Insights and Inspiration

Some of the novels I’ve read in the past eighteen or so months that have provided insights and inspiration for my writing.

• The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster

• America Fantastica, Tim O’Brien

• Already Dead: A California Gothic, Denis Johnson

• Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion

• Play it as it Lays, Joan Didion

• Baked, Mark Haskell Smith

• What Makes Sammy Run, Budd Schulberg

• The Day of the Locust, Nathaniel West

• Ride the Pink Horse, Dorothy B. Hughes

• In a Lonely Place, Dorothy B. Hughes

• The Expendable Man, Dorothy B. Hughes

• The Low Desert: Gangster Stories, Tod Goldberg

• Gangsters Don’t Die, Tod Goldberg

• Last Acts, Alexander Sammartino

• A Ship Made of Paper, Scott Spencer

• The Black Dahlia, James Ellroy

• The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain

• The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler

• The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler

• The High Window, Raymond Chandler

• The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett

• The Moving Target, Ross MacDonald

• The Barbarous Coast, Ross MacDonald

• The Chill, Ross MacDonald

• Dead Low Tide, John D. MacDonald

• Harlem Shuffle: A Novel, Colson Whitehead

• The Lottery and Other Short Stories, Shirley Jackson

• Devil in a Blue Dress, Walter Mosley

• Billy Summers, Stephen King

• Lake Success, Gary Shteyngart

• Silverview: A Novel, John Le Carré

• Agent Running in the Field: A Novel, John Le Carré

• The Plague, Albert Camus

• The Stranger, Albert Camus

• Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee

• Falconer, John Cheever

• White Noise, Don DeLillo

• True Grit: A Novel, Charles Portis

• Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California, Matthew Specktor

• The Die, Jude Berman

• The Goldilocks Genome, Elizabeth R. Aden, PhD

• Bit Flip, Mike Trigg

• Burner, Mike Trigg