Download or read book Eddie s Bastard written by William Kowalski and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-12-31 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eddie's Bastard spins the warm, endearing tale of William Amos Mann IV and of the inhabitants of his eponymous small upstate New York town, Mannville. Related in flashback by the adult Billy, the story begins with him being deposited as an infant on the doorstep of his grandfather's home in a simple wicker basket with a plain two-word message pinned to his shawl reading 'Eddie's Bastard'. Eddie had been killed in Vietnam three months earlier - his father, Thomas Mann Jnr, had given up on life, having lost his only son and, he thought, his only heir. But now, suddenly, Thomas has a grandson and an heir - if not to the once-vast Mann fortune (for Thomas had recklessly squandered that in a foolhardy enterprise just after his heroic return from WWII), then at least to the long legacy of the Mann family stories, stretching back to the Civil War. Eddie's Bastard is filled with episodes of madcap adventure and resonates with the power of lifelong friendship. By turns hilarious, thrilling and heart-breaking, here is a début that stays in the mind long after the reading is over.

Download or read book The Friends of Eddie Coyle written by George V. Higgins and published by Holt Paperbacks. This book was released on 2010-04-27 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic novel from "America's best crime novelist" (Time), with a new introduction by Dennis Lehane George V. Higgins's seminal crime novel is a down-and-dirty tale of thieves, mobsters, and cops on the mean streets of Boston. When small-time gunrunner Eddie Coyle is convicted on a felony, he's looking at three years in the pen--that is, unless he sells out one of his big-fish clients to the DA. But which of the many hoods, gunmen, and executioners whom he calls his friends should he send up the river? Told almost entirely in crackling dialogue by a vivid cast of lowlifes and detectives, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is one of the greatest crime novels ever written. “The best crime novel ever written--makes The Maltese Falcon read like Nancy Drew.” -- Elmore Leonard

Download or read book Somewhere South Of Here written by William Kowalski and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-12-31 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his widely acclaimed debut, 28-year-old William Kowalski emerged as one of the most exciting and distinctive new American writers in years. In his hew book, Kowalski once again proves himself an extraordinarily gifted writer as he follows his hero Billy Mann on his search for the mother who deserted him as a baby. Now 20 years old, Billy travels atop his beloved motorcycle to the last known address he has for her ot a side street named Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is a journey that will teach him many things about family, friends, love - and death. Filled with wondrous imagery and lyricism, Somewhere South of Here has a lightness of touch that belies how very much it has to say about life's greatest themes of all.

Download or read book Something Noble written by William Kowalski and published by Orca Book Publishers. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linda is a young, hardworking single mom struggling to get by from paycheck to paycheck. When she learns that her son Dre needs a kidney transplant, her family's already precarious financial situation takes a turn for the worst. Then she discovers that the only one who can help Dre is his half-brother LeVon, a drug-dealing gangbanger who thinks only of himself. Somehow Linda must get through to LeVon in order to save her son. Though she is deathly afraid of LeVon and the world he lives in, Linda knows she must conquer her fear and meet him on his own turf if she is to have any hope of success. Linda is finally able to teach LeVon the value of doing something noble with his life. And to her surprise, she learns she has room in her heart for one more kid, a boy from the streets who never had a chance.

