Book picks similar to
Writing & Other Blood Sports by Charles Willeford


20th-century
collectible
crime-stories-murder
memoirs

The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey


Salman Rushdie - 1987
    What he discovered was overwhelming: a culture of heroes who had turned into inanimate objects and of politicians and warriors who were poets; a land of difficult, often beautiful contradictions. His perceptions always heightened by his special sensitivity to “the views from underneath,” Rushdie reveals a land resounding with the clashes between history and morality, government and individuals.

Praise of Motherhood


Phil Jourdan - 2012
    The death of the author's mother sparks a series of reflections on the secret roles mothers play in the lives of troubled adolescents.

The Train


Georges Simenon - 1961
    But on May 10, 1940, as Nazi tanks approach, this timid, happy man must abandon his home and confront the “Fate” that he has secretly awaited. Separated from his pregnant wife and young daughter in the chaos of flight, he joins a freight car of refugees hurtling southward ahead of the pursuing invaders. There, he meets Anna, a sad-looking, dark- haired girl, whose accent is “neither Belgian nor German,” and who “seemed foreign to everything around her.” As the mystery of Anna’s identity is gradually revealed, Marcel leaps from the heights of an exhilarating freedom to the depths of a terrifying responsibility—one that will lead him to a blood-chilling decision. When it first appeared in English in 1964, British novelist and critic Brigid Brophy declared The Train to be “the novel his admirers had been expecting all along from Simenon.” Until The Train, she wrote, the dazzlingly prolific novelist had been “a master without a masterpiece.”

The Innocents (Wil Hardesty, #1


Richard Barre - 1995
    Children -- innocents -- whose long-buried remains are uncovered by a flash-flood. No one knows who could have committed such a crime. Clues are scarce, and with the media turning the story into a law enforcement nightmare, time is short. Only Wil Hardesty, a private eye who has more in common with the case than anyone knows, is willing to push hard enough -- and dig deep enough -- to find the cruelest of killers. The killer of The Innocents...

Addie and the Gunslinger


Celia Yeary - 2011
    On the fourth day, the sheriff ushers in a beautiful woman dressed in men’s pants and toting her own six-shooter. Adriana Jones claims he is her worthless husband who married her, but never came home.The young woman makes a bargain with Jude in front of the sheriff. Jude is to come home where he belongs, and she will have him released. Once they’re alone, she explains his job is to pose as her husband to thwart the marriage advances of her neighbor, wealthy rancher Horace Caruthers. The older man wants her ranch to join with his; the Pecos River runs through her property.To seal the bargain, Jude wants a kiss. During the next few weeks, however, Jude and Addie learn that the kiss meant more than they intended. Then, when Addie's life is in danger, will Jude rescue his Addie? Or will Addie save herself and her gunslinger?

His Baby's Breath: The May Flowers Series


Olivia Hawthorne - 2019
     That’s not the kind of headline I’d ever expect to read, especially about my own life. But a chance meeting at a hotel with Noah Forte, America’s favorite super hero, leads to a night of passion. One and done, was how I planned it. Just one crazy night outside of my boring routine and then back to my regular life. But life is more than a headline, after all. And sometimes life takes you in directions you never imagined in your wildest dreams. Twelve of your favourite Flirt Club authors bring you the May Flowers Series. Sexy stories filled with filthy talking heroes and beautiful women with steamy scenes to curl your toes, enjoy the entire bouquet!

Such, Such Were the Joys


George Orwell - 1952
    A collection of essays by Orwell.Contents:Why I WriteSuch, Such Were the JoysWriters and LeviathanAnti-Semitism in BritainPoetry and the MicrophoneMarrakechLooking Back on the Spanish WarInside the WhaleEngland Your England

One Young Fool in South Africa


Joe Twead - 2016
    Sometimes dark, sometimes funny, and often magical, his childhood memories are vividly portrayed and give the reader a snapshot of a time and lifestyle that has all but disappeared.

