The Goodbye Coast

The Goodbye Coast
Author: Joe Ide
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2022-02-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316459267

In this colorful reinvention of a classic, Philip Marlowe finds himself tangled in two missing persons cases; “Ide has chiseled off the rust while keeping the soul of one of American fiction’s icons” (Dennis Lehane). The seductive and relentless figure of Raymond Chandler’s detective, Philip Marlowe, is vividly re-imagined in present-day Los Angeles. Here is a city of scheming Malibu actresses, ruthless gang members, virulent inequality, and washed-out police. Acclaimed and award-winning novelist Joe Ide imagines a Marlowe very much of our time: he’s a quiet, lonely, and remarkably capable and confident private detective, though he lives beneath the shadow of his father, a once-decorated LAPD homicide detective, famous throughout the city, who’s given in to drink after the death of Marlowe’s mother. Marlowe, against his better judgement, accepts two missing person cases, the first a daughter of a faded, tyrannical Hollywood starlet, and the second, a British child stolen from his mother by his father. At the center of The Goodbye Coast is Marlowe’s troubled and confounding relationship with his father, a son who despises yet respects his dad, and a dad who’s unable to hide his bitter disappointment with his grown boy. Steeped in the richly detailed ethnic neighborhoods of modern LA, Ide’s The Goodbye Coast is a bold recreation that is viciously funny, ingeniously plotted, and surprisingly tender.

Drama City

Drama City
Author: George Pelecanos
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2005-03-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0759513376

Lorenzo Brown loves his work. In his job as an officer for the Humane Society, he cruises the city streets, looking for dogs that are being mistreated - underfed, unclean, trained to kill. He takes pride in making their lives better. And that pride helps Lorenzo resist the pull of easier money doing the kind of work that got him a recent prison bid. Rachel Lopez loves her work, too. By day she is a parole officer, helping people - Lorenzo Brown among them - along a path to responsibility and advancement. At night she heads for the city's hotel bars, where she can always find a man who will let her act out her damage. She loses herself in sex and drink and more. But Rachel's nights are taking a toll on her days. Lorenzo knows the signs. The trouble is, he truly needs her right now. There's an eruption coming in the streets he left behind, the kind of territorial war that takes down everyone even near it. Lorenzo needs every shred of support he can get to keep from being sucked back into that battleground. He reaches out to Rachel - but she may be too far gone to help either of them. Writing with the grace and force that have earned him praise as "the poet laureate of the crime world," George Pelecanos has created a novel about two scarred and fallible people who must navigate one of life's most brutal passages. It is an unforgettable, moving, even shocking story that will leave no reader unchanged.

The Goodbye Season

The Goodbye Season
Author: Marian Hale
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2009-10-13
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1429982179

A courageous young woman comes of age in the midst of an historical tragedy, from the author of Dark Water Rising. Mercy Kaplan doesn't want to be like her mother, saddled with crying kids and failing crops for the rest of her life. Mercy longs to be on her own—until her wish comes true in the worst possible way. It is 1918 and a deadly flu epidemic ravages the country, leaving her utterly alone and penniless. Mercy soon finds a job with Mrs. Wilder. But there's something unsettling about the woman, whose brother died under mysterious circumstances. And then there's Daniel, who could sweep a girl off her feet if she isn't careful. “The history—of the epidemic and of early feminism—creates a dramatic story, and Mercy’s personal struggle for independence is universal.” —Booklist “Mercy tells her story in a gentle, cadenced voice filled with youthful hope, simple wisdom and gritty endurance. Perfect similes capture the flavor of Mercy's bittersweet life during the epidemic of 1918.” —Kirkus Reviews

King Suckerman

King Suckerman
Author: George Pelecanos
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2011-08-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316204463

In the summer of 1976, the nation's capital is gearing up for the Bicentennial. Captain Beefheart's on the eight-track, and the hot new film "King Suckerman" has everyone talking. Two knockaround guys named Clay and Karras are out looking for trouble when they stumble onto a drug deal gone bad and end up with a pile of money that isn't theirs. When the well-armed dealer starts spilling blood to get to the cash, Clay and Karras must take a stand, go straight, and get justice--or maybe just sweet revenge.

