Novels and books by herb schultz

Born conjoined at the chest in rural North Carolina, identical twins Ronnie and Lennie have spent their lives quite literally inseparable. When they finally gain their independence from one another, they discover that being apart presents complications they could never have imagined. Spanning decades and populated by an unforgettable assortment of family, lovers, opportunists and misfits, Ronnie and Lennie is a funny, sad and unapologetically vulgar story about brotherhood, identity, freedom—and two men who discover that the bonds connecting them aren't so easily severed.

Gerald Pfalzgraf is a successful Manhattan architect with expensive tastes, flexible morals, and an inconvenient wife standing between him and the life he believes he deserves. With his eye on his wife’s fortune—and on the much younger Wren—Gerald begins engineering an increasingly elaborate scheme involving deception, manipulation, and a colorful collection of people who may not be quite as controllable as he thinks. Darkly comic and unapologetically cynical, Architect’s Rendition is a story of greed, desire, and the dangerous consequences of treating human beings like pieces on an architect’s drawing board.

Tracy Shepard is a highly successful mediator accustomed to resolving other people’s conflicts. But when identical twin brothers developing a potentially revolutionary drug become embroiled in a bitter dispute, professional obligation becomes intensely personal: the drug could offer hope to Tracy’s father. As she is drawn deeper into the twins’ world, Tracy encounters fraud, manipulation, desire and revenge—and discovers that neither the brothers nor their miracle cure is quite what it seems. Double Blind Test is a provocative, darkly humorous tale in which almost everyone has something to hide and determining whom to trust may be the most dangerous test of all. 

In Sometimes the Sun Does Shine There, ordinary people wander into decidedly extraordinary trouble. Across a collection of darkly comic stories populated by schemers, victims, criminals, lovers and people making spectacularly bad decisions, exploitation and desperation collide with the occasional—and often satisfying—moment of comeuppance. Funny, disturbing, vulgar and unexpectedly poignant, these are stories about people operating near the margins, where morality is negotiable, consequences are unpredictable, and sometimes justice arrives in forms no one could have anticipated.

Avarice, deceit, connivance and revenge – such vile human traits - nd the stuff of so many entertaining Hollywood movies. Here are two screenplays that fit the bill.

 Logline of the first screenplay: Determined to marry his mistress, a Machiavellian architect  enlists three associates in a complex scheme to murder his wife – and  each other. Logline of the second: After a professional mediator is conned by  identical twin businessmen who sought her help to resolve a dispute, she  meets another woman in a suspiciously similar circumstance, and the two  team up to take down the con artists.  

 Culture is represented in many forms: art, music, architecture,  books, movies, television, advertising, business, fashion, cuisine,  sports, technology. Even politics, and especially death. And all of it  deserves scrutiny – justly, of course. This eclectic collection of more  than 250 essays justly scrutinizes culture over six years beginning in  2012. Some of it virtuous, lots of it venal.

With its diverse content of bite-sized essays, Culture Justly Scrutinized is the perfect book for the bedside table, or the rack next to the toilet.