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South of the Pumphouse is a 2006 novella by rock musician Les Claypool. The book can be described as a tragic tale containing themes of family, racism, drugs, and misconceptions. The book describes the San Francisco and San Pablo Bays, and the fishing areas they have to offer. The novella was published by Akashic Books and is also available on the Amazon Kindle store.
Two brothers get together for a fishing trip in memory of their recently deceased father. But while one, Ed, has left the small town of El Sobrante (the actual town where Claypool grew up) to go live in the town of Berkeley, California, the other, Earl, has stayed in the town and has become a methamphetamine addict. When Earl invites his best friend, Donny, along on a fishing trip things get heated between the left wing Ed and right wing racist Donny. When Earl mistakenly concludes that Donny has slept with his wife, he beats him to death with a boat pole. The rest of the novel is concerned with the brothers' efforts to dispose of Donny's body, a twist in the tale which explains Earl's mistake and a brief epilogue concerning the sturgeon which the three men were trying to catch during their day's fishing.
Claypool fleetingly addresses the themes of racism and urban decay in his novel.
| | This article about a 2000s novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |
Heart of Darkness is an 1899 novella by Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad in which the sailor Charles Marlow tells his listeners the story of his assignment as steamer captain for a Belgian company in the African interior. The novel is widely regarded as a critique of European colonial rule in Africa, whilst also examining the themes of power dynamics and morality. Although Conrad does not name the river on which most of the narrative takes place, at the time of writing, the Congo Free State—the location of the large and economically important Congo River—was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II. Marlow is given a text by Kurtz, an ivory trader working on a trading station far up the river, who has "gone native" and is the object of Marlow's expedition.
Leslie Edward Claypool is an American rock musician, best known as the founder, lead singer, bassist, and primary songwriter of the band Primus since its formation in 1984. Frequently considered to be one of the greatest bassists of all time, his playing style mixes tapping, flamenco-like strumming, whammy bar bends, and slapping.
Of Mice and Men is a 1937 novella written by American author John Steinbeck. It narrates the experiences of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States.
Ramsey Campbell is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. He is the author of over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them winners of literary awards. Three of his novels have been adapted into films.
Primus is an American rock band formed in El Sobrante, California in 1984. The band is currently composed of bassist/vocalist Les Claypool, guitarist Larry "Ler" LaLonde, and drummer Tim "Herb" Alexander. Primus originally formed in 1984 with Claypool and guitarist Todd Huth, later joined by drummer Jay Lane, though the latter two had departed the band by the beginning of 1989, and were replaced by LaLonde and Alexander respectively.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a novella by Gabriel García Márquez, published in 1981. It tells, in the form of a pseudo-journalistic reconstruction, the story of the murder of Santiago Nasar by the Vicario twins.
A River Runs Through It and Other Stories is a semi-autobiographical collection of three stories by American author Norman Maclean (1902–1990) published in 1976. It was the first work of fiction published by the University of Chicago Press.
Philip Purser-Hallard is a fantasy, science fiction and crime author described by the British Fantasy Society as "the best kept secret in British genre writing".
Trout Fishing in America (1967) is a novella written by Richard Brautigan. It consists of short pieces linked by recurring characters.
Tanith Lee was a British science fiction and fantasy writer. She wrote more than 90 novels and 300 short stories, and was the winner of multiple World Fantasy Society Derleth Awards, the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Horror. She also wrote a children's picture book, and many poems. She wrote two episodes of the BBC science fiction series Blake's 7 .
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is a 1977 Newbery Medal awarded novel by Mildred D. Taylor. It is a part of her Logan family series, a sequel to her 1975 novella Song of the Trees.
Maniac Magee is a novel written by American author Jerry Spinelli and published in 1990. Exploring themes of racism and inequality, it follows the story of an orphan boy looking for a home in the fictional town of Two Mills. Two Mills is harshly segregated between the East and West, blacks and whites. He becomes a local legend for feats of athleticism and helpfulness, and his ignorance of sharp racial boundaries in the town. It is popular in middle school curricula, and has been used in social studies on the premises of reaction to racial identity and reading. A TV movie was released on February 23, 2003.
The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 is a historical-fiction novel by Christopher Paul Curtis. First published in 1995 by Delacorte Press, it was reprinted in 1997. It tells the story of the Watsons, a lower middle class African-American family living in Flint, Michigan in the early 1960s from the perspective of Kenny Watson, the middle child of three. The first part of the novel focuses on Kenny's struggles to make friends as a smart and thoughtful ten-year-old, then shifts in setting when his parents decide to deliver their oldest son, Byron, to live with his grandmother in Birmingham, Alabama. The family embarks on a road trip to the Deep South, and while visiting Alabama, they get caught up in a tragic historical event of the Civil Rights Movement.
Steven Millhauser is an American novelist and short story writer. He won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel Martin Dressler.
Robert Maxwell Hood is an Australian writer and editor recognised as one of Australia's leading horror writers, although his work frequently crosses genre boundaries into science fiction, fantasy and crime.
Colin Channer is a Jamaican writer, often referred to as "Bob Marley with a pen," due to the spiritual, sensual, social themes presented from a literary Jamaican perspective. His first two full-length novels, Waiting in Vain and Satisfy My Soul, bear the titles of well known Marley songs. He has also written the short story collection Passing Through, and the novellas I'm Still Waiting and The Girl with the Golden Shoes. Channer's poetry collection Console was included in The New Yorker's The Best Books of 2023.
James Brown is an American novelist who has also written short fiction and nonfiction.
Shira Nayman is a South African, Australian and American novelist, short story writer and clinical psychologist. She is best known for her collection Awake in the Dark, published in 2006.
The Book of the Damned is a 1988 fantasy/horror novel by World Fantasy Award winner Tanith Lee. Set in Paradys, an alternative version of Paris, it takes place in three novellas set in different periods in the city's dark history.
Summer Brenner is a writer and an activist. Brenner's works include short stories, novellas, noir crime, social justice youth novels, poetry, and a memoir.