Most Popular Books by Howard Fast

DIVHoward Fast’s 1987 New York Times bestseller, a tight political drama that remains just as relevant today as when it was first written/div DIVFast’s 1987 novel The Dinner Party confronts issues including American intervention in Latin America and the AIDS epidemic. Often compared to a play, The Dinner Party takes place during a single day, culminating in a party hosted by Richard Cromwell, a US Senator whose wealthy entrepreneur father-in-law is building a controversial highway across Central America, though powerful government interests want the highway stopped stopped. International politics become deeply personal in this novel, and unfailingly serve as a commentary on contemporary politics./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

A “profoundly shocking” tale of immigrant children growing up in New York tenements from the New York Times–bestselling author of Spartacus (Kirkus Reviews). Ishky is Jewish; Marie and Shomake are Irish; Ollie is Italian. All children of immigrants, they are confronted daily by the prejudice that rules in one of the world’s greatest urban centers: New York City. Living in slums, they must rely on each other to overcome hunger, disease, violence, and the bigotry of those who arrived before them. Fighting for a better life against the tide of poverty, the children must overcome their own city’s barbarism, or be consumed by it. Heartrending in its scope and harrowing in its realism, The Children is an elegy of the ghettoes and a moving cri de coeur against bigotry and oppression in all its forms. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate.

Two full-length mysteries featuring Nisei detective Masao Masuto are together in one volume. In "The Case of the Sliding Pool", Masuto investigates the identity of a skeleton found when a swimming pool collapses. And in "The Case of the Kidnapped Angel", the husband of a kidnapped Hollywood sex goddess does not return from paying her ransom.

DIVA New York detective’s investigation of a Catholic priest’s murder leads him to a shocking drug plot that reaches the highest seats of American power /div DIVDetective Mel Freedman’s life changes forever the day Joe Cullen walks into his New York City office to confess to murder. Cullen, a pilot and Vietnam veteran, has come to admit his guilt in the murder of an American priest, thrown from a helicopter to his death in the jungles of El Salvador 800 feet below. But when a prostitute to whom Cullen also confessed turns up dead, Freedman quickly realizes that there is much more to Cullen’s story than meets the eye. As he digs deeper into the mystery, Freedman unravels a tangled web of conspiracy stretching from the cocaine fields of Central America all the way to CIA headquarters. /divDIV /divDIVTense and thought-provoking, The Confession of Joe Cullen is a powerful thriller about government corruption and the individuals who try to combat it, by one of the most masterful American writers of the twentieth century./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVA collection of Fast’s best short fiction, from science fiction and fantasy to philosophy and suspense/div DIVThis collection of short stories encompasses twenty years of work by Howard Fast, including some of his best-known and most treasured tales. Not merely fantasy or science fiction, these “Zen stories” explore the world’s mysterious and unanswerable questions, big and small, and the results are at once bizarre, humorous, chilling, and poignant. An American general shoots down what appears to be an angel during a Vietnam War battle, a celebrated author becomes a hunted man, and a mouse is granted human thought and emotion by a group of alien beings. The thirty-one stories in Time and the Riddle showcase Fast’s range and supreme talent as a storyteller./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVFast’s book on his break with the Communist Party, and a riveting tribute to the importance of justice and beauty over dogma and rigidity/div DIVThe Naked God is Howard Fast’s public repudiation of the Communist Party, of which he was a devoted member for thirteen years until reading about the full scope of atrocities committed by the Soviet Union under Stalin. The bestselling author of Spartacus and Citizen Tom Paine, Howard Fast lent his writing talents and celebrity to the communist cause as a steadfast advocate and public figure. However, he felt increasingly ill at ease with the superior manner Party leaders took with rank-and-file members and with rumors of Soviet anti-Semitism. In his first book after officially leaving the Party in 1956, Howard Fast explores the reasons he joined and his long inner struggle with a political movement in which he never felt he truly belonged./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVDIVFast’s epic novel, about one man’s family tree stretching through history from the Revolutionary War, portrays the best and worst of the American experiment/divDIV /divDIVBroken and sick, a young Revolutionary War soldier from New York is taken in by an innkeeper’s family and nursed to health. The soldier, John Preswick, falls in love with the innkeeper’s daughter, even as his wife Inez waits back home. Through five generations, the two families he starts share an intertwined fate. The Preswicks take part in some of the country’s most significant episodes, from the Civil War to the California Gold Rush, with fortunes discovered, lost, and made on the backs of others./divDIV /divDIVA tenacious chronicler of American history, Howard Fast was one of the most prolific historical novelists of the twentieth century. Strange Yesterday is perhaps his most sweeping, ambitious novel./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div/div

