Fiction

THE BRISTOL WARRIOR JOB (2008)
A novel of World War II.  The year is 1942.  From the beginning it has been nothing but bad news for America.  Half the Pacific fleet lies at the bottom of Pearl Harbor.  German submarines are patrolling the North Atlantic, popping off ships.  The old, tattered Allied fleet has to be repaired.  Only rivet gangs can do it and they are a tough, fiercely independent, hard-drinking bunch difficult to handle.  When the British freighter Bristol Warrior limps into the Tebo shipyard in Brooklyn, they have only four days to complete repairs.  It’s a frenzied, electric time. The waterfront is bursting with shipyard workers, hustlers, fakers trying to avoid the draft, girls mad for gold braid, and sailors preparing themselves to face possible death.  Nobody is certain that the war will have a good ending.

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THE LEAGUE OF THE LESS LUCKY (2006)
A novel about an astonishing conspiracy of the disabled, full of twists and surprises, dire threats and locked doors, cozy macaroni dinners and Champagne toasts spiked with menace.  No flags of fake good cheer are flown.  The characters remain true to themselves, coping with their losses, celebrating their victories and trying, like everybody else, to find their place in the world.

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DEMONS TO DOUGHNUTS (2005)
Two novellas as different as a cold December moon and strawberry pudding.  The first, The Tiptop Jelly Doughnut, is set in a land run quite well by babies.  Designed for readers eight to 108, the story is all warm sunshine and good eats.  The second novella, The Lucifer Gypsies, is a dark chiller set in nineteenth-century New England and written in the style of that period.  It’s the tale of a casket-maker who commits a grievous error: he insults a band of gypsies.  Unfortunately, these particular gypsies are darlings of the devil.

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THE FAMILY OVERHEAD (2004)
A novel about three orphaned children during the Great Depression and their Brooklyn neighbors, including the rogues and the nitwits, all of them struggling in one way or another for food and rent, for love and fun, for everything that keeps life going. It’s a time when rumrunners wear diamonds as big as knuckles, grocers stack IOU’s like cans of tomato soup, even cops have their favorite speakeasies, and through it all, radio and the talkies entrance the nation.

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TIPPY LOCKLIN (1960)
A warm and funny novel about the first eight years in the life of a boy born in Brooklyn in 1920.  A bit surprised to learn that he is not the center of the universe, Tippy is not unduly dismayed because there are so many fascinating characters around to observe and puzzle over  - like the mysterious and charming  professional gambler, Prince Sharkey,  and the indomitable Mr. Duffy, father of many (including a nun-biter), who advises little Tippy to quit horsing around and settle down and make some nice girl happy.

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THE TENEMENT OF DREAMS (1956)
A novel of 1915 set in New York City.  A young penniless musician is taunted by a ravishing deaf-mute beauty who lives above him with her elderly husband in a seedy yellow brick tenement.  Linking the worlds of musicians and poets, tenements and mansions, is an aged rag doll of a woman, a miserly millionairess, who owns the yellow tenement and personally collects the rents.  Suddenly she vanishes.  To find her, a chain of events is set in place that alters profoundly her own life and the lives of the tenement dwellers. 

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THROUGH MIDNIGHT STREETS  (1954)
Joseph William Meagher’s debut novel is set in the shadows of the Brooklyn waterfront.  Two men – one happy-go-lucky, the other sunk in despair - cross paths with the midnight crowd – the hustlers, hangers-on, street fighters, beached sailors and minor-league crooks.  Both men find a refuge of sorts at the faded Hotel Rochambeau. Unfortunately, the proprietor of the hotel  happens to be an expert at draining the life – and money - out of the poor souls who get caught in his net.

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BROKEN YESTERDAYS (2003)
A candid and often highly amusing memoir that also presents a picture of the very beginnings of rehabilitative therapy.  At the age of four Joe Meagher contracted polio.  After a barbaric (and fruitless) treatment to straighten his crooked spine, he returned home to the warm shelter of a loving family.  Little by little the cold eye of the outside world made clear to him how different he was. At the age of nine he was sent away to Port Jefferson, Long Island to spend the next four years at a hospital/school for crippled children.  Though many there were severely disabled, they had the same unquenchable zest for life as any other kids, and with great innocence and gusto set about the business of being kids in the best way they could.

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LIES ARE THE DEVIL'S CANDY or Never Hang Out at the Plaza (2008)
Lee Meagher worked in New York publishing for seven years. As she sat at home one evening editing a young man's first novel already under contract to a large publisher, she kept muttering to herself, "Oh, I can do better than this - I can do better than this..." Finally her husband, the novelist Joseph William Meagher, doubtless tiring of the moaning and muttering, looked up and said, "Well, Lee, I guess we'll never know what you can do unless you try." That must have been the right push. The result is this entertaining novel that takes no prisoners.

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