Novelist, editor and screenwriter Charles Alverson tops today’s Buffet with Goodey’s Last Stand, the 1975 hard-boiled thriller in which he introduced San Francisco private eye Joe Goodey. The New Yorker described the book as “the next-best thing to finding a new and unsuspected Raymond Chandler phantasmagoria.”
Charles was co-screenwriter of Terry Gilliam’s cult film “Jabberwocky,” (1977) and co-developer of the story that became “Brazil” (1985). His credits also include 10 other novels, two children’s books, several short stories and short film scripts, some of which have recently been adapted to comics by the cartoonist John Linton Roberson, including Rapunzel and the parody the Story of OH!
Charles served as a U.S. Army Paratrooper before receiving his M.A. in Journalism from Columbia University. He currently lives in the village of Parage in northwestern Serbia with his wife, Zivana.
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Goodey’s Last Stand
Mystery > Hard-Boiled
Author: Charles Alverson
San Francisco police detective Joe Goodey has all the luck.
Bad.
Not only does he accidentally shoot an elderly janitor, but his perforated victim turns out to be the mayor’s cousin. This costs Joe his badge and earns him an invitation to get out of town immediately–or else. But no sooner has Joe done so, than he is jerked back, issued a private eye’s license and ordered to find out who iced Tina D’Óro–North Beach’s topless go-go queen and the mayor’s ‘special friend,’ who left a red-hot diary capable of torpedoing hizzoner’s political career.
Given less than no time to work miracles, Joe sets off on a ricochet course with more bumps than the hilly streets of San Francisco. A bizarre cast that includes Chinatown’s premier junior hoodlums, a mad plastic surgeon, Tina’s wannabe successor, a retired mobster with paternal longings and worse keeps Joe hopping on an assignment that constantly threatens to become Mission Impossible.
With time running out and his adversaries closing in, this hard-boiled mystery might wind up being Joe Goodey’s last.
The Seasons on Henry’s Farm: A Year of Food and Life on a Sustainable Farm
Gardening & Horticulture > Natural Foods
Author: Terra Brockman, Deborah Madison
Henry’s Farm is in central Illinois, some of the richest farming land in the world. There, Henry Brockman and his family — five generations of farmers, including sister Terra — farm in a way that produces healthy, nutritious food without despoiling the land. Terra Brockman tells their story in the form of a yearlong diary/memoir — with recipes — that takes readers through each season of life on the farm.
Studded with vignettes, photographs, family stories, and illustrations of the farm’s vivid plant life, the book is a one-of-a-kind treasure that will appeal to readers of Michael Pollan, E. B. White, Gretel Ehrlich, and Sandra Steingraber. The book opens a window into what sustainable farming really entails and why it is vital and relevant to everyone who eats. Though rooted in the rolling oak-hickory hills and fertile fields and flood plains of the Mackinaw River Valley, the book ranges widely, incorporating literary, scientific, and culinary reflections occasioned by the week-by-week events of farm life.
The Aware (The Isles of Glory)
Fantasy > Epic
Author: Glenda Larke
Imagine what it’s like to be born citizenless in a world where citizenship is everything.
Imagine what it’s like to be abandoned by the parents you can’t remember before you are two years old, in a city that despises you for being a halfbreed.
Imagine what it is like to be able to see magic when others can’t.
Imagine what it’s like to live in the Glory Isles at a time when your archipelago is about to be discovered by another civilization from half a world away. Changes are in the wind
This is the world of The Aware.
Shine On (Shine On Series)
Mystery > Women Sleuths
Author: Allison J. Jewell
Emmie Talbot is a quintessential good girl. Smart, Southern, Kind. Church Goer. Small Town Seamstress. Aspiring Teacher. And A Misguided Moonshiner.
Emmie’s sole purpose in life was taking care of her moonshine loving step-father. When he is killed in a fiery crash on their farm, she is left alone and frustrated with a mountain of debt. Working as a seamstress for a crazy-old-coot shopkeeper is not the kind of life she had imagined for herself.
The curious events that surround her step-father’s death send Emmie on a quest for answers. Answers that lead to a dangerous secret tucked away on her property. Stumbling on a moonshine still was an unfortunate event for most folks in the hills of Kentucky. She was lucky not to have been shot on the spot. Emmie saw hope in the steam escaping the curved copper pipe of “Ole Maizy”. However, a series of mishaps put her front and center in a local moonshine war.
In the midst of chaos, Emmie is befriended by an attorney recently transported from Chicago. Silas McDowell is a man seeking some answers of his own. In an attempt to find a little roaring twenties glamour in the small town, he introduces Emmie to the underground world of Speakeasies and Blind Pigs. Loyalty, lies, and murder conspire to push Silas and Emmie together or rip them apart.
