Roland Merullo Books In Order

Publication Order of Breakfast with BuddhaBooks

Publication Order of Revere Beach Trilogy Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Roland Merullo
Author Roland Merullo was born in Boston, Massachusetts on September 19, 1953, and grew up in Revere, Massachusetts, which is a working class Italian American community located five miles from downtown Boston.

He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire in the year 1971, and Brown University in the year 1975, where he also earned a Master’s in Russian Language and Literature the very next year.

He met Amanda Stearns, a photographer, while he was attending Brown. They started dating in the year 1978, and got married during the fall of 1979. Together they two daughters: Juliana and Alexandra.

“Lunch with Buddha” was selected as one of the Best Books of 2013 by Kirkus Reviews.”The Talk Funny Girl” was a 2012 ALEX Award Winner, which the Massachusetts Center for the Book and the Massachusetts Library Association called a Must Read.

His debut novel, called “Leaving Losapas”, was released in the year 1991. He writes non-fiction, inspirational, and thriller novels.

“Leaving Losapas” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 1991. Leo Markin, a young Vietnam combat veteran and US Marine that survived the war, found himself entirely changed by the whole experience that he just could not find a way to back to his family, home, and his fiancee in the working class city he was born in right outside of Boston. The islanders of Losapas are all kind to him, he had been living there for quite some time, and even found a woman that he came to love.

Various events help convince him to go back to America, but on his way back home, he feels lost. He has some troubling encounters with his aging dad, his old friends seem to be strangers to him, and his former fiancee married another guy and seems to be trapped in an abusive relationship.

Leo is torn between the natural and peaceful way of life on the island, and the rougher rules of his upbringing. In the end, even though he swore to turn his back on physical violence, it is actually an act of physical violence that convinces him the one place he is able to live is Losapas. His dad suddenly dies, and Leo decides to leave the house that he inherited to his ex-fiancee. Thus encouraging her to leave her husband, and goes back to the life that he left behind as well as his island lover.

Readers found this to be a wondrous and spiritually rich tale, and Merullo has written something of a beauty, one that lingers with you after you have closed up the book.

“A Russian Requiem” is the second stand alone novel and was released in the year 1993. Anton Czesich (nearing fifty who has spent a largely disillusioning career working for the US government overseas) shows up in Moscow, just two weeks before the failed right-wing coup of August 1991. He is there to take charge of a volatile American food distribution program, one that is administered by Julie Stirvin, who is the love from his youth. Czeshich and she have got their own history, and their own protracted cold war.

Many miles away, out in the mining center of Vostok, Soviet bureaucrat Serghei Propenko, an ex-champion boxer, is in the middle of his own midlife crisis, partly political and personal. Decent and modest, surrounded by one household of strong-willed and politically astute women.

The novel is briskly paced and all the characters are crisp. This is a page-turner of a story, and is finely crafted story about the tiny piece of history we all bear. The novel, having been speckled with irony and humor, rich in both political and psychological drama, takes the reader on a post-cold war voyage through the American and Russian soul.

“A Little Love Story” is the third stand alone novel and was released in the year 2005. Janet Rossi, unusually attractive and very smart, is an aide to the governor of Massachusetts, but suffers from an illness that makes her not quite a good long-term investment, as she puts it.

Jake Entwhistle is just a few years older, a portrait painter and a carpenter, good-looking and smart, just with a shadow over his romantic history. After they meet by accident, literally, when Janet backs right into Jake’s antique truck, they start a love affair that is marked by a deep and erotic intimacy, courage, and humor, as well as modern complications.

Roland does a great job of telling this story of grief, attraction, jealously, and loyalty. He also does a great job of describing both physical things and emotional things in a true, humorous, and real ways. At times, this book is hilarious, and others it’s poignant, and is a classic love story with a modern twist.

“Golfing With God” is the fourth stand alone novel and was released in the year 2005. Herman “Hank” Fins-Winston once was a professional golfer that was destined for greatness. Now he resides in a condo located on the thirteenth fairway of one of heaven’s glorious courses, a fact that he finds rather surprising, because for one reason or another, a fair percentage of all golfers never make it to paradise. Not to mention, that Hank was not really an angel while on Earth.

Hank has the time of his after life, until he gets summoned one beautiful morning to play with the Almighty. It appears that God has some trouble with putting. While they play through the heavenly courses, both back on earth and in paradise, Hank figures out that what started as a golf lesson turned into a real spiritual journey.

Readers found the message in this to be uplifting and inspiring, and the book is just a great reminder to remain in the moment. Even readers who aren’t fans of golf enjoyed this one, finding that Merullo is able to make it fairly interesting and his writing is funny. He tells this one with subtlety and wit without attempting to pound inspiration into the reader’s skull with a titanium golf club.