Here are 49 books that The Plinko Bounce fans have personally recommended if you like
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I read Lolita as a college freshman and laughed out loud as Nabokov made me love the goofy, intelligent, and clearly sociopathic Humbert Humbert. Nabokov’s fun was palpable; it made me want to write. And knee-jerk criticisms of Lolita drove me crazy – how can people take themselves so seriously as to be offended by fictional characters? To me, an author’s ability to inspire genuine empathy for characters with distorted, irreverent, or socially unacceptable perspectives is both genius and riotously fun (something that people too busy looking for a reason to be offended will unfortunately never appreciate). Hope you enjoy this book list for people who don’t take themselves too seriously!
I loved all of McCaffrey’s The Claire Trilogy books and recommend reading them first, but Finding Jimmy Moran will always occupy a special place in my heart.
McCaffrey is a born storyteller – he pulls you into his world and makes it feel like your own. The book is gritty, hilarious, sometimes gut-wrenching and (while allegedly fiction) it is also one of the most accurate representations of the wild west reckless abandon enjoyed by New York kids growing up in the 1970s and ’80s.
It’s the type of book that makes you want to break out a bottle of good Irish whiskey and read in a single sitting.
"The Claire Trilogy gives us Jimmy Moran, resurrected mob lawyer turned alien godfather of a crew of mystical misfits, including Claire the Mule. Finding Jimmy Moran shows the world the magical origins that make Jimmy tick. Don't miss this." -Ivy Logan, author of Broken (The Breach Chronicles)
Who is Jimmy Moran? It starts with a lucky penny. Then a muse who bestows a mystical gift. Or maybe a curse? Family, friends, and fights abound as Jimmy breaks the law, looks for love in all the wrong places and experiences loss that transforms…
For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with the unbroken chain of storytelling that stretches from the ancient world to the present day, which is why I write mythological retellings. So many myths tackle grief and families in all their myriad forms and shapes, and their continued existence shows us how storytelling is a healing process and always has been. We can see our own complicated family relationships and the profound impact of love and loss reflecting back to us across the centuries. Fiction continues to do this for us today too and I’ve chosen the modern books which I think do this the best.
My copy of this book is battered, dog-eared, and creased from the sheer number of times I’ve read and re-read it. It’s an absolutely glorious family saga, recounted by Ruby who narrates her own conception in the first chapter and takes us back through generations weaving together all the different stories that lead up to the events of her own life. It’s brilliantly funny and heartbreaking and it skewers the oddities and dysfunction of family relationships so perfectly. Characters wrestle with their grief, they deny it and suppress it and it rears up to overwhelm them but ultimately they find their way through. I’m with them every step of the way, unable to put the book down whenever I pick it up again…and again!
Whitbread Book of the Year, 1995. Ruby was born while her father was in the pub. Her mother, Bunty, had never wanted to marry him, and dreamt of being swept off to America by a romantic hero, but instead, was stuck in a flat with her three children. This is the family's story.
The American Southwest never gets old. Exploring any of the Ancestral Pueblo sites is like walking back in time. Anasazi Medium takes the reader there. I love the land and the culture that has brought us to the present. My character, Santa Fe reporter Rachel Blackstone, reflects this. She is sarcastic at times, can be funny, and has her poignant moments as she copes with a “talent” she never wanted. In Anasazi Medium, I concocted a mixture of mystery, Hopi traditions and a journalist’s eye to entertain and inform. What resulted is a climate mystery in the most water-challenged state in the U.S. and a high adventure read.
Divorce lawyer Neil Hamel always seems to do more PI work than law. In Parrot Blues (A Neil Hamel Mystery) by Judith Van Gieson, she tries to locate a missing woman—and an indigo parrot. Oddly, the husband seems more concerned about the bird than his wife, who may be on her way out of the marriage anyway. But with the parrot as the only witness, it’s a tough case to crack. There’s plenty of New Mexico history and vistas to satisfy, but I found the information about birds and smuggling to be eye-opening. Her relationship with the “Kid” adds to Neil’s character. She’s her own woman, doing things her way. That alone gained my respect.
She may be a divorce lawyer, but Neil Hamel uses her PI's instincts when a millionaire's rare indigo macaw and newly endangered wife are kidnapped together. The unusual search puts her right in the heart of New Mexico's breathtaking Plains of San Agustin, for a dangerous game of bird smuggling and one-upmanship. Armed with high-tech surveillance equipment and a backpack full of her client's money, Neil treks to a remote exchange point. Alas, she returns with the indigo, but no wife, and she's beginning to get ideas. When she learns that one of her chief suspects has suspiciously expired in…
Keen to rekindle their love of East African wildlife adventures after years of filming, extreme dangers, and rescues, producer Pero Baltazar, safari guide Mbuno Waliangulu, and Nancy Breiton, camerawoman, undertake a filming walking adventure north of Lake Rudolf, crossing from Kenya into Ethiopia along the Omo River, following a herd…
Ian Zack is a New York-based journalist who has written two critically acclaimed biographies. The subjects of both his books—Say No to the Devil: The Life and Musical Genius of Rev. Gary Davis and Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest—began their lives in the Jim Crow South before venturing North and making their voices heard.
