Head Games
10 best books like Head Games (Craig McDonald): Fake I.D. (Hard Case Crime #56), Tower, The Bastard Hand, The King of Pain: A Novel With Stories, Hoodtown, The Ice Harvest, Safer, Fish Whistle: Commentaries, Uncommentaries, And Vulgar Excesses, One Dead Hen, Yellow Medicine
Fake I.D. (Hard Case Crime #56)
Jason Starr writes dark characters like no other and Tommy Russo is a walking, talking curse upon the Earth and all who encounter him.
Tommy is an out of work actor by day, a bouncer by night, and a "degenerate gambler" all the time. He is offered the opportunity to buy into a syndicate with some...
| Author | Ken Bruen |
| ISBN | 1935415077 |
“Taking up the storied themes of crime fiction—loyalty and betrayal, temptation and treachery—Tower lifts and elevates them, forging a tale both barbaric and baleful, swaggering and broken-hearted. Brutal, soaring street poetry to take your breath away.”—Megan Abbott, Edgar Award–winning...
| Author | Heath Lowrance |
| ISBN | 0982843623 |
Charlie Wesley is not right in the head. He's escaped from a mental hospital up north and hitchhiked his way south, the voice of his dead brother urging him on. But when Charlie hits Memphis, the fine line between his delusions and reality shift in the form of the Reverend Phineas Childe-a preacher bent...
The King of Pain: A Novel With Stories
A riotously funny portrait of an out-of-control entertainment mogul and a devastating look at torture and imprisonment, The King of Pain is part George Saunders, part Jennifer Egan, part "Entourage," and 100% marvelous.
Rick Salter expects to be hated; after all, he’s the mind behind...
| Author | Christa Faust |
| ISBN | 0975379100 |
It's mayhem, murder and masks in the acclaimed genre-bending novel from the "First Lady of Hard Case Crime” Christa Faust (Money Shot, Choke Hold).
Hoodtown, ghetto of masked wrestlers, inner-city sanctuary of hooded culture. Evolved from lucha libre, the family gimmick is sacred, and...
| Author | Scott Phillips |
| ISBN | 0345440196 |
Mostly read whilst killing time waiting for English public transport to turn up
Compared to Cain and Thompson this novel seemed to have a high pedigree of hype going for it, having recently thoroughly enjoyed the John CUsack movie adaptation there was a little added pressure when I found this...
| Author | Sean Doolittle |
| ISBN | 0385338988 |
In Safer, a young couple moves into an idyllic little cul-de- sac—and ignites a harrowing journey into darkness as a shocking accusation is made, a family is shattered, and the mystery of a long-ago crime begins to unravel.
For Paul Callaway and his wife, Sara, moving from the East Coast...
| Author | Daniel Pinkwater |
| ISBN | 0201570009 |
This is a pleasant collection of short essays, many of which were previously read by the author on NPR. Pinkwater waxes eloquently on his boyhood, his weight, writing and art, teaching writing and art, and owning befriending dogs.
No surprise here, but my favorite essays involved food and...
| Author | Charlie Williams |
| ISBN | 1935597507 |
The town of Mangel has always been a rough place, but rough turns to nightmarish when headless corpses begin piling up. The police are desperate for a suspect, and Royston Blake, the former pub doorman-turned-recluse is prime for the taking. He’s hauled in for questioning, but to no avail: this is...
| Author | Anthony Neil Smith |
| ISBN | 1932557709 |
Deputy Billy Lafitte is not unfamiliar with the law; he just prefers to enforce it, rather than abide by it. But his rule-bending and bribe-taking have gotten him kicked off the force in Gulfport, Mississippi, and he's been given a second chance...in the desolate, Siberian wastelands of rural Minnesota....
| Author | Reed Farrel Coleman |
| ISBN | 1932557644 |
There are no second acts for the dead...or are there? For over twenty years, retired NYPD officer and PI Moe Prager, has been haunted by the secret that would eventually destroy his family. Now, two years after the fallout from the truth, more that secrets are haunting the Prager family. Moe Prager follows...
| Author | Allan Guthrie |
| ISBN | 1905512694 |
Receiving ten grand as down payment on a hit isn't that much of a surprise to Carlos Morales. After all, arranging contract killings is his business. But he never expected that someone might want his mother dead! What's equally troubling is the fact that the anonymous package arrived addressed to 'Charlie'....
| Author | Michael J. Malone |
| ISBN | 1907869344 |
A body is discovered: the terrible mutilations spell out the wounds of the Stigmata. For Glasgow DI Ray McBain, the killings are strangely familiar... and then the dreams begin. The first in a series of books featuring DI Ray McBain, a Glasgow detective who has too many friends in the underworld for his...
In 1987, fourteen-year-old Junius Posey sets out on the cold Cambridge (MA) streets to find his brother’s killer in a cluster of low-income housing towers—prime drug-dealing territory. After committing a murder to protect his friend, he finds himself without protection from retribution....
| Author | Mitch Silver |
| ISBN | 1416537945 |
In this debut of a uniquely talented novelist, Ian Fleming's real world of spies, love, passion, and danger is brought to life when a young woman inherits Fleming's long-hidden account of spying during World War II and must finish it to find out why people are trying to kill her.
In 1964, James Bond's...
Death is Simon’s business. And now the ageing vermin exterminator is preparing to die. But he still has one last job down on the coast and he needs a driver. Bernard is twenty-one. He can drive and he’s never seen the sea. He can’t pass up the chance to chauffeur for Simon, whatever his mother may say....
| Author | Jay Stringer |
| ISBN | 1469205289 |
When gangland detective and former cop Eoin Miller wakes up to realize his almost-one-night stand has gone cold as a corpse in his bed, his gypsy heritage screams for him to do the easy thing and run. Having abandoned his morals, ambitions, and relationships for a life of alcohol, denial, and dirty work...
| Author | Duane Swierczynski |
| ISBN | 1930997590 |
Detective Del Farmer is investigating a murder. But the usual suspects are all in his head. "Believe in nothing, believe in Hell, believe in the Brain Hotel... Secret Dead Men is the most inventive, uplifting, hilarious, moving novel since Catcher in the Rye" -- Ken Bruen Del Farmer isn't your ordinary...
| Author | Mary Logue |
| ISBN | 1932557601 |
Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins is back, in this tragic, personal follow up to Poison Heart. Claire's daughter Meg is struggling with depression--after an all-night high school Halloween party, Meg's best friend was found dead of an apparent suicide at the foot of Maiden Rock. Krista and Meg had fought...
| Author | Victoria Houston |
| ISBN | 1932557741 |
Murder never takes a holiday or so Loon Lake learns one wintry Thanksgiving Day. Chief of Police Lew Ferris, short-handed thanks to an AWOL coroner, never even gets the turkey stuffed before the bodies start to surface. By the end of the day, credit card theft and dysfunctional families have so muddied...
