Mowbray & the Sharks: Being a Tale of Ghosts, Gangsters, and Nazis

Howard Denson, a native of Jasper, Ala., grew up reading Mark Twain, James Thurber, Robert Benchley, plus a host of serio-comic novelists. His aunts, parents, and grandparents immersed him in life in the 1920s and 1930s, and Hollywood filled in any gaps in what he learned thanks to Cagney, Robinson, and the Thin Man. He has been a flunky for various newspapers in Florida and Alabama and a teacher of college-level writing and humanities in Jacksonville, Fla.