DIVBestselling author Howard Fast’s straightforward introduction to Zen meditation/div DIVHoward Fast began to formally practice Zen meditation after turning away from communism in 1956. The Art of Zen Meditation, originally published by the antiwar political collective Peace Press in 1977, is the fruit of Fast’s study: a brief and instructive history of Zen Buddhism and its tenets, written with a simplicity that is emblematic of the philosophy itself. Fast’s study of Zen also inspired his popular Masao Masuto mystery series about a Zen Buddhist detective in Beverly Hills, which he published under the pseudonym E. V. Cunningham./divDIV /divDIVThe Art of Zen Meditation is illustrated with twenty-three beautiful photographs./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVTwo tales of speculative fiction from bestselling author Howard Fast/div DIVThe Hunter and The Trap presents two thrilling and suspenseful stories by Howard Fast, one of the most prolific authors of the twentieth century. In “The Hunter,” celebrated but down-on-his-luck novelist Andrew Bell returns to New York from an African safari only to find himself the prey in someone else’s big game hunt. Bell must seek the help of an old friend in order to escape with his life./divDIV /divDIVIn “The Trap,” an ex-soldier is tasked with traveling the world to find children for a daring social and scientific experiment. In a secret compound in California, a group of government-funded US scientists are attempting to win the Cold War by developing a race of super-humans. Isolated from the shortcomings of human society and nurtured to their full potential, these brilliant children begin to develop powers, including telekinesis and telepathy, which represent the next leap in human development./divDIV /divDIVThese two engrossing stories are at once horrifying, thrilling, tragic, and uplifting, demonstrating Fast’s range and versatility./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVDIVAs the Red Scare grips America, a midwestern literature professor becomes an unlikely hero in the struggle for freedom /divDIVProfessor Silas Timberman has never been one for theatrics. A quiet American literature professor at a mid-sized college, Timberman decides to build a semester’s course around the democratic ideals of Mark Twain—a subject that under normal circumstances would not arouse the suspicions of the university administration. But as the Korean War rages on and congressional investigations of potential Communists gain traction, no amount of ideological nuance is safe. When Timberman is asked to renounce his work or face the repercussions, he finds that not only his tenure but also his very freedom is at stake./divDIV /divDIVInspired by Fast’s own persecution at the hands of the House Un-American Activities Committee, Silas Timberman is a gripping record of the injustices of McCarthyism and a rousing ode to those who fought against it./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div/div

DIVHoward Fast’s controversial essay on the proper role of literature, offering insight into his life and works/div DIVIn this 1950 essay, Howard Fast argues that all writers have a duty to reflect the truth of the world in their works, particularly regarding social justice. Fast’s treatise on literary criticism allows for a fuller understanding of his early novels, in which his political beliefs remain inseparable from his writing./divDIV /divDIVLiterature and Reality, which Fast wrote around the time of the 1949 Peekskill riots, offers a unique window into his worldview during the mid-twentieth century./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

It''s been 11 years since a young actress was raped by half a dozen men on a Hollywood set. She was never seen again. Now, one by one, the very same men who participated in the rape are being slain. Racing against time, Masao Masuto must uncover the killer''s identity. Original.

A pair of imaginative science fiction story collections from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Spartacus, Freedom Road, and the Immigrants saga. Over his long and illustrious career, New York Times–bestselling author and prolific novelist Howard Fast proved himself a master of any literary genre, from historical fiction in Spartacus to family generational drama in his bestselling Immigrants saga. Although his output in fantasy and science fiction is relatively modest, these two short story collections, reminiscent of classic Twilight Zone episodes, demonstrate that Fast’s imagination knew no boundaries. The General Zapped an Angel: Nearly forty years after the publication of his first story, “Wrath of Purple,” in the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, Fast returned to the genre with a set of nine supremely entertaining tales. In this collection, a Vietnam general shoots down what appears to be an angel, a man sells his soul to the devil for a copy of the next day’s Wall Street Journal, and a group of alien beings bestow a mouse with human thought and emotion. “These stories amply display Fast’s considerable gifts as a writer—his clear, concise, often elegant prose, his sense of humor, his gift of sympathetic imagination, and sheer talent as a storyteller.” —Tangent A Touch of Infinity: This follow-up to The General Zapped an Angel offers thirteen brisk and engrossing science fiction stories. In “The Hoop,” a scientist builds a portal to an unknown destination, which the mayor of New York City hijacks to use as a garbage dump until the location’s surprising—and hilarious—revelation. And in “The Egg,” set three thousand years in the future, a research team discovers an egg, something they have never seen before, cryogenically frozen in a nuclear bunker. “Fast, a master of economy . . . spins his stories quickly and most effectively.” —Associated Press

DIVDetective Masuto reopens an investigation into a murderous film star—with deadly consequences/div DIVOn the day that Eve Mackenzie murders her husband, Masao Masuto is on a plane to Japan. For years he and his wife, both American-born Japanese, have dreamed of visiting their homeland, and though the trip is a delight, the Zen Buddhist detective cannot help but check the international papers for news of murder on his home turf of Beverly Hills. Part of him regrets missing the sensational Mackenzie killing. Once a high-profile film star, Eve faded from the public eye after wedding a wealthy Scotsman—an unhappy marriage that ended in bloodshed. When Masuto returns home, Eve is headed toward an inevitable conviction. Why, then, does he reopen the case?/divDIV /divDIVThe evidence against the Hollywood starlet is so airtight that Masuto suspects a frame-up. As he pries into the closed case, more blood spills. Eve Mackenzie may not have murdered her husband, but she is far from innocent./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

When he has just the right feeling, Tony can open the door in his New York City tenement backyard and step through to the time when the Dutch and Indians lived on Manhattan Island--but no one believes him.

Defense counsel in an army murder case during World War II must decide whether to save his client on grounds of insanity or to appease British allies by letting him die.

During the Spanish Inquisition, the Grand Inquisitor involves a close friend in charges of heresy.

As the sinister shadow of McCarthyism spreads across America, a woman fights to save everything she holds dear. Lola Gregg grew up the daughter of a respected physician in a tiny factory town. She married and had children, perfectly content in her quiet suburban existence. But Lola has a problem: at a time when progressivism is considered a national threat, Lola and her husband are on the wrong side of the political spectrum. When the FBI begins to tail her husband due to his leftist affiliations, Lola is forced to choose between her deeply held beliefs and the very safety of her family. Intense and thought-provoking, Lola Gregg is a potent thriller about one woman''s struggle to preserve ideological freedom against the reactionary forces of her day. Based partially on a true story.