"Hard Case may be the best new American publisher to appear in the last decade."
        —Neal Pollack in The Stranger

From World War II through the 1960s, paperback crime novels were one of the fastest-selling categories in book publishing. Millions of readers snapped up hundreds of millions of books by well-known authors like Erle Stanley Gardner and Mickey Spillane, as well as by promising young newcomers like Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake. These inexpensive, pocket-sized novels captured the public's imagination with jaw-dropping cover paintings and bare-knuckled prose that grabbed you by the collar with the first sentence and held you until the last page. No one had published books like that in years.

Until we came along.

"The art perfectly captures the era—if I didn't know better, I would have sworn it was from one of the old publishing houses. I am very impressed."
        —Donald Hamilton, creator of Matt Helm

Hard Case Crime is dedicated to reviving the vigor and excitement, the suspense and thrills—the sheer entertainment—of the golden age of paperback crime novels, both by bringing back into print the best work of the pulp era and by introducing readers to new work by some of today's most powerful writers and artists. Determined detectives and dangerous women...fortune hunters and vengeance seekers...ingenious criminals and men on the run...Hard Case Crime novels offer everything you want from a great story, all in handsome and affordable editions.

"They do write 'em like they used to."
        —Publishers Weekly on Fade to Blonde

Hard Case Crime was created by Charles Ardai and Max Phillips; cover design for books between December 2006 and August 2010 was by Steve Cooley of Cooley Design Lab. Typesetting by Leigh Grossman at Swordsmith Productions.