Righteous

Righteous
Author: Joe Ide
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2017-10-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316267767

In this hotly anticipated follow-up to the smash hit IQ, a New York Times Critics' Best of the Year and winner of the Anthony, Macavity, and Shamus Awards, Isaiah uncovers a secret behind the death of his brother, Marcus. For ten years, something has gnawed at Isaiah Quintabe's gut and kept him up nights, boiling with anger and thoughts of revenge. Ten years ago, when Isaiah was just a boy, his brother was killed by an unknown assailant. The search for the killer sent Isaiah plunging into despair and nearly destroyed his life. Even with a flourishing career, a new dog, and near-iconic status as a PI in his hometown, East Long Beach, he has to begin the hunt again-or lose his mind. A case takes him and his volatile, dubious sidekick, Dodson, to Vegas, where Chinese gangsters and a terrifying seven-foot loan shark are stalking a DJ and her screwball boyfriend. If Isaiah doesn't find the two first, they'll be murdered. Awaiting the outcome is the love of IQ's life: fail, and he'll lose her. Isaiah's quest is fraught with treachery, menace, and startling twists, and it will lead him to the mastermind behind his brother's death, Isaiah's own sinister Moriarty. With even more action, suspense, and mind-bending mysteries than Isaiah's first adventures, Righteous is a rollicking, ingenious thrill ride.

A Season for Goodbye

A Season for Goodbye
Author: Lurlene McDaniel
Publisher: Laurel Leaf
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2010-12-15
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0307776395

Together again. It's been a year since Katie O'Roark, Chelsea James, and Lacey Duval shared a special summer at Jenny House. The girls have each spent the year struggling to fit into the world of the healthy. Now they're back, this time as "big sisters" to a new group of girls who also face life-threatening illnesses. But even as the friends strive to help their "little sisters" face the future together, they must separately confront their own expectations. Katie must decide between an old flame and an exciting scholarship far from home. Chelsea must overcome her fear of romance. And Lacey must convince the boy that she loves that the feelings for him can be trusted. When tragedy strikes Jenny House, each of the girls knows that things can never be the same again. Will Lacey, Chelsea, and Katie find a way to carry on the legacy of the Jenny House? Can their special friendship endure when they go their separate ways?

The Matchmaker

The Matchmaker
Author: Paul Vidich
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2022-02-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1643138669

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice In the vein of Graham Greene and John le Carré, The Matchmaker delivers a chilling Cold War spy story set in West Berlin, where an American woman targeted by the Stasi must confront the truth behind her German husband's mysterious disappearance. Berlin, 1989. Protests across East Germany threaten the Iron Curtain and Communism is the ill man of Europe. Anne Simpson, an American who works as a translator at the Joint Operations Refugee Committee, thinks she is in a normal marriage with a charming East German. But then her husband disappears and the CIA and Western German intelligence arrive at her door. Nothing about her marriage is as it seems. She had been targeted by the Matchmaker—a high level East German counterintelligence officer—who runs a network of Stasi agents. These agents are his "Romeos" who marry vulnerable women in West Berlin to provide them with cover as they report back to the Matchmaker. Anne has been married to a spy, and now he has disappeared, and is presumably dead. The CIA are desperate to find the Matchmaker because of his close ties to the KGB. They believe he can establish the truth about a high-ranking Soviet defector. They need Anne because she's the only person who has seen his face - from a photograph that her husband mistakenly left out in his office - and she is the CIA’s best chance to identify him before the Matchmaker escapes to Moscow. Time is running out as the Berlin Wall falls and chaos engulfs East Germany. But what if Anne's husband is not dead? And what if Anne has her own motives for finding the Matchmaker to deliver a different type of justice?

The Sweet Forever

The Sweet Forever
Author: George Pelecanos
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2011-08-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316204501

One of the 1990s' rising stars of crime fiction delivers a bold, brilliant tale of mystery, revenge, and survival in the 1980s, when cocaine and money ruled the city streets and even the good guys wanted a piece of the action.

Bayou Farewell

Bayou Farewell
Author: Mike Tidwell
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 0307424928

The Cajun coast of Louisiana is home to a way of life as unique, complex, and beautiful as the terrain itself. As award-winning travel writer Mike Tidwell journeys through the bayou, he introduces us to the food and the language, the shrimp fisherman, the Houma Indians, and the rich cultural history that makes it unlike any other place in the world. But seeing the skeletons of oak trees killed by the salinity of the groundwater, and whole cemeteries sinking into swampland and out of sight, Tidwell also explains why each introduction may be a farewell—as the storied Louisiana coast steadily erodes into the Gulf of Mexico. Part travelogue, part environmental exposé, Bayou Farewell is the richly evocative chronicle of the author's travels through a world that is vanishing before our eyes.

Hard Revolution

Hard Revolution
Author: George Pelecanos
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2004-03-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0759508852

In this epic showdown from "one of the best crime novelists alive" (Dennis Lehane), police officer Derek Strange hunts his brother's killer through a city erupting with rage.