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Hotlists 2008
Crime Fiction - embedded
Booklists
Lists of books, many of which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist , Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ). Additional titles of interest may be included on the lists. Titles are generally listed alphabetically by author.
Overbooked specializes in providing timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction. Overbooked has been online since 1994. Overbooked is a work in progress . . .
Overbooked is the winner of the 2008 Louis Shores - Greenwood Publishing Award: to recognize excellence in book reviewing and other media for libraries. The award recipient is selected for significant achievement related to a reviewing process that helps librarians make selection decisions.
Booklists and Suggested Reading
Surfer Stars
Page Modified: August 19, 2008
Fiction and Nonfiction about surfing and surfers.
Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.
Fiction
- The White Boy Shuffle
Author: Beatty, Paul
Publisher: Houghton $ 19.95 ISBN: 0395742803 Date: 1996
PW
In Beatty's hilarious and scathing debut novel, Gunnar Kaufman is an awkward black surfer bum who moves from Santa Monica to urban West Los Angeles. There, he begins to undergo a transformation from neighborhood outcast to basketball superstar.
Updated 6.13.05 - Reef Dance
Author: Decure, John
Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312272979 Date: 2001
Thirteen years ago J. Shepard's mother rose before dawn, packed a bag and walked out of his life forever. Since then, the rolling surf has been his only escape, a refuge from the daily stress of his job defending parents in the overburdened L.A. juvenile dependency court, and from the dark, unanswered questions of his past. When J. is assigned a high profile case, one in which a mother is accused of selling her child to the highest bidder, even a day in the surf won't let him escape. J. can't hide from the media attention that the case draws, and nor can he hide from the painful memories of his own desertion that the case congers. He realizes that if he does not confront the mystery of his own past he will always be stuck in equilibrium, unable to move against his emotional and physical tide. He will be stuck in the darkest spot in the ocean, the reef dance.
J. simultaneously throws himself into the case and search for the reasons behind his own mother's disappearance. In order to succeed in both areas, however, he must rely on an old friend, Jackie Pace, a wayward surfing legend with a sordid past, that no one believes is reliable. But J. needs his friends help, and Jackie must rise to the challenge not just because he is J.'s friendbut because he is much more intimately linked to the mystery than J. could ever know. Reef Dance will suck you into the surfer's pacific, pulling you deep within it's mystery, and the turmoil of one man's soul. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 5.18.05 - Bluebird Rising
Author: Decure, John
Publisher: Minotaur $ 25.95 ISBN: 0312273088 Date: 2003
In this brooding, atmospheric mystery, John DeCure once again brings the seemingly disparate worlds of law and surfing together with engaging results. For J. Shepard, prosecuting attorney with the California State Bar Association, only one thing in his life keeps him centered: riding waves. When the surf is rising, J. has never had a problem coming up with an excuse to cut out of work.
But with a new fiancee and a troubling internal audit beginning at work, J. has little time these days to hit the sand. When a legal mentor from his distant past washes up in his office stinking of alcohol and hoping for a second chance at life, J. drops everything, including his surfboard. But will he be able to help? The man is in deep trouble, and J. will have to use every tool at his disposal, both in the courtroom and on the beach, to get him out of it. A wrenching, suspenseful follow-up to John DeCure's critically acclaimed Reef Dance, Bluebird Rising is a taut novel sure to please established fans and new readers alike. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 5.18.05 - Six Bad Things
Author: Huston, Charlie
Publisher: Ballantine $12.95 (paper) ISBN: 0345464796 Date: 2005
Booklist
From the author of the Hitchcockian debut Caught Stealing comes a fast-paced crime thriller about a good man who just wants to go home--and the bad past that won't let him.
Updated 5.9.05 - Clay's Way
Author: Mastbaum, Blair
Publisher: Alyson $ 12.95 ISBN: 1555838197 Date: 2004
Lambda Literary Award Winner Gay Men's Fiction Debut
For 15-year-old Sam, his middle-class suburban life feels like a prison. Mistaking lust for fate, Sam becomes obsessed with Clay, a 17-year-old surfer. The tumult of Clay's search for identity propels him, with desperately confused Sam in his wake, through the hardest decisions and obstacles of their young lives.
Updated 5.18.05 - Tapping the Source
Author: Nunn, Kem
Publisher: Doubleday $ 14.95 ISBN: 0385292724 Date: 1984
People come to Huntington Beach in search of the endless party, the ultimate high, and the perfect wave. Ike Tucker has come to look for his sister and the three men who might have murdered her. His search takes him on a dangerous journey through a world of crazed Vietnam vets, sadistic surfers, and drug dealers.
Updated 6.13.05 - The Dogs of Winter
Author: Nunn, Kem
Publisher Scribner: $ 24.95 ISBN: 068482647X Date: 1997
Jack Fletcher is hired to take pictures of a dangerous, premier mysto surf spot off the Pacific Northwest. But disaster soon strikes when an Indian boy drowns--and the men from his reservation seek vengeance.
Updated 6.13.05 - Tijuana Straits
Author: Nunn, Kem
Publisher: Scribner $ 25 ISBN: 0684843056 Date: 2004
PW
From the National Book Award-nominated author of Tapping the Source comes a potent suspense novel that pits a beautiful young Mexican woman and an aging American surfer against three vicious killers out for revenge.
Updated 6.21.04 - Killer Swell
Author: Shelby, Jeff
Publisher: Dutton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0525948805 Date: 2005
LJ
Surfing and murder come together in this dazzling debut mystery series featuring San Diego private investigator Noah Braddock.
Updated 6.9.05
Nonfiction
- On a Wave: A Surfer Boyhood
Author: Ziolkowski, Thad
Publisher: Atlantic $ 23 ISBN: 087113845x Date: 2002
Kirkus
A disenchanted English professor decides on a whim one day to sneak off from his job in Manhattan and catch a wave off a dingy Queens shoreline. On a Wave is an unpretentious portrait of youth in the tradition of Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life and Frank Conroy's Stop-Time.
Updated 2.18.02
Hotlists
African American Fiction | Christian Fiction
2008 Excel Files: (download - print, sort, etc.)
Crime Fiction | Fiction | African American Fiction | Christian Fiction | Nonfiction Notables
Stars
Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec Crime Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec
Speculative Fiction Romance Historical Nonfiction | YA
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