Book picks similar to
Not For Public Consumption by Frank P. Lipton


fiction
netgalley
all-time-faves
american-literature

The Drifters


James A. Michener - 1971
    With the sure touch of a master, Michener pulls us into the dark center of their private world, whether it's in Spain, Marrakech, or Mozambique, and exposes the naked nerve ends with shocking candor and infinite compassion."A superior, picaresque novel...and a revealing mirror held up to contemporary society."JOHN BARKHAM REVIEWS

Heaven's Night


Harry Aderton - 2012
    With an arsenal of demonic fallen angels at his side, Lucifer’s march to satanic glory seems imminent. Archangel Sariel has other plans. Join acclaimed author Harry Aderton as he takes you on an incredible journey from the pinnacles of heaven to the dark depths of hell. The heroic soul of Sariel is put to the test as he battles fierce warriors in his quest for love and the resurrection of the Heaven he knew. This addictive novel combines a complex blend of action and passion with the age-old debate of obeying your heart or your duty. Follow the intricate twists and turns as they lead you to the surprising and explosive climax. Hang on - all hell is about to break loose!

Pauper's Gold


Margaret Dickinson - 2006
    It is a cruel blow for such a young girl, but her three travelling companions are even younger than she is, and Hannah is determined to keep their spirits up and remain in good cheer.Once she is settled in the mill, Hannah discovers that the hours of work are long, and the daily routine is dangerous, arduous and harsh, but her bright singing and capacity for joy lighten the load for everyone.Hannah soon becomes a favourite with the other mill workers. Friendships are forged and an innocent love starts to blossom. But can such a fragile love survive cruel reality? It is not long before she attracts the eye of Edmund Critchlow, the man who owns them all, body and soul - the man from whom no pretty mill girl is safe.Times are hard in the cotton industry as civil war rages across America affecting even the mill owner and the lives of all his workers . . .

To Dream the Blackbane


Richard J. O'Brien
    Scientists referred to the event as The Anomaly. A byproduct of The Anomaly was the advent of hybrid beings—people who became mixed with whatever animal or object was closest to them the moment the event occurred. Humans, or pedigrees, soon relegated fairy refugees and hybrids into ghetto zones in large cities.Seventy years later, Wolfgang Rex, a second-generation hybrid—part human, part Rhodesian Ridgeback—is a retired police detective who runs a private investigation business in Chicago’s Southside. It’s a one-hybrid show; though Rex couldn’t survive without his assistant, the faerie Sally Sandweb.One night, two vampires visit Rex and offer him a substantial reward for the recovery of a stolen scroll. Later that same evening, Charlotte Sweeney-Jarhadill, a pedigree woman from Louisiana, visits Rex and hires him to exorcize the headless ghost of a Confederate soldier from her home.To complicate matters, the private detective ends up falling for Charlotte. Meanwhile, the vampires demand results in the search for the missing scroll. When Rex’s assistant Sally goes missing, he must stay alive long enough to find her. Charlotte and the vampires, however, have other plans for Rex.

Booth


Karen Joy Fowler - 2022
    Junius Booth--breadwinner, celebrated Shakespearean actor, and master of the house in more ways than one--is at once a mesmerizing talent and a man of terrifying instability. One by one the children arrive, as year by year, the country draws frighteningly closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war.As the tenor of the world shifts, the Booths emerge from their hidden lives to cement their place as one of the country's leading theatrical families. But behind the curtains of the many stages they have graced, multiple scandals, family triumphs, and criminal disasters begin to take their toll, and the solemn siblings of John Wilkes Booth are left to reckon with the truth behind the destructively specious promise of an early prophecy.Booth is a startling portrait of a country in the throes of change and a vivid exploration of the ties that make, and break, a family.

The Keeper of Secrets


Amanda Brooke - 2013
    Can long-buried secrets break you apart … or set you free?On the surface, Elle has the perfect life – husband, child and a beautiful home. But sometimes a perfect facade hides the cracks beneath: Elle’s husband Rick seems determined to clip her wings at every turn, keeping her at home and away from her friends and from the world. When Elle’s father dies and she starts to clear his house, the cracks start to widen – and it’s only a matter of time before everything breaks open.On a quest for buried treasure at the house, her young son, Charlie, finds a box underneath the apple tree, with love letters from the past that could tear her world apart.As past and present collide, Elle must decide what is right – and what course her life should take.

Pew


Catherine Lacey - 2020
    The person is genderless, racially ambiguous, and refuses to speak. One family takes the strange visitor in and nicknames them Pew.As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. Pew listens and observes while experiencing brief flashes of past lives or clues about their origins. As days pass, the void around Pew’s presence begins to unnerve the community, whose generosity erodes into menace and suspicion. Yet by the time Pew’s story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of their true nature—as a devil or an angel or something else entirely—is dwarfed by even larger truths.Pew, Catherine Lacey’s third novel, is a foreboding, provocative, and amorphous fable about the world today: its contradictions, its flimsy morality, and the limits of judging others based on their appearance. With precision and restraint, one of our most beloved and boundary-pushing writers holds up a mirror to her characters’ true selves, revealing something about forgiveness, perception, and the faulty tools society uses to categorize human complexity.

