Tod Goldberg – författare

Lonnie Milton has all of life's essential accessory pieces: a 401(K) plan, a nice TV, a coffee table from Pottery Barn. The only thing missing is an actual life. Trapped in a dead-end job, Lonnie meets Claire, the perfect deliverance from his safe, boring, and even worse, ordinary life. Sucked into the swirling L.A. nightlife. Lonnie quickly graduates from Claire's admirer to her accomplice. Together they pillage the town's hottest spots, kissing cheeks with Hollywood's power players, show runners and stars at SkyBar and Spago before their mendacity runs out. Alone, Lonnie discovers he has become an underground legend, his actions spawning a cult following of imitators as he careens toward an inescapable, explosive climax. In Los Angeles, it isn't who you are, it's where you're seated...

September 2001: two years since legendary Chicago hitman Sal Cupertine disappeared into the guise of Las Vegas Rabbi David Cohen. For David, everything is coming up gold: temple membership is on the rise, the new school is raking it in, and the mortuary and cemetery, where he launders bodies for the mob, is minting cash. But Sal wants out. He's got money stashed all over the city. If he makes it through Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, he'll have enough to slip away, grab his wife and kid and start afresh.Across the country, former FBI agent Matthew Drew is now running security for a casino outside of Milwaukee, spending his time off stalking members of The Family, looking to avenge his former partner's murder. So when Sal's cousin stumbles into the casino, Matthew takes the law into his own hands, starting a chain of events that will have Rabbi Cohen running for his life, trapped in Las Vegas, with the law, society, and the post-9/11 world closing in on him.Gangster Nation is a page-turning examination of the seedy foundations of American life. With the wit and gritty glamour that defines his writing, Goldberg traces how the things we value most in our lives - home, health, even our spirituality - have been built on the enterprises of criminals.

“Tod Goldberg''s stories are not like faceted jewels. They are like glinting barbed wire, actually, roped across the field where you are reading, racing, wondering what''s next, and then pierced with longing, regret, or revelation. His new collection kept me reading like that — racing to find out what would happen next to these people only Tod Goldberg could create.” —Susan Straight“Tod Goldberg is a gifted writer, a surveyor of the soul, and Other Resort Cities is powerful fiction. He catches his characters at moments of great stress, then reveals their depths to us with compelling insight and great empathy. He sure as hell knows the details that convince. These are inventive and fresh stories that might have been merely clever in lesser hands, but Goldberg’s talent and compassion extends dignity even to the most fucked-up and misbegotten lives.” —Daniel Woodrell“This is an excellent, compulsively readable collection. Goldberg knows and loves the cities of which he writes, and he brings their unsung citizens to life in a brilliant and affecting way.” —Mary Yukari Waters“Darkly funny and ferociously readable, Other Resort Cities is a book you''ll want to spend your entire holiday reading. Because of the subtle crime plots that give each story momentum, Goldberg''s book doubles as an ideal choice for mystery-lovers.”—Tucson WeeklyIn ten seductive new stories, the author of Simplify and Living Dead Girl encounters the ruthless, vulnerable people who inhabit resort cities, along with their misdemeanors and felonies. A mobster hides out in Las Vegas posing as a rabbi; a casino cocktail waitress adopts a Russian teen in an attempt to outrun her loneliness; a disturbed husband sets up a Starbucks in his living room; a retired sheriff looks for his first wife''s remains in the Salton Sea. Vibrant, moving, and often profound, Other Resort Cities is Goldberg at his best.Tod Goldberg is the author of seven books, including the novels Living Dead Girl (Soho Press), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Fake Liar Cheat (Pocket Books/MTV) and the popular Burn Notice series (Penguin). His short story collection Simplify (OV Books) was a 2006 finalist for the SCIBA Award for Fiction and winner of the Other Voices Short Story Collection Prize. He directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside''s Palm Desert campus.

Ex-covert op Michael Westen has a new client. Paolo Fornelli is Helmsman for a yacht in the Hurricane Cup-a winner-take-all race financed by the super-rich and preceded by a week of highstakes gambling, high-risk business, and high-class attitude. Paolo''s family has been taken hostage. If Paolo ever wants to see them again, he must make it to the final race-and lose. To find the kidnappers, Michael will have to infiltrate high society and enter a deadly game against deadlier opponents in a world where money isn''t the only thing worth killing for...

