lindad_amato wrote:One of my favorite authors, who I feel is greatly overlooked by the American public is Joyce Carol Oates.

DanQuigley wrote:I'll toss another one out there. I have just begun The Lost Valley (1921) by Australian writer J. M. Walsh (1897-1952).

The rise and fall of a media-made messiah is the subject of Palahniuk's impressive second novel (after the well-received Fight Club), a wryly mannered commentary on the excesses of pop culture that tracks the 15 minutes of fame of the lone living member of a suicide cult. Tender Branson, aged 33, has commandeered a Boeing 747, emptied of passengers, in order to tell his story to the "black box" while flying randomly until the plane runs out of gas and crashes. Branson relates in his long flashback the vicissitudes of his life: a member of the repressive Creedish Death Cult, supposedly founded by a splinter group of Millerites in 1860, he is hired out as a domestic servant who must dedicate his earnings to the cult. Despite his humble beginnings, Branson finds himself on the edge of fame and fortune when the cult members begin their suicide binge, and he keeps himself on the media radar by using the psychic dreams of his potential romantic interest, Fertility Hollis, in which the girl accurately predicts a series of strange disasters. After a brief period at the top of the freak-show heap, Branson succumbs to the excesses of his trade when his agent mysteriously dies at the Super Bowl as Branson predicts the outcome of the game at half-time, simultaneously triggering a riot and turning him into a murder suspect. Branson's spookily matter of fact account of his bizarre experiences does not excite tension until the narrative is well under way, but the novel picks up momentum during the homestretch when Branson goes on the lam with Fertility and his murderous brother Adam, and the story steamrolls toward its nightmarish climax.

DanQuigley wrote:I realize I don't get a vote because I have not yet made 25 posts, but I really like Giselle's suggestion.

I'll toss another one out there. I have just begun The Lost Valley (1921) by Australian writer J. M. Walsh (1897-1952). This is one of Walsh's earliest works and out of copyright. So, it is available for free a number of places. There are no reviews of the work I could find, but I like the writing style and find the first chapter so interesting that I must continue. The story reads like an early film noir type novel minus the femme fatale set in the western Australian province of Victoria. We see the story through the eyes of its antihero protagonist, Carstairs, and his new found friend Bryce, who while out in the middle of nowhere are shot at for no apparent reason. They band together to figure out why people want them dead.

Much of the appeal for me is that the book is set in an Australia in a time period I know next to nothing about.