Download or read book Lucky Bastard written by Joe Buck and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this New York Times bestselling memoir, the announcer of the biggest sporting events in the country—including the 2017 Super Bowl and this century's most-watched, historic, Chicago Cubs–winning World Series—reveals why he is one lucky bastard. Sports fans see Joe Buck everywhere: broadcasting one of the biggest games in the NFL every week, calling the World Series every year, announcing the Super Bowl every three years. They know his father, Jack Buck, is a broadcasting legend and that he was beloved in his adopted hometown of St. Louis. Yet they have no idea who Joe really is. Or how he got here. They don’t know how he almost blew his career. They haven’t read his funniest and most embarrassing stories or heard about his interactions with the biggest sports stars of this era. They don’t know how hard he can laugh at himself—or that he thinks some of his critics have a point. And they don’t know what it was really like to grow up in his father’s shadow. Joe and Jack were best friends, but it wasn’t that simple. Jack, the voice of the St. Louis Cardinals for almost fifty years, helped Joe get his broadcasting start at eighteen. But Joe had to prove himself, first as a minor league radio announcer and then on local TV, national TV with ESPN, and then finally on FOX. He now has a successful, Emmy-winning career, but only after a lot of dues-paying, learning, and pretty damn entertaining mistakes that are recounted in this book. In his memoir, Joe takes us through his life on and off the field. He shares the lessons he learned from his father, the errors he made along the way, and the personal mountain he climbed and conquered, all of which have truly made him a Lucky Bastard.

Download or read book One Red Bastard written by Ed Lin and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this thrilling sequel to the highly acclaimed Snakes Can’t Run, detective Robert Chow must wrestle with his own morality to solve a murder, set against the backdrop of gritty Chinatown following the Vietnam War. It’s the fall of 1976, and New York’s Chinatown is in turmoil over news that Mao’s daughter is seeking asylum in America. Vietnam vet Robert Chow is now a detective-in-training, and he is thrilled when his girlfriend, Lonnie, scores a once-in-a-lifetime interview with the Chinese representative of Mao’s daughter. But hours after their meeting, the man is found dead. Lonnie, the last person to see him alive, is the main suspect. The police are restless to close the case, and as Lonnie is subjected to increasing amounts of intimidation, Robert is tempted to reach into his own bag of dirty tricks to protect her. Will Chow stay on the right side of the law, or will his loyalty to Lonnie provoke him to turn to darker methods? Find out in this exciting and fast-paced mystery, set in one of New York’s most fascinating neighborhoods . . .

Download or read book What Night Brings written by Carla Trujillo and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2003-04-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What Night Brings focuses on a Chicano working-class family living in California during the 1960s. Marci—smart, feisty and funny—tells the story with the wisdom of someone twice her age as she determines to defy her family and God in order to find her identity, sexuality and freedom.

Download or read book Fresh Off the Boat written by Eddie Huang and published by One World. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NOW AN ORIGINAL SERIES ON ABC • “Just may be the best new comedy of [the year] . . . based on restaurateur Eddie Huang’s memoir of the same name . . . [a] classic fresh-out-of-water comedy.”—People “Bawdy and frequently hilarious . . . a surprisingly sophisticated memoir about race and assimilation in America . . . as much James Baldwin and Jay-Z as Amy Tan . . . rowdy [and] vital . . . It’s a book about fitting in by not fitting in at all.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS Assimilating ain’t easy. Eddie Huang was raised by a wild family of FOB (“fresh off the boat”) immigrants—his father a cocksure restaurateur with a dark past back in Taiwan, his mother a fierce protector and constant threat. Young Eddie tried his hand at everything mainstream America threw his way, from white Jesus to macaroni and cheese, but finally found his home as leader of a rainbow coalition of lost boys up to no good: skate punks, dealers, hip-hop junkies, and sneaker freaks. This is the story of a Chinese-American kid in a could-be-anywhere cul-de-sac blazing his way through America’s deviant subcultures, trying to find himself, ten thousand miles from his legacy and anchored only by his conflicted love for his family and his passion for food. Funny, moving, and stylistically inventive, Fresh Off the Boat is more than a radical reimagining of the immigrant memoir—it’s the exhilarating story of every American outsider who finds his destiny in the margins. Praise for Fresh Off the Boat “Brash and funny . . . outrageous, courageous, moving, ironic and true.”—New York Times Book Review “Mercilessly funny and provocative, Fresh Off the Boat is also a serious piece of work. Eddie Huang is hunting nothing less than Big Game here. He does everything with style.”—Anthony Bourdain “Uproariously funny . . . emotionally honest.”—Chicago Tribune “Huang is a fearless raconteur. [His] writing is at once hilarious and provocative; his incisive wit pulls through like a perfect plate of dan dan noodles.”—Interview “Although writing a memoir is an audacious act for a thirty-year-old, it is not nearly as audacious as some of the things Huang did and survived even earlier. . . . Whatever he ends up doing, you can be sure it won’t look or sound like anything that’s come before. A single, kinetic passage from Fresh Off the Boat . . . is all you need to get that straight.”—Bookforum

