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Blameless: A Novel
Lisa Reardon Manufacturer: Random House ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover  General
| Comics & Graphic Novels
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| Comics & Graphic Novels
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Contemporary
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ASIN: 0375504052 Release Date: 2000-04-25 |
Amazon.com
<B>Penzler Pick, June 2000:</B> After reading a strong debut, I am always eager to see the author's next offering. Will it live up to the potential of that first book, or will that book remain a flash of brilliance, never to be equaled? No worries here. Reardon's first book, Billy Dead, was an outstanding first novel in a year of excellent first novels, and her second book more than confirms that we have a major new talent in our midst.While not a mystery in the strictest sense of the word, there is a killing. Blameless, however, is not about who did it, or even why. It is about the effect that killing has on one member of the community: the woman who discovered the body. Mary Culpepper, a school-bus driver, is strong, fearless, independent, and seemingly in command of her life. Sure, her husband left her for her best friend, but she's over that, and when the novel opens, Mary is waiting to testify in the death of one of her charges. She will have to take the stand and tell what she witnessed. As Mary tries to keep her mind off the upcoming trial, she enters into an affair with a local guy who plays softball with her. A dream man, except that he's the father of another of her charges.
All this drama does nothing to keep away the Night Visitor, the stone monster who, each night, climbs onto Mary's chest and destroys her sleep. As we get to know Mary, we understand that she, like many of us, chooses very carefully what she does and does not witness. Layer by layer, Reardon peels away the protective covering that Mary has grown until the explosive finale when Mary will have to come to terms with her past and the way she has chosen to live her life. This novel explores moral accountability and the way we all look away from what we don't want to see, and in that way Blameless is both profoundly disturbing and utterly compelling. --Otto Penzler
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"The night turned blacker and colder. I switched off the car radio. I had a home to go to. I had locks on my doors. But just outside were dark hungry shapes that had once had names like Hero or Jack. Muzzles that used to nudge someone's hand for a pat now sniffed the air for prey. People walked away from the things they were responsible for, like those things weren't going to come back in the middle of the night and tear your throat open. I rolled up the window against the chill. Lit another cigarette with my head pounding like a kettledrum. The Merc rolled toward home."
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Billy Dead
Lisa Reardon Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics) ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Contemporary
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| Literature & Fiction
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Family Saga
| Genre Fiction
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ASIN: 0140280510 |
Amazon.com
So, you find out one day that your brother has just been killed, brutally murdered in fact, by someone who seemed to take calm delight in watching him die slowly, agonizingly. The thing is, you can think of dozens of people who wished Billy harm, and a few who very well might have done it, including members of your own family.Such is the situation of Ray Johnson, the narrator of Lisa Reardon's first novel, Billy Dead, as we begin a gut-wrenching trip into the past of an American family that's about as unappetizing as you will find. A relatively decent, tender man who's spent much of his life trying to keep out of harm's way, Ray has managed to cobble together a pretty good existence of steady job and thoughtful, intelligent girlfriend, Sally... until now. As he ranges around town in a surreal haze in the days following Billy's murder, meeting up with ghosts from the past, and interacting with various and sundry family members (including a mother who flirts with an old boyfriend in sight of her son's coffin), Ray realizes just how much he remains shackled to a past chock full of domestic abuse, alcoholism, incest, and just plain meanness.
While Billy's death seems a just, but unavoidable, conclusion to a nasty existence--"Somebody took that thing full of mean and made it nothing at all"--maybe he was the lucky one. For Ray, the killing pulls into sharp relief the hell on earth that is his when he realizes his only life passion is his forbidden love for his younger sister, Jean: "All the hurt and confusion about Billy being killed is like a big forest fire that's burned through everything in me. Burned clean through all the underbrush of when we were little, all the deadwood memories. Even the big strong trees that I thought would live forever, blocking all the sun ... Jean and me, we're looking at each other now in that empty, burned-out place."
In a narrative that explores in terrifying detail the violent nature of Jean and Ray's past and the poignant truth of their love, Reardon creates a skillful and credible tale. This is a hard, in-your-face kind of book that takes you for a disturbing ride, and finally asks you to reexamine your notions of what is and what is not right when it comes to affairs of the heart. --Marianne Painter
Book Description
When Ray Johnson's brother Billy is found murdered in a ditch, Ray is overcome with sorrow and a strange sense of relief. In a quiet Michigan town with no secrets, Billy's death unleashes some ugly memories--events that the working-class Johnson family has struggled for years to forget. Ray watches closely as the sheriff pursues the killer, and soon he is reluctantly drawn back to a violent and chaotic family history, which he reveals in a voice that is sometimes funny, often shocking, but always unsparingly honest. In the span of four unforgettable days Ray Johnson propels us through past and present, desolation and joy, as he is forced to reassess a life of stark abuse and remarkable love.
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The Mercy Killers: A Novel
Lisa Reardon Manufacturer: Counterpoint LLC ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback General
| Mystery
| Mystery & Thrillers
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ASIN: 1582433372 |
Book Description
"On a rainy evening in the spring of 1967, Old Jerry hunkers on his bar stool like a liquor-soaked question mark..."So begins the story of Old Jerry, seventy years old, a lifetime drunk, and ready to die. His grandson Charlie has troubles of his own: the scars of a father's rage, a juvenile record, and brother P.T., who lives in another world with the ghost of their long-dead mother. When Old Jerry fails to show up for his birthday party at McGurk's Tap Room, these two young men are the first to ask questions. But the discovery of the old man's body in a nearby lake will send one off to war in Vietnam-and everyone else to pick up the pieces. Set in the dusky world of a working-class Midwestern city, The Mercy Killers tells a chilling story of actions taken in the name of love, and of histories spun from unspeakable pasts.
"Sharply written and stylistically brilliant, The Mercy Killers I a wonderful novel of crime with an authentic human story at its heart." -Chicago Sun-Times
"Reardon takes us into a world so complete...that nothing seems more important than reading these pages and discovering what her vivid, ferocious characters will do next." -Margot Livesey, author of Banishing Verona
"Reardon...keeps the action churning away." -Chicago Tribune
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Schuldlos.
Lisa Reardon Manufacturer: Deuticke, Verlagsgesellschaft mbH Franz ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover ASIN: 3216305198 |
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Billy.
Lisa Reardon Manufacturer: Rowohlt Tb. ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback ASIN: 3499231646 |
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Sang pour sang
Lisa Reardon , and Joseph Antoine Manufacturer: Murder Inc. ProductGroup: Book Binding: Mass Market Paperback ASIN: 2913636314 |
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Billy Dead
Lisa Reardon Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics) ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback ASIN: B000OIUUEO |
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