City of Fallen Angels


Paul Buchanan - 2020
    A scorching heatwave is suffocating L.A. PI John Keegan is offered a small fortune to find a beautiful woman from a set of photographs. He refuses; the job seems suspicious.But the next day the same woman, Eve, turns up, unbidden, on his doorstep. Eve fears for her safety. She is being watched. Before Keegan knows it, someone has been killed with Keegan s own gun, and he gets sucked into a world of suspicion and betrayal where he s never quite sure where the truth lies. Before long he s the prime suspect in a murder he didn't commit, and all the evidence seems to point in his direction.It s almost like someone planned it that way.

The Other Half of Augusta Hope


Joanna Glen - 2019
    At seven, she’s correcting her teachers. At eight, she spins the globe and picks her favourite country on the sound of its name: Burundi. And now that she's an adult, Augusta has no interest in the goings-on of the small town where she lives with her parents and her beloved twin sister, Julia.When an unspeakable tragedy upends everything in Augusta's life, she's propelled headfirst into the unknown. She's determined to find where she belongs – but what if her true home, and heart, are half a world away?

The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell


Robert Dugoni - 2018
    Born with red pupils, he was called “Devil Boy” or Sam “Hell” by his classmates; “God’s will” is what his mother called his ocular albinism. Her words were of little comfort, but Sam persevered, buoyed by his mother’s devout faith, his father’s practical wisdom, and his two other misfit friends.Sam believed it was God who sent Ernie Cantwell, the only African American kid in his class, to be the friend he so desperately needed. And that it was God’s idea for Mickie Kennedy to storm into Our Lady of Mercy like a tornado, uprooting every rule Sam had been taught about boys and girls.Forty years later, Sam, a small-town eye doctor, is no longer certain anything was by design—especially not the tragedy that caused him to turn his back on his friends, his hometown, and the life he’d always known. Running from the pain, eyes closed, served little purpose. Now, as he looks back on his life, Sam embarks on a journey that will take him halfway around the world. This time, his eyes are wide open—bringing into clear view what changed him, defined him, and made him so afraid, until he can finally see what truly matters.

West with Giraffes


Lynda Rutledge - 2021
    But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling the unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave.It’s 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the Atlantic. What follows is a twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to deliver Southern California’s first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. Behind the wheel is the young Dust Bowl rowdy Woodrow. Inspired by true events, the tale weaves real-life figures with fictional ones, including the world’s first female zoo director, a crusty old man with a past, a young female photographer with a secret, and assorted reprobates as spotty as the giraffes.Part adventure, part historical saga, and part coming-of-age love story, West with Giraffes explores what it means to be changed by the grace of animals, the kindness of strangers, the passing of time, and a story told before it’s too late.

The Billionaire Broker: A Clean Romance


Deb Goodman - 2019
     When Macey Declan inherits her grandfather’s odd, crumbling Irish castle, she not only has to decide what to do with it, but now she’s fighting against the land-grabbing real estate agent across the street. Billionaire Levi Richardson has one more property to secure to complete a years-long urban expansion project designed to bring this sleepy small town into the modern era: the Declan mansion. He needs a wrecking ball and quick. Levi didn’t plan on Macey’s refusal to sell, but when his client increases the offer and Macey is even more determined to keep it, he finds himself switching tactics and helping her paint instead. Uncovering the castle’s old secrets together, Macey and Levi begin to put aside their differences and learn that maybe her grandfather knew what they needed all along.

A Pair of Second Chances (Ben Jensen Series)


Brian Gore - 2011
    He is increasingly adrift in a modern world into which, more and more, he doesn't seem to fit. The sorrows and losses that have scarred his life and crushed his soul are close to taking what's left of the ranch and home his Grandfathers built. His self respect and his life are circling the drain when fate drops him into the path of Amanda Blake, a desperate young woman, and her son. The girl is struggling to escape a life of brutal slavery and give her son the chance at a decent life. Acting out of the habits of a long and un-gentle life, Ben finds he is unable to walk away from that life and death struggle of a helpless woman and her son. For him, there are no options. The Honor and Values of his ancestors, and everything he is demand, he must help. Along the way he discovers that there is indeed life and Love left in his heart, and a reason for fresh hope. As they struggle to survive, the idea begins to form that though they might be an unlikely pair; his need for her is as great as her need for him. Together, they find the courage to create for each other, A Pair of Second Chances.

When the Wildflowers Bloom


Rupa Bhullar - 2021
    

My Mother's Children


Annette Sills - 2021
    She has just lost her mother Tess and brother Mikey, her marriage to Joe is coming apart at the seams and her thirty-year friendship with Karen is on the rocks.While clearing out her childhood home, Carmel discovers that her mother gave birth to a baby in an Irish Mother and Baby home when she was sixteen, a place notorious for its mass burial of babies and illegal adoptions.Carmel goes on a quest for the truth about her troubled mother’s past. Her roller-coaster journey takes her from her comfortable Manchester home to the west of Ireland and to London's theatre land. It’s a journey that leads her to ask: Can we ever escape our own family history or is our destiny in our DNA?