. “By sublimely manipulating characters and plot elements,” one reviewer notes, “Block has created a very disturbing story of a family’s journey into darkness, fear and suspicion.” Another adds, “There is a certain disturbing quality to Ariel, which may be interpreted as teenage angst or a supernatural involvement. One can read the book as a psychological thriller or a spooky ghost story. Both work.“
That’s really all I got. Twelve books, each excellent in its own way. That’s their chief common denominator, but there’s 
another reason I happened to pick them over other equally fine backlist titles, and that’s because they’re all also available in audio, in all but one case because LB chose to self-publish them via Audible’s ACX division. We can’t give you special pricing on the audio because ACX sets their own prices, based strictly on length, but I can definitely recommend any or all of these if (as the Big Guy likes to say) you’d prefer to give your eyes a rest and read with your ears.
I’ve got the room here, so let me mention the narrators. Barbara Nevins Taylor has voiced Of Shame and Joy, and is at work now on A Woman Must Love. Dana Roth narrated 21 Gay Street. Theo Holland, whom you may know as the Voice of Evan Tanner, is the narrator of The Adulterers and Four Lives at the Crossroads. The late (and sorely missed) Don Sobczak narrated Wide Open:New Modes of Marriage, as well as the Ehrengraf stories, Defender of the Innocent.
P. J. Morgan has recorded Shadows, and we’re waiting for her audio of Passport to Peril to be cleared for sale; meanwhile, she’s returned to Jill Emerson for A Madwoman’s Diary. Emily Beresford voiced three Jill Emerson titles: Warm & Willing, Enough of Sorrow, and Thirty. And the team of Bill Weeden and Dolores McDougal have brought the three narrators of Threesome very much to life; that book, too, is awaiting ACX clearance, while Bill and Dolores have changed LB pen names if not topics and are at work on 3 is Not a Crowd.
Ariel is the one book of the twelve that we didn’t self-publish in audio—because Recorded Books beat us to it. Their audiobook is narrated by Alexandra O’Karma; I didn’t know anything about her and just this minute Googled her, and am thoroughly bummed to learn that she died in September, 2019.
If I get a chance, maybe I’ll download Ariel and see what she did with it.
This seems awfully long for a newsletter just pointing you at a dozen ebooks at a bargain price of $2.99 apiece. I can guarantee we’ll hold that price point until May 15. Then they’ll edge up a little, probably to $6.99. In the meantime, the more you buy, the more you save. Isn’t that the only logical way to look at it?
Cheers,
David Trevor sitting in for
PS: As always, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest. And, if you yourself have received the newsletter from a friend and would like your own subscription, that’s easily arranged; an email to lawbloc@gmail.com with
