Book picks similar to
A Dream of Kings by Harry Mark Petrakis
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fiction
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Evidence of Things Unseen
Marianne Wiggins - 2003
In the years between the two world wars, the future held more promise than peril, but there was evidence of things unseen that would transfigure our unquestioned trust in a safe future. Fos has returned to Tennessee from the trenches of France. Intrigued with electricity, bioluminescence, and especially x-rays, he believes in science and the future of technology. On a trip to the Outer Banks to study the Perseid meteor shower, he falls in love with Opal, whose father is a glassblower who can spin color out of light.Fos brings his new wife back to Knoxville where he runs a photography studio with his former Army buddy Flash. A witty rogue and a staunch disbeliever in Prohibition, Flash brings tragedy to the couple when his appetite for pleasure runs up against both the law and the Ku Klux Klan. Fos and Opal are forced to move to Opal's mother's farm on the Clinch River, and soon they have a son, Lightfoot. But when the New Deal claims their farm for the TVA, Fos seeks work at the Oak Ridge Laboratory -- Site X in the government's race to build the bomb. And it is there, when Opal falls ill with radiation poisoning, that Fos's great faith in science deserts him. Their lives have traveled with touching inevitability from their innocence and fascination with "things that glow" to the new world of manmade suns. Hypnotic and powerful, Evidence of Things Unseen constructs a heartbreaking arc through twentieth-century American life and belief.
The Dubious Hills
Pamela Dean - 1994
Receiving an enormous responsibility as Physici for her people, the only individual in the Dubious Hills capable of experiencing and understanding pain, fourteen-year-old Arry seeks to protect her world from a wolf invasion.
Dr. Dredd's Wagon of Wonders
Bill Brittain - 1987
Wells were running dry, livestock suffered, great cracks crisscrossed farmers' fields, no crops could be planted. Rain had become more valuable than gold.Then a miracle happened: Dr. Dredd and his Wagon of Wonders came to town, and among his wonders was a young boy called Bufu the Rainmaker. At first the townspeople were skeptical moments later they were dancing for joy, faces turned up into a driving rain. Then, as quickly as it had begun, the rain stopped.More rain! somebody yelled. Dr. Dredd's toothy smile grew wide. Yes, he could command Bufu to make more rain but what it would cost Coven Tree, he wouldn't say. Not yet.Those who thought rain would be worth whatever it cost didn't know what Bufu knew. And when fourteen-year-old Ellen McCabe found Bufu cowering in her family's woodshed later that night, seeking sanctuary from his evil master, all of Coven Tree soon would know the terrible wrath and frightening powers of Dr. Hugo Dredd.
Deep in the Darkness
Michael Laimo - 2004
But Ashbourough has a deep, dark secret . . . and it's living in the woods behind his home. "One of the best and most refreshing horror novels you're likely to read this year."
A Single Pebble
John Hersey - 1956
Pulled on a junk hauled by forty-odd trackers, he is carried, too, into the settled, ancient way of life of the people of the Yangtze -- until the interplay of his life with theirs comes to a dramatic climax.
A Piece of My Heart
Richard Ford - 1976
Robard Hewes has driven across the country in the service of a destructive passion. Sam Newell is seeking the missing piece of himself. When these men converge, on an uncharted island in the Mississippi, each discovers the thing he's looking for--amid a conflagration of violence that's as shocking as it is inevitable."This is one of those books that hit you hard...a story filled with breathing characters and genius-crafted dialogue between moments of consummate description.... I can't be unbiased. I'm mad for this book."--Elizabeth Ashton, Houston Chronicle
American Morons
Glen Hirshberg - 2006
A woman chases the ghost of her neglectful father to a vanished amusement park at the end of the Long Beach pier. Two recently retired teachers learn just how much Los Angeles has taken from them.In these atmospheric, wide-ranging, surprisingly playful, and deeply mournful stories, grandkids and widows, ice cream-truck drivers and judges, travelers and invalids all discover -- and sometimes even survive -- the everyday losses from which the most vengeful ghosts so often spring.
Country of Origin
Don Lee - 2004
Half-Japanese, adopted by African American parents, she returns to Tokyo, ostensibly to research her thesis on Japan's "sad, brutal reign of conformity." When she vanishes, Tom Hurley, who is half-Korean and half-white, is assigned to her case at the American embassy, as is local cop Kenzo Ota, who is 100 percent Japanese but deemed an outsider.
