Standalone Novels In Publication Order
- Dear American Airlines (2008)
- Want Not (2013)
- Anatomy of a Miracle (2018)
Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order
- The Wreck of the Medusa / Medusa (2007)
- The Nine Lives of Otto Katz (2010)
- The Dangerous Otto Katz (2010)
- St Petersburg (2018)
Standalone Novels Book Covers
Non-Fiction Book Covers
Jonathan Miles Books Overview
Dear American Airlines
Sometimes the planes don’t fly on time. Bennie Ford, a fifty three year old failed poet turned translator, is traveling to his estranged daughter’s wedding when his flight is canceled. Stuck with thousands of fuming passengers in the purgatory of O’Hare airport, he watches the clock tick and realizes that he will miss the ceremony. Frustrated, irate, and helpless, Bennie does the only thing he can: he starts to write a letter. But what begins as a hilariously excoriating demand for a refund soon becomes a lament for a life gone awry, for years misspent, talent wasted, and happiness lost. A man both sinned against and sinning, Bennie writes in a voice that is a marvel of lacerating wit, heart on sleeve emotion, and wide ranging erudition, underlined by a consistent groundnote of regret for the actions of a lifetime and made all the more urgent by the fading hope that if he can just make it to the wedding, he might have a chance to do something right. A margarita blend of outrage, wicked humor, vulnerability, intelligence, and regret, Dear American Airlines gives new meaning to the term ‘airport novel’ and announces the emergence of major new talent in American fiction.
The Wreck of the Medusa / Medusa
The Wreck of the Medusa is a spellbinding account of the most famous shipwreck before the Titanic, a tragedy that riled a nation and inspired Theodore Gericault’s magnificent painting The Raft of the Medusa. In June 1816, the flagship of a French expedition to repossess a colony in Senegal from the British set sail. She never arrived at her destination; her incompetent captain Hugo de Chaumareys, ignoring telltale signs of shallow waters, plowed the ship into a famously treacherous sandbar. A privileged few claimed the lifeboats while 146 men and one woman were herded aboard a makeshift raft and set adrift. Without a compass or many provisions, hit by a vicious storm the first night, and exposed to sweltering heat during the following days, the group set upon each other: mayhem, mutiny, and murder ensued. When rescue arrived thirteen days later only fifteen were alive. Meanwhile, those in the boats who made it to shore undertook a dangerous two-hundred-mile slog through the desert. Among the handful of survivors from the raft were two men whose written account of the fiasco became a bestseller that rocked France’s political foundations and provided graphic fodder for Gericault’s world-famous painting.
The Dangerous Otto Katz
The FBI’s file on the Soviet spy Otto Katz 1893 1952 called him ‘an extremely dangerous man.’ This label doesn’t even begin to tell the story. Katz, a daring and treacherous Soviet spy, seemed perpetually to beat the center of crucial historical moments. A deft writer and litt rateur, he talked Arthur Koestler out of a life threatening but ultimately useless mission in the Spanish Civil War, and persuaded Hollywood’s gentry to donate to the Hollywood Anti Na*zi League, a cover organization that fed money into Soviet coffers. He traveled to Weimar Berlin, Moscow, Mexico City, Prague, New York, and London, and may even have married the film star Marlene Dietrich. His best known alter ego, a debonair character known as Rudolf Brea, was the inspiration for numerous film heroes, including Casablanca’s Victor Laszlo. In the hands of the hugely talented Jonathan Miles, this story is more than a biography; we also see this tumultuous period through Katz’s unflinching eyes. His activities take us from the Spanish Civil War to Stalin’s secret meetings, from Trotsky’s murder to the hidden lives of major Western celebrities. He takes us to the precipice of war and, more than a few times, over it. Through Katz’s quests for fame, fortune, glory, and power, Miles uncovers the shadowy side of a critical period in world history.
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