Books by "James Carlos Blake"
10 books found
"Jurassic Park meets Jungle Cruise in this rollicking adventure!" Rick Chesler, author of Golden One A legendary creature guards a lost city of wonders. When a satellite photograph reveals the location of a legendary lost city deep in the Congo River basin, journalist Mackenzie Moore knows it is only a matter of time before its secrets are revealed to the world. In order to get there first, she needs someone capable and crazy enough to take her there. Treasure hunter and former Navy SEAL Bones Bonebrake loves adventure and hates boredom. But an expedition into one of the worlds most dangerous and remote locations might turn out to be more than he bargained for. Somewhere in the depths of the Dark Continent lies Mbanza Mpimpá, the City of Night. But this seemingly abandoned city does not surrender its secrets easily, and intruders are not welcome in the Lost City! Classic adventure for the modern reader! Fans of Indiana Jones, Dirk Pitt, and National Treasure will love the Bones Bonebrake Adventures! Praise for David Wood "Jurassic Park meets Jungle Cruise in this rollicking adventure!" Rick Chesler, author of Golden One "Contest is an adrenaline-fueled thrill ride!" Alan Baxter, author of Hidden City "David Wood has done it again. Within seconds of opening the book, I was hooked. Intrigue, suspense, monsters, and treasure hunters. What more could you want? David's knocked it out of the park with this one!" Nick Thacker- author of The Enigma Strain "Dane and Bones.... Together they're unstoppable. Rip roaring action from start to finish. Wit and humor throughout. Just one question - how soon until the next one? Because I can't wait." Graham Brown, author of Shadows of the Midnight Sun "What an adventure! A great read that provides lots of action, and thoughtful insight as well, into strange realms that are sometimes best left unexplored." Paul Kemprecos, author of Cool Blue Tomb and the NUMA Files "A page-turning yarn blending high action, Biblical speculation, ancient secrets, and nasty creatures. Indiana Jones better watch his back!" Jeremy Robinson, author of SecondWorld "With the thoroughly enjoyable way Mr. Wood has mixed speculative history with our modern day pursuit of truth, he has created a story that thrills and makes one think beyond the boundaries of mere fiction and enter the world of 'why not'?" -David Lynn Golemon, Author of the Event Group series "A twisty tale of adventure and intrigue that never lets up and never lets go!" -Robert Masello, author of The Einstein Prophecy "Let there be no confusion: David Wood is the next Clive Cussler. Once you start reading, you won't be able to stop until the last mystery plays out in the final line."-Edward G. Talbot, author of 2012: The Fifth World "I like my thrillers with lots of explosions, global locations and a mystery where I learn something new. Wood delivers! Recommended as a fast paced, kick ass read."-J.F. Penn, author of Ark of Blood
A page-turning epic about the making of a borderland crime family, Country of the Bad Wolfes will appeal both to aficionados of family sagas and to fans of hard-knuckled crime novels by the likes of Donald Pollack, Elmore Leonard, James Lee Burke and James Ellroy. Basing the novel partly on his own ancestors, Blake presents the story of the Wolfe family - spanning three generations, centring on two sets of identical twins and the women they love, and ranging from New England to the heart of Mexico before arriving at its powerful climax at the Rio Grande. Begat by an Irish-English pirate in New Hampshire in 1828, the Wolfe family follows its manifest destiny into war-torn Mexico. There, through the connection of a mysterious American named Edward Little, their fortunes intertwine with those of Porfirio Díaz, who will rule the country for more than thirty years before his overthrow by the Revolution of 1910. In the course of those tumultuous chapters in American and Mexican history, as Díaz grows in power, the Wolfes grow rich and forge a violent history of their own, spawning a fearsome legacy that will pursue them to a climactic reckoning at the Río Grande.
The award-winning author's "hard-edged, fast-moving thriller" about love, crime, family, and loyalty set around the borderlands of Texas and Mexico ( Booklist, starred review). On a rainy winter night in Mexico City, a ten-member wedding party is kidnapped in front of the groom's family mansion. The perpetrator is a small-time gangster named El Galán, who wants nothing more than to make his crew part of a major cartel. He hopes that this crime will be his big break. Setting the wedding party's ransom at five million US dollars, he demands to be paid in cash within twenty-four hours. The only captive not related to either the bride or the groom is the young Jessica Juliet Wolfe, a close friend of the bride. Jessie also hails from a family of notorious outlaws that has branches on both sides of the border, and when the Wolfes learn of Jessie's abduction, El Galán suddenly finds himself in over his head. "This fast-paced, well-plotted thriller" from the Los Angeles Times Book Prize –winning author of In the Rogue Blood "reads like a mix of Cormac McCarthy and Elmore Leonard" ( Library Journal). "[ The House of Wolfe] keeps the reader engaged as the action rushes toward a surprising and fully satisfying conclusion" — Publishers Weekly, starred review "A pungent and exhilarating read. " — Financial Times
A "gritty, raw, bare-knuckled" collection of stories set along the US-Mexico border from the LA Times Book Prize–winning author of In the Rogue Blood ( Publishers Weekly). In this extraordinary collection of short fiction, James Carlos Blake, "one of the greatest chroniclers of the mythical American outlaw life" and author of the Wolfe Family series of border noir novels, journeys from the nineteenth-century Mexican frontier to the borderlands of today ( Entertainment Weekly). Borderlands begins with Blake's personal essay, "The Outsiders," which recounts his own straddling of worlds and identities. In the following eight stories, we meet characters like Don Sebastián Cabrillo Mayor Cortés y Mendoza, a powerful landowner reduced to howling at the moon from behind the bars of a mental institution; an illegal immigrant in Florida who must reckon with his emotional turmoil after being robbed by a fellow Mexican; a Texas woman orphaned by disease and desertion, making her way into a violent world of men; and many more who pass through the shadows of the borderlands. Bold, honest, and humane, these pieces represent some of the best writing from one of the most original and authentic voices in contemporary fiction. "Blake writes with a fearless precision and a ruthless sensibility, his prose is spare and tough, and his descriptions detailed and cinematic. This is gritty, raw, bare-knuckled fiction, blazing with an extraordinary kind of violence, and certainly not for the faint of heart." — Publishers Weekly
“Heart-pounding and heartfelt, Fine Line is a perfectly paced romantic suspense that captivates.” ~LITERAL ADDICTION With a new wife and a successful career as the co-owner of Phantom Force Tactical, retired U.S. Navy SEAL and former homicide detective Blake Madison thinks he has it all. But when his wife disappears from their bed while he’s taking a morning jog, Blake has to figure out if it’s someone from her past as an investigative journalist, or his as a combat veteran and police officer. Fortunately, Blake has a team of the nation’s best warriors at hand to assist in solving the crime. With the help of his partner, Nick “Colt” Colten, they set out to take down the mastermind behind the heinous plot—a violent adversary who is hell-bent on retaliation and vengeance. Despite the stakes stacked against them, the men of Phantom Force Tactical are willing to risk everything to bring Caitlin back alive and rid the world of this powerful and formidable foe. But will it be enough, or will this enemy, with his vast influence and powerful connections, be one they can’t defeat?
