William Brinkley Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

William Brinkley was a published American journalist and writer.

He was famously known for his novel The Last Ship, as well as his novel Don’t Go Near the Water. This would be adapted into a film by the same name by MGM in 1957. He was also a writer on one episode of the television series ‘Climax!’.

He was born on September 10, 1917 in Custer City, Oklahoma. He was the youngest out of five children. Born to a minister, he attended the University of Oklahoma. He would then serve in the U.S. Navy as an officer during World War II, serving in Europe and the Pacific.

Once he had graduated from University, he would work for The Daily Oklahoman, based out of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He was afterwards a reporter for a year for The Washington Post in 1941 and then worked for them again two years later from 1949 to 1951.

William has served as a correspondent, a staff writer, and an assistant editor for Life magazine for seven years from 1951 to 1958. He also belonged to the National Press Club and remained a member until he passed away in 1993.

He served during the Navy during the second World War and then in 1948 wrote his first novel Quicksand, which was also published the same year. He wrote his nonfiction book in 1954 titled The Deliverance of Sister Cecelia.

He would keep on writing, continuing on with Don’t Go Near the Water, which was a comedic story about sailors in the Navy that were serving in the South Pacific while World War II was going on. He would keep the comedy going by writing his novel The Fun House, which was set in a picture magazine’s offices just like Life.

The next year in 1962 he wrote his novel The Two Susans, following it up with his novel The Ninety and Nine in 1966, which was similar to ‘Water’ in that it also focused on sailors in the Navy during World War II.

He decided in 1971 that he would move to McAllen, Texas. He would reside there until he passed away November 22, 1993. Throughout all of the seventies he only penned one novel, a story called Breakpoint that came out in 1978 about Tennis.

He followed it up with Peeper, another comedy novel that was all about a voyeur in a small town in Texas. He would release his last work in 1988, The Last Ship. The novel was fictional and was a post-apocalyptic tale that dealt with various sailors in a fictional Navy guided missile destroyer which makes it through a short but all-consuming nuclear war.

The author had been contending for years with major depressive disorder. He took his own life and passed at home in Texas. His ashes were carefully scattered to lay the author to rest in the Gulf of Mexico. The author leaves behind a legacy of stories as well as film and television, seeing his works Don’t Go Near the Water and his work The Last Ship come to life on the screen.

Don’t Go Near the Water is the comedic novel from William Brinkley. It follows along with the many adventures of a group of naval officers that make up a PR unit that have been stuck on a remote island in the Pacific in the days that World War II has concluded.

The book serves as a parody of different aspects of the U.S. Navy in wartime, especially by the Navy public relations. This also happens to be the area in which Brinkley served.

The story takes place in the year 1945, placed just after Iwo Jima was invaded all the way to the war’s conclusion. The officers that are depicted there are in the PR section of ComFleets, which is the headquarters of the Pacific Fleet, also fictionally placed on the island of Tulura.

This book is broke up into ten different chapters. Each is going to be able to tell a story about the different public relations officers that have been placed on the island. It also has six numbered interludes that have been numbered sequentially, which all go over the romance that existed between Melora Alba and Ensign Max Siegel.

The PR section is led by Lt. Commander Clinton C. Nash, a bald man who wants to be nautical but cannot master a sextant’s use. There is also Lt. JG Ross Pendleton, a radio producer, and more, such as Ensign Siegel who helps Pendleton with a mission to visit the natives and get photographs and film for the Navy. Siegel makes friends with the natives and their visit is planned but the footage are never used and Siegel is relieved for that.

There are six meloras here. They each go into various different stories. The first melora is titled ‘The Passionate Sailors of Mendoza’ and features Siegel showing two politicians the island and features an interaction between the politicians and an attractive girl, who ends up speaking English in a surprise twist.

The second melora is titled ‘Never Mind the Frangipani’. It sees the return of Siegel to the village, where he interrogates Mr. Seguro about Melora. He eventually finds out that she’s the teacher at the schoolhouse for the village and immediately heads in that direction.

The third melora is titled ‘Hydroz to Jerem’. Siegel has now formed a relationship with Melora and is assisting her in the schoolhouse after class. The school doesn’t have a library, and he is looking up questions from her students in the base library. He ends up purchasing an encyclopedia for the school as a result.

The fourth melora is called ‘I Went to Harvard College, Sir’. Ensign Siegel goes home with Melora in order to have some tea with her father, who is also the chief banker of Tulura. He is a man of culture who has pursued his education in Europe. Once the tea is concluded, Mr. Alba politely dissects the man and finds him clearly wanting when it comes to education and his breeding, despite his background from Harvard.

The fifth melora is titled ‘Queen’s Pawn Opening’. The new schoolhouse has opened and is going well, and Melora invited Ensign Siegel to come have tea with her and her father. He is more comfortable when he discovers that her father has a collection of chess sets and shows how much he knows and appreciates the game. Once he finds out that Siegel is skilled at the game, he invites him to play one as well as to stay for dinner.

The sixth melora is called ‘New York is a Very Great Excitement’. Melora and Ensign Siegel have become very close, and her father has discovered that he and Siegel have a lot in common. He likes him a lot more now, but things are thrown into question when Melora tells Siegel that she could not live anywhere else but Tulura thanks to her sense of duty here to the community and the people.

Quicksand is another book to come out from William Brinkley. This story is chock full of suspense so if you love a good suspense story, check this work out!

Brock Andrews is very upset when he finds out that his wife Alison has decided to release Edward Nelson. Nelson is an arms dealer and a former CIA agent, and she wants to use him as an undercover spy.

However, Nelson has come up with a diabolical scheme where he is going to go further into the political arena and infiltrate it from within. Just like that, Brock finds himself in a world full of deceit, betrayal, and corruption where he just might find out that nothing is as it appears. Read this book to find out what happens!