Before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, there was Thurgood Marshall. As a young lawyer and head of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, Marshall spearheaded the civil rights organization’s slow but steady legal course in challenging and defeating segregation in the courts. Risking his life to represent black plaintiffs in the South and slowly building the legal precedents that led to Brown vs. Board of Education, Marshall had a profound effect on the course of history. This excellent biography takes you there.
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • The definitive biography of the great lawyer and Supreme Court justice, from the bestselling author of Eyes on the Prize
“Magisterial . . . in Williams’ richly detailed portrait, Marshall emerges as a born rebel.”—Jack E. White, Time
Thurgood Marshall was the twentieth century’s great architect of American race relations. His victory in the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the landmark Supreme Court case outlawing school segregation in the United States, would have made him a historic figure even if he had never been appointed as the first African-American to serve on…
I’m a seventh-generation West Virginian. My husband and I own the farm that’s been in my family since before the Civil War. My Appalachian roots are sunk deep, so when it comes to “writing what you know,” this is it! I was baptized in stories by my father who transformed my ancestors and my history into a living, breathing cast of characters I longed to meet. So, I began to write their stories in the guise of novels about made-up people. My seven novels (and two novellas) are love letters to the place that shaped me.
Don’t you love that title?!? And the novel is based on a true story about a ghost who testified at her own trial. Seriously. Testimony from the Greenbrier Ghost was accepted in a court of law. I’m just sorry I didn’t get around to writing about this one before Sharyn did!
From New York Times bestselling author Sharyn McCrumb comes this finely wrought novel set in nineteenth-century West Virginia, based on the true story of one of the strangest murder trials in American history-the case of the Greenbrier Ghost.
Lakin, West Virginia, 1930-Following a suicide attempt and consigned to a segregated insane asylum, attorney James P.D. Gardner finds himself under the care of Dr. James Boozer. Eager to try the new talking cure for insanity, Boozer encourages his elderly patient to reminisce about his experiences as the first black attorney to practice law in nineteenth-century West Virginia. In his forty-year career,…
I'm a retired trial lawyer and a legal history professor and fellow at Marquette Law School in Wisconsin. As a young lawyer, I was struck by how much Americans focus on federal lawmakers and judges at the expense of their state counterparts, even though state law has a much greater effect on people's daily lives than federal law. The scholar Leonard Levy once said that without more study of state legal history, “there can be no … adequate history of [American] civilization.” I want to help fill that need through my books and articles, and I enjoy sharing this fascinating world with my readers.
Although he is virtually unknown today, New York chancellor James Kent ranks as one of America's greatest state judges. Kent was an old-time Federalist, a believer in government by gentlemen. During his lifetime his views steadily lost ground to Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, but he made a permanent imprint on American law. Among other things, he authored the first general treatise on American law and arranged for national circulation of New York judicial decisions, thus giving his state an outsize role in shaping American law, and he helped preserve the central place of federal authority and protection of private property in the law. Kent deserves a modern biography, but until one is written, readers interested in New York history and legal history will find John Horton's older 1939 biography a lively and easy-to-read book, well worth their time.
Reprint of the first and only edition. Originally published: New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., [1939]. xi, 354 pp. Well-annotated, with a thorough bibliography and index.
In 2038 a devastating pandemic sweeps across the world. Two decades later, Britain remains the epicenter for the Fornax variant, annexed by a terrified global community.
David Malik is as careful as any man to avoid contact with the virus. But when his sister tests positive as an asymptomatic carrier,…
Warner is a multi-disciplinary artist who began with object theatre – writing, designing and building characters, and performing. Now, history writing is his primary focus, having written two books for 14 years, and still counting, writes a monthly blog, combining words and images to tell stories of early Snohomish.
Just finished listening to this dynamite book read by the author. Dahlia Lithwick demolished the conventions of women lawyers I’ve lived with, by telling us the stories of women who used the law to stand up and overcome the shock of Trump’s administration.
Remember the infamous “travel ban?” If like me, a surface memory, you may enjoy the tour with lawyer and writer Lithwick, who introduces us to the players in her stories – the lawyers who worked all night in the airports on their laptops to file petitions to the court first thing in the morning, for example.
Lithwick’s rant on the chant: “Lock Her Up” is worth the price of admission alone. Dynamite. File under First-Draft-of-History.
