Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| The Postman Always Rings Twice | 1934 |
| Double Indemnity | 1936 |
| Serenade | 1937 |
| Career in C Major / Two Can Sing | 1938 |
| The Embezzler / Money and the Woman | 1940 |
| Mildred Pierce | 1941 |
| Love’s Lovely Counterfeit | 1942 |
| Past All Dishonor | 1946 |
| The Butterfly | 1947 |
| Sinful Woman | 1947 |
| The Moth | 1948 |
| Jealous Woman | 1950 |
| The Root of His Evil / Shameless | 1951 |
| Galatea | 1953 |
| Mignon | 1962 |
| The Magician’s Wife | 1965 |
| Rainbow’s End | 1975 |
| The Institute | 1976 |
| Cloud Nine | 1984 |
| The Enchanted Isle | 1985 |
| The Cocktail Waitress | 2012 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| Our Government | 1930 |
| Career in C Major and Other Stories | 1943 |
| The Baby in the Icebox and Other Short Fiction | 1981 |
| Career in C Major and Other Fiction | 1986 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| 60 Years of Journalism | 1985 |
About James M. Cain
James M. Cain (1892 to 1977) was an American novelist and journalist, widely regarded as a founder of the hardboiled school of American crime fiction. He is best known for “The Postman Always Rings Twice”, “Double Indemnity” and “Mildred Pierce”, all three of which became celebrated Hollywood films in the 1940s.
Cain was born in Annapolis, Maryland, and graduated from Washington College, where his father was president. He joined the Baltimore American as a reporter in 1917 and moved to The Baltimore Sun the following year, before serving with the US Army in France during the First World War, where he edited his division’s newsletter. In the 1920s he wrote for H. L. Mencken’s magazine The American Mercury and became an editorial writer on the New York World. He spent nine months as managing editor of The New Yorker in 1931, then left for Hollywood on a screenwriting contract with Paramount.
His film work brought him few credits, but California gave him his material. “The Postman Always Rings Twice”, a short first-person story of adultery and murder, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1934 and was an immediate critical and commercial success. “Double Indemnity”, about a murder plot built around an insurance fraud, ran as a serial in Liberty magazine in 1936. “Serenade” (1937) and “Mildred Pierce” (1941), the story of a divorced mother building a business during the Great Depression, followed.
Billy Wilder filmed “Double Indemnity” in 1944, Michael Curtiz directed “Mildred Pierce” in 1945, and “The Postman Always Rings Twice” reached American cinemas in 1946, with a second American version in 1981. “Mildred Pierce” was adapted again as an HBO miniseries directed by Todd Haynes in 2011. Cain’s later novels include the Civil War story “Past All Dishonor” (1946) and “The Butterfly” (1947), set in rural West Virginia.
The Mystery Writers of America named Cain a Grand Master at the Edgar Awards in 1970. He went on publishing novels into his eighties and died in University Park, Maryland, in October 1977. Several books appeared after his death: “Cloud Nine” (1984), “The Enchanted Isle” (1985) and “The Cocktail Waitress”, which the novelist Charles Ardai assembled from Cain’s manuscripts for Hard Case Crime in 2012.
Photo: George W. Vassar, Crowell-Collier Publishing Company (The American Magazine, April 1938), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).