Ex-covert op Michael Weston owes favors to Barry, the local money launderer. Now Barry wants to call those favors in. Barry has a friend, Bruce, who is an ex-legendary gentleman thief. But with an ailing mother to support, Bruce has returned to his illegal vocation. Unfortunately, his most recent job involved stealing from the notorious Ghouls motorcycle gang, and they''re looking for some serious payback. Unless Michael can convince them otherwise...

Once a hard-case gangbanger, famous philanthropist Father Santiago is being pressured to aid his former gang or have his crimes exposed. He can''t go to the cops, but he can go to his old friend-burned covert operative Michael Westen.

Michael Westen is still in Miami, trying to survive as a spy without a country. Brent Grayson is a nineteen-year-old college kid who claims to own a company that doesn''t really exist. And Michael has to save Brent''s father from loan sharks and fend off sinister Russian businessmen who see every takeover as an opportunity to be hostile.

Covert spy Michael Westen has found himself in forced seclusion in Miami?and a little paranoid. Watched by the FBI, cut off from intelligence contacts, and with his assets frozen, Weston is on ice with a warning: stay there or get ?disappeared.? Driven to find out who burned him and why, he?s biding his time helping people with nowhere else to turn. People like socialite Cricket O?Connor whose own husband has vanished, along with her fortune...

Sal Cupertine is a legendary hit man for the Chicago Mafia, known for his ability to get in and out of a crime without a trace. Until now, that is. His first-ever mistake forces Sal to botch an assassination, killing three undercover FBI agents in the process. This puts too much heat on Sal, and he knows this botched job will be his death sentence to the Mafia. So he agrees to their radical idea to save his own skin.A few surgeries and some intensive training later, and Sal Cupertine is gone, disappeared into the identity of Rabbi David Cohen. Leading his growing congregation in Las Vegas, overseeing the population and the temple and the new cemetery, Rabbi Cohen feels his wicked past slipping away from him, surprising even himself as he spouts quotes from the Torah or the Old Testament. Yet, as it turns out, the Mafia isn''t quite done with him yet. Soon the new cemetery is being used as both a money and body-laundering scheme for the Chicago family. And that rogue FBI agent on his trail, seeking vengeance for the murder of his three fellow agents, isn''t going to let Sal fade so easily into the desert.Gangsterland is the wickedly dark and funny new novel by a writer at the height of his power – a morality tale set in a desert landscape as ruthless and barren as those who inhabit it.

"The sequel conducts extended discussions on how America is defined by crime, boldly linking gangland violence to the 9/11 attacks . . . Sal/David''s mixing of Talmudic citations with Bruce Springsteen lyrics is still very funny. The sacred gets the stuffing kicked out of it by the profane in this wild and sometimes-shocking novel." —Kirkus ReviewsIt''s been two years since the events of Gangsterland, when legendary Chicago hitman Sal Cupertine disappeared into the guise of Vegas Rabbi David Cohen. It’s September of 2001 and for David, everything is coming up gold: Temple membership is on the rise, the new private school is raking it in, and the mortuary and cemetery—where Cohen has been laundering bodies for the mob—is minting cash. But Sal wants out. He’s got money stashed in safe-deposit boxes all over the city. He’s looking at places to escape to, Mexico or maybe Argentina. He only needs to make it through the High Holidays, and he’ll have enough money to slip away, grab his wife and kid, and start fresh.Across the country, former FBI agent Matthew Drew is now running security for an Indian Casino outside of Milwaukee, spending his off-time stalking members of The Family, looking for vengeance for the murder of his former partner. So when Sal’s cousin stumbles into the casino one night, Matthew takes the law into his own hands—again—touching off a series of events that will have Rabbi Cohen running for his life, trapped in Las Vegas, with the law, society, and the post-9/11 world closing in around him.Gangster Nation is a thrilling follow-up to Gangsterland, an unexpected, page-turning examination of the seedy foundations of American life. With the wit and gritty glamor that defines his writing, Goldberg traces how the things we most value in our lives—home, health, even our spiritual lives—have been built on the enterprises of criminals.

Reading the West Book Awards NomineeThe “gloriously original” (The New York Times) and critically acclaimed crime series starring a Chicago hitman hiding out as a rabbi in the desert suburbs of Las Vegas comes to its thrilling conclusionMafia hit-man-turned-rabbi Sal Cupertine is ready to get out of the life. But it’s not going to be easy. His once-brilliant plan to pass himself off as Rabbi David Cohen is unraveling. Enemies on both sides of the law are hot on his trail. His wife and son are unreachable in witness protection and are probably in danger. In order to find his family, get out of the desert alive, and salvage his long-sought-after happy ending, Sal is going to have to confront some very bad people from his past.Native American kingpin Peaches Pocotillo has wrested control of Chicago’s mob family while expanding his criminal empire in the west, and now seeks to settle an old score with Sal. These two antiheroes have a history that stretches back decades, and the blood feud between Peaches and Sal will lead them to a violent showdown deep in the heart of the low desert.As complications cast old revelations in a new light, including one that stretches back to the long-ago death of Sal’s infamous gangster father Dark Billy Cupertine, Sal must team up with some unlikely allies—and confront the reality of who he has become—in this stunning conclusion to the popular and critically acclaimed Gangsterland trilogy.

