Download or read book Saul and Patsy written by Charles Baxter and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence and “one of our most gifted writers” (Chicago Tribune), Saul and Patsy is "stunning, never predictable, glimmering fiction, full of mischief and insight" (The Los Angeles Times). Five Oaks, Michigan is not exactly where Saul and Patsy meant to end up. Both from the East Coast, they met in college, fell in love, and settled down to married life in the Midwest. Saul is Jewish and a compulsively inventive worrier; Patsy is gentile and cheerfully pragmatic. On Saul’s initiative (and to his continual dismay) they have moved to this small town–a place so devoid of irony as to be virtually “a museum of earlier American feelings”–where he has taken a job teaching high school. Soon this brainy and guiltily happy couple will find children have become a part of their lives, first their own baby daughter and then an unloved, unlovable boy named Gordy Himmelman. It is Gordy who will throw Saul and Patsy’s lives into disarray with an inscrutable act of violence. As timely as a news flash yet informed by an immemorial understanding of human character, Saul and Patsy is a genuine miracle.
Download or read book The Sun Collective written by Charles Baxter and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A timely and unsettling novel about the people drawn to—and unmoored by—a local activist group more dangerous than it appears. From the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award and “one of our most gifted writers” (Chicago Tribune). Once a promising actor, Tim Brettigan has gone missing. His father thinks he may have seen him among some homeless people. And though she knows he left on purpose, his mother has been searching for him all over their home city of Minneapolis. She checks the usual places— churches, storefronts, benches—and stumbles upon a local community group with lofty goals and an enigmatic leader. Christina, a young woman rapidly becoming addicted to a boutique drug that gives her a feeling of blessedness, is inexplicably drawn to the same collective by a man who’s convinced he may start a revolution. A vision of modern American society and the specters of the consumerism, fanaticism, and fear that haunt it, The Sun Collective captures both the mystery and the violence that punctuate our daily lives.
Download or read book Shadow Play written by Charles Baxter and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2001 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: His wife does magic tricks, his crazy mother invents her own vocabulary, and his aunt writes a holy book. Still Wyatt Palmer tries to live a normal life. But when he lures a toxic waste plant to his economically depressed town, he discovers he has made a deal with the Devil.
Download or read book The Feast of Love written by Charles Baxter and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-05-14 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Award Finalist • A superb novel that delicately unearths the myriad manifestations of extraordinary love between ordinary people, from "one of our most gifted writers" (Chicago Tribune) and the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award "A near perfect book, as deep as it is broad in its humaneness, comedy and wisdom." —The Washington Post The Feast of Love is just that—a sumptuous work of fiction about the thing that most distracts and delights us. In a re-imagined Midsummer Night's Dream, men and women speak of and desire their ideal mates; parents seek out their lost children; adult children try to come to terms with their own parents and, in some cases, find new ones. In vignettes both comic and sexy, the owner of a coffee shop recalls the day his first wife seemed to achieve a moment of simple perfection, while she remembers the women's softball game during which she was stricken by the beauty of the shortstop. A young couple spends hours at the coffee shop fueling the idea of their fierce love. A professor of philosophy, stopping by for a cup of coffee, makes a valiant attempt to explain what he knows to be the inexplicable workings of the human heart Their voices resonate with each other—disparate people joined by the meanderings of love—and come together in a tapestry that depicts the most irresistible arena of life. Crafted with subtlety, grace, and power, The Feast of Love is a masterful novel.
Download or read book A Relative Stranger written by Charles Baxter and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2001 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in the Michigan landscape that Charles Baxter has made his own, these thirteen exquisite stories illuminate the often curious connections of relatives and strangers. "You can't just get a brother off the street," says the narrator of the title story, but indeed he does. In another, a woman tries to elude her lover's voice by spending an entire day without words. A marriage is jostled by the departure of a friend during a snowstorm. Baxter's stories tend to be love stories, but it is love tinged with fear, even danger, where shock, comedy, and love combine in unexpected ways. Book jacket.
Download or read book The Soul Thief written by Charles Baxter and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-02-10 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this extraordinary novel of mischief and menace, we see a young man's very self vanishing before his eyes—from the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award and “one of our most gifted writers” (Chicago Tribune) "Entirely original.... So craftily construcyed that to appreciate how liberally Baxter plants creepy hints of what's to come a reader should really savor this book twice." —The Washington Post As a graduate student in upstate New York, Nathaniel Mason is drawn into a tangle of relationships with people who seem to hover just beyond his grasp. There's Theresa, alluring but elusive, and Jamie, who is fickle if not wholly unavailable. But Jerome Coolberg is the most mysterious and compelling. Not only cryptic about himself, he seems also to have appropriated parts of Nathaniel's past that Nathaniel cannot remember having told him about.
Download or read book There s Something I Want You to Do written by Charles Baxter and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "There’s something I want you to do.” This request—sometimes simple, sometimes not—forms the basis for the ten interrelated short stories that comprise this latest penetrating and prophetic collection from the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award and “one of our most gifted writers” (Chicago Tribune). As we follow a diverse group of Minnesota citizens, each grappling with their own heightened fears, responsibilities, and obsessions, Baxter unveils the remarkable in what might otherwise be the seemingly inconsequential moments of everyday life.