Download or read book The Adventures of Flash Jackson written by William Kowalski and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-05-28 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Haley Bombauer, aka Flash Jackson, confronts the summer of her seventeenth year with glorious anticipation. She envisions herself roaming the hillsides and forests on her beloved horse, venturing farther and farther away from her sleepy hometown and her overprotective mother. But when Haley falls through the rotted roof of the barn, she is destined to spend the summer in a thigh-high cast, stuck at home with her mother, enduring visits from her spooky grandmother, and pondering the error of her impulsive ways. The year that follows will, in fact, transform not only her life but also the lives of those around her. Set in Mannville, New York, William Kowalski's signature town, here is the story of one young woman's emergence into a world that, in her words, "was not designed with girls in mind" and her efforts to find a way to fit in without giving up her independence.

Download or read book The Way It Works written by William Kowalski and published by Orca Book Publishers. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Walter Davis is young, handsome, intelligent, dynamic, personable and homeless. The product of a bi-racial marriage but abandoned by his father as a young child, he prides himself on three things: his drive to succeed, his fine clothes and never having been late for anything in his life. Walter is also homeless. The medical expenses that came with his mother's brief and unsuccessful battle against cancer have left him destitute. Still, ever the optimist, Walter believes that if he lives in his car for a few months, he will have the time he needs to find a good job in the business world and turn his life around. His situation gets more complicated when he finds himself attracted to a girl he meets at the mailing center where he keeps a post box. But trying to impress a girl when you have no fixed address proves difficult, and when he's caught in a lie, she shuns his company. Walter's struggles grow when his car is impounded and he can't afford to pay the fine. Only resilience, ingenuity and his drive to succeed can bring Walter back from the brink of despair.

Download or read book The Barrio Kings written by William Kowalski and published by Orca Book Publishers. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rosario Gomez gave up gang life after his brother was killed in a street fight. Now all he wants to do is finish night school, be a good father and work hard enough at his job at the supermarket to get promoted. But when an old friend shows up to ask him why he left the gang, Rosario realizes he was fooling himself if he thought his violent past would just go away. When his pregnant girlfriend is hit in a drive-by shooting, Rosario has to make some hard choices. Revenge means a return to his old ways, something he swore he would never do. But unless he takes action, his enemies will not rest until they've settled the score against him.

Download or read book The Hundred Year House written by Rebecca Makkai and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-07-10 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed author of The Borrower returns with a dazzlingly original, mordantly witty novel about the secrets of an old-money family and their turn-of-the-century estate, Laurelfield. “Rebecca Makkai is a writer to watch, as sneakily ambitious as she is unpretentious." –Richard Russo Meet the Devohrs: Zee, a Marxist literary scholar who detests her parents’ wealth but nevertheless finds herself living in their carriage house; Gracie, her mother, who claims she can tell your lot in life by looking at your teeth; and Bruce, her step-father, stockpiling supplies for the Y2K apocalypse and perpetually late for his tee time. Then there’s Violet Devohr, Zee’s great-grandmother, who they say took her own life somewhere in the vast house, and whose massive oil portrait still hangs in the dining room. Violet’s portrait was known to terrify the artists who resided at the house from the 1920s to the 1950s, when it served as the Laurelfield Arts Colony—and this is exactly the period Zee’s husband, Doug, is interested in. An out-of-work academic whose only hope of a future position is securing a book deal, Doug is stalled on his biography of the poet Edwin Parfitt, once in residence at the colony. All he needs to get the book back on track—besides some motivation and self-esteem—is access to the colony records, rotting away in the attic for decades. But when Doug begins to poke around where he shouldn’t, he finds Gracie guards the files with a strange ferocity, raising questions about what she might be hiding. The secrets of the hundred-year house would turn everything Doug and Zee think they know about her family on its head—that is, if they were to ever uncover them. In this brilliantly conceived, ambitious, and deeply rewarding novel, Rebecca Makkai unfolds a generational saga in reverse, leading the reader back in time on a literary scavenger hunt as we seek to uncover the truth about these strange people and this mysterious house. With intelligence and humor, a daring narrative approach, and a lovingly satirical voice, Rebecca Makkai has crafted an unforgettable novel about family, fate and the incredible surprises life can offer. For readers of Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle

