Book picks similar to
Portrait of Clare by Francis Brett Young
fiction
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Soldier's Joy
Madison Smartt Bell - 1989
He meets up with a childhood friend who is black, and together they battle against a platoon of Klansmen for the literal salvation of a local preacher.
Dante's Town of Terror
Patrick R. Delaney - 2018
Bill, Brian, and Cathy had the perfect camping trip planned. It was supposed to be a weekend filled with good friends and healing. But when an unexpected collision with fate leaves them stranded deep in the wilderness, they find a deserted town not listed on any map. Somewhere time doesn't exist and nothing seems quite right. Somewhere no one ever leaves and insidious things wait in the dark. When they meet a desperate man searching for his lost love and a suspiciously prepared stranger they are forced to work together to find an escape. A vacation soon becomes a fight for survival when a mysterious figure from Bill's past returns and the true nature of the town is revealed.
Tidewater Blood
William Hoffman - 1998
Rich, pretentious, and proud, the LeBlancs operate a prosperous plantation and celebrate their heritage each year in grand old Southern fashion on the mansion's portico. But this year, the front of the mansion explodes and everyone on the portico is instantly killed. As the dust settles, all fingers point to embittered brother and ex-con Charles LeBlanc, who lives as a hermit outside town. When it seems he's going down on a murder rap, Charley flees to begin his own investigation. Charley must win the trust of one person after another--from his frat-boy lawyer to an old backwoods woman harboring a special hatred of the LeBlancs. Charley solves the crime moments before he faces imprisonment, but not before he learns long-hidden secrets about that illustrious LeBlanc blood. Crisp and cinematic, Tidewater Blood is a riveting and tightly constructed thriller. "A first rate, page-turning thriller." --George Garrett "Limpid and swift-moving, with a full complement of understated surprises: an exemplary presentation of the innocent man on the run for readers who want more texture then they can find in The Fugitive." --Kirkus Reviews "This is a gripping read." --Library Journal A MYSTERY GUILD SELECTION
Man in the Corner
Nathan Besser - 2016
But the following night David collapses from a rare brain disease and within a few months his world is turned upside down.It was a perfectly acceptable life – successful business, happy marriage, two children. Why then has David involved himself in an identity-theft crime worth millions of dollars? Why is he taking instructions from the oddly eloquent, handsome criminal, Ben Strbic? David can't quite understand the sequence of events that has led him here, only that he must continue to the very end.As the days and months progress, a scam that was meant to be straightforward becomes a perilous mystery unfolding in David's very own life.
Directions to the Beach of the Dead
Richard Blanco - 2005
The words are redolent with his Cuban heritage: Marina making mole sauce; Tía Ida bitter over the revolution, missing the sisters who fled to Miami; his father, especially, his hair once as black as the black of his oxfords
” Yet this is a volume for all who have longed for enveloping arms and words, and for that sanctuary called home. So much of my life spent like this-suspended, moving toward unknown places and names or returning to those I know, corresponding with the paradox of crossing, being nowhere yet here.” Blanco embraces juxtaposition. There is the Cuban Blanco, the American Richard, the engineer by day, the poet by heart, the rhythms of Spanish, the percussion of English, the first-world professional, the immigrant, the gay man, the straight world. There is the ennui behind the question: why cannot I not just live where I live? Too, there is the precious, fleeting relief when he can write "
I am, for a moment, not afraid of being no more than what I hear and see, no more than this:..." It is what we all hope for, too.
Jesse James and the Secret Legend of Captain Coytus
Alex Mueck - 2013
When a Harvard history professor receives a thesis paper titled Jesse James and the Secret Legend of Captain Coytus, from Ulysses Hercules Baxter-an underwhelming student-he assumes the paper must be a prank. He has never read such maniacal balderdash in his life. But after he calls a meeting with the student, Professor Gladstone is dismayed when Baxter declares the work is his own. As he takes a very unwilling Professor Gladstone back in time via his thesis, Baxter's grade hangs in the balance as he attempts to prove his theory. It is 1864 as philanderer and crusader Captain Coytus embarks on a mission to avenge his father's death and infiltrates the Confederate Bushwacker posse looking for the man responsible, Jesse Woodson James. Accompanied by the woman of his dreams, Coytus soon finds himself temporarily appointed to be the sheriff of Booneville and commissions his less-than-loyal deputy to help him carry out his plan. But when tragedy strikes, the Captain is forced to change his immature ways and redefine his lofty mission-more or less.
Her Curves, His Rules: High Heat Older Alpha Male Younger BBW Instalove Romance
Kitty Paris - 2019
I need her.
Sadie:
My father's death came suddenly. Dealing with the loss was overwhelming.I dropped out of college. I started drinking. I lost all ambition. Until Marcus showed up at my door. He claimed to be an old friend of my father's.He made a promise to look after me.He dried my tears and made me feel safe again. But his rippling muscles and broad chest make me want so much more.
