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Lou Berney

Biography

Lou Berney

Lou Berney is the multiple award-winning author of DARK RIDE, NOVEMBER ROAD and THE LONG AND FARAWAY GONE, as well as GUTSHOT STRAIGHT, WHIPLASH RIVER and DOUBLE BARREL BLUFF. His short fiction has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He lives in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and teaches in the MFA program at Oklahoma City University.

Books by Lou Berney

by Lou Berney - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

During his years as a wheelman for the Armenian mob in Los Angeles, Shake Bouchon didn’t think of himself as the settling-down type. But now he’s happily married to Gina, the love of his life --- and former adversary --- in Indiana, of all places. The great thing about Bloomington, for two people with checkered pasts, is that everyone is nice and no one knows them. Until the day a brutal Armenian thug shows up in his backyard. He demands that Shake help him find his missing mob boss, Alexandra “Lexy” Ilandryan, who also happens to be Shake’s ex-girlfriend. Shake reluctantly agrees to travel to Siem Reap, Cambodia, where Lexy was last seen. Once there, he finds himself tangled in an underworld of Cambodian gangsters, mob politics and opportunistic expats, where the stakes aren’t clear and everyone is looking to score.

by Lou Berney - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Twenty-one-year-old Hardy “Hardly” Reed, a minimum-wage scare actor at an amusement park, notices two children sitting all alone on a bench. He checks if they’re okay and sees injuries on both of them, so he reports the incident to Child Protective Services. But the more research he does, the less he trusts that they will do anything about it. Gradually, Hardly develops investigative skills and discovers he’s smarter and more capable than he ever imagined. But he also discovers that the situation is more dangerous than he ever expected. The abusive father who has been hurting these children isn’t just a lawyer --- he also runs a violent drug-dealing operation. The mother claims she wants to escape with the kids, but Hardly isn't sure he can trust her.

by Lou Berney - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

A loyal street lieutenant to New Orleans’ mob boss, Carlos Marcello, Frank Guidry knows too much about the crime of the century: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Within hours of JFK’s murder, everyone with ties to Marcello is turning up dead, and Guidry suspects he’s next. With few good options, Guidry hits the road to Las Vegas, to see an old associate --- a dangerous man who hates Marcello enough to help Guidry vanish. When Guidry sees a beautiful housewife on the side of the road with a broken-down car, two little daughters and a dog in the back seat, he sees the perfect disguise to cover his tracks from the hit men on his tail.

by Lou Berney - Fiction, Mystery

In the summer of 1986, six movie-theater employees were killed in an armed robbery, while one inexplicably survived. Then, a teenage girl vanished from the annual State Fair. Twenty-five years later, the reverberations of those unsolved cases quietly echo through the survivors’ lives. A private investigator in Vegas, Wyatt’s latest inquiry takes him back to a past he’s tried to escape. Similarly, Julianna struggles with the past --- with the day her beautiful older sister Genevieve disappeared. When Julianna discovers that one of the original suspects has resurfaced, she’ll stop at nothing to find answers.

by Lou Berney - Humor, Suspense, Thriller

Former getaway driver Charles “Shake” Bouchon has finally realized his dream of owning a restaurant in Belize. Unfortunately, to do so, he has to go deep in debt to a murderous local drug lord named Baby Jesus. Things go from bad to worse quickly when Shake’s restaurant goes up in flames and suddenly he finds himself on the run from Baby Jesus, two freelance assassins, and a beautiful but ferocious FBI agent.