Didn’t My Skin Used to Fit?
Humor & Entertainment > Spirituality
Author: Martha Bolton
Do you know a friend or have a spouse who’s getting a little older and could use some ribs tickling? Could you use a perspective-altering, shot-in-the-arm about how to look at the minor aches and pains of going over the hill? For some, getting older is definitely not a laughing matter. For Martha Bolton, however, there’s one lesson she’s learned that makes aging easier–laughter and longevity go hand-in-hand!
Like other top Christian humorists Barbara Johnson and Patsy Clairmont, Bolton’s humor is based in a faith that teaches while it makes you laugh. In Didn’t My Skin Used to Fit, the message is that life after forty can be as much fun (even more so) than life before forty. When you can’t stop the crow’s-feet from walking over your face, it’s time to laugh about it.
Sun & Moon (Minstrel Series #1)
Romance > Contemporary
Author: Lee Strauss
She has a past. He has a secret.
Katja Stoltz is a risk-taking singer-songwriter, hoping to make it in the indie music scene in Dresden, Germany. Micah Sturm’s a brooding uptown banker on a quest.
Driven to the streets, Katja is picked up by Micah – but he doesn’t want what she thinks he does.
There’s an undeniable attraction between them, a gravitational pull they both struggle to resist. Katja knows she mustn’t fall in love with this handsome enigma. There’s something dark lurking beneath the surface. He could be dangerous.
And even if her life isn’t on the line, her heart most definitely is.
Forget Me Not (The Heart’s Spring)
Romance > Westerns
Author: Amber Stokes
Summer 1885. A startling revelation sends Elizabeth Lawson escaping into a stormy night – and tosses her into the arms of a young mountain man with secrets of his own. When he offers to take her to the Nevada mining town where her long-lost brother lives, she accepts. Suspicions and uncertainties are pushed aside as she struggles to forge a future for herself by meeting her past.
David has been hiding from his painful memories for years. The solitude and wildness of the Rocky Mountains are challenge and comfort enough for him – until Elizabeth’s arrival. Fueled by anger and a sense of obligation, he strives to take control of his new situation…only to find control slipping from his grasp with each new emotion Elizabeth evokes in him.
When their journey leads them on unexpected paths, can two lonely hearts find the strength to remember the good amid the heartbreak?
Maddie’s Choice
Romance > Contemporary
Author: Joyce Zeller
Romance writer Maddie Taylor is fed up with New York City. She is getting nowhere with her latest manuscript and does not believe true love exists outside of her imagination. When a friend, Jonah Spartman, dies and wills her half of his Arkansas cattle ranch, she sees the chance for a new beginning. Jonah has also left behind two orphaned great-grandsons desperate for affection and an accounting book in the red.
The other half of the failing ranch belongs to Gideon Spartman, Jonah’s grandson, who believes all capacity for love was torn from him during his tour of duty in Afghanistan. Rugged and sexy, Gideon is the enthralling physical manifestation of the hero in Maddie’s current manuscript. He is far from happy to be sharing an inheritance that is rightfully his.
As she senses the need behind Gideon’s rough and unwelcoming exterior, Maddie acknowledges her own yearning for love and family. Jonah’s will requires Maddie to stay on the ranch for three months. When that time is up, will she return to her comfortable but emotionally barren existence or embrace the challenges of her new life, which include cattle rustlers and drug dealers? Maddie’s choice proves to be far from simple.
Crush
Teen & Young Adult > Love & Romance
Author: Lacey Weatherford
Cami Wimberley has a plan, and that plan includes no room for boys–especially the big time party animal, Hunter Wilder, no matter how handsome and charismatic he is. She’s beautiful, a senior, extremely talented, gets good grades, and is working her way toward her dream college to be a musical theater major. Everything is perfect.
Hunter Wilder does not want a girlfriend–that would complicate his life way too much right now. He especially doesn’t want this girl, Miss-Goody-Two-Shoes, so how come he can’t keep his eyes off her? He tries to keep her at arms length, but fate seems to keep pushing them together. Before long, it’s obvious to everyone they’re crushing on each other.
As sparks begin to fly, Hunter finds himself sinking deeper and deeper into hot water. Soon he’s scrambling to keep Cami from discovering his dark secret–one that can destroy their entire relationship.
TODAY’S BARGAINS……………What’s this?
The Atlantis Gene (Origin Mystery, Book 1)
Thrillers > Conspiracies
Author: A.G. Riddle
Regularly $9.99, Today $1.99
The Immari are good at keeping secrets. For 2,000 years, they’ve hidden the truth about human evolution. They’ve also searched for an ancient enemy–a threat that could wipe out the human race. Now the search is over.
