Robert Hough

Hogie Wyckoff

A novelization of the sensational life of the early twentieth-century female circus tiger trainer finds her reexamining her life, from her stint as a burlesque dancer after her escape from a mental institution to her five marriages and the devastating loss of her cats. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.

Solving Women's Problems Through Awareness, Action, and Contact

A computer operator finds himself funding a terrorist operation out of love for his Russian wife.

The Culprits

An illuminating portrait of an unconventional marriage by bestselling and critically acclaimed author Robert Hough. When Rose Camilleri and Scotty Larkin meet, neither expects to spend a lifetime together, navigating a sometimes turbulent marriage and scraping through the process of raising a family. When he first enters the bakery where she works, she is a new arrival from the tiny island nation of Malta, fond of rabbit stew and Hollywood cinema. He is a thoughtful printer's assistant recently released from juvenile detention after stealing and swiftly totalling a stranger's car. Even after years of marriage and two children together, Rose struggles to shake the idea that perhaps she should have held out for someone as voluble and optimistic as herself. But while some marriages are weakened by trauma, Rose and Scotty's union is strengthened by the act of survival, and they find their own kind of happiness along the way. In The Marriage of Rose Camilleri, Robert Hough writes his larger-than-life characters with warmth, insight and humour, displaying the masterful approach to storytelling that gained his previous novels acclaim and several prestigious award nominations. Hough transports the reader into the epicentre of an unconventional love story, where he draws out captivating details from the fabric of an ordinary shared lifetime to create a story that lives in the moment and takes seriously the small but vital details of everyday life.

The Marriage of Rose Camilleri

A riotous tale of love and lust, valor and villainy on the Mexican frontier of the 1930s. Robert Hough’s vivid and wildly imaginative novel takes us to 1931 Mexico and Corazón de la Fuente, a war-ravaged border town where the only enterprise is a brothel in which every girl is called Maria. Enter, from north of the border, Dr. Romulus Brinkley, inventor of a miraculous “goat gland operation” said to cure sexual impotence. When Brinkley decides to build a gargantuan new radio tower to broadcast his services throughout the United States, he chooses none other than Corazón de la Fuente for its site. The town’s fortunes change overnight, but not all to the good – word of the new prosperity spreads, and Corazón is overrun with desperadoes and mercenaries itching to reopen old wounds. Worst of all, Dr. Brinkley has attracted the affections of the town’s most beautiful citizen, Violeta Cruz. But with the help of a motley band of allies, Violeta’s spurned fiancé, Francisco, decides to fight back. Inspired by the monstrous shenanigans of a real life American con man and peopled with unforgettable characters, Dr. Brinkley’s Tower captures a young Mexico caught between its own ambitions and the designs of its wealthier neighbor to the north. From the Trade Paperback edition.

A Novel

Dr. Brinkley's Tower

A rollicking tale of friendship and betrayal by critically acclaimed novelist Robert Hough The year is 1664, and Benny Wand, a young thief and board game hustler, is arrested in London for illegal gaming. Deported to the city of Port Royal, Jamaica -- known as "the wickedest city on earth” -- Wand is forced by his depleted circumstances to join a raid on the Spanish city of Villahermosa. The mission is a perilous success, and Wand attracts the attention of the mission’s leader, an up-and-coming Welsh seaman, Captain Henry Morgan, whose raids on Spanish strongholds are funded by the British government. While embarking on a campaign in the Caribbean, Morgan forms an unlikely friendship with Wand through their shared love of chess. Yet as Morgan becomes morally corrupted by the increasingly sordid attacks, he slowly transforms into Wand’s greatest enemy. To defeat his former ally, Wand embarks on a strategic battle of wits with Morgan, only to discover that if he wants to break free of his friend, he’s going to have to help him in the most savage and unexpected way possible. Bawdy, philosophical, and darkly humorous, The Man Who Saved Henry Morgan is storytelling at it’s best.

The Man Who Saved Henry Morgan

An illuminating portrait of an unconventional marriage by bestselling and critically acclaimed author Robert Hough. When Rose Camilleri and Scotty Larkin meet, neither expects to spend a lifetime together, navigating a sometimes turbulent marriage and scraping through the process of raising a family. When he first enters the bakery where she works, she is a new arrival from the tiny island nation of Malta, fond of rabbit stew and Hollywood cinema. He is a thoughtful printer’s assistant recently released from juvenile detention after stealing and swiftly totalling a stranger’s car. Even after years of marriage and two children together, Rose struggles to shake the idea that perhaps she should have held out for someone as voluble and optimistic as herself. But while some marriages are weakened by trauma, Rose and Scotty's union is strengthened by the act of survival, and they find their own kind of happiness along the way. In The Marriage of Rose Camilleri, Robert Hough writes his larger-than-life characters with warmth, insight and humour, displaying the masterful approach to storytelling that gained his previous novels acclaim and several prestigious award nominations. Hough transports the reader into the epicentre of an unconventional love story, where he draws out captivating details from the fabric of an ordinary shared lifetime to create a story that lives in the moment and takes seriously the small but vital details of everyday life.