“Stirring…Lithwick’s approach, interweaving interviews with legal commentary, allows her subjects to shine...Inspiring.”—New York Times Book Review
“In Dahlia Lithwick’s urgent, engaging Lady Justice, Dobbs serves as a devastating bookend to a story that begins in hope.”—Boston Globe
Dahlia Lithwick, one of the nation’s foremost legal commentators, tells the gripping and heroic story of the women lawyers who fought the racism, sexism, and xenophobia of Donald Trump’s presidency—and won
After the sudden shock of Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, many Americans felt lost and uncertain. It was clear he and his administration…
I read history to better understand myself, others, and the world around me; I write historical fiction to share what I have learned. At New York University, I was the Jacob K. Javits Fellow in fiction. In addition to Our Man in the Dark, I am the author of The Abduction of Smith and Smith, one of Huffington Post's 25 Necessary Books By Black Authors (2015),andHuffington Post's 50 Amazing Books By Black Authors from the Past Five Years (2019).
A Black attorney is forced to participate in a plot to bring back slavery—with a particular variation. What could go wrong? Taut writing and suspenseful storytelling carry the weight of history in Forty Acres. The concept is bold and audacious, and I never questioned a word of it. The execution is that impressive.
Martin Grey, a smart, talented young lawyer working out of a storefront in Queens, is taken under the wing of a secretive group made up of America's most powerful, wealthy, and esteemed black men. He's dazzled by what they have accomplished, and they seem to think he has the potential to be one of them. They invite him for a weekend away from it all - no wives, no cell phones, no talk of business. But what he discovers, far from home, is a disturbing organisation which challenges his deepest convictions...A novel of rage and compassion, trust and betrayal, Forty…
I am a retired lawyer and judge with a long-held concern about access to justice, especially as we face the need for stepped-up activism to protect minority rights today. I first became fascinated by Fay Stender’s pioneering career as a board member of California Women Lawyers, which she helped found in 1974. I related to her passion for justice, which led me to research and write her biography and two books on “the trial of the century” of Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton. That trial took place in my home city of Oakland over half a century ago, yet its focus on systemic racism remains just as important now.
Charles Garry was a legendary Bay Area criminal defense lawyer from the 1940s through the 1980s, most famous for his aggressive courtroom tactics and for never losing a client to the death penalty. I was fascinated by Garry’s early cases that resulted in establishing a “diminished capacity” defense to murder in California. Garry’s reputation prompted the leadership of the Black Panther Party to reject calls for a black lawyer and instead turn to this white Lefty to represent their co-founder Huey Newton faced with execution for killing a white policeman. Streetfighter in the Courtroom proved a great source for me as I wrote two books on the Newton trial and the biography of Garry’s pioneering female co-counsel in the Newton trial, Fay Stender.
By legendary radical lawyer, Charles R. Garry and Art Goldberg. ISBN 978-0525211105. "Art Goldberg, who assisted Charles Garry on this book, was a reported and editor of Ramparts (magazine) during the politically active sixties. He is the coauthor, with Bobby Seale, of Seize the Time."
Meet Tony Valenti. His high-flying corporate law career just cratered. His society marriage blew up in a bitter divorce. He's returned to the Chicago suburbs to lick his wounds and regroup in the haven of the Valenti family home. But time to heal isn't in the cards.
I like to read about people pursuing their dream because that’s not an easy thing to do. When I was working as a lawyer at a corporate law firm, I was sure I wanted to become a partner. But eventually I realized that being in-house counsel at a company was a much better fit for me so I changed jobs. And similarly, I’d always wanted to write a romantic comedy and so, after many years as a lawyer, I started taking courses at night, and eventually I found the courage to quit my legal job and pursue this passion. The underlying theme of all of my books is to encourage readers to pursue their dreams.
This is one of my favorite books—probably because I was a stressed-out corporate lawyer who definitely can’t iron.
The Undomestic Goddess is the story of a workaholic lawyer who is trying to become a partner at her law firm—only to get fired for an egregious mistake that she can’t believe she made. In her shock, she agrees to become a housekeeper. The only problem is she has no idea how to do any housework, which leads to some hilarious scenes.
I also loved how she figured out the mystery leading to her dismissal. This book made me feel less alone as a stressed-out workaholic lawyer and also made me consider that maybe being a partner at a law firm was not what I really wanted in life.
The hilarious romantic comedy from NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING AUTHOR Sophie Kinsella
Samantha thrives under pressure. A high-powered London lawyer, all she can concentrate on is taking the next step in her career; eating, sleeping, seeing friends - even taking a breath - will have to wait.
But just when she's about to get everything she has ever wanted, Samantha makes a mistake. A fifty-million-pound, career-destroying mistake. Unable to face the consequences, she does the unimaginable and runs away...
Catching the first train she can, she finds herself in the countryside, outside…
