Book picks similar to
Down on Ponce by Fred Willard
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Casablanca Blues
Tahir Shah - 2013
CASABLANCA BLUES Blaine Williams lives and breathes Casablanca.He’s trapped in a make-believe world of Bogart and Bergman, smoke-filled cafés, fugitives and hit-men.And he’s having a mid-life crisis.Having lost his girl, his job, and his home, he flees to the one place that’s always provided comfort in times of sorrow and despair: CASABLANCADiving in at the deep end of Morocco’s most misunderstood city, Blaine is sucked down through the many interwoven layers until he hits its bedrock.And it’s there that he meets Ghita, a fabulously wealthy socialite, who’s got a plan for him – one laced with intrigue and revenge.Through an adventure paid out in twists and turns, Blaine and Ghita find themselves in a storyline straight out of Casablanca the movie.Hilarious, poignant, and shocking at times, CASABLANCA BLUES lifts the veil on modern Morocco and conjures a secret realm hidden from travellers and locals alike.
How Lucky
Will Leitch - 2021
He considers himself to be a mostly lucky guy—despite the fact that he’s suffered from a debilitating disease since he was a small child, one that has left him unable to speak or to move without a wheelchair. Largely confined to his home, Daniel spends the hours he’s not online communicating with irate air travelers observing his neighborhood from his front porch. One young woman passes by so frequently that spotting her out the window has almost become part of his daily routine. Until the day he’s almost sure he sees her being kidnapped.
A Short Gentleman
Jon Canter - 2008
He struggles to come to terms with the forces that brought him down.
Carter & Lovecraft
Jonathan L. Howard - 2015
Lovecraft mythos into the twenty-first century, optioned by Warner Bros TV.Daniel Carter used to be a homicide detective, but his last case-the hunt for a serial killer-went wrong in strange ways and soured the job for him. Now he's a private investigator trying to live a quiet life. Strangeness, however, has not finished with him. First he inherits a bookstore in Providence from someone he's never heard of, along with an indignant bookseller who doesn't want a new boss. She's Emily Lovecraft, the last known descendant of H.P. Lovecraft, the writer from Providence who told tales of the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods, creatures and entities beyond the understanding of man. Then people start dying in impossible ways, and while Carter doesn't want to be involved, he's beginning to suspect that someone else wants him to be. As he reluctantly investigates, he discovers that Lovecraft's tales were more than just fiction, and he must accept another unexpected, and far more unwanted inheritance.
Don Quixote, U.S.A.
Richard Powell - 1966
He has, however, been a disappointment to his family in several ways: In appearance he is insignificant looking both in face and figure; he went to the University of Florida instead of Harvard where his forbears had been mainstays of the varsity crew for generations, and he studied agriculture instead of pointing himself toward a career in banking, bonds, or law. To say the least he is not apparently the stuff from which heroes are fashioned.As an agricultural expert specializing in fruit farming, Arthur becomes a Peace Corps volunteer and is assigned to the Republic of San Marco in the Caribbean. This weak-chinned Don Quixote soon acquires his Sancho Panza in the person of a rascally eleven-year-old boy, Pepe, who makes a bargain to be paid 400 pesos each time he saves Arthur's life. (The payments mount alarmingly!)The island's dictator thinks he can use Arthur to obtain military supplies with which to wipe out the band of guerillas in the hills who oppose his corrupt dictatorship. Failing in this the dictator decides to murder Goodpasture and cause an international incident by blaming it on the guerillas. This, he reasons, will bring the U.S. in to help stamp out the rebels.This plan also backfires (with Pepe's help, of course) and Goodpasture is taken prisoner and when they see he is a harmless eccentric he is appointed chief cook for the guerillas. From then on Arthur's life becomes a series of misadventures through which he moves serenely and from which he generally emerges unscathed (again with Pepe's assistance) until he surprisingly finds himself the guerillas' leader.Following one of the funniest bloodless revolutions imaginable Arthur Peabody Goodpasture ends up as Arthur el Gavilan, the new dictator of San Marco. "His strength was as the strength of ten because his heart was pure."
Neptune Island
Tony Reed - 2017
Lincoln Monk, ex-cop, left the rat race, and has a simple life plan— travel the world, work along the way, and enjoy life —nothing ever goes according to plan. -Two divers die in brutal fashion -A landslide kills hundreds -Quantum physicists are disappearing around the globe -A scientist is murdered on a secluded beach -What dark secret links all these events? Lincoln hadn’t been back to the island of Saipan in quite some time, and for good reason, he wanted to let old wounds heal. However, when he discovers an old flame has died in mysterious circumstances, he feels compelled to find some answers. So, armed with a never give up attitude, the help of an old friend and some new ones, and a dog named Napoleon, what starts out as a simple investigation into her death, soon becomes a deadly game of cat and mouse played out over a tropical island paradise. Lincoln’s trail soon crosses path with ruthless billionaire industrialist Jonathan Kane. Surrounded by impenetrable cliffs, deadly jungles and an army of mercenaries, Kane is a man who will stop at nothing to protect his secrets, and his secluded island complex, from prying intruders and the outside world. Lincoln knows he’s out of his league, out gunned, out manned and out of time. The race is now on to prevent a madman from altering the future of mankind forever, and reveal the dark truth of—Neptune Island. “Who’d have thought saving the world would be this stressful.”- Lincoln Monk. A sexy assassin - Deadly creatures - Raging oceans - A Bond-style villain - Sadistic henchmen - Tropical jungles - Lovable characters - Quantum physics - A good dose of humour - And over the top action on a grand scale.
