Howard Owen, Author Permanent Press (NY) $21.95 (0p) ISBN 978-1-877946-18-9
In a subtle and intelligent first novel Owen, a sports editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch , tells a low-key story of rural life in North Carolina. At 82, Littlejohn McCain straddles two very different eras in the South: his father was a...
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Howard Owen. Permanent, $29.95 (262p) ISBN 978-1-57962-567-2
Owen’s unremarkable seventh mystery featuring Richmond, Va., newspaper reporter Willie Black (after 2017’s The Devil’s Triangle) opens with Black’s editor alerting him to reports of a fight in Scuffletown Park. The journalist discovers that when the
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Howard Owen. Permanent, $29.95 (264p) ISBN 978-1-57962-522-1
In 1968, Grayson Melvin, the protagonist of this moving, well-crafted standalone from Owen (The Reckoning), meets the love of his life, Annie Lineberger, when they’re both college students in North Carolina. When Annie breaks up with him, he tells...
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Howard Owen. Permanent, $28 (240p) ISBN 978-1-57962-499-6
At the start of Owen’s superior sixth outing for Richmond, Va., reporter Willie Black (after 2016’s Grace), a twin-engine Beechcraft plane crashes into the Dark Star bar, killing 22, injuring 29, and fueling wild speculation about the cause of the...
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Howard Owen. Permanent, $28 (246p) ISBN 978-1-57962-434-7
The disappearance of 10-year-old Artesian Cole from a poor Richmond, Va., neighborhood propels Owen’s middling fifth Willie Black mystery (after 2015’s The Bottom). Willie, the police reporter for a floundering Richmond daily, gets involved when...
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Howard Owen. Permanent, $28 (208p) ISBN 978-1-57962-392-0
Willie Black has the tenacity of a bulldog when chasing a story or a bad guy, as shown in Owen’s satisfying fourth mystery featuring the Richmond, Va., newspaper reporter (after 2014’s Parker Field). A serial killer dubbed Tweety Bird has just...
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Howard Owen. Permanent, $28 (224p) ISBN 978-1-57962-361-6
In Hammett Prize–winner Owen’s enjoyable third mystery featuring biracial Richmond, Va., newspaper reporter Willie Black (after 2013’s The Philadelphia Quarry), Willie rushes to the scene of a shooting in Monroe Park. The victim turns out to be Les...
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Howard Owen. Permanent, $28 (224p) ISBN 978-1-57962-335-7
Richmond, Va., reporter Willie Black proves himself a dogged, flawed, and tarnished knight of the Fourth Estate in Owen’s strong if less accomplished sequel to 2012’s Oregon Hill, a Hammett Prize finalist. DNA evidence establishes the innocence of...
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Howard Owen, Author HarperCollins Publishers $23 (288p) ISBN 978-0-06-018654-8
In a fit of pique over a blown softball game, Walker Fann, publisher of a small North Carolina newspaper, tosses aside his cherished baseball glove, only to cry theft when he sees a black youth running away with it. The kid turns out to be Carneal...
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Howard Owen, Author . Permanent Press $26 (256p) ISBN 978-1-57962-043-1
In his sixth novel, Owen (Fat Lightning; Harry & Ruth) draws on 20 years of experience as a newspaper sports editor to fashion a touching story of fathers, sons and baseball that emphasizes the irrevocable ties of blood. Neil Beauchamp was born...
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Howard Owen, Author Permanent Press (NY) $25 (288p) ISBN 978-1-57962-066-0
Two star-crossed lovers take a wrong turn and spend the rest of their lives trying to find their way home in Owen's (The Measured Man) nostalgia-packed fifth novel. The tale begins on Long Island, where Harry Stein, who's dying of cancer, is being...
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Howard Owen, Author HarperCollins Publishers $22 (0p) ISBN 978-0-06-017312-8
Loud, hard-drinking truck driver Thomas Wayne Sweatt wants his twin sons, born in 1946, to be the strongest and smartest in North Carolina, so he and his wife name one boy Jack Dempsey (``Lucky'') Sweatt, and the other Thomas Edison Sweatt. When...
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Howard Owen, Author Permanent Press (NY) $24 (181p) ISBN 978-1-877946-41-7
Owen's first novel, 1992's Littlejohn , was a subtle, pleasant surprise. His second is equally fine, a multigenerational saga that echoes the plot of its predecessor but also resonates with imagery invoking the spiritual tradition of such Southern...
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Howard Owen, Author Vintage Books USA $15 (230p) ISBN 978-0-679-75001-7
In his intelligent, low-key first novel, Owen, sports editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch , portrays an elderly man in rural North Carolina. (Aug.)
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Howard Owen, Permanent, $28 (222p) ISBN 978-1-57962-207-7
Owen (Rock of Ages) offers parallel coming-of-age stories in this hardheaded look at two very different eras. In Richmond, Va., in 2004, 16-year-old Jake James is still dealing with his mother's recent death, his first serious love affair, and his...
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Howard Owen, Author . Permanent $26 (238p) ISBN 978-1-57962-128-5
Set in the bleak blue sandhills of North Carolina's "Scots" (read Scotland) County, Owen's atmospheric eighth novel continues the story of Littlejohn McCain's willful prodigal daughter, Georgia, a character from his acclaimed...
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Howard Owen, Author . Permanent $26 (224p) ISBN 978-1-57962-103-2
Spurred by a nighttime encounter with a mysterious old man, a faded football hero–cum–long-distance trucker risks everything to become—a fiction writer. Jack Stone of Speakeasy, Va., sells his rig so he can take the 68 pages of "
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Howard Owen. Permanent, $29.95 (254p) ISBN 978-1-57962-573-3
In Owen’s low-key eighth Willie Black mystery (after Scuffletown), a dying relative unexpectedly asks Willie, a Richmond, Va., crime reporter, to take over as caretaker of his father’s grave in Evergreen, the city’s historic African-American...
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Howard Owen. Permanent, $29.95 (242p) ISBN 978-1-57962-595-5
At the start of Owen’s well-plotted ninth Willie Black mystery (after 2019’s Evergreen), Willie, a world-weary, thrice-divorced, 58-year-old newspaper reporter in Richmond, Va., gets a call from an old buddy on Belle Isle, a park in the James River,
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Howard Owen. Permanent, $29.95 (232p) ISBN 978-1-57962-643-3
Early in Owen’s engrossing 10th Willie Black mystery (after 2020’s Belle Isle), Willie, a world-weary reporter for a struggling Richmond, Va., newspaper, jumps at the chance to write the memoirs of Stick David, an old drinking buddy, after Stick...
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Howard Owen. Permanent, $29.95 (256p) ISBN 978-1-57962-647-1
The summer of Black Lives Matter protests provides the backdrop for Owen’s exceptional 11th mystery featuring Richmond, Va., newspaper reporter Willie Black (after Jordan’s Branch). As Willie focuses on vandalism and counterprotests regarding “the...
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