Bøger af Edward Eriksson

In Flamingo Desires Laureen Metcalf, an African American journalist, uncovers a seventeen-million-dollar scandal in the politics of suburbia. Then one of the guilty politicians, Tom Flynn, is found dead in his office. Laureen stands to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, but she needs to find out if Flynn's death was a suicide or something else. Her secret informer, the suave political leader Frank Van Dam, once her boyfriend in high school, might have been using her to get at Flynn. Or maybe he'd just been trying to win her back. The man is a player, who crosses racial lines with ease, and is now having an affair with the beautiful Rochelle Davis, President of the Council on Racial Matters. It appears that this woman may have wanted to have Flynn murdered for hiding the money that should have come to her and Van Dam! Along the way, two more deaths pose serious questions; and now Laureen must try hard to maintain her sanity in a world spinning out of control on the force of illicit desire--something she herself is not immune to. Her only consolation comes in the person of Sonny Anzalone, a whimsical gay acting teacher, who thinks he can help solve her problem. Fascinating characters carry the plot of this mystery, written with a touch of satire, humor, and subtle psychology.

Dancing to Mozart is a satire of Hollywood values and fantasies, Latin American dictatorships, Da Vinci Code conspirators, movie violence, magical realism, televangelists, mixed wrestling, extreme cosmetic surgery, and a host of other sensational idiocies that thrive on 21st century self-delusion. This whimsical contemporary "Candide" offers a trip through the world of out-of-control egos to a final revelation of ordinary common sense. The send-up is a mix of shrewd perception, lampoon, and wacko action that includes the Society of the Crystal Skull, the Opus Dopus, a female wrestling Amazon with one breast, an Arab who wants to recruit Islamic converts like an American billboard evangelist, two energetic film directors with crazy ideas, a rescue from captivity through "mind-invasion" (á la Inception) and a Hindu swami who tries to set all straight with a Bhagavad burrito. And a lot more.

An adventure story for children of all ages. It takes the hero and heroine on trips to the moon and elsewhere as it introduces the scheme of days and months in the year. Other interesting characters appear as the story unfolds. Colorful illustrations liven the tale.

The culture is out of control, everyone knows it, and Dancing to Mozart is an imaginative satire that will appeal to readers who sense that the best way to deal with the situation is to have a good laugh at its expense. Personal relationships, silly behavior, Hollywood movies, extremes in politics and religion-eccentric characters and other wacky stuff offer the reader a good deal of amusement in colorful worldwide settings that include Europe, Africa, Asia, and New York City. Of course, there is a plot to the story, and it carries the reader along to the final and sensible ending, where all is resolved and the characters come to a common sense view of themselves and the world around them.

REALITY SLOWS ME DOWN offers a wide variety of audition pieces for professional actors, as well as high school and college students and actors performing in community theaters. The contents have a broad range of choices in age, emotional tones, and personality characterizations that will suit any actor's need and inclination. These include attitudes of irony, desperation, bewilderment, suffering, anger, and exhilaration. Further, five dialogues are given for practice with friends and actors to be used for fun and practice. As well, the various speeches may be used as presentation pieces before a studio audience.

Here is a sports-mystery novel about the Negro League, taking place in 1946 and narrated by the main character, Carl "Moonbeam" Slyder, second baseman for the fictional Jersey City Bluebirds. The good-natured, thoughtful Moonbeam gets involved in solving the murder of another, younger player, handsome, mysterious Buster Fenton, with a future in the Major Leagues. Buster, however, has gotten involved with a white woman, whose husband, as it turns out, has has him killed near Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, Moonbeam links up with Buster's African-American fiancée, Jamesetta Kelly, who helps him solve the crime. The novel reviews racial attitudes of the 1940s as the Major Leagues are about to be integrated. It introduces real characters, such as Satchel Paige, Adam Clayton Powell, Bumpy Johnson, Hank Thompson, and others. Comedy and baseball action mix with the serious theme of lost talent in a world that failed to appreciate the black ball player--symbolic of the racial situation in general.