Almost to Eden
June Hall McCash - 2010
Seeking a new Eden in America, she discovers that freedom and justice, even in the new world, do not always triumph over wealth and power. In the process of her journey, Maggie finds and loses the things she loves most, but grace and courage lead her toward a fulfillment she never thought to find.
The Sweet Everlasting
Judson Mitcham - 1996
For a brief and cherished time there was a woman, and then a child, too, who had been a kind of salvation to him. Then they were gone, leaving Ellis to carry on with the burden of what he had done to them, of the ruin he brought down upon them all.In The Sweet Everlasting, Ellis is seventy-four. Moving back and forth over his life, he recalls his Depression-era boyhood, the black family who worked the neighboring farm, his time in prison, and the subsequent years adrift, working at jobs no one else would take and longing for another chance to rejoin what is left of his family. Ever in the background are the memories of his wife, Susan, and their boy, W.D.--how Ellis drew on her strength and his innocence to resist everything that threatened to harden him: the shame that others would have him feel, the poverty he had known, and the distorted honor and pride he had seen in others and that he knew was inside him, too.Like the hero of William Kennedy's masterpiece, Ironweed, Ellis Burt is a man of uncommon personal dignity and strength, always moving toward, but never expecting, redemption.
Red Planet Blues
Robert J. Sawyer - 2013
Clues and a journal lead to murders of Simon Weingarten and Denny O’Reilly, founders of the Great Martian Fossil Rush, and their treasure. Expanded “Identity Theft”.
The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc
Loraine Despres - 2001
She's been living in stifling old Gentry since the day she was born and trapped in a sham of a marriage to PeeWee LeBlanc since she was only seventeen. In short, she's fed up, restless, and ready for an adventure. Sissy just never imagined temptation would come into her life that breathless summer day as she sat smoking on her porch swing. For although she may have been fixated on the taut muscles of the lineman shimmying down the telephone pole across the street, she hadn't allowed herself to imagine that he'd be none other than her high school sweetheart, Parker Davidson, who left town fourteen years before without so much as a wave good-bye. But suddenly, here he is, leaning in for a kiss that will stir up more excitement than Sissy could ever have imagined...
While You Walked By
Regina Felty - 2020
A FINALIST and highly recommended!’ The Wishing Shelf Book AwardsA young homeless boy. An old man who had lost everything. An unlikely friendship that brought healing to both.Ben doesn’t know what to think when a homeless boy shows up late one night behind Angelo’s Bakery where he works as a handyman. He’d seen his share of suffering humanity on the streets of Philadelphia, but there was something about this boy—so young, so vulnerable. Pushing sixty and feeling as if his life has no purpose, Ben struggles with his own problems. A recovering alcoholic, he is gripped with remorse over the loss of his wife and son, but determined to stay sober. Twelve-year-old Aden starts to run when an old man comes out of Angelo’s Bakery and catches him hiding, but something about the man draws Aden to him. Terrified and naive to life on the streets, Aden was forced to forge his own survival in the face of dangerous predators and violence after his mother abandoned him almost a year ago. Can Aden trust the gentle old man who offers him food and a hand of friendship? Will Ben be able to forgive himself and look for his son? While You Walked By delivers a heartfelt, coming-of-age story about the hope that can be found even in the most desperate circumstances.
Madrenga
Alan Dean Foster - 2020
A desperate queen. A hero in the making.He is plainly too young and too inexperienced for the mission, but on the advice of her aged adviser Natoum, and with her husband off at war, the Queen reluctantly assigns the task of delivery to…Madrenga. Accompanied only by a runt of a pony and a scrap of a pup, he sets off to transport the royal message to its destination. No matter what it might take.But things are not always what they seem. Heroes are sometimes made of the strangest stuff, and love is to be found in the most unexpected places. If one doesn’t die while treading the lethal path…
Where'd You Go, Bernadette
Maria Semple - 2012
But worn down by years of trying to live the Seattle life she never wanted, Ms. Fox is on the brink of a meltdown. And after a school fundraiser goes disastrously awry at her hands, she disappears, leaving her family to pick up the pieces--which is exactly what Bee does, weaving together an elaborate web of emails, invoices, and school memos that reveals a secret past Bernadette has been hiding for decades. Where'd You Go Bernadette is an ingenious and unabashedly entertaining novel about a family coming to terms with who they are and the power of a daughter's love for her mother.
Westward Sight / Westward Horizons
Linda Bridey - 2015
Book 22 – Westward Sight. When Frankie Scorrano and D.J. Samuels meet, romance blossoms, but when a terrible illness strikes, leaving behind complications, will their love survive or will it succumb to bitterness and despair? Book 23 – Westward Horizons. Grieving Chief Black Fox meets Beth Langley, who runs an orphanage in Wolf Point, and they fall in love. Can they reach the horizon that promises happiness, or will their path be forever darkened by anger and pride?