JFK Fiction

November 22nd, 1963 - John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.  Here are ten works of fiction with JFK.

11/22/63 by Stephen King - On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? The author's new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination. In this novel that is a tribute to a simpler era, he sweeps readers back in time to another moment, a real life moment, when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces readers to a character who has the power to change the course of history. Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students, a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night fifty years ago when Harry Dunning's father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk. Not much later, Jake's friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane, and insanely possible, mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake's new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake's life, a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

The Berlin Conspiracy by Tom Gabbay - Berlin. June 1963.
Jack Teller shouldn't be here.
But is a CIA agent ever really out of the game?
Jack Teller left the Company after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, hoping to live a quiet life on a remote beach in south Florida. But it's not turning out that way. Just days before President John F. Kennedy is scheduled to deliver his historic speech at the Berlin Wall, a mysterious message is sent to the Berlin station of the CIA from a Colonel in the East German Stasi. He claims to have important information, but he will disclose it to only one man: Jack.
 Tom Gabbay has created an unforgettable twentieth-century hero in Jack Teller, and populated his story with a wealth of multidimensional characters -- men and women who exist in the parallel but inter-secting worlds of a divided Berlin when it was the crossroads between communist Soviet Union and the West.
The intelligence provided by this Stasi official, if true, exposes a treacherous plot originating from the highest levels of the U.S. government. Jack's handlers, including his former mentor Sam Clay, believe it's a communist setup, and Jack is playing the part of the expendable pawn. But after a face-to-face meeting with his informer, Jack isn't so sure and plunges into a risky search for the truth. After receiving threats from higher-ups in the CIA, he soon finds himself alone, at the axis of the Cold War, in a city that holds many dark secrets -- including some from Jack's own storied past.
In the world of espionage, lies are currency and nothing is what it seems -- a truth Jack would do well to remember if he wants to live to prevent a global catastrophe. A unique and brilliantly plotted debut thriller featuring dark twists, breathtaking action, and unforgettable characters, The Berlin Conspiracy is spellbinding to its hair-raising end.  Book 1 of 3 in the Jack Teller series 

Big Bang by David Bowman - Where were you when you first heard President Kennedy had been shot? This is a question most people can answer, even if the answer is "I wasn't born yet." In this epic novel, David Bowman makes the strong case that the shooting on November 22nd, 1963 was the major, defining turning point that catapulted the world into an entirely new stratosphere. It was the second big bang.
In this hilarious, lightning-fast historical novel, Bowman follows the most famous couples of the decade as their lives are torn apart by post-war's new normal. We see Lucille Ball's bizarre interrogation by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and Jackie Onassis' moonlight cruise with Frank Sinatra . We follow Norman Mailer and Arthur Miller as they attempt to get quickie divorces together at a loophole resort in Nevada and watch a young Howard Hunt snoop around South America with the newly founded CIA. A young Jimi Hendrix, now the epitome of counterculture cool, tries his luck as a clean cut army recruit.

Jack 1939 by Francine Mathews - It's the spring of 1939, and the prospect of war in Europe looms large. The United States has no intelligence service. In Washington, D.C., President Franklin Roosevelt may run for an unprecedented third term and needs someone he can trust to find out what the Nazis are up to. His choice: John F. Kennedy.
It's a surprising selection. At twenty-two, Jack Kennedy is the attractive but unpromising second son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Roosevelt's ambassador to Britain (and occasional political adversary). But when Jack decides to travel through Europe to gather research for his Harvard senior thesis, Roosevelt takes the opportunity to use him as his personal spy. The president's goal: to stop the flow of German money that has been flooding the United States to buy the 1940 election--an election that Adolf Hitler intends Roosevelt lose.

The Kennedy Connection by R. G. Belsky - Half a century after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, someone is killing people on the streets of New York City and leaving behind a bizarre calling card of that tragic day in Dallas.
In this bold and entertaining thriller from a true media insider, discredited newspaper reporter Gil Malloy breaks the story of the link between seemingly unconnected murders--a Kennedy half dollar coin found at each of the crime scenes. At the same time, a man emerges who claims to be the secret son of Lee Harvey Oswald and says he has new evidence that Oswald was innocent of the JFK killing.
Malloy, who has fallen from grace at the New York Daily News and sees this as an opportunity to redeem himself as an ace reporter, is certain there is a connection between the Oswald revelations and the NYC murders, but first he has to get someone to believe him. Convinced that the answers go all the way back to the JFK assassination more than fifty years ago, Malloy soon uncovers long-buried secrets that put his own life in danger from powerful forces who fear he's getting too close to the truth.  Book 1 of 3 in the Gil Malloy series 

