Bøger af Joe Clifford

A story of recovery and redemption."A voice filled with sincerity, salvation, and splendor. A voice as stark, unforgiving, and mesmerizing as blood backing into the needle." J.A. Kazimer, The Ampersand ReviewFrom the cow fields of Connecticut to the streets of San Francisco, Joe Clifford's Junkie Love traverses the lost highways of America, down the rocky roads of mental illness to the dead ends of addiction. Based on Clifford's own harrowing experience with drugs as a rock 'n' roll wannabe in the 1990s, the book draws on the best of Kerouac & the Beats, injecting a heavy dose of pulp fiction as it threads a rollicking narrative through a doomed love triangle, lit up by the many strange characters he meets along the way. Part road story, part resurrection tale, Junkie Love finds a way to laugh in one's darkest hour, while never abandoning its heart in search of a home.Junkie Love by Joe Clifford is an original ride through the down-and-dirty underside of the drug and music scene, inspired and propelled by Jack Kerouac's youthful dreams of an American nirvana, translated to a later, darker generation. Clifford is its passionate spokesman.Buy now and get a free Kindle book with paperback via Kindle Matchbook!Praise for Junkie Love"Joe Clifford's Junkie Love portrays high-heeled heroin amour, beautiful and vicious, full of front seat hot sex and brutal cop raids, secret rehab gropes and smack-fueled crime sprees. In prose that speeds like a stolen car, Clifford does for opiated romance what Michael Herr did for war and F.X. Toole for prize fights: brings mind-blowing news from hells beyond imagining." - Alan Kaufman, author of Jew Boy and The Outlaw Bible of American Literature"No one writes this good the first time out, do they? Joe Clifford's Junkie Love is a literary achievement of the first order. Junkie Love is both harrowing and haunting, hypnotic and hilarious. Clifford can flat-out tell a story. He's savvy, insightful, and fearless. Trust me, here's a world that's more vivid, unnerving, and compelling than the one you're living in, written with the exhilaration and abandon of an improbable survivor." - John Dufresne, author of Requiem, Mass (a People magazine's Book Pick of the Week)"Joe Clifford reminds us that even in the most punishing circumstances, the human heart doesn't just struggle or abide, it points the way home. Junkie Love is a savage, funny, ravishing gift of a book, strangely gentle and beautifully strange. Like Jimmy Santiago Baca's A Place to Stand, it reveals that man in extremis is the man in the mirror, and that our own humanity resides precisely in the willingness to see the irreparable fault lines in our own souls, to witness despite the impenetrable darkness: to love." - David Corbett, author of Blood of Paradise and Do They Know I'm Running?

Like some born killers, this pairing of crime stories and the songs of Bruce Springsteen is a natural one. Each of the accomplished authors in this unique anthology chose a Springsteen title as a starting point, and in the criminally inclined spirit of the Boss, drove headlong to wherever that inspiration called. The destinations are as wildly diverse and far-reaching as the songs that influenced them. Some arrive at hope and redemption; others end up smoking in a ditch. One thing's for sure: you sign up for this ride, and Trouble in the Heartland will transport you somewhere unforgettable. Lynne Barrett (Dancing in the Dark) Eric Beetner (Up All Night) Richard Brewer (Last to Die) Jamez Chang (This Little Light of Mine) Jen Conley (Hard to Be a Saint in the City) Mike Creeden (Something in the Night) Lincoln Crisler (Born to Run) Hilary Davidson (Hungry Heart) Chris DeWildt (Glory Days) Les Edgerton (The Iceman) Peter Farris (What Love Can Do) Paul J. Garth (Nebraska) Jordan Harper (Prove It All Night) Chris F Holm (Mansion on the Hill) Chris Irvin (Death to My Hometown) David James Keaton (The Ghost of Tom Joad) Isaac Kirkman (Streets of Fire) Chris Leek (Candy's Room) Dennis Lehane (State Trooper) Benoit LeLievre (Atlantic City) Ezra Letra (Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street) John McFetridge (Spare Parts) Lela Scott Macneil (Darkness on the Edge of Town) Court Merrigan (The Promised Land) Brian Panowich (Wreck on the Highway) Rob Pierce (Rosalita) Tom Pitts (Local Hero) Keith Rawson (My Best Was Never Good Enough) Chuck Regan (Radio Nowhere) Chris Rhatigan (Wrecking Ball) Todd Robinson (We Take Care Of Our Own) Ryan Sayles (Highway Patrolman) Gareth Spark (Straight Time) Richard Thomas (Because the Night) James Tuck (I'm on Fire) Steve Weddle (Meeting Across the River) Chuck Wendig (Queens of the Supermarket) Dyer Wilk (Dry Lightning)

