Windsor Selection S.

4 total works

Jolie Blon's Bounce

by James Lee Burke

Published 1 June 2002

Small-time black hustler Tee Bobby Hulin is partly redeemed, in Robicheaux's eyes, by a rare musical gift. Three men are present when Amanda Boudreau is raped and murdered, and Tee Bobby's prints are found at the crime scene. Dave reckons he's innocent, and Tee Bobby pleads so, then attempts suicide in his holding cell. Why?

Soon after, hooker and junkie Linda Zeroski is beaten to death by a man wearing leather gloves who, with great care and precision, crushes every bone in her face.

Louisiana's murky history casts a long shadow in the work of James Lee Burke, but nowhere longer than here, with the LaSalles family, who settled there before the Louisiana Purchase and built their wealth upon the backs of slave labour. When lawyer Perry LaSalles takes on the defence of Tee Bobby Hulin, Dave knows his motives are fuelled by guilt. For Tee Bobby's grandmother Ladice was seduced by Perry's grandfather, and Amanda Boudreau's death is related to events that happened long before Tee Bobby was born.

In this rich and compelling novel James Lee Burke weaves a web of plots and subplots involving perfectly observed characters. Dense with passion and compassion, Burke's novels get better and better.

White Doves at Morning

by James Lee Burke

Published 1 November 2002

Set mainly in Louisiana during the years 1861-1868, this passionate novel of men, women and war tells the story of the author's ancestor, Confederate soldier Willie Burke. A classic Burke hero, innately moral to the point of lunacy, Willie is soon in conflict with his superiors. As his best friend Jim Stubblefield observes: 'the juncture of Willie Burke and the Confederate Army is akin to the meeting of a wrecking ball and a crystal shop.' The characters who people these pages, many of them based on real historical figures, are as memorable as any Burke has created. Mulatto Flower Jamison, victim of terrible abuse that never touches her soul, determined to better herself; Quaker abolitionist Abigail Dowling, whose Unionist sympathies put her in constant danger; Colonel Ira Jamison, rotten to his core yet who would rise from a cesspit smelling of roses; these and many others stay powerfully in the mind in this epic tale. Like all the best war novels, WHITE DOVES AT MORNING concentrates not on battles but on the edges of grand events, the detritus that wars create, the human cost, and, in this case, the terrible aftermath.

Half of Paradise

by James Lee Burke

Published 19 October 1995

HALF OF PARADISE is a series of novels, set in the Louisiana heartland, that gave birth to Robicheaux. Published in 1965 when Burke was in his twenties this is a mesmerising narrative of three young men from disparate backgrounds hwo find their destinies tragically interwined.

Two for Texas

by James Lee Burke

Published 1 July 1982

This is the story of Son Holland and Hugh Allison - two prison escapees from Louisiana - and their whirlwind trip to Texas territory where they collide with more fascinating characters and adventure than they could have imagined possible from within the walls of their gaol cells.