Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Bluebottle

Bluebottle

James Sallis

As Lew Griffin leaves a New Orleans music club with an older white woman he has just met, someone fires a shot and Lew goes down. When he comes to, Griffin discovers that most of a year has gone by since that night. Who was the woman? Which of them was the target? Who was the sniper?…

The Killer Is Dying

The Killer Is Dying

James Sallis

A hired killer on his final job; a burned-out detective whose wife is dying slowly and in agony; a young boy abandoned by his parents and living alone by his wits. Three people, solitary and disconnected from society….

The Long-Legged Fly

The Long-Legged Fly

James Sallis

There are those who vanish into the steaming New Orleans night – and it is part time Private Investigator, Repo-man and blues afficionado Lew Griffin’s job to find them….

Conman

Conman

Richard Asplin

Conman is the story of young Neil Martin, a kindly family man. A bit geeky, a bit nerdy. If you met him, you would assume he runs a failing comic memorabilia store in London’s Soho. Which he does. In order to bail himself out of a huge stock-ruining, poster sopping basement flood, he needs to claim on his insurance. Which he…

The Brothers’ Lot

The Brothers’ Lot

Kevin Holohan

Combining the spirit of Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim with a bawdy evisceration of hypocrisy in old-school Catholic education, The Brothers’ Lot is a comic satire that tells the story of the Brothers of Godly Coercion School for Young Boys of Meager Means……

Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Tom Robbins

Switters is a contradiction for all seasons: an anarchist who works for the government, a pacifist who carries a gun, a vegetarian who sops up ham gravy. Yet there is nothing limp about Switters. He doesn’t merely pack a pistol. He is a pistol. As we follow Switters across four continents Robbins explores, challenges and celebrates…

Big Machine

Big Machine

Victor LaValle

Ricky Rice is a middle-aged hustler with a lingering junk habit, a bum knee, and a haunted mind. The sole survivor of a suicide cult, he spends his days scraping by as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York. Until one day a letter arrives, reminding him of a vow he once made and summoning him to Vermont’s remote Northeast Kingdom …

Jew

Jew

D. O. Dodd

A man regains consciousness to find himself naked in a mass grave, with no idea who he is. His thought is survival, but in a religious war survival depends on knowing which side you are on….

B is For Beer

B is For Beer

Tom Robbins

Have you ever wondered why your daddy likes beer so much? Have you wondered, before you fall asleep at night, why he sometimes acts kind of “funny” after he’s been drinking beer? Maybe you’ve even wondered where beer comes from, because you’re pretty sure it isn’t from a cow. Well, Gracie Perkel wondered those same things….

Little Boy Blue

Little Boy Blue

Edward Bunker

Young Alex Hamilton is intelligent and independent but given to sudden fits of violent rage. Rebellious since his parents split up, Alex is constantly absconding from foster homes and institutions to be with his father, a broken man who can’t give his son the home he desperately needs….

No Beast So Fierce

No Beast So Fierce

Edward Bunker

An angry and mercilessly suspenseful novel about an ex-con’s attempt to negotiate the “straight world” and his swan dive back into the paradoxical security of crime. It is airtight in its construction, almost photorealistic in its portrayal of L.A. lowlife and utterly knowledgeable about the terrors of liberty, the high of the quick…

The Animal Factory

The Animal Factory

Edward Bunker

Ronald Decker guilty of a first offence, minor drug dealing charge is put away in San Quentin where he is befriended by “old lag”, Earl Copen. Copen is well in with the White Brotherhood just one of the many White, Black and Chicano gangs in constant brutal conflict in San Quentin. Their growing friendship is tested by Ron’s rejection…