Former top-flight prospect Oz Reyes heads security for Coastal Sports Network in Los Angeles. On the eve of the annual awards show, his boss Delma Dupree summons him to Miami. Since tearing his ACL in a bar fight eighteen years ago, Oz rarely returns to the city where he blew his NFL chances and lost the love of his life, Tania. At Delma's waterfront mansion, Oz encounters a chaotic scene with police and emergency vehicles. Delma's oldest son, Jackson, navigates the aftermath. There are three Dupree children: Jackson, Janelle, and Rodney, an adopted screw-up currently serving life in prison for the rape and murder of Janelle's daughter, Juniper. Jackson explains his mother has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and was picked up by police wandering during the night. At first Delma seems fine to Oz, but when she asks Oz to look into Rodney's seemingly airtight conviction, her symptoms begin to show. Despite Oz's polite refusal, Delma insists he store a file, which she swears contains the truth of who really committed the crime.Once Oz comes in possession of that file, an open and shut case suddenly seems less so, as forces seen and unseen conspire to take Oz down. Fired from his job and attacked in his home, Oz dives headlong into South Florida's glitzy and glamorous underbelly, reopening a case the rich and powerful would prefer stay closed. With the help of Tania and her ex-convict brother, Angel, Oz uncovers a Miami rarely seen, one crawling with shifty detectives, rogue assassins, and hard-drinking, sexual deviants-and no one and nothing is what it seems.In the vein of modern mystery/pop culture writers such as Michael Connelly (Bosch novels), Gillian Flynn (Dark Places), and Dennis Lehane (Gone, Baby, Gone), Joe Clifford's Occam's Razor is a fast-paced, intricately plotted novel that balances accessible prose, masterful suspense, and a twisted, cinematic climax.

Starting in the Humboldt wilds and ending on the Skid Row of Los Angeles, Skunk Train follows two teenagers, Kyle and Lizzie, who stumble upon stolen drug money and set off to find Kyle's father, a Hollywood director he's never met, with drug dealers, dirty cops, and the Mexican mob on their heels.Kyle Gill, fifteen, lives with his older cousin, Deke, in the backwater Northern California town of Dormundt. Kyle has been cutting class for the past three weeks. When Kyle returns home one afternoon, he discovers Deke and his business partner, Jimmy, are holding one hundred pounds of marijuana, which they discovered abandoned at their dealer's house. Knowing people will soon come looking for the dope, Deke and Jimmy set up a quick deal at the Skunk Train Inn, a skeezy roadside motel, but the buyers turn out to be dirty cops. In the ensuing melee, Deke is killed, Jimmy escapes, and the dirty cops flee. Kyle takes off in Jimmy's truck with the money that was transferred before the shootout.On a mission to find his father, Kyle heads to San Francisco, where he meets Lizzie Decker, a wealthy high school senior, whose father has just been arrested for embezzlement. Together, Kyle and Lizzie join forces, but are soon pursued by Jimmy, the two dirty cops, and the Mexican cartel, as a third detective closes in, attempting to tie loose threads and solve the Skunk Train murders.Drawing on novels featuring teenage protagonists such as Rule of the Bone and Catcher in the Rye, Skunk Train is a modern-day love story set against the backdrop of the NorCal marijuana trade. Like No Country for Old Men, the book is steeped in the colloquial. It is a fast-paced thriller, which tests the bonds of family and shows the lengths desperate people will go to keep a secret and protects the ones they love.

