I was a wild card in the industry heavy town where I was born and raised, destined to burn out my days early in a factory or steel mill. But I worked my way through college, survived several close calls in Vietnam and bull headed my way into a series of jobs that pushed me toward Hollywood assignments as a writer, producer and director.
I liked this book because of its unique plot. After the American Civil War, ex-trooper and sharp shooter Valdez is working as a part-time small town sheriff. He gets on the bad side of a wealthy rancher who has a gang beat him up and leave him for dead out in the desert.
But after this excellent opening, I love what happens next. Valdez is a survivor: he returns to face off against incredible odds, to regain his honor and see that justice prevails.
No writer chronicles the battles of misfits, underdogs and renegades like Elmore Leonard ...
VALDEZ IS COMING is a stunning stale of morality and justice in which a simple, honest man is transformed into a killer - and begins a long journey of revenge against those who scarred his soul for ever.
Elmore Leonard's Western novels stand as some of the most vivid writing of his career. With all of his trademark sharp dialogue and set against a beautifully evoked landscape, this is a classic work that captures the wild and glorious spirit of the American West.
I liked this novel because I was in Vietnam, have friends forever changed by contact with the mad god Mars, and could easily relate to the main character.
After his time in the military, Vietnam war tunnel rat Harry Bosch has to fight his own PTSD as well as very real present dangers in his job with the Los Angeles police force. Since I have studied the L.A. police for some of my novels, Connelly’s writing rings very true to me.
An LAPD homicide detective must choose between justice and vengeance as he teams up with the FBI in this "thrilling" novel filled with mystery and adventure (New York Times Book Review). For maverick LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch, the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam is more than another anonymous statistic. This one is personal . . . because the murdered man was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat" who had fought side by side with him in a hellish underground war. Now Bosch is about to relive the horror of Nam. From a dangerous maze of blind alleys…
Cities of Women is a dual timeline novel that interweaves the contemporary story of Verity Frazier, a disillusioned professor lacking passion and love in her life, with the tale of a medieval woman, who transforms herself into the artist, Anastasia, an unidentified illuminator of the manuscripts of the historical Christine…
I liked this hundred-year-old novel because it explores some darker doubts and concerns I have always had about “the hidden heart of mankind unrestrained.” What’s more, the theme of Heart Of Darkness is reflected in the movie Apocalypse Now, with stark modern-day observations on the wounds the violence of war can inflict on the hearts and minds of humans.
Although Polish by birth, Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) is regarded as one of the greatest writers in English, and Heart of Darkness, first published in 1902, is considered by many his "most famous, finest, and most enigmatic story." — Encyclopaedia Britannica. The tale concerns the journey of the narrator (Marlow) up the Congo River on behalf of a Belgian trading company. Far upriver, he encounters the mysterious Kurtz, an ivory trader who exercises an almost godlike sway over the inhabitants of the region. Both repelled and fascinated by the man, Marlow is brought face to face with the corruption and despair…
I like the Spenser novels because they show that NOT EVERY VETERAN has PTSD.
In this first volume of the series, hard-boiled Private Detective Spenser is a Korean vet with a clear awareness of the difference between morally right and wrong, and when all else fails, he’s got a keen wit and a sense of humor to fall back on.
I think the author must be doing a lot of things right because the popular series is up to volume number 53!
Tiny Tales is a collection of 365 bite-sized stories and poems, written each day of 2023 to a one-word prompt created by one of the official #vss365 (very short story, 365 days a year) ambassadors on Twitter ("X").
Tweet-sized (280 characters or fewer) storytelling (aka "Twitterature") inspires experimentation and variety,…
I admire Hemingway’s measured empathy for the war-torn social outcast. This classic novel pictures a post-WWI environment where survivors have been physically and mentally maimed by their war experience; I like how Hemingway creates a vivid cast of characters struggling to find their way in a society that seems no better than before the conflict began.
Jake Barnes is a man whose war wound has made him unable to have sex—and the promiscuous divorcée Lady Brett Ashley. Jake is an expatriate American journalist living in Paris, while Brett is a twice-divorced Englishwoman with bobbed hair and numerous love affairs, and embodies the new sexual freedom of the 1920s. The novel is a roman à clef: the characters are based on real people in Hemingway's circle, and the action is based on real events, particularly Hemingway's life in Paris in the 1920s and a trip to Spain in 1925 for the Pamplona festival and fishing in the…
U.S. Army LURP and forward observer Brando Mahr left behind as the Americans retreat from Vietnam, is stunned by the close impact of an exploding artillery shell. Ten years later, he is in an army rehab hospital, speechless and subject to random fits of Jacksonian epilepsy.
I wrote FOUL because I have an interest in "otherly-talented"
people often misunderstood in our society. I once met Kim Peek, the real
"rain man," at the ABA book fair in Chicago, and I was amazed by his
powers of observation and memory. My own cousin was a brilliant pianist
and incurable pyromaniac. A good friend of mine, Andy L., could read a
fact-heavy book once and remember it word for word. But Andy couldn’t
relate to people well enough to hold an ordinary job.
Secrets, lies, and second chances are served up beneath the stars in this moving novel by the bestselling author of This Is Not How It Ends. Think White Lotus meets Virgin River set at a picturesque mountain inn.
Seven days in summer. Eight lives forever changed. The stage is…
