Black Coconuts, Brown Magic

Black Coconuts, Brown Magic
by Joseph Theroux

The first novel by Joseph Theroux, set in the fallen paradise of Samoa. Silas Wicklowe, once a medic in Vietnam, is now a doctor on a three-month assignment at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Tropical Medical Center in Pago Pago. Wicklowe carries a double burden. Born in American Samoa, the son of a naval officer, he has returned to paradise to uncover the mysteries surrounding his dead mother and father. He's also running from his former wife. His war experience has made him impotent, thrown him into a kind of psychic fatigue. He suffers from what the Samoans call ''spirit sickness.'' He screams in the night and walks around with dead eyes. He has the Vietnam blues. Joseph Theroux is the younger brother of the writers Paul and Alexander Theroux.

Chump Change

Chump Change 
by Dan Fante 

The book follows the exploits of Bruno Dante. In New York his life is a train wreck and is turned into an upheaval when he gets the call from Los Angeles that his screenwriter father is in a coma and not expected to live. The next three weeks on the streets on the streets of L.A. will change Bruno Dante's life forever. The book expresses the bewilderment of its hero and its author with rawness, crudeness, and shock, and also serves as a very beautiful and touching homage to Fante's famous father John Fante. 

Rumble Tumble

Rumble Tumble
by Joe R. Lansdale

Hap Collins is hitting the hard edge of a midlife crisis. By night, he's bouncing at a local club. By day, he's living by the grace of his best friend--black, gay Vietnam vet Leonard Pine--and his good woman, former Sweet Potato Queen Brett Sawyer. Hap may be down, but he`s a long throw from out.

Brett's daughter, Tillie, who is turning tricks and taking drugs, stands in need of a quick and merciful rescue. It will be no easy chore, starting with a hard trek from mosquito-ridden but familiar LaBorde, Texas, to the fleshpots and hardasses of Hootie Hoot, Oklahoma.

On the road the trio picks up new friends, like a hulking Pentecostal preacher and retired hit man, as well as fresh enemies, including a redheaded midget with a giant chip on his shoulder and an army of bikers turned vice profiteers and cold-blooded killers.