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Dorothy B. Hughes

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Dorothy B. Hughes


Born
in Kansas City, MO, The United States
August 10, 1904

Died
May 06, 1993

Genre
Mystery & Thrillers


Dorothy B. Hughes (1904–1993) was a mystery author and literary critic. Born in Kansas City, she studied at Columbia University, and won an award from the Yale Series of Younger Poets for her first book, the poetry collection Dark Certainty (1931). After writing several unsuccessful manuscripts, she published The So Blue Marble in 1940. A New York–based mystery, it won praise for its hardboiled prose, which was due, in part, to Hughes’s editor, who demanded she cut 25,000 words from the book.

Hughes published thirteen more novels, the best known of which are In a Lonely Place (1947) and Ride the Pink Horse (1946). Both were made into successful films. In the early fifties, Hughes largely stopped writing fiction, preferring to focus on critic ...more

Combine Editions

Average rating: 4.03 · 18,477 ratings · 2,692 reviews · 66 distinct works • Similar authors
In a Lonely Place
by
4.12 avg rating — 8,949 ratings — published 1947 — 54 editions
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The Expendable Man
4.08 avg rating — 3,415 ratings — published 1963 — 32 editions
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Ride the Pink Horse
3.79 avg rating — 1,081 ratings — published 1946
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The Blackbirder
3.73 avg rating — 544 ratings — published 1943 — 37 editions
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The So Blue Marble (Griseld...
3.39 avg rating — 560 ratings — published 1940 — 29 editions
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Dread Journey
3.62 avg rating — 420 ratings — published 1945 — 27 editions
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The Fallen Sparrow
3.47 avg rating — 260 ratings — published 1942 — 42 editions
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Erle Stanley Gardner: The C...
3.98 avg rating — 101 ratings — published 1978 — 4 editions
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The Bamboo Blonde (Griselda...
3.17 avg rating — 95 ratings — published 1941 — 10 editions
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The Davidian Report
3.55 avg rating — 58 ratings — published 1952 — 24 editions
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More books by Dorothy B. Hughes…

Series by Dorothy B. Hughes

The So Blue Marble The Bamboo Blonde
(2 books)
by
3.35 avg rating — 655 ratings

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Quotes by Dorothy B. Hughes  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“He'd always had a quickening of the heart when he crossed into Arizona and beheld the cactus country. This was as the desert should be, this was the desert of the picture books, with the land unrolled to the farthest distant horizon hills, with saguaro standing sentinel in their strange chessboard pattern, towering supinely above the fans of ocotillo and brushy mesquite.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, The Expendable Man
tags: arizona, cactus, desert, southwestern
32 likes
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“It’s harder to come back than it is to arrive.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place
19 likes
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“Once he’d had happiness but for so brief a time; happiness was made of quicksilver, it ran out of your hand like quicksilver. There was the heat of tears suddenly in his eyes and he shook his head angrily. He would not think about it, he would never think of that again. It was long ago in an ancient past. To hell with happiness. More important was excitement and power and the hot stir of lust. Those made you forget. They made happiness a pink marshmallow.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place
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Polls

January 2020 New School Classic Poll

Stoner by John Williams, 1965, 278 pages
 
  78 votes, 27.8%

Blindness by José Saramago, 1995, 326 pages
 
  74 votes, 26.3%

Quicksand by Nella Larsen, 1928, 192 pages
 
  41 votes, 14.6%

A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul, 1979, 326 pages
 
  36 votes, 12.8%

In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes, 1947, 256 pages
 
  33 votes, 11.7%

The Fixer by Bernard Malamud, 1966, 335 pages
 
  19 votes, 6.8%

281 total votes
More...

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics posts views last activity  
The Mystery, Crim...: This topic has been closed to new comments. POLL CLOSED- Sept/Oct 2012 Group Read 69 503 Sep 03, 2012 06:02PM  
Reading with Style: This topic has been closed to new comments. Summer 2013 RwS Completed Tasks - Summer 2013 648 128 Aug 31, 2013 09:06PM  
The Seasonal Read...: This topic has been closed to new comments. Completed Tasks (Do Not Delete Posts) 2519 652 Aug 01, 2014 02:12PM  
Reading with Style: This topic has been closed to new comments. Winter 14/15 20.2 - Persephone 18 79 Dec 14, 2014 09:17AM  
Reading with Style: This topic has been closed to new comments. Winter 14/15 RwS Completed Tasks - Winter 14/15 918 136 Mar 01, 2015 01:36PM  
Reading with Style: This topic has been closed to new comments. WI 15-16 My Domino Plan 26 81 Dec 11, 2015 02:33PM  
Black Coffee: Year of the Woman 14 67 Mar 02, 2017 03:25PM  
Cozy Mysteries : This topic has been closed to new comments. Mystery ABC's, Round 3 13220 636 Apr 24, 2017 10:00AM