An underaged bellboy thrust into an awful intimacy with grown-up vice. An alcoholic writer trying to postpone a crack-up just long enough to finish his next book. A wildly dysfunctional Okie family floundering on the edge of mutual destruction amid the deceptive plenty of wartime California.<br><br>These are the ingredients of Jim Thompson's devastating and eerily autobiographical first novel. In <b>Now and On Earth</b>, America's hard-boiled Dante ushers readers into his own personal hell and limns its suffering inhabitants with bleak humor and compassion.<br><br>With an introduction by Stephen King.