Off the coast of Antarctica, a research vessel discovers a mysterious structure buried deep in an iceberg. It has been there for thousands of years, and something is guarding it. As the Immari rush to execute their plan, a brilliant geneticist makes a discovery that could change everything.
Dr. Kate Warner moved to Jakarta, Indonesia to escape her past. She hasn’t recovered from what happened to her, but she has made an incredible breakthrough: a cure for autism. Or so she thinks. What she has found is far more dangerous–for her and the entire human race. Her work could be the key to the next stage of human evolution. In the hands of the Immari, it would mean the end of humanity as we know it.
Agent David Vale has spent ten years trying to stop the Immari. Now he’s out of time. His informant is dead. His organization has been infiltrated. His enemy is hunting him. But when David receives a coded message related to the Immari attack, he risks everything to save the one person that can help him solve it: Dr. Kate Warner.
Elyon (The Lost Books)
Teen & Young Adult > Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author: Ted Dekker
Regularly $9.99, Today $0.99
Elyon’s lakes have turned blood red. Is it a curse . . . or the cure?
Shaeda has one blue eye and one purple eye. No one fully knows her story, but her mere gaze eats away at the core of one’s being. In his quest for power, Johnis now finds himself in her intoxicating grip.
Assumed identities, a magic amulet, the fearsome Shataiki bats, and a troubling alliance with the Dark Priest all converge against the three remaining chosen.
Only Elyon knows what will happen when the forces of ultimate good and evil clash in their final battle. Dive deep with them in this epic conclusion—if you dare!
Steam Legion
Science Fiction > Steampunk
Author: Evan Currie
Regularly $3.99, Today $1.99
The Library would not burn. Dyna of Sparta would not allow it, on her life and her ancestors she so swore.
An Epic adventure set during the Early Roman Empire’s era of expansion and unrest. Steam Legion develops from a real historical crossroads and explodes out in a new direction, derailing our history centuries before the first railroads were invented.
When the revolts against the Empire reach the city of Alexandria, a small cadre of Legionnaires find themselves thrust into a revolution not of religion but of technology. Watch as Dyna of Sparta, Heron of Alexandria, and those who stand with them forge a new path to the future. Epic military action mixed with sparkling and memorable characters brings Legion to life, while forgotten technologies of our own distant past provide hope in an uncertain world.
Presidential Campaigns: From George Washington to George W. Bush
Politics & Government
Author: Paul F. Boller Jr.
Regularly $19.99, Today $2.99
Were presidential campaigns always as bitter as they have been in recent years? Or is the current style of campaigning a new political development? In this revised and updated edition of Presidential Campaigns the answers to these questions are clear: the race for the presidency, although at times mean and nasty, has always been an endlessly entertaining and highly-charged spectacle for the American public.
This book unveils the whole history of American presidential elections, from the seamless ascent of General George Washington to the bitterly contested election of George W. Bush, bringing these boisterous contests to life in all their richness and complexity. In the old days, Boller shows, campaigns were much rowdier than they are today. Back in the nineteenth century, the invective at election time was exuberant and the mudslinging unrestrained; a candidate might be called everything from a carbuncle-faced old drunkard to a howling atheist. But there was plenty of fun and games, too, with songs and slogans, speeches and parades, all livening up the scene in order to get people to the polls.Presidential Campaigns takes note of the serious side of elections even as it documents the frenzy, frolic and the sleaze.
The Big Crowd
Author: Kevin Baker
Regularly $19.99, Today $2.51
From “the lit world’s sharpest chronicler of New York’s past” (Rolling Stone), a novel of two Irish brothers who travel from the gangland waterfront to the halls of power.
Based on one of the great unsolved murders in mob history, and the rise-and-fall of a real-life hero,The Big Crowd tells the sweeping story of Charlie O’Kane. He is the American dream come to life, a poor Irish immigrant who worked his way up from beat cop to mayor of New York at the city’s dazzling, post-war zenith. Famous, powerful, and married to a glamorous fashion model, he is looked up to by millions, including his younger brother, Tom. So when Charlie is accused of abetting a shocking mob murder, Tom sets out to clear his brother’s name while hiding a secret of his own.
The charges against Charlie stem from his days as a crusading Brooklyn DA, when he sent the notorious killers of Murder, Inc., to the chair—only to let a vital witness go flying out a window while under police guard. Now, out of office, Charlie lives in a shoddy, Mexico City tourist hotel, eaten up with regrets and afraid he will be indicted for murder if he returns to the U.S. To uncover what really happened, Tom must confront stunning truths about his brother, himself, and the secret workings of the great city he loves.
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2