"A superb and engrossing novel... Blake [is] one of the best and most original writers in America today." -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel James Carlos Blake is a masterful chronicler of the restless, outcast, the lawless, and the lonelyheart. With Red Grass River, he has written a powerful and rousing historical saga of family loyalties, blood feuds, and betrayed friendships; of bank robberies and bootlegging; and of a passionate love as wild at heart as the Everglades. It is the story of sworn enemies: John Ashley, a criminal and folk hero, the brightest star in a family destined to become the most notorious in south Florida; and Bobby Baker, a lawman born of lawmen, a violent, hard-hearted man driven by the searing memory of past affronts and the enduring hatreds the engendered. Ashley and Maker will clash many times over many decades. And as the twentieth century encroaches on their world—and the wildlands give grudging way to the rising boomtown of Miami—a feral, sensual mating will place one man in gravest peril...while his adversary contrives a dark, personal vengeance that could leave countless lives—his own included—in ruin.
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, In the Rogue Blood is "powerful . . . impressive . . . [an] epic of the 1840s frontier" ( Dallas Morning News). With soaring and masterful prose, James Carlos Blake brings to life an enthralling historical time and place—and a cast of memorable characters—in a stunning tale of dark instinct, blood reckoning, and fates forged in the zeal of America's "Manifest Destiny." The offspring of a whore mother and a homicidal father, Edward and John Little are driven from their home in the Florida swamplands by a scheming parent's treacheries, and by a shameful, horrific act that will haunt their dreams for the rest of their days. Joining the swelling ranks of the rootless—wandering across an almost surreal bloodland populated by the sorrowfully lost and defiantly damned—two brothers are separated by death and circumstance in the lawless "Dixie City" of New Orleans, and dispatched by destiny to opposing sides in a fierce and desperate territorial struggled between Mexico and the United States. And a family bond tempered in hot blood is tested in the cruel, all-consuming fires of war and conscience.
James Rudolph Youngblood, aka Jimmy the Kid, is an enforcer, a "ghost rider" for the Maceo brothers, Rosario and Sam, rulers of "the Free State of Galveston," who are prospering through illicit pleasures in the midst of the Great Depression. Raised on an isolated West Texas ranch that he was forced to flee at age eighteen following the violent breakup of his foster family, Jimmy has found a home and a profession in Galveston -- and a mentor in Rose Maceo. Looming over Jimmy's story like an ancient curse is the specter of his fearsome father. Their ties of blood, evident since Jimmy's boyhood, have been drawn tighter over time. Then a strange and beautiful girl enters his life and a swift and terrifying sequence of events is set in motion. Jimmy must cross the border and go deep into the brutal and merciless country of his ancestors -- where the story's harrowing climax closes a circle of destiny many years in the making.
Harry Pierpont and John Dillinger were die-hard and deadly partners who made national headlines with their daring bank hold-ups and gun battles -- and they had a lot of laughs while they were at it. They were known as the Dillinger Gang but at its heart was "Handsome Harry" Pierpont -- tough, fearless, intelligent, and sworn to live by no law but his own. Presented as his intimate "confessions," Harry's story takes us from his teenage days as a small-time crook to his fateful meeting with the equally young Dillinger to the pinnacle of his notoriety, and to his final hours in the penitentiary death house. Crafted in James Carlos Blake's signature style of fast-paced violence, sizzling sex, and darkly raucous humor, Handsome Harry re-creates a thrilling chapter from the chronicles of American crime.
From the raw clay of historical fact, James Carlos Blake has sculpted a powerful novel of both a man and an America at war with themselves. Here is the brutally honest story of free-spirit William Anderson, who is pulled into a savage conflict of state against state in the years leading up to the Civil War. When Bill suffers a catastrophic loss, a fury is unleashed in his anguished soul. He becomes the most fearsome guerrilla captain and earns a name that becomes whispered with reverence and terror: "Bloody Bill."