Hold Me Close, Let Me Go: A Mother, A Daughter and an Adolescence Survived


Adair Lara - 2001
    The author, her youngest son, Patrick, her ex-husband, Jim, and her new husband, Bill, all stepped on a five-year roller-coaster ride in which Morgan incarnated the chaos principle in torn jeans and dyed hair. Drinking, drugging, disappearing, suspicious companions, failing and cheating at school, joy riding in a stolen car–there was no variety of adolescent acting out that she didn’t indulge in. For Adair Lara it became an endless sojourn at the end of her rope, a trial immensely complicated by the reappearance in her life of her aging father, a man who had abandoned his wife and seven children decades earlier. Inevitably, Morgan’s misbehavior revives memories of her own headstrong adolescence, while her father’s presence makes agonizingly real for her the consequences of giving up. Paradoxically, he also becomes the source of her best advice.Hold Me Close, Let Me Go is an emotionally charged, often brutally honest memoir that all parents (and anyone who was ever a teenager) will experience shocks of recognition from while reading. It imparts invaluable lessons about holding loved ones close through the roughest passages and about the power of family to overcome the most grievous obstacles. Adair Lara is a clear-eyed and eloquent witness to the complex costs and rewards of motherhood, and her book will redefine for readers their idea of what being “a good enough mother” really means.

Bridger


Lana Dash - 2020
    But when my estranged father passes and leaves me his home, I must return to deal with his estate. My plan to get in and out as soon as possible is derailed when the only man I've ever loved shows up on my doorstep.BRIDGERIt's been years since I've seen her, but if I'm honest, she never left my mind. Iris was my first love and she broke my heart. When she returns after being away for so many years, will the feelings we once shared return or will this once in a lifetime love be gone forever?Wild Knight's Ridge Mountain Men is a series of steamy and short standalone romances about curvy woman finding love with hot mountain men in the mountains of North Carolina. Read BRIDGER if you like second chance romance, action adventure, and romance that will swooning. No cliffhangers. No cheating.

Dancing Under the Mistletoe (The Sweater #12)


Anita Knight - 2020
    

Stay Tuned: Conversations with Dad from the Other Side


Jenniffer Weigel - 2007
    Stay Tuned is Jenniffer"s story of a father and daughter's journey from materialistic journalists to spiritually attuned spiritual beings--a journey that continues even after his death.During his illness, while Tim turns to alternative treatments like chi gong and reiki sessions, Jenniffer reads Neale Donald Walsch, starts a spiritual diet plan and uses the law of attraction to find free parking spaces. The book takes you on a witty, irreverent trip through popular spiritual beliefs and insights of masters and celebrities, including Don Miguel Ruiz, James Van Praagh and Russell Crowe, as this intelligent, award-winning broadcaster transforms from "cynical daughter" to "spiritual woman."

Rethinking Possible: A Memoir of Resilience


Rebecca Faye Smith Galli - 2017
    With a pastor father and a stay-at-home mother, her 1960s southern upbringing was bucolic--even enviable. But when her brother, only seventeen, died in a waterskiing accident, the slow unraveling of her perfect family began. Though grief overwhelmed the family, twenty-year-old Galli forged onward with her life plans--marriage, career, and raising a family of her own--one she hoped would be as idyllic as the family she once knew. But life had less than ideal plans in store. There was her son's degenerative, undiagnosed disease and subsequent death; followed by her daughter's autism diagnosis; her separation; and then, nine days after the divorce was final, the onset of the transverse myelitis that would leave Galli paralyzed from the waist down. Despite such unspeakable tragedy, Galli maintained her belief in family, in faith, in loving unconditionally, and in learning to not only accept, but also embrace a life that had veered down a path far different from the one she had envisioned. At once heartbreaking and inspiring, Rethinking Possible is a story about the power of love over loss and the choices we all make that shape our lives --especially when forced to confront the unimaginable.

Right, Said Fred


Andrew Flintoff - 2020
    

The Sinaloa Story


Barry Gifford - 1998
    Ava is a Mexican prostitute, beautiful and no victim of circumstance. When DelRay falls in love with her at the drive-in whorehouse where she is the prize, she seizes the chance to break free. They take off for Sinaloa ,Texas, the lone-dog state where "nothin’ good ever happens." The far-out border flunkies they meet — Thankful Priest, the one-eyed former football player; Indio Desacato, Ava’s pimp and a small-town racketeer; Arkadelphia Quantrill Smith, an octogenarian whose father marched with Shelby in the Iron Brigade; and many others — fill out the sinister and electrifying ride.