Works by
Jesse Kellerman
(Playwright, Writer)
[September 1, 1978 - ]

Children

• Daddy, Daddy, Can You Touch the Sky? (1994) with his father, Jonathan Kellerman
  Six poems designed to develop strong identity concepts.

Fiction

• The Genius (2008, aka Brutal Art)
  A tenant has disappeared in a New York slum, leaving behind strange, original artwork. Gallery owner Ethan Muller can see its brilliance—and money-making potential. When Ethan displays the art, the show attracts the attention of the police. Because the subjects of the pictures look exactly like the victims in a long-cold murder case. Ethan has received a letter saying stop, stop, stop. And the still-missing genius may be the link to a madman—or the madman himself.

• Trouble (2007)
  Young, idealistic, and overworked, Jonah is living the lonely life of a medical student in New York City when he accidentally stumbles across a murder in progress: a woman, being stabbed to death in the middle of the sidewalk. Without thinking, he rushes in to protect her-inadvertently killing her attacker in the process.
  
  Thrust into the media spotlight, crushed by guilt, Jonah quickly learns that heroism isn't all it's cracked up to be. He receives a shower of unwanted attention-and hostility-from his superiors. The district attorney wants to "interview" him. The family of the dead man wants revenge.
  
  Everything is further upended when the woman whose life he saved shows up at his apartment. What begins as a thank-you drink turns into a wildly passionate love affair. As their relationship deepens, however, Jonah realizes that she isn't quite the woman she appears to be. His nightmare has only begun, and the price of kindness will turn out to be higher than he could have imagined.

• Sunstroke (2006)
  The blazingly original novel from the most exciting new voice in crime fiction today-a brilliantly crafted modern noir filled with secrets, heartbreak, and mordant humor.
  
  Gloria Mendez is single and thirty-six, and secretly and somewhat hopelessly in love with her oblivious boss. He is both single and solitary, and far too old for her, but she has worked for him, side by side, for ten oddly companionable years. But when he disappears on his annual trip to Mexico-the one aspect of his life to which she's never been privy-Gloria's sudden and impulsive search for him reveals the wreckage of a hidden past. Carl Perreira was not who Gloria thought he was-nor was he anything she could have imagined.
  
  As Gloria travels this twisted road into Carl's backstory, she realizes she might not have known him at all. Her investigation discloses as much about her own life as it does about her mysterious boss -and leaves her fighting for her life. Sunstroke is everything a thriller should be: circuitous, thought provoking, and brimming with edge-of-the-seat suspense-and the start of a brilliant career.

Plays

• Things Beyond Our Control (2003) -- Winner 2003 Princess Grace Foundation Playwriting Award
  On a rainy Texas night, a cabbie commits hit-and-run. Though they try to forget it happened, guilt draws the driver and his passenger together and seven lives change forever. The well-drawn characters include a lesbian airline employee, a doctor with the bedside manner of a mannequin, a waitress who always carries a burn kit - just in case, a single father whose only happiness hovers near death, a high-strung business woman, an ex-con terrified of Texas justice and a street magician whose verbal contortions hide a thirty-year battle to rectify his past. This is a play about Dallas, love, fate, magic and peach pie.