Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas

Marlowe stands close and lights it for him, smelling of hair cream and something else as well. The faintest whiff of brimstone. Marlowe enjoys a different kind of immortality, achieved by different means. No magic acorns or slumbering under trees. He sold his soul on the dotted line, joined an exclusive members’ club. Eternal life. But not eternal
... See moreThomas D. Lee • Perilous Times
The desk clerk, whose name-plate identified him as G. O. Horner, was a thin, elderly man with protuberant eyes that gave him an expression of intense interest and curiosity. The expression was false. After thirty years in the business, people meant no more to him than individual bees do to a beekeeper. Their differences were lost in a welter of sta
... See moreMargaret Millar • Beast in View
Philip Davis
philipcdavis.comI couldn’t go back to sleep. I began to wonder about Miss Merrick and when – whether I would hear from her again and what she hoped to get out of me. The only thing I have is money.’ She paused, as if giving him a chance to contradict her or agree with her. Blackshear remained quiet. He knew she was wrong, but he didn’t feel that anything could be
... See moreMargaret Millar • Beast in View
North had worked for the arms-length, extra-judicial, extra-governmental agency known as the Board for four years. He was going to die young – the bullet guaranteed it. He told them he wanted to do something useful with the time he had left. And they took him at his word.
Judith O'Reilly • Killing State
Jimmy Van Heusen was a decadent womanizer, an Olympian boozer, a war hero, a daredevil pilot, and one of America’s best songwriters. Bogart may have been Sinatra’s role model for style, but for lifestyle, it was Van Heusen “All the Way,” the Oscar-winning song Van Heusen wrote with his lyricist Sammy Cahn. Sinatra called Van Heusen “Chester,” after
... See moreGeorge Jacobs • Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra
Nineteen twenty-three was one of Broadway’s brightest years. John Barrymore played Hamlet just a few blocks away from where his sister Ethel was appearing in Romeo and Juliet. Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine and Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author also opened. Most critics cited Galsworthy’s Loyalties as the best play of the season.
A. Scott Berg • Max Perkins: Editor of Genius
Unlike the professorial Declan, Ben Diamond looks vaguely menacing, with his shaved head and black leather jacket. It takes innate command presence to pull off a look like that at age seventy-three, but Ben still has it.