Nick Hornby
Whether writing about male obsessions or insecurity; football, books or music; teenage pregnancy, relationship break ups or suicide; Nick Hornby tells moving, funny and insightful stories exploring how we live now.
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Michael Koryta
Michael Koryta
Michael Koryta began writing at a very early age. As an eight-year-old boy, he began writing to his favorite writers and by 16 had decided he wanted to become a crime novelist. By the age of 21, his crime novel, Tonight I Said Goodbye, had won the St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America Best First Novel prize.[4] Nine of Koryta’s novels have been optioned for potential film or television production.[5]
Those Who Wish Me Dead, his 2014 stand-alone novel, was named the summer’s best thriller by both Amazon and Entertainment Weekly and was selected as one of the year’s best books by more than 10 publications. The audio version was also honored as a best of the year, the second time that Robert Petkoff’s narration of Michael’s work has earned such an honor. The novel is currently in production as a major motion picture starring Angelina Jolie, Nicholas Hoult, Tyler Perry, Jon Bernthal and Aidan Gillen and directed by Taylor Sheridan.
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Bradley Denton
Bradley Denton
Bradley Clayton Denton is an American science fiction author. He has also written other types of fiction, such as the black comedy of his novel Blackburn, about a sympathetic serial killer. He was born in Towanda, Kansas, and attended the University of Kansas at Lawrence and graduated with degrees in astronomy (B.A.) and English (M.A.).
An all time favorite of Roaming the Arts is Denton’s 1993 classic:
Read Kirkus Review of Blackburn
Link above is to Goodreads site while the BradleyDenton.net site is being reimagined.
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Joe R. Lansdale
Hap and Leonard series and Stand-alones.
Locations in Texas
Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale has written novels and stories in many genres, including Western, horror, science fiction, mystery, and suspense. As of 2018, he has written 45 novels and published 30 short-story collections along with many chapbooks and comic-book adaptations. He has been inducted into The Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and several of his novels have been adapted to film.
His Hap and Leonard series of ten novels, four novellas, and three short-story collections feature two friends, Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, who live in the fictional town of Laborde, in East Texas, and find themselves solving a variety of often unpleasant crimes. The characters themselves are an unlikely pairing; Hap is a white, working-class laborer in his mid-forties who once protested against the war in Vietnam and spent time in federal prison rather than be drafted; Leonard is a gay, black Vietnam vet. Both of them are accomplished fighters, and the stories (told from Hap’s narrative point of view) feature a great deal of violence, profanity, and sex. Lansdale paints a picture of East Texas which is essentially “good” but blighted by racism, ignorance, urban and rural deprivation, and government corruption. Some of the subject matter is extremely dark, and includes scenes of brutal violence. These novels are also characterized by sharp humor and “wisecracking” dialogue. These books have been adapted into a TV series for the SundanceTV channel and a series of graphic novels began publication in 2017. Season 2 of the television series is based on the second Hap and Leonard novel, Mucho Mojo, and season 3, which premiered on 3/7/18, is based on the third novel, The Two-Bear Mambo. Much of Lansdale’s work has been issued and re-issued as limited editions by Subterranean Press and as trade paperbacks by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Publications. His current new-release publisher is Mulholland Books. Lansdale also publishes with Dark Regions Press and Tachyon Publications, and with his daughter Kasey he has started a new publishing company called Pandi Press to control the re-issue and publishing of his older works.
