UNITED STATES AUTHOR · FICTION · MARINE BIOLOGISTS
Randy Wayne White
RAWLISTON SPRAWLS; from space it's a grubby smudge, staining the glassy clarity of the atmosphere along fifty kilometers of coastline.
— from Dark light, 2008
Most acclaimed
Seduced
Derek Harper is an r&b junkie whose desire since childhood has been to be a successful songwriter in the tradition of his idol, Curtis Mayfield. Indeed, music frees Derek from the protective cocoon that his enigmatic father, an undertaker, and his devout mother created for him in their black middle-class Queens neighborhood. Derek's ambitions take him away from the comfortable predictability of his life to a tiny Times Square apartment in Manhattan. There he encounters the guts of the music industry in the 1980s: frustrated gospel singers, nefarious record producers, captivating vocal divas, the cultural stripmining of jingle writing, rebellious rap groups, and record company executives in Atlanta, L.A., and New York. The seduction of women, music, and flash take Derek around the country, with only his parents to act as his conscience: his mother admonishes against his irresponsible lifestyle. Yet it is his father's attitude that is more troubling to Derek. In the wake of their neighborhood's steady deterioration, his bitter pragmatism shocks Derek into maturity. His odyssey comes full circle, when Derek gets what he thought he wanted from life - and maybe even more. Using his own lyrics, songs of the times, and colorful anecdotes, George shows us how the threads of love - both romantic and familial - weave into the work of an artist and into building a young black man's life.
Dark light
2008
A Category Four hurricane has swept the west coast of Florida, creating havoc, changing lives, and reshaping the ocean bottom. Well-known reefs and wrecks have been covered up-and new ones have emerged. The old woman who visits Doc Ford's lab late one night has a haunting story, of a loved one lost while rendezvousing with a German submarine off the coast of Florida sixty years earlier, of her belief that he was being blackmailed and that the storm has given her a second chance to prove his innocence by uncovering the wreck of his boat-and the truth-if only Ford would look for it. Intrigued, Ford agrees, and sets in motion a chain of events that will change his life forever. For there are other things in that wreck as well, and other men want those things, men willing to commit terrible acts to get them. And the woman herself-the woman is not what she seems...Rich with passion and vivid, pungent prose, and some of the best characters found in suspense fiction today, Dark Light is a thriller of uncommon intensity.
Dead of night
For years UN peacekeepers have been deployed to war-torn regions of the world, now it's America's turn. A crippling terrorist attack has left the United States cities deserted, it's countryside set ablaze and the government shaken to its knees. Then in the aftermath of the attack civil war has broken out, that is until the UN arrives to restore peace. Sam Simpson is a young idealistic journalist from Canada who is looking for some adventure. So he volunteers to become a record-keeper for a UN war-crimes investigation team at work in upper New York State. While Sam and his team are travelling through the New York countryside, they are searching for evidence of war atrocities, they soon learn that death can strike from any farmhouse, road corner or rest area. But even more chilling than that is when he begins to suspect that there is a traitor in their group, who is trying not only to conceal evidence of this war crime but who is willing to kill them all to do it...