Standalone Novels
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Deliverance Of Sister Cecilia | 1954 | Buy |
| Don’t Go Near the Water | 1956 | Buy |
| Quicksand | 1958 | N/A |
| The Fun House | 1961 | Buy |
| The Two Susans | 1963 | Buy |
| The Ninety and Nine | 1966 | Buy |
| Breakpoint | 1978 | Buy |
| Peeper | 1981 | Buy |
| The Last Ship | 1988 | Buy |
William Brinkley was a journalist and novelist whose career produced nine books between 1954 and 1988. His work moves between comedy and dead-serious drama, from the satirical Navy tale Don’t Go Near the Water to the post-apocalyptic naval thriller The Last Ship. His background as a war correspondent during World War II informed much of his fiction, particularly his understanding of military life and the behavior of people under extreme pressure.
Don’t Go Near the Water, published in 1956, was a bestselling comic novel about the Navy’s public relations operation during the war. It became a film starring Glenn Ford. His later books explored different territory, including the psychological drama of Quicksand and the sports novel Breakpoint. The Last Ship, his final novel, imagined a U.S. Navy destroyer and its crew as among the last survivors after a nuclear exchange, and was adapted into a television series by TNT decades after publication.