James Franco is a busy man. Between starring in major motion pictures, appearing on daytime soap operas, and guesting in the book trailer for Gary Shteyngart’s new novel, he is also pursuing a literary life; his debut short story collection will be published this fall. For now we’ll recuse ourselves from judging whether Franco’s writing talent is equal to his acting abilities (judge for yourself: PWxyz offers up representative opening lines from the short stories, and Esquire published “Just Before the Black” back in March). But we can equivocally say this: the guy has great taste.

In a May interview, Franco discussed his favorite recent reads, among them our very own title: Richard Stark’s The Hunter. And today, culture blog Flavorwire dutifully assembled this James Franco Reading List, which, of course, contains the classic crime thriller. Well, James, since your proposed seminar at Yale got nixed, you probably have some time on your hands. And if you liked The Hunter, we’ve got plenty more where that came from.

In September 2008, the University of Chicago Press began reissuing Donald E. Westlake‘s Parker novels (which he wrote under the alias Richard Stark), and so far we’ve bought fifteen titles back into . . .

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Fans of Donald E. Westlake were saddened by his sudden death on New Year’s Eve of 2008. But luckily, the beloved author—who over the course of his fifty-year career published more than a hundred books, many under sundry pseudonyms—has continued to be prolific, even in death. In September 2008, the University of Chicago Press began reissuing Westlake’s Parker novels (which he wrote under the alias Richard Stark). So far, we’ve published an even dozen, and the next three books in the series—The Green Eagle Score, The Black Ice Score, and The Sour Lemon Score—will be showing up in stores any day now. In order to celebrate the books, our resident Westlake scholar Levi Stahl talked with Charles Ardai, editor of Hard Case Crime, the publisher of a newly discovered Westlake novel from the early 1960s, Memory, out this month. Ardai will also contribute forewords to our next set of Parker reissues—Deadly Edge, Slayground, and Plunder Squad —due out this fall.

Fans of crime novels have a lot of reasons to be grateful to Charles Ardai: as a writer, he’s produced a couple of top-notch hardboiled novels, and as a cofounder of Hard Case Crime, he’s shepherded new voices into . . .

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As we’ve previously noted, Donald Westlake’s (1933-2008) early Parker novels—the hard-boiled noir thrillers he wrote under the name Richard Stark—have been making a comeback since we began reissuing them in ’08.

But we can’t take all the credit for the resurgence of the ruthless Parker. In the summer of ’09 Eisner Award-winning comic book artist Darwyn Cooke released his graphic adaptation of one of the first books of the series—The Hunter—at the 2009 Comic-Con International in San Diego where it made a big splash amongst the comic book world’s elite tastemakers. And now it seems that the federally sanctioned tastemakers in Washington have taken notice too. According to Almost Darwyn Cooke’s Blog Darwyn is scheduled to discuss his graphic adaptation of The Hunter at the Smithsonian American Art Museum on Saturday January 30, 2010 starting at 4 PM. Mr. Westlake, I’m sure would be pleased to see such an enthusiastic reception of his classic character of crime fiction from all corners.

For more about the event see Calum Johnston’s Almost Darwyn Cooke’s Blog or check the event listing on the Smithsonian website.

For more about Darwyn’s graphic adaptation of The Hunter check out his publisher’s website at www.idwpublishing.com.

And . . .

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