Ken Kuhlken

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  • Bibliography:
    23 Books (2 Series)
  • First Book:
    July 1980
  • Latest Book:
    February 2024
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Full Series List in Order

A California Century Mystery

1 - The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles (May-2010)
2 - The Good Know Nothing (Aug-2014)

A Hickey Family Mystery

1 - The Loud Adios (Aug-1991)
2 - The Venus Deal (Apr-1993)
3 - The Angel Gang (Aug-1994)
4 - The Do-Re-Mi (Dec-2006)
5 - Vagabond Virgins (Feb-2008)

Book List in Order: 23 titles

  • Midheaven

    Midheaven, Ken Kuhlken’s first novel, was originally published by Viking Press and honored as a finalist for PEN's Ernest Hemingway Award for Best First Fiction Book. The haunting story, set in and around the exquisite Lake Tahoe basin, is told thr...

  • The Loud Adios

    A Hickey Family Mystery - 1

    The Loud Adios is set on the home front during World War II. Tom Hickey is in the army, an M.P. working the Tijuana-San Diego border, when a farm boy draftee about to ship overseas begs for help rescuing his sister from a gang of German and Mexican N...

  • The Venus Deal

    A Hickey Family Mystery - 2

    While the rest of San Diego is dealing with the rages of World War II, Tom Hickey--half owner of a local club--is making money. But when the club's young singer Cynthia Moon disappears, business drops precipitously. Sometime private detective Hickey ...

  • The Angel Gang

    A Hickey Family Mystery - 3

    As The Angel Gang begins, thoughtful, capable ex-private detective Tom Hickey is married to the delicate Wendy, whose unworldly innocence and faith in her "angels" provides her with a stronger shield against evil than even Hickey's devotion and th...

  • The Do-Re-Mi

    A Hickey Family Mystery - 4

    It's late summer, 1972, up in California's redwood forests. They seem a ""safe and wondrous place,"" but some of Evergreen's population is growing pot up in the trees and others are bent on stealing it. Then there's the coming folk festival, a jambor...

  • Vagabond Virgins

    A Hickey Family Mystery - 5

    In the weeks before the 1979 Mexican elections, San Diego P.I. Alvaro Hickey follows newspaper accounts of the stories Baja California campesinos are spreading about visits from the Holy Virgin. Shes admonishing them to vote the corrupt and tyrannica...

  • The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles

    A California Century Mystery - 1

    In 1926, when musician Tom Hickey reads in a broadside about a lynching the Los Angeles newspapers failed to report, and discovers the Negro victim was an old friend, he goes to his neighbor Leo Weiss, an LAPD detective. Leo confirms that, officiall...

  • The Good Know Nothing

    A California Century Mystery - 2

    During the summer of 1936, destitute farmers from the Dust Bowl swarm into California, and an old friend brings police detective Tom Hickey a clue to the mystery of his father Charlie's long-ago disappearance. Tom chooses to risk losing his job and f...

  • Cars: California Stories

    Stories selected from the work of much honored novelist Ken Kuhlken that vividly capture California as a glorious dream, a hallucination and a nightmare, a state we all should visit though we might not want to risk living there....



  • Cars

    Stories selected from the work of much honored novelist Ken Kuhlken that vividly capture California as a glorious dream, a hallucination and a nightmare, a state we all should visit though we might not want to risk living there....

  • Newport Ave

    A fugitive from a manslaughter charge returns home to a foggy California beach town hoping to protect his sister Olivia from her estranged husband, a mob-connected gambler. He enlists the help of his closest old friend, now a devoted Christian family...

  • Newport Ave.

    A fugitive from a manslaughter charge returns home to a foggy California beach town hoping to protect his sister Olivia from her estranged husband, a mob-connected gambler. He enlists the help of his closest old friend, now a devoted Christian family...

  • The Fat Lady, A Love Story

    The Very Least: (San Diego, Tijuana, Lake Tahoe, 1985) A dear friend of Clifford Hickey's cousin Bo crosses the border on the run from a charge of molesting children in a church nursery school. Because Bo believes him innocent, journalist Clifford...

  • The Very Least

    A dear friend of Clifford Hickey’s cousin Bo crosses the border on the run from a charge of molesting children in a church nursery school. Because Bo believes him innocent, journalist Clifford agrees to investigate. Soon he has made enemies of gang...

  • The Answer to Everything

    Jodi McGee, narrator of the Answer to Everything, has a seventeen-year-old daughter, a husband in prison, and a deep affection for Clifford Hickey, a San Diego journalist. When Clifford’s brother Alvaro assists in the murder of a Tijuana drug carte...

  • Hickey and McGee

    Hickey and McGee is at once an epic love story and a novel of crime, corruption, faith, madness, and extreme courage.The parts of the story are:Midheaven, a coming-of-age drama set in and around the exquisite Lake Tahoe basin, told by Jodi McGee as a...

  • Supermen

    Supermen is book one of For America, a two-family saga of suspense and mystery. Set in the long aftermath of WW II, the novel dramatically explores the failure of traditional beliefs and political systems and the rise and fall of counter cultures and...

  • This Rough Beast

    In This Rough Beast, Book Two of For America, Otis Otterbach attempts to make a life after baseball and after his best and most trusted friend disappears, perhaps on the run after committing murder The story follows and interprets the hopes and turmo...

  • The Gas Crisis

    Following the loss of his home and best friend, Otis faces tough questions, such as whether to stay married, what sort of work and life to pursue and, above all, whether to kill Henry Tucker, whom his nemesis Cynthia Jones calls the Enemy. These dile...



  • War

    Book Four of For America. Otis Otterbach decides he won't live in the same world as the man he holds responsible for burning down his home and killing his dearest friend. He trains to make himself into a ruthless warrior then and sets off on what he ...

  • The Holy Grail

    The Holy Grail concludes the For America saga with Otis finding in an island prison a measure of peace, which then is disturbed by baseball and the rape of a woman he loves. He escapes from prison and flees Mexico to settle with the rapist, with the ...

  • Damned Hot

    Kyle Moss, a bankrupt real estate developer returns to Crown City, his hometown in California's Imperial Valley, from which at sixteen he had gotten sent away after a near-deadly clash with a rival, Frank Castro.Now twelve years have passed, Frank ha...

  • Young Tom Hickey

    • / Literary
    • Buy

    The two books that together become Hickey & Hickey are the harrowing story of a gifted brother and sister attempting to make good in early 20th century Los Angeles. This is hardly easy, given World War I, the wild and violent prohibition era, the Gre...

Award-Winning Books by Ken Kuhlken

The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles
2011 San Diego Book Award -- Mystery


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Ken Kuhlken has published 23 books.

Ken Kuhlken does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, Damned Hot, was published in February 2024.

The first book by Ken Kuhlken, Midheaven, was published in July 1980.

Yes. Ken Kuhlken has 2 series.
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