Mystery Books

  • The Gordon Star

    Gordon sees everyone else in his class getting gold stars for being good at something: Lucy has neat handwriting, Rachel

  • Skin Tight

    New York Times bestselling author Carl Hiaasen serves up a humorous helping of "taut, fast-paced action...crisp an

  • The Runaway Jury

    Every jury has a leader, and the verdict belongs  to him. In Biloxi, Mississippi, a landmark tobacco  trial with hundreds of m

  • The Broker

    In his final hours in the Oval Office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorio

  • All Our Yesterdays

    They were the Sheridan men, ruled by passion, betrayed by love, heirs to a legacy of violence and forbidden desire.  Gus, Boston

  • L.A. Requiem (Elvis Cole Novels)

    The day starts like any other in L.A. The sun burns hot as the Santa Ana winds blow ash from mountain fires to coat the glittering

  • Play Dead

    No sooner had supermodel Laura Ayers and Celtics star David Baskin said "I do" than tragedy struck. While honeymooning on Aus

  • More...

Mystery Movies

  • Mystic River

    Three friends who grew up in working-class Boston drift apart after a terrible tragedy. Years later, brutal events reconnect them.

  • Fight Club (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

    "'Fight Club' pulls you in, challenges your prejudices, rocks your world and leaves you laughing" (Rolling Stone). Brad Pitt ("12

  • Arlington Road

    Jeff Bridges, Tim Robbins. A professor whose wife was killed during an anti-terrorist operation begins to suspect that his new nei

  • Oldboy

    Oh Dae-su is an ordinary Seoul businessman with a wife and little daughter who, after a drunken night on the town, is abducted and

  • More...

Mystery Authors

Chester Himes biography

Himes

 

 

Chester Himes

(1909 - 1984)

Chester Himes, the son of a teacher, was born in Jefferson City, Missouri, on 29th July, 1909. Himes attended Ohio State University but in 1929 he was arrested and found guilty of armed robbery. The following year he witnessed a prison fire that killed 320 convicts.

While in prison he began writing fiction. This included, To What Red Hell? (1934), a story about a prison fire. Over the next few years his stories appeared in the Pittsburgh Courier, Atlanta Daily World, Bronzeman, Esquire and Abbott's Monthly Magazine.

On his release in 1936 Himes joined the Federal Writers' Project. and became friendly with the poet, Langston Hughes. Himes first novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go, appeared in 1945. This was followed by Lonely Crusade, a novel about racism in the trade union movement, and Cast the First Stone (1952).

After the publication of The Third Generation (1954) and The Primitive (1955), Himes moved to Paris where he joined a group of black writers and artists that included James Baldwin, Richard Wright and Ollie Harrington.

While living in France he concentrated on writing a series of books about two Harlem detectives, Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones. This included For Love of Imabelle (1957), The Real Cool Killers (1959), All Shot Up (1960), Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965), The Heat's On (1966) and Blind Man with a Pistol (1969).

Chester Himes, who wrote two volumes of autobiography, The Quality of Hurt (1972) and My Life of Absurdity (1976), died in Moraira, Spain, on 12th November, 1984.

Information source: wikipedia