All that homicide detective M Gantry needs in order to solve the most gruesome murders in Miami history is the answer to a simple question. Who is the cigarette smoker? Who is the serial killer leaving the half-smoked Camels butts at the scene of each crime? The problem is the vicious killer might be linked to her own murky past, and her future.When her partner is added to the list of victims, hoochie mama or not, the beautiful, troubled M Gantry must act and act fast before the killer strikes again.

Hoochie Mama

Literature & Fiction

Allen, Preston L.

Genre Fiction

Writer's Club Press

Welcome to the bright red bouncing-ball world of Cindique Sanders-Lassiter in this slick, sleek, sexy tale from the undisputed master of literary erotica, Preston L. Allen.Cindique is in love with Roderick Redd, the cutest phone pro at McDarc Inc., but can she save him from the clutches of their boss, Groan of Dark? In the meantime, Cindique herself is being pursued by the violent wildman with the pretty, pretty shoes, who still holds the key to her apartment and her heart.Bounce is rejection and reversal. Bounce is making love to words. Bounce is the one who'll always be there for you. Bounce is the day he fails to show up. Bounce is the ball, which like our heart, is made of rubber so we scarcely feel it when we hit the wall over and over again.

Bounce

Romance

iUniverse

Although he grew up in the United States, Preston L. Allen was born in Honduras, on one of its Caribbean possessions, the island of Roaton, which is populated by a thriving community of English-speaking members of the African diaspora. "Preston Allen's writing is in the tradition of writers such as James Baldwin...His work is especially important because he reveals within the consciousness of young Black men, who have too often been the targets of vilification and shame, a tortured beauty. Every generation needs writers to interpret and re-interpret the canon and contemporary events in a novel way. Preston Allen is such a writer"― Geoffrey Philp, author of Benjamin My Son.

Churchboys and Other Sinners

United States

Blair

Every Boy Should Have a Man

Nominated for the 2014 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Fiction! A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy Fiction Pick for 2013 "Allen's concise book's power lies within its understated irony, never more heavy-handed than a preacher’s admonition that 'a world without mans is a world without us all.' The plain narrative and relationship between boy and female man, rounded out with humor and occasional (sometimes literal) bite, promises to be a sleeper favorite among speculative audiences." --Publishers Weekly "Allen...throws caution to the wind with his bizarre but exquisitely composed fable that uses transhumanism as the prism to reflect on the nature of humanity...It's also intellectually curious and rather cutting in many of its conceptual and cultural assessments. It's a world where man is not only pet, but also meat, where religion, wars and empires are just as backward as they are in our own world, and where worlds collide with a temperamental angst that is as uncomfortable as it is alluring. Much like Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel Planet of the Apes, this novel is a sardonic parable on the nature and destiny of the species. A nimble fable whose bold narrative experiment is elevated by its near-biblical language and affectionate embrace of our inherent flaws." --Kirkus Reviews "An imaginative and honest epic, weaving together biblical stories, fantasy, poetry, and fairy tales with a touch of realism...Allen asks us to question the assumptions, -isms, and contradictions of the modern world...Recalling the humanitarian concerns of Octavia Butler's Fledgling and the poetry of Ovid's Metamorphosis, this book will appeal to readers of literary fiction and fantasy." --Library Journal "Imaginative, versatile, and daring Allen (Jesus Boy, 2010) raids the realms of myth and fairy tales in this topsy-turvy speculative fable....With canny improvisations on 'Jack and the Beanstalk,' the 'Epic of Gilgamesh,' and Alice in Wonderland, Allen sharpens our perceptions of class divides, racism, enslavement, and abrupt and devastating climate change to create a delectably adventurous, wily, funny, and wise cautionary parable." --Booklist "There's no doubt this is an original story and one you should read." --Book Sp(l)ot Reviews "From this point forward, readers consulting any reference work addressing the concept of tour de force will find there a citation of Preston L. Allen's Every Boy Should Have a Man. It is one thing to devise a fable dealing so adroitly with such concepts as racism, war, religion, and the very nature of civilization itself, but Preston's true triumph is the infusion of each page and every astonishing episode with palpable emotional resonance." --Les Standiford, author of Desperate Sons A riveting, poignant satire of societal ills with an added dose of fantasy, Every Boy Should Have a Man takes place in a post-human world where creatures called oafs keep humanlike "mans" as beloved pets. One day, a poor boy oaf brings home a man whom he hides under his bed in the hopes his parents won't find out. With echoes of Margaret Atwood and Jack and the Beanstalk, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Octavia Butler's Kindred, this is a picaresque journey into uncharted territory in earth, sky, and firmament. Oafs and mans each gain insight and understanding into one another's worlds, and the worlds that touch theirsultimately showing that oafs and mans alike share a common "humanity." Filled with surprising twists and turns, the novel is in part a morality tale that takes on many of today's issues, including poverty, the environment, sexism, racism, war, and religion, all in lighthearted King James prose.