Raymond Carver meets Elmore Leonard in this extraordinary collection of contemporary crime writing set in the critically acclaimed Gangsterland universe, a series called "gloriously original" by The New York Times Book Review.With gimlet-eyed cool and razor-sharp wit, these spare, stylish stories from a master of modern crime fiction assemble a world of gangsters and con men, of do-gooders breaking bad and those caught in the crossfire. The uncle of an FBI agent spends his life as sheriff in different cities, living too close to the violent acts of men; a cocktail waitress moves through several desert towns trying to escape the unexplainable loss of an adopted daughter; a drug dealer with a penchant for karaoke meets a talkative lawyer and a silent clown in a Palm Springs bar.Witty, brutal, and fast-paced, these stories expand upon the saga of Chicago hitman-turned-Vegas-rabbi Sal Cupertine--first introduced in Gangsterland and continued in Gangster Nation--while revealing how the line between good and bad is often a mirage.

The “gloriously original” (The New York Times) and critically acclaimed crime series starring a Chicago hitman hiding out as a rabbi in the desert suburbs of Las Vegas comes to its thrilling conclusionMafia hit-man-turned-rabbi Sal Cupertine is ready to get out of the life. But it’s not going to be easy. His once-brilliant plan to pass himself off as Rabbi David Cohen is unraveling. Enemies on both sides of the law are hot on his trail. His wife and son are unreachable in witness protection and are probably in danger. In order to find his family, get out of the desert alive, and salvage his long-sought-after happy ending, Sal is going to have to confront some very bad people from his past.Native American kingpin Peaches Pocotillo has wrested control of Chicago’s mob family while expanding his criminal empire in the west, and now seeks to settle an old score with Sal. These two antiheroes have a history that stretches back decades, and the blood feud between Peaches and Sal will lead them to a violent showdown deep in the heart of the low desert.As complications cast old revelations in a new light, including one that stretches back to the long-ago death of Sal’s infamous gangster father Dark Billy Cupertine, Sal must team up with some unlikely allies—and confront the reality of who he has become—in this stunning conclusion to the popular and critically acclaimed Gangsterland trilogy.

The perfect holiday gift for the crime fiction lover in your life! Curated by New York Times bestselling author Tod Goldberg, this collection of eleven delightful and twisted Hanukkah capers will entertain you through all eight nights of the Festival of Lights.In Stefanie Leder’s “Not a Dinner Party Person”—finalist for the ITW Thriller Award for Best Short Story—an unstable pharmaceutical rep tries not to kill anyone at her family dinner on the last night of Hanukkah; in Ivy Pochoda’s “Johnny Christmas,” a taciturn Gulf War vet commissions a tattoo from a man he knew from his prison days, a man not named Christmas but Goldfarb; in David L. Ulin’s “Shamash,” it’s the last night of Hanukkah, and a live-at-home adult son considers doing something drastic to get out of his elderly father’s Upper West Side apartment; in James D.F. Hannah’s “Twenty Centuries,” a pair of detectives solve a curiously unprompted murder during the holiday season.This captivating collection contains old-school slapstick comedy, hardboiled noir, gritty procedurals, and poignant reminders of the meaning of Hanukkah, offering something for almost every reader willing to take the journey through these twisted tales.With stories by: Ivy Pochoda, David L. Ulin, James D.F. Hannah, Lee Goldberg, Nikki Dolson, J.R. Angelella, Liska Jacobs, Gabino Iglesias, Stefanie Leder, and Jim Ruland, plus a foreword and story by Tod Goldberg.

