Six Standalone Novels by James Lee Burke
Requirements: Mobi Reader, 3 MB
Overview: Burke’s work has been awarded an Edgar twice for Best Crime Novel of the Year. He has also been a recipient of a Breadloaf and Guggenheim Fellowship and an NEA grant. Two of his novels, Heaven’s Prisoners and Two For Texas, have been made into motion pictures. His short stories have been published in The Atlantic Monthly, New Stories from the South, Best American Short Stories, Antioch Review, Southern Review, and The Kenyon Review. His novel The Lost Get-Back Boogie was rejected 111 times over a period of nine years, and upon publication by Louisiana State University press was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Half of Paradise (1965)
Toussaint Boudreaux, a black docker in New Orleans, puts up with his co-workers’ racism because he has to, and moonlights as a prize-fighter in the hope of a better life – but the only break he gets lands him in penal servitude. J.P. Winfield, a hick with a gift for twelve-string guitar, finds his break into showbiz leads to the flipside of the American dream. Avery Broussard, descendant of an aristocratic French family, runs whiskey after what remains of his land is repossessed… The interlocking stories of these three men are an elegy to the realities of life in 1950s, Louisiana, their destinies fixed by the circumstances of their birth and time. Yet each carries the hope of redemption.
To the Bright and Shining Sun (1970)
For generations, Perry James’ family has lived under the shadow of the Cumberland range and worked in the coal mines. Staunch union supporters, Perry’s grandfather and father have known hard times and after Perry helps to sabotage the mine to keep the ‘scabs’ out, things look bleaker than ever.
To escape from the cycle of poverty, Perry signs up with the Jobs Corps, where they begin to teach him how to read and write, as well as train him in a skilled trade. But Perry is torn between family honor and the lure of seedy beer joints where he can drink and escape the dark and atavistic heritage of the Cumberland Mountains.
In This Book, Burke Brings His Brilliant Feel For Time And Place To A Stunning Story Of Appalachia In The Early 1960s. Here Perry Woodson Hatfield James, A Young Man Torn Between Family Honor And The Lure Of Seedy Watering Holes, Must Somehow Survive The Tempestuous Journey From Boyhood To Manhood And Escape The Dark And Atavistic Heritage Of The Cumberland Mountains.
Two for Texas (1982)
Son Holland arrived in the Louisiana penal camp determined not to spend the rest of his days suffering in a chain gang – but he didn’t imagine for one minute that in order to escape he would need to kill a man. Terrified for his life, he flees the state across the river to Texas, taking with him a beautiful Indian squaw and a fellow prisoner. And as they make their way towards General Houston’s infamous Texas Rangers they find themselves in the midst of the final tragic battle for the Alamo
The Convict and Other Stories (1985)
The Convict and Other Stories is a collection of nine award-winning and beautifully composed stories, set in locales along the Gulf coasts of Louisiana and Texas and battlefields around the world. These masterful stories are at once poignant portrayals of the rugged, conflicted Southern man as well as explorations of themes long familiar to Burke’s readership: loss and hard-won courage, betrayal and friendship, violence and heroism, and the inveitability of death.
The Lost Get-Back Boogie (1986)
Iry Paret’s done his time — two years for manslaughter in Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary. Now the war vet and blues singer is headed to Montana, where he hopes to live clean working on a ranch owned by the father of his prison pal, Buddy Riordan. In prison, Iry tinkered with a song — "The Lost Get-Back Boogie" — that never came out quite right. Now, the Riordan family’s problems hand him a new kind of trouble, with some tragic consequences. And Iry must get the tune right at last, or pay a fateful price.
White Doves at Morning (2002)
In a startling departure, James Lee Burke has written an epic story of love, hate and survival set against the tumultuous background of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
At the center of the tale are James lee Burke’s own ancestrors, Robert Perry, who comes from the slave-owning family of wealth and privliege, and Willy Burke, born of Irish immigrants, a poor boy who is as irreverent as he is brave and decent. Despite personal and political conflicts, both men join the Confederate Army, determined not to back down in their commitment to their moral belirfs, to their friends, and to the abolitionist woman with whom both are infatuated.
Willie’s friend, Flower Jamison, a beautiful young black slave is owned by — and fathered by, although he will not admit it — Ira Jamison. Owner of Angola Plantation, Ira Jamison returns after the war and transforms his plantation into a penal colony which houses prisoners he rents out as laborers to replace the emancipated slaves.
Against all local laws and customs, Willie teaches Flower how to read and write. She receives the help and protection of Abigail Dowling, the Massachusetts abolitionist who has attracted both Willie and Robert Perry’s attention. These love affairs are fraught with danger and compromised by the great and grim events of the Civil War and its aftermatch.
With unforgettable battle scenes at Shiloh and in the Shenandoah Valley, White Doves at Morning is an epic masterpiece of historical fiction.
Jesus Out to Sea (2007)
In this moving collection of short stories, James Lee Burke elegantly marries his flair for gripping storytelling with his lyrical writing style and complex, fascinating character portraits. The backdrop of the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast is a versatile setting for Burke’s stories, which cover the scope of the human experience — from love and sex to domestic abuse to war, death, and friendship.
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