Back in January I dashed off a brief New Treasures article titled The Library of America Publishes Elmore Leonard, in which I highlighted the first two volumes of The Library of America’s omnibus editions of Leonard, Four Novels of the 1970s and Four Novels of he 1980s.

Despite the fact that Leonard never wrote a single SF or fantasy novel (and we’re very much a fantasy blog), it became one of the most popular New Treasures articles I’ve ever written — and in fact, it still outperforms half of the New Treasures articles I write every month. Elmore Leonard is a popular writer in any genre.

So I could hardly ignore the third and final volume in the set, Elmore Leonard: Four Later Novels. Like the others it contains four full novels (Get Shorty, Rum Punch, Out of Sight, and Tishomingo Blues, published between 1990-2002). Here’s the description, which does a find job of summarizing each of Leonard’s freewheeling plots in a single sentence.

The definitive edition of an American master of crime fiction culminates with four modern classics. In Get Shorty, a Miami loan shark with an idea for a movie finds a way to break into Hollywood as a producer, the perfect setup for Elmore Leonard’s brilliantly satiric take on an industry he knew well. Rum Punch (filmed by Quentin Tarantino as Jackie Brown in 1997) shows an aging bail bondsman and an airline stewardess matching wits against lawmen and criminals alike. In Out of Sight, deputy U.S. marshal Karen Sisco and escaped bank robber Jack Foley find themselves thrust together in a highrisk fusion of violent adventure and unlikely romance; included as a special feature is “Karen Makes Out,” the story that introduced Sisco. The collection concludes with Tishomingo Blues, a kaleidoscopic story involving exhibition high divers, Civil War reenactors, and an unforgettable cast of gangsters and hustlers. This is Elmore Leonard at his unbeatable best.

The Library of America has been publishing archival quality omnibus editions for 34 years, and recently has been focusing on the most important novels of the 20th Century, including Kurt Vonnegut, Dashiell Hammett, Philip K. Dick, Ross Macdonald, David Goodis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many others. We’ve covered several here recently, including:

Four Novels of the 1970s and 1980s by Elmore Leonard
A Princess of Mars and Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s, edited by Gary K. Wolfe
American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny, edited by Peter Straub

Elmore Leonard: Four Later Novels was published on August 30, 2016. It is 1,000 pages, priced at $40 in hardcover. There are no paperback or digital editions.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.