Richard Lange Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

Richard Lange is a bestselling author of mystery and horror fiction that is best known for his short story collection “Dead Boys.” Lange has made a name for himself writing character-driven stories with a strong sense of place.
The author was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2009 and the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him with the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award.

The author was born and brought up in Central Valley and as an eighteen-year-old, he went to the University of Southern California where he studied film. Thereafter, he moved to Barcelona, where he was a teacher of English working for Berlitz.
Upon returning to Los Angeles, he got a job with Larry Flynt Publications as a copy editor. He would eventually advance up the ranks at the organization to become managing editor.

He would then work as a textbook editor before he worked for a radio industry trade magazine and editor of Rdio & Records. His works have been featured in the likes of Best American Mystery Stories, The Iowa Review, and The Sun.

The several years that Richard Lange spent at Larry Flint publications as editor played a huge role in shaping his future career as a fiction author.

It was a very professional environment where employees were expected to show up ready to work, sober, and on time. He got the chance to learn all the rules of spelling, punctuation, and grammar as a managing editor.

As an editor at Radio & Records, he had to edit the stories of many writers who had more enthusiasm rather than experience or skill. As such, he got a baptism by fire editing ramblings into coherent prose.

He got very good at creating a coherent story structure, cutting fat, and distilling scribblings of various musicians into easy-to-understand responses.

While he was working very hard during the day, he spent his nights penning his short stories, most of which would form the backbone of his bestselling “Dead Boys” short story collection.

His experience as an editor meant that he sent out stories that were well polished. When he got the inevitable rejections, he reworked them and sent them out again.

Richard Lange got his fiction writing training writing short stories. He spent more than a decade writing his short fiction and pitching them to literary journals. When he eventually published “Dead Boys” he had more than a dozen short fiction to his name.

He published “This Wicked World” his debut long-form fiction in 2009 to much critical acclaim. He would then go back to writing his short stories that he would then publish in Sweet Nothing.

Most of his short stories are a collection of moments as compared to his novels which are much more structured showing his development as an author.

Lange got his first break when an agent saw his story in a journal and contacted him. The agent asked if he has enough stories to make a collection and luckily he did.

Another condition was that he also needed to pen at least a this of a novel before he was signed on by a publisher. He would eventually get his debut novel and short story collection published by Little Brown.

“This Wicked World” by Richard Lange is an explosive debut novel set in Southern California, where there is a meeting between Denis Johnson and Elmore Leonard.

Jimmy Boone is a former marine and former bodyguard to the famous and rich of Los Angeles. At the opening of the story, he is on parole, fresh out of Corcoran and trying to remain clean until he can figure out what to do next.

He works on Hollywood Boulevard tending a bar, where he usually serves drinks to tourists. He has vowed to turn his life around but he has never been successful with such vows before.

Soon enough, he runs into trouble when he agrees to help the bouncer at his bar in a murder investigation. The more he learns about the murdered innocent boy, the more he takes the investigation as a mission.

In his investigations, he has to deal with a vicious crime boss, struggling drug dealers, a beautiful ex-cop, a vengeful stripper, and millions of dollars in counterfeit bills.

Diving deeper into the investigation, Boone seems to believe that it may be his last chance at redemption. It makes for a great story that will grab its readers by the neck and never lets go right to the very last page.

Richard Langes’ novel “Angel Baby” introduces Luz a woman that has been abused by her criminal husband for years. To get back her life and reunite with Isabel her young daughter, she will need to leave the man.

To do that, she will need to cross over to the US and locate her aunt who has been taking care of her daughter. She is determined to do anything to get her life back but once she gets away she will need all the help she can get.

She has her chance one evening and empties out her husband’s safe and goes into hiding. Luz gets introduced to a man that has been smuggling people into the United States for years.

While it is not the perfect setup, she does not have any other option. In the meantime, her husband El Principe notices that she is gone and comes up with a plan to get her back.

He threatens a man named Jeronimo to go after her and bring back his wife or else he would kill his entire family. Throw in a corrupt border patrol agent who learns that she is crossing over with a lot of money and things could not get more complicated. Will her husband find and bring her back before she is successful or will, she get the chance at reuniting with her daughter and getting a fresh start?

“The Smack” by Richard Langes is the story of Rowan Petty, a professional conman who is in the doldrums. He has only five grand left and resorts to calling people on Thanksgiving hoping to scam them with a dodgy real estate plan.

But things just cannot go right and even a rendezvous with Tinafey his favorite hooker is not that great. However, he meets someone he had worked with in the past who tells him of a scam that could get him early retirement.

Allegedly, there are two million dollars stored at some warehouse in Reno that is being held at a downtown Los Angeles apartment. He is cognizant of the fact that even scammers can get scammed but the lute of the hunt and the money are too tempting.

Moreover, he will get the chance to be reunited with Sam his estranged daughter who has recently been ailing.

It is a seductive story with a lot of misdirection that makes for a diamond-cut thriller with a lot of twists and turns.