Chump Change
10 best books like Chump Change (Dan Fante): L.A. Noir, Fear Itself, SAHM I Am, The Actor's Guide To Murder, The Magic of Blood, Hollywood Hellraisers: The Wild Lives and Fast Times of Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty, and Jack Nicholson, Chicago Lightning: The Collected Nathan Heller Short Stories, Do They Know I'm Running?, Delta Girls, Father of Frankenstein
| Author | James Ellroy |
| ISBN | 0892966866 |
James Ellroy explored modern-day L.A. in a trilogy featuring his anti-hero cop, Det. Sgt. Lloyd Hopkins. Now in one volume, here are the three original novels. Blood on the Moon. Twenty random killings of women remain unconnected in police files. But Det. Sgt. Lloyd Hopkins sees a pattern. In a shattering...
| Author | Walter Mosley |
| ISBN | 0316591122 |
Paris Minton doesn't want any trouble. He minds his used bookstore and his own business. But in 1950s Los Angeles, sometimes trouble finds him, no matter how hard he tries to avoid it. When the nephew of the wealthiest woman in L.A. is missing and wanted for murder, she has to get involved--no matter if...
| Author | Meredith Efken |
| ISBN | 0373785518 |
I am going to start with the things I liked about this book before I get into what I did not.
#1- It was fast and laid out in e-mail format throughout which made it fun to read (albeit confusing at times).
#2- A couple of the characters were realistic in their SAHM lifestyles.
However,...
| Author | Rick Copp |
| ISBN | 0758204965 |
Baby, don't even go there!
That was Jarrod Jarvis's catch phrase as the adorable, girl-crazy moppet on the eighties sitcom, Go to Your Room! It was a great ride until the tabloids caught the popular teen idol kissing another guy at the L.A. gay rodeo. Gay and teen heartthrob not exactly being...
| Author | Dagoberto Gilb |
| ISBN | 0802133991 |
If Raymond Carver got stoned and had a love child with a plate of fajitas and a twelve back of Budweiser, that love child would call itself Dagoberto Gilb and then punch you in the face for making such a stupid analogy.
Dagoberto Gilb is a tough dude. He writes about tough dudes. And he writes about...
| Author | Robert Sellers |
| ISBN | 1616080353 |
“I don’t know what people expect when they meet me. They seem to be afraid that I’m going to piss in the potted palm and slap them on the ass.”—Marlon Brando
“I should have been dead ten times over. I believe in miracles. It’s an absolute miracle that I’m still around.”—Dennis...
Chicago Lightning: The Collected Nathan Heller Short Stories
Tough, cynical, and clever, Nathan Heller has been called "the perfect private eye", the best investigator that Chicago (where 'lightning' means gunfire) has to offer. In this engaging collection of thirteen stories, Heller encounters gangsters and petty crooks, noble doctors and quacks, loving...
Do They Know I'm Running?
| Author | David Corbett |
| ISBN | 0812977556 |
From acclaimed author David Corbett, a stunning and suspenseful novel of a life without loyalties and the borders inside ourselves.
Roque Montalvo is wise beyond his eighteen years. Orphaned at birth, a gifted musician, he’s stuck in a California backwater, helping his Salvadoran...
| Author | Gayle Brandeis |
| ISBN | 0345492625 |
The disparate lives of two women—a single mother working hard to make ends meet and a young figure skater at the top of her game—entwine in an unforgettable novel of warmth, depth, and wisdom.
Izzy and her daughter, Quinn, have been on the move for all of Quinn’s nine years. Izzy works...
| Author | Christopher Bram |
| ISBN | 0452273374 |
James Whale, the elegant director of such classic horror films as"Frankenstein" and "The Bride of Frankenstein, " was found at his Los Angeles mansion in 1957, dead of unnatural causes. Christopher Bram, whose social insight and wit have earned him comparisons to Henry James and Gore Vidal, explores...
| Author | Jerry Stahl |
| ISBN | 1582345821 |
Through a syringe darkly.
There's so little written on Roscoe Arbuckle that I'm grateful for anything, and I find that "fictionalized autobiographies" can sometimes reveal much more than the real thing.
The first part of the book dealing with Roscoe Arbuckle's childhood rings very true,...
| Author | John Fante |
| ISBN | 0876856555 |
I have read this book standing.
Because Fante is a magician.
He lines up words so they become fireworks.
He manages to populate the hardships and the hopes next door - in back to back sentences.
You root for any character he wants, immediately.
He orchestrates how many crescendos...
| Author | Ace Atkins |
| ISBN | 0399155368 |
San Francisco, September 1921: Silent-screen comedy star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle is throwing a wild party in his suite at the St. Francis Hotel: girls, jazz, bootleg hooch . . . and a dead actress named Virginia Rappe. The D.A. says it was Arbuckle who killed her ? crushing her under his weight ? and brings...
| Author | James Scott Bell |
| ISBN | 1599956861 |
For Ty Buchanan, defending a suspected drunk driver named Carl Richess seems routine enough. But when his client ends up dead, an apparent suicide, there's nothing routine about it. Because the cops suspect it's murder, and arrest Eric Richess, Carl's brother, for the crime. Now Ty, at the desperate...
A Graveyard for Lunatics: Another Tale of Two Cities
| Author | Ray Bradbury |
| ISBN | 0380812002 |
Halloween Night, 1954. A young, film-obsessed scriptwriter has just been hired at one of the great studios. An anonymous investigation leads from the giant Maximus Films backlot to an eerie graveyard separated from the studio by a single wall. There he makes a terrifying discovery that thrusts him...
My Best Friends Have Hairy Legs
| Author | Cierra Rantoul |
| ISBN | 1439213305 |
"My Best Friends have Hairy Legs" is my story of overcoming abusive relationships with my dog, Trooper. It is a story about his growth from a fearful puppy into a confident adult dog - and mine - from a psychologically abused wife into a confident woman who can look back at my past with laughter and no regrets....
A novel about subprime mortgages, ruthless Hollywood economics, and the unraveling of a young marriage.
This Is Where We Live tells the story of Claudia and Jeremy, a young married couple (she’s an aspiring filmmaker, he’s an indie musician) who are on the verge of making it. Her first...
| Author | Kevin J. Anderson |
| ISBN | 0765357763 |
It's the largest oil spill in history: a crashed supertanker in San Francisco Bay. Desperate to avert environmental damage—and a PR disaster—the multinational oil company releases an untested "designer microbe" to break up the spill.
An "oil-eating" microbe, designed to consume...
Set internationally and spanning three decades, Daniel Martin is, among other things, an exploration of what it is to be English. Daniel is a screenwriter working in Hollywood, who finds himself dissatisfied with his career and with the person he has become. In a richly evoked narrative, Daniel travels...