A “hilariously, touchingly . . . extravagantly entertaining” novel based on the life of America’s greatest circus tiger tamer (The Boston Globe). In the 1920s, during the golden age of the big top, Mabel Stark was the superstar of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and one of America’s most eccentric and unlikely celebrities. A tiny, curvaceous Kentucky blonde in a white leather bodysuit, Mabel was brazen, sexually adventurous, and, as the greatest tiger trainer in history. She was fearlessly courageous. That was then. This is now. It’s 1968. Mabel is turning eighty and is about to lose her job at Jungleland, a Southern California game park. Devastated by the loss of her cats, she looks back on her life, her five marriages, her regrets, and her triumphs. From her time as a mental institution–escapee; the notorious belly dancer, Little Egypt; and a crowd-roaring success with her one true love—a 550-pound Bengal tiger named Rajah—Mabel delivers an audacious confession of dark secrets, broken dreams, and escapades both comic and tragic. In The Final Confession of Mabel Stark, Robert Hough resurrects the life of a formidably independent, proudly scarred, naughtily ribald, and totally unapologetic star in “one of the most rollicking, good-time books of the year” (USA Today). “Mabel Stark developed an act so original, so daring, so brave, that it puts all the stupid human tricks on today’s reality shows to shame . . . a captivating portrait of a woman and a way of life that no longer exist.” —The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review “Narrating with a saucy, bouncy verve, [Mabel Stark] recounts a life story that is one part John Irving, two parts blue movie.” —Time Out New York

The Final Confession of Mabel Stark

'Robert Hough's fictionalised big-top biog packs in the laughs and tears... Running away with the circus has never looked so good.' -- Elle Mabel was five-feet tall, brazen, suicidally courageous, obsessed with tigers and sexually eccentric. In The Final Confession of Mabel Stark, Robert Hough has used the documents of her life to explore the mysteries of her heart. His vibrant and moving fictional autobiography starts in 1968. Mabel is just turning eighty and is about to lose her job. Faced with the loss of her cats, she looks back on her life, her escapades and her tragedies, her love affairs with tigers and men. She also confronts her darkest secret, her guilt at committing, 'the worst thing one person can do to another.' Now, with the end of her life in sight, there is one thing above all else she needs to do. Mabel Stark wants to confess. 'The story steams along like a Ringling train... It's impossible not to warm to Hough's plucky, masochistic adventuress, fleeing the wraths of insanity and across every state in the Union; she's the sanest nutter the confession bug ever bit' Observer 'Hough has produced a work which captures the complexity and ambiguity of life' Times Literary Supplement 'A must read' Tatler 'Unputdownable... Mabel's story has grip and gumption along with bucket-loads of sadness and self-destructive glamour' Time Out 'As she swaggers through the book, Mabel's feisty character comes across as an undoubted star' Marie Claire 'Hough has found a voice and tone - prickly and pathetic, sly and wounded - that fits Mabel as snugly as her soiled leather suit' Economist 'Hilarious... It is frankly impossible not to fall in love with the heroine, a woman other women would like to be, and men would like to tame... This book is an uplifiting account of a life lived to the hilt... Captivating' Irish Examiner 'A splendid rumbustious recreation of her bizarre life that simply demands to be read' Woman and Home

The Final Confession Of Mabel Stark

When two Eastern European men are discovered on board the Maersk Dubai, the crew is forced to come to terms with earlier stowaways the captain put overboard on a flimsy raft to disappear in the frigid ocean.

The Stowaway

With the suspense of a thriller and the moral resonance of a Joseph Conrad classic, The Stowaway is an adventure story of the highest caliber, a profound tale of good and evil all the more moving because it is based on actual events. When two Romanian stowaways show themselves on the container ship Maersk Dubai one day into its passage across the Atlantic Ocean, bosun Rodolfo Miguel escorts them to his captain, assuming they’ll be fed and put to work. To his horror, and that of the rest of the crew, the officers order the men to be put onto a flimsy raft, which in an instant is sucked under the frigid, unforgiving water. Over the next few weeks, the crew is divided between those loyal to the officers and those who cannot accept what they have seen. When on a later voyage a third stowaway is found, and then another, they’re forced to come to terms with the earlier murders and, at the risk of their own lives, act for good or evil. Intercut with these events is the backstory of the desperate stowaways, forced to flee their impoverished country in search of a better life. The powerful resolution of these two narratives, of the stowaways and the crew, makes for a tense and heart-pounding tale of murder, fear, and courage on the high seas.

Robert Hough

About

Books

Join the club