Killer Take All (ePub)

They called him Johnny Berlin and he had an instinct for cards, for trouble... for dames. He'd dealt at all the biggest tables in Reno and Vegas. He'd told the head of the gambling syndicate to go to hell—and repeated the message to his hired killers. He'd had women throwing themselves at him at every turn... and he loved it. That was Johnny Berlin. Who would have thought he'd find the dice loaded against him in a peanut-sized town off a back road in northern California? Who would have thought he'd fall for a nice girl? And who would have thought he'd risk his life for her? Nobody—least of all Johnny Berlin himself.On his way from San Francisco, Johnny gets lost in the fog while driving the costal route to Portland, Oregon. Stopping to get directions from a stranger turns out to be deadly, when that stranger—a dangerous racketeer—turns up dead... and Johnny is pegged as the killer. Now it'll take all his smarts and toughness to save himself and the woman he loves.About Vintage Paperback Pulp Fiction:A new revolution was underway at the start of the 1940s in America—a paperback revolution that would change the way publishers would produce and distribute books and the reading public would consume them. In 1939 a new publishing company—Pocket Books—stormed onto the scene with the publication of its first paperbound book. Unlike hardback books, these pulp paperbacks were available in drugstores, newsstands, bus and train stations, and cigar shops. The American public could not get enough of them. The popular pulp genres reflected the tastes of Americans during the 1930s and 1940s—mysteries, thrillers, and "hardboiled detective" stories were all the rage.In the early 1950s new pulp fiction sub-genres emerged—science fiction, lesbian fiction, juvenile delinquent and sleaze, for instance—that would tantalize readers with gritty, realistic and lurid stories never seen before. Publishers had come to realize that sex sells. In a competitive frenzy for readers, they turned to alluring covers that often featured a sexy woman in some form of undress, along with a suggestive tag line that promised sex and violence within. To this day, the pulp cover art of these vintage paperback books are just as sought after as the books themselves were sixty years ago.We are excited to make these wonderful pulp fiction stories available in ebook format to new generations of readers, as a new revolution—the ebook revolution—is in full swing. We hope you will enjoy this nostalgic look back at a period in American history when dames were dangerous, tough-guys were deadly and dolls were downright delicious.