Her Curves, His Rules is a short, high heat instalove romance between an older alpha man and a younger BBW. If you like your books sweet & spicy, and your endings happily ever after, then this story is for you. This is a standalone story. * High Heat Romance * Older Man Younger Woman * Curvy BBW * Alpha Male * Over the Top Instalove * Short Sweet Romance
Eyes of the Hawk
Elmer Kelton - 1981
Eyes of the Hawk, winner of the Spur Award for Best Western Novel, is an outstanding tale of Texas--filled with authentic characters and history, and telling the story of the outstanding courage and determination of the men and women who challenged an unyielding wilderness to build a frontier legend.Thomas Canfield descends from a line of Texas's earliest settlers. A proud man with a fierce-eyes stare, he inspires the Mexican of Stonehill, Texas to call him el gavilan--the "hawk". When Branch Isom--an insolent, dangerous newcomer--seeks to build his fortune at Canfeild's expense, an all-out feud ensues. Hurtling the town toward a day of reckoning that will shake the entire town to its very roots. Eyes of the Hawk is a classic tale of Western history, told by one of the most critically acclaimed writers of the American West.
Mindgames: Fool's Mate
Neal Asher - 2013
It is thus embarrassing when he is run over by a bus. It is even more embarrassing when he, and atheist, realises there is an afterlife…Resurrected on a huge flat plain, he is forced to play a deadly game. Moved as a pawn to the whim of the Gods in a fight to the death with warriors from all ages of earth’s history. Killed again and again only to be resurrected.The General, the Grim Reaper and Anubis are some of the strange beings who direct this grisly entertainment. Is it real or only in his decaying mind. Who is the Clown? It there anywhere to escape to?To retain his sanity, he must believe there is an end; an escape; a purpose. A thought-provoking story leading to an action filled climax that challenges our accepted beliefs…
Mordecai: The Life & Times
Charles Foran - 2010
It is also an extraordinary love story that lasted half a century.The first major biography with access to family letters and archives. Mordecai Richler was an outsized and outrageous novelist whose life reads like fiction.Mordecai Richler won multiple Governor General's Literary Awards, the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, among others, as well as many awards for his children's books. He also wrote Oscar-nominated screenplays. His influence was larger than life in Canada and abroad. In Mordecai, award-winning novelist and journalist Charlie Foran brings to the page the richness of Mordecai's life as young bohemian, irreverent writer, passionate and controversial Canadian, loyal friend and deeply romantic lover. He explores Mordecai's distraught childhood, and gives us the "portrait of a marriage" — the lifelong love affair with Florence, with Mordecai as beloved father of five. The portrait is alive and intimate — warts and all.
Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure
Craig Lancaster - 2011
A traveling salesman consigned to a late-night bus ride. A prison inmate stripped of everything but his pride. A teenage runaway. Mismatched lovers. In his debut collection of short fiction, award-winning novelist Craig Lancaster returns to the terrain of his Montana home and takes on the notion of separation in its many forms - from comfort zones, from ideas, from people, from security, from fears. These ten stories delve into small towns and big cities, into love and despair, into what drives us and what scares us, peeling back the layers of our humanity with every pag
Rosebloom
Christine Keleny - 2008
What she seeks is adventure. What she finds is much more.Rose is thrown into the lives of the varied people and towns of the Mississippi while working on river boats, going to a prep school in St. Louis where she lives with a black family in the Ville, and working in a bordello in New Orleans (not as a call girl, of course. She is a Catholic girl from the Midwest after all). What she doesn't anticipate are the close relationships that develop with many of the women she encounters. She also discovers the harshness of the world far away from the security of home. Ultimately, Rose realizes what is most important in her life: her family and her friends.Rosebloom takes place at a time in history that buffets Rose between the great depression and the coming wave of World War II. She gets herself into situations through her naiveté and also just by chance that test her resolve and teach her not only about herself but about the world of others which she would have never know if she hadn't left her small farm in Southwest Wisconsin.A percentage of the profits of each book sold will be donated to help in the education of disadvantaged children, because Christine believes that knowledge is a powerful tool.
The Undertaker's Wife
Loren D. Estleman - 2005
He has raised it to an art through the high craft of the Connable Method. Through it, he has managed to transform the ugliness of death into a thing of dignity and beauty. Victims brutalized by war, street fights, tavern brawls, ambushes, fires, every hazard in a raw West---these, in his hands, become presentable. Everywhere on the frontier, which erupts with life and death, he offers his skill: to the rich of San Francisco, the bawds and ruffians of the Barbary Coast, to Kansas cowboys, outlaws, soldiers, and sheriffs. He is devoted to dignifying the dead.She is devoted to making her marriage whole, in spite of the tragedy that surrounds it and, most especially, in spite of the tragedy that in one terrible afternoon strikes at its center.Today the undertaker is called to disguise the suicide of a famous financier. It is high drama, for only his art can save America's financial markets. Her task on this day is secret, an act of understanding and dedication.In the end, it is the undertaker's wife who, through love, is able to transcend death.
The Sonnets of Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca
Bergin.Illustrated with drawings by Aldo Salvadori