Books about los angeles

An exploration of Los Angeles, told with passion, wit and a sharp eye for the absurd, the unjust and the dangerous. The author tells a lurid tale of greed, manipulation, power and prejudice that has made LA one of the most cosmopolitan and class-divided cities in the United States.

Los Angeles has become a magnet for the American apocalyptic imagination, with many disasters - both real and those created by Hollywood movies - in recent years. This book examines the history of disaster - both real and imagined - in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles is a city where the police are as corrupt as the criminals. Six prisoners are beaten senseless in their cells by cops crazed on alcohol. For the three L A P D detectives involved, it will expose the guilty secrets on which they have built their corrupt and violent careers.

A beautiful young woman walked into the night and met her horrific destiny. Five days later, her tortured body was found drained of blood and cut in shelf. The newspapers called her 'The Black Dahlia'. Two cops are caught up in the investigation and embark on a hellish journey that takes them to the core of the dead girl's twisted life.

This L.A. fable is by one of Hollywood's greatest comics.

Clay comes home to LA for Christmas vacation and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and moral entropy. His holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs. This is a novel about the casual nihilism that comes with youth and money.

The first book in the impossibly-cool and massively-acclaimed Dangerous Angels series. Has the potential to be a cult phenomenon...

Los Angeles, in 1958 is a city on the make. It is a boom town at the edge of a new era ripe for plunder. Lieutenant Dave Klein is in turn a lawyer, bagman, slum landlord, mob killer. He stands at the centre of a complex web of plots, where violence and death intersect.

Arturo Bandini is a struggling writer lodging in a seedy LA hotel. While basking in the glory of having had a story published in a small magazine, he meets waitress Camilla Lopez, and they embark on a strange and strained love-hate relationship. Slowly, but inexorably, it descends into madness.

The City of Angels has become the city of the Angel of Death. Communist witch-hunts and insanely violent killings are terrorising the community. Three men are plunged into a malestrom of violence and deceit when their lives become inextricably linked as each one confronts his own personal darkness.

Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. Marlowe's got his work cut out. But that's before he stumbles over the first corpse.

A superb new Harry Bosch novel from the No.1 bestselling author.

An investigation into the murder of crime writer, James Ellroy's mother. She was murdered in 1958 and the case was never solved, leaving her son to embark on years of petty crime and drinking. Only later, as a writer, did he begin to delve into his past and set out to solve the mystery.

Banham's construct of four ecologies examines the ways in which Angelenos relate to the beach, the freeways, the flatlands and the foothills of their city. The author - an architectural historian - identified Los Angeles as an exemplar of the posturban future.

Easy Rawlins, out-of-work black war veteran in 1948 Los Angeles, accepts the assignment of finding blonde torch singer Daphne Monet. In his search, he is lucky to be under the protection of the murderous Mouse, who wants a piece of the action.

The Poet is back! Harry Bosch is on the case, in this stunning sequel to the novel that catapulted Michael Connelly to fame.