In the early 2000s, a string of abductions rocked the small upstate town of Reine, New York. Only one girl survived: Alex Salerno. The killer, Ken Parsons, was sent away. Life returned to normal. No more girls would have to die. Until another one did.It's been seven years since Kira Shanks was reported missing and presumed dead. Alex Salerno has been living in New York City, piecemealing paychecks to earn a livable wage, trying to forget those three days locked underground and her affair with Sean Riley, the married detective who rescued her. When Noah Lee, hometown reporter with a journalistic pedigree, requests an interview, Alex returns to Reine and Riley, reopening old wounds. What begins as a Q&A for a newspaper article soon turns into an opportunity for money, closure and-justice. The disappearance of Kira Shanks has long been hung on Benny Brudzienski, a hulking man-child who is currently a brain-addled guest at the Galloway State Mental Hospital. But after Alex reconnects with ex-classmates and frenemies, doubts are cast on that guilt. Alex is drawn into a dangerous game of show and tell in an insular town where everyone has a secret to hide. And as more details emerge about the night Kira Shanks went missing, Alex discovers there are some willing to kill to protect the horrific truth.In the modern vein of Dark Places and Mystic River, The One That Got Away is a dark, psychological thriller featuring a compelling, conflicted heroine and a page-turning narrative that races toward its final, shocking conclusion.Praise for THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY:"A great book! I devoured it. Taut, pacey and with a powerful sense of place, Joe Clifford's The One Got Away is an intelligent and astutely observed piece of American small town noir." -Paula Hawkins, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train and Into the Water"Joe Clifford is a gifted storyteller with a knack for crafting characters who are entirely human. The One That Got Away is dark and unforgiving, a chilling crime novel with the perfect touch of tenderness that will keep readers turning the pages with haste. This is one book you won't be able to put down. -Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Girl and Every Last Lie"The mystery of The One That Got Away sucked me in, but it was the emotional punch of Alex Salerno's return home that broke my heart. With its sharply observed characters and setting and crime-thriller pace, its tough exterior belies a vast, unexpected tenderness. I cannot not quit thinking about this book." -Emily Carpenter, author of Burying the Honeysuckle Girls and The Weight of Lies"It's not often that I read a top-notch thriller with layers of emotion buried within each page. On the surface, Joe Clifford's story of a young woman who survived a kidnapping and returns to her hometown to investigate a seemingly similar disappearance is compulsively readable, but when you dig a little deeper, you discover there's so much more to unpack. The On That Got Away is by far Clifford's best and most fully realized novel to date, and might well be the most rewarding thriller I've read this year." -Jennifer Hillier, author of Jar of Hearts

2018 Anthony Award Nominee The American Dream is great as long as you don't wake up.Three years have passed since estate-clearing handyman Jay Porter almost lost his life following a devastating accident on the thin ice of Echo Lake. His investigative work uncovering a kids-for-cash scandal may have made his hometown of Ashton, New Hampshire, a safer place, but nothing comes without a price. The traumatic, uncredited events cost Jay his wife and his son, and left him with a permanent leg injury. Jay is just putting his life back together when a mysterious stranger stops by with an offer too good to be true: a large sum of cash in exchange for finding a missing teenage boy who may have been abducted by a radical recovery group in the northern New Hampshire wilds. Skeptical of gift horses and weary of reenlisting in the local drug war, Jay passes on the offer. The next day his boss is found beaten and left for dead, painting Jay the main suspect. As clues begin to tie the two cases together, Jay finds himself back on the job and back in the line of fire.

Joe Clifford didn't start drinking beer until he was almost twenty years old. By the time he turned twenty-two, he was addicted to methamphetamine; and the heroin wasn't far behind. Soon he'd lose his wife, his job, his home.Junkie Love follows the roughly ten years Clifford spent wandering the streets of San Francisco and beyond, first as a wannabe rock star, and then as another homeless junkie with his head lost in the stars.In between are the harrowing events and close calls, the shady characters and the enduring friendships, the redemption and restitution that led Fix Magazine to call Junkie Love "one of top four recovery memoirs" of all time.