A Deal with Benefits
Susanna Carr - 2013
For hours. Behind the imposing wooden doors sits the man who stole her family's island home. And she wants it back. But the fight is knocked from her when Ashley recognizes him as the man she knows intimately—the man who betrayed her after their blissful night together. Sebastian has no intention of giving the island back, but he does want Ashley. He agrees to her deal, but has a few sub-clauses of his own. Specifically, a month at his beck and call—and in his bed!
Clive Barker's Shadows in Eden
Stephen Jones - 1991
Heavily illustrated with rare photos, stills, and drawings, 16 in full color. With an introduction by Stephen King.
The Dining Room
A.R. Gurney - 1981
The action is comprised of a mosaic of interrelated scenes-some funny, some touching, some rueful-which, taken together, create an in-depth portrait of a vanishing species: the upper-middle-class WASP. The actors change roles, personalities and ages with virtuoso skill as they portray a wide variety of characters, from little boys to stern grandfathers, and from giggling teenage girls to Irish housemaids. Each vignette introduces a new set of people and events; a father lectures his son on grammar and politics; a boy returns from boarding school to discover his mother's infidelity; a senile grandmother doesn't recognize her own sons at Christmas dinner; a daughter, her marriage a shambles, pleads futilely to return home, etc. Dovetailing swiftly and smoothly, the varied scenes coalesce, ultimately, into a theatrical experience of exceptional range, compassionate humor and abundant humanity.
Conviction: Solving the Moxley Murder: A Reporter and a Detective's 20-Year Search for Justice
Leonard Levitt - 1990
She never made it. Her brutal murder with a golf club in her own backyard made national headlines. But for years no one was arrested, despite troubling clues pointing to the Skakels, a rich and powerful family related to the Kennedys. After the police department's first unsuccessful attempts to catch the killer, the case lay dormant, and the culprit remained free.Enter Leonard Levitt. In 1982, the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time newspapers asked investigative reporter Levitt to look into the murder and the undying rumors of a cover-up. Levitt soon uncovered groundbreaking information about how the police had bungled the investigation, and he learned that Tommy and Michael had lied about their activities on the night of the murder. But Levitt's articles about his findings -- and the haunting questions they raised -- almost never saw the light of day. For years, Levitt's superiors mysteriously refused to publish the stories. Convinced that the Moxley family deserved the peace and closure they had so long been denied, Levitt fought desperately to keep his discoveries alive. Finally, after Levitt's first article appeared, the case was reopened.Enter Frank Garr. As the newly appointed investigator on the Moxley case, the seasoned Greenwich detective doggedly pursued unexplored leads and became increasingly convinced that for over a decade, his colleagues had been pursuing the wrong suspects. At first mistrustful of one another, as reporters and detectives often are, Levitt and Garr became friends, encouraging each other in their quest for the truth as the obstacles against them piled up.In 2002, more than twenty-five years after Moxley's death, a shocked world watched as Michael Skakel was convicted of the murder, thanks largely to the evidence Garr alone had marshaled against him.Now, for the first time, Leonard Levitt tells the amazing true story of Garr's fight to solve the case and of how their friendship with each other, and with Martha Moxley's mother, Dorthy, sustained them over the years. A riveting, suspenseful drama that unfolds like a mystery novel, this incredible memoir also reveals how a police officer and a reporter refused to give up, and how they helped justice to prevail, against all odds.
The Dreams of Ada
Robert Mayer - 1987
Tales spread of rape, mutilation, and murder, and the police set out on a relentless mission to bring someone to justice. Six months later, two local men—Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot—were arrested and brought to trial, even though they repudiated their “confessions,” no body had been found, no weapon had been produced, and no eyewitnesses had come forward. The Dreams of Ada is a story of politics and morality, of fear and obsession. It is also a moving, compelling portrait of one small town living through a nightmare.
The Second Tree from the Corner
E.B. White - 1954
But no matter what his subject, Mr. White always writes about it in a prose that is a joy to read."--New York Times
Collected Stories, 1939-1976
Paul Bowles - 1979
Gore Vidal's Introduction to this large collection remarks "His stories are among the best ever written by an American".