Pete Dexter Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Pete Dexter is a literary fiction author who has been described as a natural humorist, a tough guy, and a man with a kind heart. He has made a reputation for himself writing beautifully observed, blackly funny, hard-edged novels.

Over the years, his novels have garnered critical acclaim for the sparkling clarity of the sentence and the riveting stories they tell.

In 1998, he won the National Book Award for the novel “Paris Trout.” In 1998 “Paperboy,” his novel was called beautiful and eerie by “The New York Times.”

Even though he has been described as a writer’s writer, it is surprising that he never read a serious work of literary fiction until he was 20. While his family was full of writers and readers he preferred to have a good time shooting out of the windows.

While he has never said what it was that turned him from a wild child into a journalist of renown in Florida, he has been specific about how he became a bestselling literary fiction author.

Dexter currently makes his home in Puget Sound so high up a cliff because that is just how he likes it.

Growing up, Pete Dexter never once thought he would grow up to become an author. Things changed when he went to the University of South Dakota and it was there that he took two writing classes.

He only took the classes after realizing that mathematics was not for him. After he looked through the student book and saw that he could take a class in Creative Writing, he thought it was the easiest way to get credits for his graduation.

Nonetheless, he was never serious with his studies and read very little even as he took those creative writing classes. In fact, when he penned “Deadwood,” his sibling told him that he had written a work longer than any he had ever read.

When he was twenty-six years old, he walked into the offices of a Fort Lauderdale-based newspaper and had himself hired as a reporter. It was that easy to get hired then and most people used to get hired that way.

Unlike other authors, he never sat around thinking of becoming a novelist. All he ever thought about was becoming the best columnist for his paper.

Pete Dexter’s novels made him happy for a little while as it was a lot of fun since he got to be left all alone for long periods. He would then move on to write for magazines for some time before realizing that he did not like it as much.

It was while Pete Draxter was working for the Philadelphia Daily News, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, and the Philadelphia Daily News that he started thinking of becoming an author.

Before then he was in West Palm Beach Florida working for “The Palm Beach Post.” He had to quit the latter since the owners of the paper pressured the editor to endorse Richard Nixon.

It was then that he started writing his fiction following an incident in 1981. He had penned a column in the paper and tens of Philadelphia residents had attacked him with baseball bats injuring him severely.

The injuries left him partially disabled in addition to the fact that he had other injuries from his years as an amateur boxer and several from traffic accidents, he had to undergo several years of corrective surgery.

In 2007, he compiled the columns he has written from the 1970s to the 1990s for “The Sacramento Bee” and “The Philadelphia News” into “Paper Trails” that he published in 2007.

“The Paperboy” is a beautiful story by award-winning author Pete Dexter set in Moat County, Florida where the author has been living for years now.

The lead in the novel is Jack James who is the son of the publisher and editor of the “Moat County Tribune.” Ward who is his elder brother is a reporter for the “Miami Times” while Jack is a delivery man for the Tribune.

But when Ward and Yardley Acheman his evil partner come to Moat County to look into a homicide that had been going cold, Jack offers his help in the investigation.

Following a brutal beating from two sailors, Ward ends up in the ICU leaving Yardley to continue the investigations on his own. This forces him to fabricate evidence to resolve the four-year-old murder mystery of the sheriff.

Jack heads back to Miami alongside his traumatized brother and gets a job at the Times as a copyboy. However, it is not long before his wrongdoing is unearthed and it generates a lot of trouble for the two brothers.

Pete Dexter’s “Train” is a work set in 1`953 that introduces Lionel Walk. Nicknamed “Train,” he is an eighteen-year-old African American lad that is an employee of an exclusive golf course in Los Angeles.

He has to deal with bigoted and cruel members while most of the caddies are criminal and violent. Everyone seems to treat him with disdain except for Miller Packard, an enigmatic golfer who recognizes that the lad might have a special golfing talent.

Packard happens to be a police officer that rescued Norah Rose, the beautiful woman when there is a brutal attack on her and her husband that leaves the latter dead and his wife devastated.

Since her husband was killed in the attack, she finds comfort in Packard. She moves in with him in Beverly Hills even as Train is let go and starts working as a groundsman at the Paradise Developments golf course.

It is not long before he gets the course into good condition but instability returns when a tree removal project goes very wrong. Packard now needs to find the man and help him to get back on his feet.

“Spooner” by Pete Dexter asks what one would do when their twin brother who is born stillborn remains your mother’s favorite.

Warren Spooner is a man that lived a life of criminal mischievousness but turned it around to become a phenomenal baseball player.

Unfortunately, he gets an injury that ends his pitching career and has to find a job in Philadelphia working as a newspaper reporter. But his colleagues and superiors dislike him so much that top of the editor’s to-do list is his firing.
However, he proves everyone wrong when he starts a family and becomes a published novelist and columnist.

He is a dogged man in his pursuits but a combination of bad judgment and bad luck causes him to lose almost everything and he has to retreat to Washington State’s Whidbey Island.

At his new home, he soon learns that good neighbors are not necessarily made by good fences. Unlike Calmer Ottosson his stepfather who showed a lot of dedication to his family, Spooner could not be any more bellicose in his adventures.