Hard-boiled fiction, femmes fatale and damaged detectives.

Dashiell Hammet was born on May 27, 1894.

Best known for his books The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, Hammett is one of the great exponents of hard-boiled detective fiction.

Sam Spade, the character created for The Maltese Falcon and famously played by Humphrey Bogart, is considered to be one of the quintessential "Private-Eyes".

We have the complete novels of Dashiell Hammett, as well as collections of his short stories.  And if reading Hammett's work gives you a taste for violent, damaged detectives and femmes fatale, we also have works by Raymond Chandler and Chester Himes - not to mention a whole bunch of detective stories and novels, and books about detective stories...

If finishing your assignments and preparing for exams is starting to stress you out, why not grab yourself a good old fashioned paperback and spend an evening in the crime-ridden streets of early 20th Century America?