Download or read book Man with the Banjo written by George Robert and published by Wheatmark, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-12 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eddie Peabody is at the peak of his musical career, known to his many fans as the King of the Banjo. But after entertaining White House guests in the Rose Garden, he is summoned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and asked to rejoin the armed forces. Secretly commissioned a lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserve, he continues performing in theaters across the country while training for his reconnaissance mission in Germany. Eddie photographs a newly constructed German U-boat, verifying the American government's suspicions. His mission complete, he troupes on to Berlin with the theater group. Unbeknown to the Allies, however, German intelligence has found a photograph of Eddie in his uniform. The head of the German state invites him to play at a private party for the chancellor and his entourage. Will this be Eddie's final performance? George Robert is the second son of Eddie and Ragna Peabody. Whenever he heard his mother yell out "George Robert " he knew he was in trouble.

Download or read book Blood Family written by Anne Fine and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-03-21 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A boy with an abusive father grows up and fears that he has the same potential for violence as his father has.

Download or read book Just Gone written by William Kowalski and published by Orca Book Publishers. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mother Anqelique runs a shelter for homeless mothers and their children in a run-down inner-city area, where drug addiction, prostitution and random acts of violence are facts of life. One day, newly orphaned Jamal and his sister Chantay arrive at the shelter, hungry and scared. As Angelique tries to find a new home for them, she develops a fascination with seven-year-old Jamal, who seems to inhabit a world of his own. Jamal tells her fantastic stories of a man named Jacky Wacky, who protects the poor children of the city and punishes the adults who harm them. A God-fearing woman, Angelique doesn't believe his stories at first. But strange things begin to happen whenever Jamal is around, and Mother Angelique is forced to admit that the world may contain stranger truths than her faith can explain.

Download or read book Power Play written by F. Ethan Repp and published by First Edition Design Pub.. This book was released on 2014-01-15 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Politics is a mean spirited business. Power Play allows the reader to be in the room where this character driven novel is graphically experienced. History repeats itself. Questionable Police tactics didn't begin in 2014. The awareness and threats caused by aggressive police actions have recently changed but they’re not without precedent. A City Manager has the inside story. Read Power Play, a story set in the 1970’s when blind trust was too often the case. Deceit, revenge, militaristic police, affected legal system and gay tragedy. The end of the Hoover era, amidst the death throes of the Nixon debacle. The author has captured an era, depicting a battle for the soul of the Republic, at the local level. Young, handsome, charming Collier Winthrop is enticed by a crusty old Political Boss, Al Caso, to seek Public Office. Collie soon faces an unscrupulous adversary practiced in deceit; manipulated state investigative agencies and a contaminated police department. Events unfold that uncover a sordid police mentality, unveil the civil rights of the Flower Children violated, ruin reputations and threaten the very lives of Collie's confederates. How can Collie unravel plots unseen and unimaginable, to survive even the earliest months of his political enterprise. The work portrays the depth and conflict of personalities. Politics is a business of expediency. Otherwise decent people justify immoral behavior in defense of careers.

Download or read book Buried Onions written by Gary Soto and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2006 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When nineteen-year-old Eddie drops out of college, he struggles to find a place for himself as a Mexican American living in a violence-infested neighborhood of Fresno, California.