November Road by Lou Berney - Set against the assassination of JFK, a poignant and evocative crime novel that centers on a desperate cat-and-mouse chase across 1960s America--a story of unexpected connections, daring possibilities, and the hope of second chances from the Edgar Award-winning author of The Long and Faraway Gone. Frank Guidry's luck has finally run out. A loyal street lieutenant to New Orleans' mob boss Carlos Marcello, Guidry has learned that everybody is expendable. But now it's his turn--he knows too much about the crime of the century: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Within hours of JFK's murder, everyone with ties to Marcello is turning up dead, and Guidry suspects he's next: he was in Dallas on an errand for the boss less than two weeks before the president was shot. With few good options, Guidry hits the road to Las Vegas, to see an old associate--a dangerous man who hates Marcello enough to help Guidry vanish. Guidry knows that the first rule of running is "don't stop," but when he sees a beautiful housewife on the side of the road with a broken-down car, two little daughters and a dog in the back seat, he sees the perfect disguise to cover his tracks from the hit men on his tail. Posing as an insurance man, Guidry offers to help Charlotte reach her destination, California. If she accompanies him to Vegas, he can help her get a new car. For her, it's more than a car-- it's an escape. She's on the run too, from a stifling existence in small-town Oklahoma and a kindly husband who's a hopeless drunk. It's an American story: two strangers meet to share the open road west, a dream, a hope--and find each other on the way. Charlotte sees that he's strong and kind; Guidry discovers that she's smart and funny. He learns that's she determined to give herself and her kids a new life; she can't know that he's desperate to leave his old one behind. Another rule--fugitives shouldn't fall in love, especially with each other. A road isn't just a road, it's a trail, and Guidry's ruthless and relentless hunters are closing in on him. But now Guidry doesn't want to just survive, he wants to really live, maybe for the first time. Everyone's expendable, or they should be, but now Guidry just can't throw away the woman he's come to love. And it might get them both killed.

The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle Gable - Based on a real story--in 1950, a young, beautiful Polish refugee arrives in Hyannisport, Massachusetts to work as a maid for one of the wealthiest families in America. Alicia is at once dazzled by the large and charismatic family, in particular the oldest son, a rising politician named Jack. Alicia and Jack are soon engaged, but his domineering father forbids the marriage. And so, Alicia trades Hyannisport for Hollywood, and eventually Rome. She dates famous actors and athletes and royalty, including Gary Cooper, Kirk Douglas, and Katharine Hepburn, all the while staying close with Jack. A decade after they meet, on the eve of Jack's inauguration as the thirty-fifth President of the United States, the two must confront what they mean to each other. 

The Tears of Autumn by Charles McCarry - Paul Christopher, at the height of his powers as a secret agent, believes he knows who arranged the assassination and why. His theory is so destructive of the legend of the dead president, though, and so dangerous to the survival of foreign policy that he is ordered to desist from investigating. But Christopher is a man who lives by and for the truth, and his internal compunctions force him to the heart of the matter. He resigns from the Agency and embarks on a tour of investigation that takes him from Paris to Rome, Zurich, the Congo, and Saigon. Threatened by Kennedy's assassins and by his own government, Christopher follows the scent of his suspicion - one breath behind the truth, one step ahead of discovery and death. Book 2 of 8 in the Paul Christopher series 

The Third Bullet by Stephen Hunter - Bob Lee Swagger is back in a thriller fifty years in the making . . .
It's not even a clue. It's a whisper, a trace, a ghost echo, drifting down through the decades via chance connections so fragile that they would disintegrate in the puff of a breath. But it's enough to get legendary former Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger interested in the events of November 22, 1963, and the third bullet that so decisively ended the life of John F. Kennedy and set the stage for one of the most enduring controversies of our time.
Swagger begins his slow night stalk through a much-traveled landscape. But he's asking questions that few have asked before: Why did the third bullet explode? Why did Lee Harvey Oswald, about to become the most hunted man on earth, risk it all by returning to his rooming house to secure a pistol he easily could have brought with him? How could a conspiracy that went unpenetrated for fifty years have been thrown together in the two and a half days between the announcement of the president's route and the assassination itself?
As Bob investigates, another voice enters the narrative: knowing, ironic, almost familiar, that of a gifted, Yale-educated veteran of the CIA Plans Division. Hugh Meachum has secrets and the means and the will to keep them buried. When weighed against his own legacy, Swagger's life is an insignificant expense--but to blunt the threat, he'll first have to ambush the sniper. Book 8 of 11 in the Bob Lee Swagger series 

The White Ghost by James R. Benn - 1943: In the midst of the brutal, hard-fought Solomon Islands campaign between the Allies and the Japanese forces, Lieutenant Billy Boyle receives an odd assignment: he's sent by the powerful Kennedy family to investigate a murder in which PT skipper (and future president) Jack Kennedy has been implicated. The victim is a native coastwatcher, an allied intelligence operative, whom Kennedy discovered on the island of Tulagi with his head bashed in. That's Kennedy's story, anyhow. Kennedy was recovering in the Navy hospital on the island after the sinking of his PT-109 motor torpedo boat. The military hasn't decided yet whether to make him a hero for surviving the attack, or have him court-martialed for losing the boat, and the last thing the Kennedy clan wants is a murder charge hanging over his head. Billy knows firsthand that he shouldn't trust Jack: the man is a charmer, a womanizer, and, when it suits his needs, a liar. But would he kill someone in cold blood? And if so, why? The first murder is followed by two more, and to find the killer, Billy must sort through a tangled, shifting web of motives and identities, even as combat rages all around him.   Book 10 of 14 in the Billy Boyle World War II Mysteries