Books by William Baer

Classic American Films explores the origin and development of many of the most influential and revered films in cinema history, and does so with the aid and insight of the people who actually wrote the screenplays.

A collection of new and selected poems from William Baer.

On the bridge over Paterson''s Great Falls, a retired state trooper is murdered by a girl in a grammar school uniform. The victim was the beloved uncle of Jack Colt, a private investigator descended from the inventor of the revolver. While investigating his uncle’s murder, Colt realizes that it is intertwined with two other cases of his. These involve the family secrets of extremely powerful New Jersey figures, including the governor, a judge, and a mob boss.  In New Jersey Noir, William Baer reinvigorates the detective genre while exploring the Garden State''s rich cultural history, glamor, and gore. Baer''s novel is fast-paced and utterly gripping, brimming with intrigue and suspense.PRAISE FOR NEW JERSEY NOIR:An accomplished poet, playwright, and short-story writer, William Baer has turned to crime, creating a brilliant debut novel, the hard-boiled whodunit New Jersey Noir. If you’re looking for classic noir elements, you’ll find them here, in spades. And you’ll find fine literary elements here, as well: precise prose, perfect pacing, stunning imagery, complex characterization, grand historical and cultural contexts, and a superb sense of place. More than anything else, New Jersey Noir is a loving tribute to the Garden State by a writer who appreciates its grime as much as its glory.  - Hollis Seamon (Jersey girl, born and raised), author of Somebody Up There Hates You Not since Donna Tartt’s The Secret History have I read a novel as mesmerizing, engrossing, and delectable as William Baer’s New Jersey Noir-a book so compelling that I was forced to drop everything and commit myself for several hours to experiencing, vicariously, the strange and haunted darkness that is the shadow world of this novel. In prose as fast-moving as a bullet, Baer compels the reader to keep flipping pages more and more rapidly. Baer’s writing is taut and gut-wrenching. New Jersey Noir and Baer’s talent presage a brilliant career for this wonderfully gifted writer.  - Terri Brown-Davidson, author of Marie, Marie, Hold On TightJack Colt, the private investigator in William Baer’s New Jersey Noir, romances the genre to the suspenseful effect that JJ “Jake” Gittes achieves in Roman Polanski’s acclaimed Chinatown. In place of technicolor LA, however, Baer evokes a cinematic chiaroscuro New Jersey, specifically Paterson, its history and politics limned over a baseline of Springsteen, doo-wop, and Whitney Houston. In the early pages of this compelling mystery when Colt muses that his fellow detective, Luca Salerno, “was tough all right, but not tough enough to look into the heart of darkness,” the allusion to Joseph Conrad alerts us that we are in for a more trenchant narrative than a gumshoe and dames thriller. Baer fulfills by deftly executing the universal themes of incest, adultery, madness, and undisguised evil rising out of the swamps of the Meadowlands and beyond.  - Dennis Must, author of Hush Now, Don’t ExplainABOUT THE AUTHOR:William Baer, a recent Guggenheim fellow, is the author of twenty-two books including Times Square and Other Stories, Classic American Films, Lu├¡s de Cam├╡es: Selected Sonnets, and The Unfortunates (recipient of the T. S. Eliot Award). A former Fulbright in Portugal, he’s also received the Jack Nicholson Screenwriting Award and a Creative Writing Fellowship in fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts. For more information, visit him at williambaer.net.

In William Baer's Times Square and Other Stories, there are everyday characters walking extraordinary paths for love; there are smart, skillful characters struggling to reconcile their viewpoints and convictions with the status quo in fields such as art, education, the cinema and religious doctrine. There is baseball and the story of the skills, training and ethics of pitching in the big leagues. And there is war and an enemy invasion juxtaposed with a do-or-die chess game. The stories take us coast to coast from New York to LA, away to South America, and overseas to Eastern and Western Europe. This is a fun-filled, fact-filled collection that smoothly melds scholarship with the everyday for unique, fresh, and highly intelligent stories, which are also highly entertaining. PRAISE FOR TIMES SQUARE AND OTHER STORIES:How wonderful to come across such a serious collection of short stories! Not "serious" as in boring and tendentious; but serious as in grown-up, broadminded, large-hearted, sharply observed, and dryly, obliquely funny. Bill Baer's fiction kicks ass. ¿ Pinckney Benedict, author of Town SmokeAs elegantly written as they are inventive, the short stories in Times Square and Other Stories engage the reader all the way from the title piece, an ambitious tale that draws upon art, love, and the complex beauty of the human narrative, through eight other works that touch upon the timeless questions of what it means to create and to act, to be and to pretend. Baer¿s collection achieves that Horatian goal so sorely lacking in much of contemporary fiction¿informing while delighting at the same time. The obligation to craft is taken very seriously in these pages, but the effort that undoubtedly went into their composition could easily be overlooked due to the skill with which they are rendered, and the degree to which they are enjoyed. ¿ A.G. Harmon, author of A House All StilledTimes Square and Other Stories, William Baer's twice-measured fictions, channel the reflecting reflections of James and Borges back into our self-conscious consciousness. Like the four-story signs plastering the "real" Times Square, these signs sing themselves, maps as detailed as the things they represent. These fictions resuscitate Poe's unities of effects, breathing life back into the simulacrum of life. I loved this book; it can't help but blurb itself! ¿ Michael Martone, author of Four for a QuarterABOUT THE AUTHOR:William Baer, a recent Guggenheim fellow, is the author of eighteen books including The Ballad Rode into Town; Luís de Camões: Selected Sonnets; and Classic American Films: Conversations with the Screenwriters. His short stories have been published in The Iowa Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Chariton Review, The Dalhousie Review, and many other literary journals. He's also a former Fulbright in Portugal and the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship in fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts.