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It would be fair to say that the deconstruction has firmly taken hold of the Western genre in movies. But while an appreciation of Sergio Leone is omnipresent to the point of cliché for cinema buffs, in literature, Louis L’Amor, Zane Grey, and William W. Johnstone reign supreme. Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic Western horrors being the exception that makes the rule.
But Western books have their own subversion, and I wanted to spotlight those. The men’s adventure, the pulp fiction, the outright smut. These are the books that inspired my own novel, A Man Called Bone, and I hope it does right by its muses.
Much like Italian filmmakers managed to create the spaghetti western by riffing on the genre from an ocean away, English pulp writers created the Piccadilly Western: violent, cynical, sometimes even too edgy for its own good. The Adam Steele books often verge on tastelessness with their violence and insensitivity, but that’s relieved by a sort of dark humor—often groan-inducing. It can be a lot to take, but for those who prefer too much to too little… Adam Steele is definitely not too little. The first book has Civil War hero Steele going outlaw to avenge his murdered father, with his best friend as the lawman hot on his trail.
Abraham Lincoln is assassinated whilst at the theater in Washington. A great and honorable President is mourned by many, but his passing brings rejoicing to those Southerners defeated in the Civil War. Adam Steele finds he has a private grief to mourn, when he discovers the body of his father slowly swinging on a makeshift gallows. This is a sorrow he cannot share with other men. He sets out on a mission with deadly purpose. A vendetta that will turn old friends into enemies, that will bring a slow or sudden death to the marked men.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
It would be fair to say that the deconstruction has firmly taken hold of the Western genre in movies. But while an appreciation of Sergio Leone is omnipresent to the point of cliché for cinema buffs, in literature, Louis L’Amor, Zane Grey, and William W. Johnstone reign supreme. Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic Western horrors being the exception that makes the rule.
But Western books have their own subversion, and I wanted to spotlight those. The men’s adventure, the pulp fiction, the outright smut. These are the books that inspired my own novel, A Man Called Bone, and I hope it does right by its muses.
Leaving Piccadilly for the moment, we have the adult western. As if the name of the genre and the name that starts every book title isn’t enough, it’s published by Playboy. And as you might have guessed from there being four hundred of these books, put out damn near monthly since the seventies, it’s a bit of a fool’s errand to single out any one book. They’re somewhere between the formulaic nature of needing to be a Western with literally obligatory sex and violence, and the author being a house name that’ll change with any given volume, who by necessity will have his own idiosyncratic take on the material.
One book, you might get a writer that’s really into delivering the sex appeal promised by the cover. Another time, you’ll get someone who just wants to write a Western (if that: people weren’t writing these things for their health,…
While pursuing the cold-blooded killer Rafe Masterson, Slocum narrowly escapes the outlaw’s quick draw with his life. Unfortunately, his trusty horse wasn’t so lucky. Slocum’s steed was just the latest victim to fall afoul of Masterson, who has two notches in his belt representing the two deputies he’s already gunned down. Wanted in several states, Masterson is increasing both his death toll and reward value—and he’s not about to let Slocum bring him in…dead or alive.
It would be fair to say that the deconstruction has firmly taken hold of the Western genre in movies. But while an appreciation of Sergio Leone is omnipresent to the point of cliché for cinema buffs, in literature, Louis L’Amor, Zane Grey, and William W. Johnstone reign supreme. Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic Western horrors being the exception that makes the rule.
But Western books have their own subversion, and I wanted to spotlight those. The men’s adventure, the pulp fiction, the outright smut. These are the books that inspired my own novel, A Man Called Bone, and I hope it does right by its muses.
You’re largely in the same boat with Longarm as you are with Slocum. The main differences is that Longarm’s name isn’t as good a euphemism (his name isn’t even really Longarm, it’s Custis Long) and that he’s a U.S. Marshall, not an outlaw like Slocum. Sort of like James Bond in the Wild West… wait, that’s James West of Wild Wild West… sort of like James West without the steampunk gadgets. Longarm goes from town to town, bringing bad men to justice and taking bad girls to bed.
Although this series has the dubious distinction of provoking an “I can do better than that” reaction in me. In Longarm on the Border—installment 2, as there are actually two books by that title in this four-hundred-strong and only recently ended series—the main character finds himself in a threesome. Maybe it’s that these are the adult westerns not being published…
Double-barreled action—the first two Longarms in one volume!
LONGARM
Longarm has a new mission. Ride to Crooked Lance. Pick up Cotton Younger, killer cousin of Jesse James, from the town jail. Bring him to trial. It should be easy. Except for one thing: Deputy Kincaid has already tried it. And Deputy Kincaid is nowhere to be found. Nobody at Crooked Lance wants Longarm to do his job—not the beautiful widow woman, or the Federal Agent, or the James gang—but Longarm never gives up when he has work to do. Even if it kills him…
Coyote weather is the feral, hungry season, drought-stricken, and ready to catch fire. It’s 1967, and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcibly sending its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war.
Jerry has stubbornly made no plans for the future because he…
It would be fair to say that the deconstruction has firmly taken hold of the Western genre in movies. But while an appreciation of Sergio Leone is omnipresent to the point of cliché for cinema buffs, in literature, Louis L’Amor, Zane Grey, and William W. Johnstone reign supreme. Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic Western horrors being the exception that makes the rule.
But Western books have their own subversion, and I wanted to spotlight those. The men’s adventure, the pulp fiction, the outright smut. These are the books that inspired my own novel, A Man Called Bone, and I hope it does right by its muses.
To quote Wernher von Braun, “research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.” In that spirit, I should mention I wasn’t just riffing off yellowed old paperbacks, but doing research into the specific setting and time period of my own book. Although this is a case where the research didn’t necessarily find its way into the first book, but was something I earmarked for a future installment. Nonetheless, The Texas Indians is a good read, giving a comprehensive overview of the Indigenous history of the region and providing many avenues for further research as I write the next book in the series.
During an excavation in the 1950s, archaeologists discovered the bones of a prehistoric woman in Midland County, Texas, and dubbed her "Midland Minnie." Some believed her age to be between twenty thousand and thirty-seven thousand years, making her remains the oldest ever found in the Western Hemisphere. While the accuracy of these dates remains disputed, the find, along with countiess others, demonstrates the wealth of human history that is buried beneath Texas soil. By the time the Europeans arrived in Texas in 1528, Native Texans included the mound-building Caddos of East Texas; the Karankawas and Atakapas who fished the Texas…
I grew up in Gainesville, Florida, and read every history of the area I could get my hands on, all the while imagining who lived there and what their lives were like. I got three degrees from the University of Florida and applied the skills learned there to Sand Mansions. The novel covers the years 1876 to 1905, a time in which a get-rich-quick frontier mentality slowly gave way to a more stable approach to community building. Sand Mansions won a prize for Best Adult Fiction from the Florida Authors and Publishers Association.
When I was 11 years old, there was a TV show called Northwest Passage, which was an eye-opener for me because it took place at a time when the American frontier was somewhere in New York State. At the end of each episode the image of a book appeared, and I pestered my parents to get me a copy. A few days before my birthday, I caught sight of the book in a bag on my dad’s dresser. I was thrilled. I loved the adventures of Rogers’ Rangers as they fought their way through an endless forest during the French and Indian War and searched for the fabled shortcut to the Orient. In school, my book report on Northwest Passage was so long and enthusiastic that the teacher called time on me.
This classic novel follows the career of Major Rogers, whose incredible exploits during the French and Indian Wars are told through Langdon Towne, an artist and Harvard student who flees trouble to join the army.
Until the millennium, I was a features journalist with an abiding fascination in Sixties counter-culture. Being a friend of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, I heard Syd’s story first-hand.
After having my own breakdown and psychiatric treatment, I decided to apply my experience and interests in writing an account of Syd’s short but sweet creative life.
With Gilmour’s tacit blessing, his contemporaries – including Floyd co-founder Roger Waters – gave me access. And through interviewing them, I came to my own understanding of Barrett: by turns a crazy diamond and a dark globe.
No one captures the self-loathing and paradoxical liberty of the moneyed junkie as well as St Aubyn (except perhaps Anna Cavan). The second novel in his almost-autobiographical Patrick Melrose series, Bad News finds our fucked-up anti-hero on a gargantuan smack binge in New York at the age of 22. How the author – now clean – can reconstruct his frame of mind is remarkable; how he can do it with such precision and wit is mind-blowing.
Bad News is the second of Edward St Aubyn's semi-autobiographical Patrick Melrose novels, adapted for TV for Sky Atlantic and starring Benedict Cumberbatch as aristocratic addict, Patrick.
Twenty-two years old and in the grip of a massive addiction, Patrick Melrose is forced to fly to New York to collect his father's ashes. Over the course of a weekend, Patrick's remorseless search for drugs on the avenues of Manhattan, haunted by old acquaintances and insistent inner voices, sends him into a nightmarish spiral. Alone in his room at the Pierre Hotel, he pushes body and mind to the very edge -…
Homeless following the death of his adoptive parents in a car crash and the subsequent loss of their farm tenancy, Seb decides to enrol as a residential student at the Asklepios Foundation, a College of Natural Medicine, boasting a sanctuary modelled on an ancient Greek healing temple. Spending a night…
I have always been intrigued by the dark side of life. It seems a natural fit for me, having grown up in a big dark house near a cemetery, a house crammed with Victorian furniture and dusty old books, where the Brontes, Dickens, and Sherlock Holmes were my constant companions. I soon developed a fascination with the dark underbelly of London, and I’ve spent the last twenty years writing about many aspects of it, from death and burial to capital punishment, murder, sex work, and gangsters. I’ve told the stories of Londoners, from William Shakespeare to Nell Gwyn and from Dr Crippen to the Krays. I’ve also contributed to several documentaries.