Humor & Satire

Akashic Books Ltd

I Disappeared Them: A Novel

Preston L. Allen’s witty, charming, and very likable school bus drivernamed Pis a desperate gambler. He has blown the hundred thousand dollars he won at the casino six months ago, but his wife and family still think he’s loaded. P spins out of control on the addict’s downward spiral of dependency, paranoia, and depression, as he must find ways to keep coming up with the money to fool his family and fund his growing addiction. The bets get bigger and bigger, until finally, faced with the ultimate financial crisis, he hits it really big. Yet winning, he soon learns, is just the beginning of a deeper problem. The one constant for Pwho rises from wage-earner to millionaire and back again in his roller-coaster-ride of a lifeis that he must gamble. That his son has died, that his wife is leaving him, that his girlfriend has been arrested, that he has no money, that he has more money than he could ever have dreamedare all lesser concerns for P as he constantly seeks out new gambling opportunities. While other books on gambling seek either to sermonize on the addiction or to glorify it by highlighting its few prosperous celebrities, All or Nothing is an honest, straightforward account of what it is like to live as a gamblerwhether a high-rolling millionaire playing $1,000-ante poker in Las Vegas or a regular guy at the local Indian casino praying for a miracle as he feeds his meager life savings into the unforgiving slot machine. All or Nothing is the first novel to dig beneath the veneer to explore the gambler’s unique and complex relationship with money. If you’ve ever wanted to get into the heart and psyche of a compulsive gambler, here is your chance. Preston L. Allen is a recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship and author of the thriller Hoochie Mama, as well as the collection Churchboys and Other Sinners. His stories have appeared in numerous magazines and journals and have been anthologized in Brown Sugar (Penguin) and Miami Noir (Akashic). He lives in South Florida. New York Times Book Review, Sun., June 15, 2008 "As a cartographer of autodegradation, Allen takes his place on a continuum that begins, perhaps, with Dostoyevsky’s Gambler, courses through Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, William S. Burroughs’s Junky, [and] the collected works of Charles Bukowski and Hubert Selby JrLike Dostoyevsky, Allen colorfully evokes the gambling milieuLike Burroughs, he is a dispassionate chronicler of the addict’s daily ritual, neither glorifying nor vilifying the matter at hand. Yet he never wallows like Lowry nor amuses like Bukowski. His spare, efficient prose could be called medium-boiled." Library Journal, Nov. 15, 2007 "Allen's new novel poignantly depicts the life of P . . . Told without preaching or moralizing, the facts of P's life express volumes on the destructive power of gambling. This is strongly recommended and deserves a wide audience; an excellent choice for book discussion groups." Kirkus Reviews, Sept., 15, 2007 "A gambler's hands and heart perpetually tremble in this raw story of addiction . . . Allen's brilliant at conveying the hothouse atmosphere of hell-bent gaming." ForeWord, Jan/Feb. 2008 "All or Nothing is funny, relentless, haunting, and highly readable."

All or Nothing

Humor & Entertainment

Puzzles & Games

Selected as WLRN's Sundial's January 2019 Book Club Pick
"Allen has created a consummate tragicomedy of African American family secrets and sorrows, and of faith under duress and wide open to interpretation. Perfect timing and crackling dialogue, as well as heartrending pain balanced by uproarious predicaments, make for a shout-hallelujah tale of transgression and grace, a gospel of lusty and everlasting love." --Booklist
"Like Dostoyevsky, Allen colorfully evokes the gambling milieu--the chained (mis)fortunes of the players, their vanities and grotesqueries, their quasi-philosophical ruminations on chance. Like Burroughs, he is a dispassionate chronicler of the addict's daily ritual, neither glorifying nor vilifying the matter at hand." --The New York Times Book Review, on All or Nothing
Into an austere community of Christian believers at the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters come the star-crossed African American Romeo and Juliet. In the world of Jesus Boy, Romeo is sixteen-year-old Elwyn Parker, a devout and sincere piano prodigy who learns too late that the saintly girl he has had a crush on all his life is inexplicably pregnant and soon to be wed. Juliet is the beautiful widow, Sister Morrisohn, age forty-two, who, in the pain and confused emotions of her grieving, ends up in Elwyn's arms.
Despite the problems posed by their age difference and the strict prohibitions of their strong religious beliefs, Elwyn and Sister Morrisohn's love is true, and as it grows among the ascetics, abstainers, and holy ghost rollers of their church, it exposes with wit, poignancy, and insight the dark secrets and ancient crimes of the pious. In Jesus Boy, Elwyn learns through tragedy and epiphany that the holy are no different from the rest of us.

Jesus Boy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Allen, Preston L.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Allen, Preston L.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Allen, Preston L.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Hoochie Mama

Bounce

Churchboys and Other Sinners

Every Boy Should Have a Man

Every Boy Should Have a Man

I Disappeared Them: A Novel

All or Nothing

Jesus Boy