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Larry Brooks
Other than a 17-year stint in the marketing and training business, Larry Brooks' resume reads like a TGI-Fridays menu: heavy on the appetizers, hard on the stomach. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon in 1952, he graduated with a degree in marketing communications from Portland State University in 1975, attended in the off-season during an unremarkable five-year career as a professional baseball player. Ironically, this led to his first published writing: a magazine article on the life of a minor league pitcher. Still not sold on a writing career, then came a few more business-suit swings and misses - history's worst stockbroker for the world's largest brokerage firm, the world's worst personnel manager in a department store (a bad, bad idea, he says), and a couple of other humbling fliers he chooses to forget. Each abandoned career resulted in another published magazine piece lampooning the experience (and the employer), and his interest in writing began to emerge as his best - and perhaps last - viable career option. In 1983 he answered an ad for a "script writer" at a small audio-visual production company, eight "arteests" and a slide projector. Cut to 1996, when the company was the second largest marketing and training firm in the region (after the folks who brought you the tagline, "Just Do It"), and Brooks was the executive creative director and a partner, with some 120 employees and a portfolio with more corporate videos, brochures and other useless stuff than Harlequin has romances. The business sold in 1999, at which point Brooks took the money and ran toward a career he'd been quietly cultivating on the side for the prior two decades - writing novels and screenplays. His official website is www.booksbybrooks.com.
Photo © Robin Damore
Serpent's Dance
When Bernadette Kane investigates her sister's suspicious death, she falls into an erotically charged relationship-with her sister's mysterious lover. He's rich, powerful, and possibly guilty of murder. But has Bernadette stumbled upon the perfect plan to avenge her sister's death-or has she stepped into the same nightmarish trap?
Larry Brooks's Summer Reading List
The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown
The highest concept home run in a long time, set on a landscape I find very compelling.
Shutter Island
by Dennis LeHane
Sometimes the reading public resists their heroes branching out to try new things. I hear LeHane took some major risks with this one, and my bet is he's good enough to have nailed it, just like Grisham nailed "A Painted House." Bravo.
The Devil Wears Prada
by Lauren Weisberger
Great reviews, and I really like these "pound of flesh" stories. This genre is hot.
Vacant Spaces
by Mark Andrew Ware
I hear good things, and the cover rocks. Love a good chiller with one foot in the beyond.
Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy
by Jane Leavy
The story of an American icon, in a game I love. Next to Nolan Ryan, Koufax was the best who ever mounted a mound.
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Summer Reading Lists
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