Pennies from Heaven

Jane & Jerry Larkin #1

by James P. Blaylock

With a 100-year storm threatening the southern California coast, Jane Larkin is approached by a strange, audacious woman who wants to invest much-needed money in Jane’s Old Orange Co-op. Meanwhile Jane’s husband Jerry discovers an ancient excavation beneath the Larkin home. On that ominous morning in autumn, shadows descend over the deceptively quiet neighborhoods of Old Orange, ushering in a flood of chaos, terror, and murder.

Genres: Fantasy, Novels

304 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2022

About the author

James Paul Blaylock is an American fantasy author. He is noted for his distinctive style. He writes in a humorous way: His characters never walk, they clump along, or when someone complains (in a flying machine) that flight is impossible, the other characters agree and show him why he's right.

He was born in Long Beach, California; studied English at California State University, Fullerton, receiving an M.A. in 1974; and lives in Orange, California, teaching creative writing at Chapman University. Many of his books are set in Orange County, California, and can more specifically be termed "fabulism" — that is, fantastic things happen in our present-day world, rather than in traditional fantasy, where the setting is often some other world. His works have also been categorized as magic realism.

He and his friends Tim Powers and K.W. Jeter were mentored by Philip K. Dick. Along with Powers he invented the poet William Ashbless. Blaylock and Powers have often collaborated with each other on writing stories, including The Better Boy, On Pirates, and The William Ashbless Memorial Cookbook.

Blaylock is also currently director of the Creative Writing Conservatory at the Orange County High School of the Arts, where Powers is Writer in Residence.

Reviews

[Happy Goat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review coming on our website soon.

This is outside of the genre we normally review, but it was a great story and a thoroughly wonderful read. Can't wait to read the next one!

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Usually, I put ghost stories in the horror category, but this is a ghost story mixed in with crime fiction. The only other book I've read that does this, that I recall, is Stephen King's Later.

Here a middle-aged couple living in Orange County, CA is living the good life. He's just retired, at a younger age than normal. She is running a sort of farm/craft co-op. While working on the house, he finds a body buried in the cellar along with the gold from a heist that took place during the days of the Wild West.

Unfortunately, someone else has been looking for the gold, and she is a hardened criminal hiding in plain sight.

I enjoyed the pacing of the book, the use of language, and the clever story. It's nice to read a book where no one does things "just because." I thought the couple were a little too flippant about money. I suppose there are people like that, but none that have achieved early retirement.

Good narrator.

[Nigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

After the sheer unmitigated raw savagery of Stephen Graham Jones, this is something of a genteel middle-class comedy of manners, not that there's anything wrong with that. When Blaylock isn't running around Victorian England, he's spinning fantasies and ghost stories set in Orange County, California, which is mostly sun-drenched, except when yet another hundred-year storm is boiling on the horizon, and threatneing the allotment/market community co-op that is Jane's life work. While her husband, Joseph, is digging out bones and treasure from their cellar, she's meeting with the peculiar Lettie Phibbs, who wants to provide some financial assistance, but who quickly catches scent of an opportunity. While all this unfolds and the storm closes in, Jane and Joseph are haunted by realistic dreams of old betrayal and murder.

An enjoyable, twisty thriller with ghosty elements.

[Chris Branch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blaylock’s whimsical writing style makes this a pleasure to read, although I have to admit that I found the pace a bit slow and the plot a bit thin. Lettie Phibbs comes across as fairly small time as antagonists go, and the bigger drama revolves around Jerry withholding information from Jane, and then later regretting it, of course. But they’re both such even-keeled characters that even their emotional interactions, positive and negative, are flat to the point of being deadpan. And most importantly, for me, I expect a Blaylock book to have at least a hint of the supernatural, even if it’s a light touch. And it does, technically, but the touch is so light as to be barely noticeable in this case. The ending is nicely done, with a bit of frenetic action finally sneaking into liven things up. I’ll consider the next in the series when I’m the mood for this sort of thing.

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fabulous story by one of my very favorite authors. I'd just finished Pennies from Heaven when the weather in southern California became unusually stormy. It was all over the news: atmospheric rivers, crazy flooding, mud slides -- that kind of stormy. It made the story seem strangely prophetic, one of those eerie examples of life imitating art. I wonder if Mr. Blaylock thought so, too.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a jolly read involving legends of lost treasure, ghosts, homicidal antiquarians, bent lawyers and a nice couple setting up a farmers co-op in a lovely little town in California. Great fun, I really enjoyed it.

[Clare Rhoden · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very satisfying mystery with a vengeful ghost

[Kayleigh Dobbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is out of my normal genre, preference-wise, but I had a great time reading it and really enjoyed the story.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Blaylock's Everyman heroes. And what a villain!