The perfect holiday gift for the crime fiction lover in your life! Curated by New York Times bestselling author Tod Goldberg, this collection of eleven delightful and twisted Hanukkah capers will entertain you through all eight nights of the Festival of Lights.In Stefanie Leder’s “Not a Dinner Party Person,” an unstable pharmaceutical rep tries not to kill anyone at her family dinner on the last night of Hanukkah; in Ivy Pochoda’s “Johnny Christmas,” a taciturn Gulf War vet commissions a tattoo from a man he knew from his prison days, a man not named Christmas but Goldfarb; in David L. Ulin’s “Shamash,” it’s the last night of Hanukkah, and a live-at-home adult son considers doing something drastic to get out of his elderly father’s Upper West Side apartment; in James D.F. Hannah’s “Twenty Centuries,” a pair of detectives solve a curiously unprompted murder during the holiday season.This captivating collection contains old-school slapstick comedy, hardboiled noir, gritty procedurals, and poignant reminders of the meaning of Hanukkah, offering something for almost every reader willing to take the journey through these twisted tales.With stories by: Ivy Pochoda, David L. Ulin, James D.F. Hannah, Lee Goldberg, Nikki Dolson, J.R. Angelella, Liska Jacobs, Gabino Iglesias, Stefanie Leder, and Jim Ruland, plus a foreword and story by Tod Goldberg.

A luckless thief’s wrong turn becomes a crooked cop’s fortune in a wild ride of a thriller by a New York Times bestselling author.Failed lawyer Robert Green has such a good plan: Crack three hundred safe-deposit boxes and sail off to South America with his brilliant, morally flexible sister, Penny. If it weren’t for the damned freezing rain.In the dying resort town of Granite Shores, cop Jack Biddle is self-appointed king—mostly of bad decisions. Between his family’s crumbling legacy, a wife who just joined the city council, and life-threatening gambling debts, Jack’s looking for a way out. Then he spots a van spinning off a mountain road into the valley below. In the wreckage, Jack finds a very dead Robert, millions in heisted loot…and opportunity.All Jack has to do is clean up the mess, disappear Robert’s body, make off with the fortune, and not get caught. One hitch is Penny. Another is Mitch Diamond, a wild card ex-con who knows more about the missing fortune than he lets on. Jack, Penny, and Mitch each have an endgame. But there’s only one way out, and they’re crashing headlong toward it.

A luckless thief’s wrong turn becomes a crooked cop’s fortune in a wild ride of a thriller by a New York Times bestselling author.Failed lawyer Robert Green has such a good plan: Crack three hundred safe-deposit boxes and sail off to South America with his brilliant, morally flexible sister, Penny. If it weren’t for the damned freezing rain.In the dying resort town of Granite Shores, cop Jack Biddle is self-appointed king—mostly of bad decisions. Between his family’s crumbling legacy, a wife who just joined the city council, and life-threatening gambling debts, Jack’s looking for a way out. Then he spots a van spinning off a mountain road into the valley below. In the wreckage, Jack finds a very dead Robert, millions in heisted loot…and opportunity.All Jack has to do is clean up the mess, disappear Robert’s body, make off with the fortune, and not get caught. One hitch is Penny. Another is Mitch Diamond, a wild card ex-con who knows more about the missing fortune than he lets on. Jack, Penny, and Mitch each have an endgame. But there’s only one way out, and they’re crashing headlong toward it.

Sal Cupertine is a legendary hit man for the Chicago Mafia, able to get in and out of a crime without a trace. Until now, that is. His first-ever mistake forces Sal to botch an assassination, killing three undercover FBI agents in the process. This puts too much heat on Sal, and he knows this botched job will be his death sentence to the Mafia. So he agrees to their radical idea to save his own skin: hide out as a Rabbi in Las Vegas.

It's been two years since legendary Chicago hitman Sal Cupertine disappeared into the guise of Las Vegas Rabbi David Cohen. It's September 2001 and for David, everything is coming up gold: temple membership is on the rise, the new private school is raking it in, and the mortuary and cemetery, where Cohen has been laundering bodies for the mob, is minting cash. But Sal wants out. He's got money stashed in safe-deposit boxes all over the city. He only needs to make it through Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and he'll have enough money to slip away, grab his wife and kid and start afresh.Across the country, former FBI agent Matthew Drew is now running security for a casino outside of Milwaukee, spending his time off stalking members of The Family, looking for vengeance for the murder of his former partner. So when Sal's cousin stumbles into the casino one night, Matthew takes the law into his own hands, starting a chain of events that will have Rabbi Cohen running for his life, trapped in Las Vegas, with the law, society, and the post-9/11 world closing in on him.Gangster Nation is a page-turning examination of the seedy foundations of American life. With the wit and gritty glamour that defines his writing, Goldberg traces how the things we value most in our lives - home, health, even our spiritual lives - have been built on the enterprises of criminals.