If you’ve ever wondered what an undertaker really does, then Brian Parsons’ history of the trade is an intriguing guide. Reflecting the rapidly changing social times of pre-inter- and post-war Britain, this book details critical episodes in the history of the modern undertaking, including the introduction of embalming, how the enormous task of dealing with the dead from both World Wars was undertaken, coping with the tragedy that was the Spanish flu; and the rise of the Co-operative Funeral Service. Important burials include the burial of the Unknown Soldier, Lord Kitchener’s empty coffin, and the rise of the Cooperative funeral service.
I’d been familiar with Brian’s work while researching Necropolis, and there were further lessons to be learned from his account of the Spanish flu when I was writing my Pandemic 1918. I recommend this book as a practical but humane account of the development of the funeral industry…
A comprehensive historical survey of the work of undertakers in the first half of the twentieth century, essential reading for anyone interested in understanding an often hidden but certainly most fascinating trade.
Reflecting the rapidly changing nature of the undertaker's work in pre, inter and post- war Britain, this book details the introduction of embalming; how the enormous task of dealing with the dead from both World Wars was undertaken; how undertakers coped with the tragic death toll of the Spanish flu, and the rise of the Co-operative Funeral Service.Around these more institutional historical keystones, the author includes several important…
There are so many billionaire romances out there based in America, but as a Brit, there’s nothing quite like reading a contemporary romance based in London. The capital city of Great Britain, there are a great number of reasons why books here are simply to die for. The history, the culture, the mixture of communities, and the potential for passion – in my opinion, there’s no better place to escape to in a book. Even better if there are delicious characters to lose yourself with…
Only one night with a handsome stranger in London? This has been my dream forever, and once I read this blurb, I immediately one clicked.
Sandi Lynn made me feel like I was literally living this, and I found it almost impossible to drag my eyes away. I wanted this book to continue forever, and if you haven't read it already, you need to.
Have sex with a stranger in a foreign country. It was on my list. It was something I’d never done before and I wasn’t sure if I could go through with it. But I did. Don’t tell him anything about yourself. No names. No personal information. Nothing. It’s all about the thrill. The mystery man. Keep him a stranger. That one night was the best night of my entire life. He was sexy, intense, and made me feel things I had never felt before. The next morning, the thrill was over and he was gone before I woke up. What…
As someone who’s never been allowed to drive, but gets motion-sick reading in a bus or car, I’ve been a lover of audiobooks since I had my Walkman and a backpack full of audiobook cassettes. As a queer man, I’m always looking for more immersive stories about people like me. Finding queer voices and queer narratives is so important to me as a way to offset how queer people don’t have an inherited continuance of our culture as most marginalized people do; books are a way to fill that gap. I do own a rescued husky, and there’s nothing like an engrossing audiobook to get me through those minus-forty Canadian winter walks with a dog.
Visiting London at its most coal-caked and financially stratified, The Affair of the Porcelain Dog was Holmes-like in its execution, and pulled me into its mystery from the opening so steeped in the time and place and culture, and then never let go. Ira Adler is so charminga character that even when he was being selfish or spoiled I was smitten. An orphan, street thief, pickpocket, and former rent boy now living in luxury at the beck and call of a crime lord, Ira ends up tasked to recover the titular “dog” statue, which contains a secret that could ruin everything, and bring Ira's comfortable new life to an end. Philip Battley’s narration was so completely immersive, and had me there with Ira, hoping he’d somehow pull it off.
For Ira Adler, former rent-boy and present plaything of crime lord Cain Goddard, stealing back the statue from Goddard's blackmailer should have been a doddle. But inside the statue is evidence that could put Goddard away for a long time under the sodomy laws, and everyone's after it, including Ira's bitter ex, Dr. Timothy Lazarus. No sooner does Ira have the porcelain dog in his hot little hands, than he loses it to a nimble-fingered prostitute.
As Ira’s search for the dog drags him back to the mean East End streets where he grew up, he discovers secrets…
Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS
by
Amy Carney,
When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…
Much of the Britain that's exported to the world is fed by the monochromatic myth of nobility and royalty, but the heart of Britain is multifaceted and multicultural. I didn’t grow up in London, but grew up visiting family here and ‘The Big Smoke’ had an allure for me. The people were all different colours and ethnicities and it truly felt like the most exciting place in the world. I moved here the week I turned 18, and I haven’t left. It's a harsh, expensive city, and it's much too busy to provide anyone with any lasting sanity, but here I found a version of Black Britain that I was missing in my hometown.
It is suffused with music throughout (and the nerd within me loves the reoccurring literary motifs and phrases that definitely lend a musical quality to the book) and took me back to lazy summer days as a teenager when I first moved to London and the city felt wide open with excitement and possibility.
This is another love story, but one about community, family and the first loves that we learn from our parents.
An exhilarating and expansive new novel about fathers and sons, faith and friendship from National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and Costa First Novel Award winning author Caleb Azumah Nelson
One of the most acclaimed and internationally bestselling “unforgettable” (New York Times) debuts of the 2021, Caleb Azumah Nelson’s London-set love story Open Water took the US by storm and introduced the world to a salient and insightful new voice in fiction. Now, with his second novel Small Worlds, the prodigious Azumah Nelson brings another set of enduring characters to brilliant life in his signature rhythmic, melodic prose.