Download or read book Through the Safety Net written by Charles Baxter and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1998-09-29 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A contemporary master of short fiction dives into the undercurrents of middle-class American life in these eleven arresting, often mesmerizing stories.
Download or read book Harmony of the World written by Charles Baxter and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1997-03-11 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story and “one of our most gifted writers” (Chicago Tribune)—these ten stories show make everyday experiences seem utterly unprecedented, even as Baxter reminds us, gently and with a sly comic twist, that everything they feel is only the collateral damage of being human. Whether he is writing about the players in a rickety bisexual love triangle or a woman visiting her husband in a nursing home, probing the psychic mainspring of a grimly obsessive weight lifter or sifting through the layers of resentment, need, and pity in a friendship that has gone on a few decades too long, Baxter enchants us with the elegant balance of his prose and the unexpectedness of his insights. Harmony of the World is a masterpiece of lucidity and compassion.
Download or read book Great North Road written by Peter F. Hamilton and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 976 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY New York Times bestselling author Peter F. Hamilton’s riveting new thriller combines the nail-biting suspense of a serial-killer investigation with clear-eyed scientific and social extrapolation to create a future that seems not merely plausible but inevitable. A century from now, thanks to a technology allowing instantaneous travel across light-years, humanity has solved its energy shortages, cleaned up the environment, and created far-flung colony worlds. The keys to this empire belong to the powerful North family—composed of successive generations of clones. Yet these clones are not identical. For one thing, genetic errors have crept in with each generation. For another, the original three clone “brothers” have gone their separate ways, and the branches of the family are now friendly rivals more than allies. Or maybe not so friendly. At least that’s what the murder of a North clone in the English city of Newcastle suggests to Detective Sidney Hurst. Sid is a solid investigator who’d like nothing better than to hand off this hot potato of a case. The way he figures it, whether he solves the crime or not, he’ll make enough enemies to ruin his career. Yet Sid’s case is about to take an unexpected turn: because the circumstances of the murder bear an uncanny resemblance to a killing that took place years ago on the planet St. Libra, where a North clone and his entire household were slaughtered in cold blood. The convicted slayer, Angela Tramelo, has always claimed her innocence. And now it seems she may have been right. Because only the St. Libra killer could have committed the Newcastle crime. Problem is, Angela also claims that the murderer was an alien monster. Now Sid must navigate through a Byzantine minefield of competing interests within the police department and the world’s political and economic elite . . . all the while hunting down a brutal killer poised to strike again. And on St. Libra, Angela, newly released from prison, joins a mission to hunt down the elusive alien, only to learn that the line between hunter and hunted is a thin one. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Peter F. Hamilton’s The Abyss Beyond Dreams. Praise for Great North Road “A mesmerizing page-turner.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A gripping saga that blends wilderness survival, police procedural, political and social intrigue, and dynastic sf into a mammoth tale featuring believable characters and exceptionally skilled storytelling.”—Library Journal (starred review) “A perfect introduction to [Hamilton’s] gifts for character design, dialogue, and sheer, big-idea-driven storytelling.”—Booklist (starred review) “Compelling and original . . . an awesome novel [with] plenty of action.”—SFRevu “One very compelling and entertaining science fiction novel.”—SF Site “Simply brilliant . . . an astonishing achievement.”—Tor.com
Download or read book First Light written by Charles Baxter and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A car dealer who has never left his Michigan hometown and his younger sister, a brilliant astrophysicist, reunite in this magnificent achievement by "one of the finest of American writers".--Boston Globe.
Download or read book Believers written by Charles Baxter and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 1998-09-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story and “one of our most gifted writers” (Chicago Tribune) With his five previous books of fiction, Charles Baxter established himself as a contemporary literary master, in the traditions of Raymond Carver, William Maxwell, and Alice Munro. This radiant collection confirms Baxter's ability to revel in the surfaces of seemingly ordinary lives while uncovering their bedrock of passion, madness, levity and grief.
Download or read book That Night on the Bayou written by Melissa Woods and published by Black Rose Writing. This book was released on 2019-11-27 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cypress, Louisiana is a town layered with secrets. And Patsy Bundy sees the ghosts that seep through the thick Southern air, telling stories people would prefer to forget. Much to her mother’s chagrin, Patsy’s visions set the town ablaze with new rumors, driving her out of town—and away from the boy she loves. But, seven years later, Cypress’s secret past is revealed—a prostitute was murdered on Patsy’s beloved Bayou. And the killer is up for parole. Patsy must return home to face the truth. That Night on the Bayou is the story of a small cast of characters whose lives inextricably intertwine through grief, conflict, and ultimately, love.
Download or read book The Time It Takes to Fall written by Margaret Lazarus Dean and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-02-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is the early 1980s, and America is in love with space. Growing up in the shadow of Cape Canaveral, young Dolores Gray has it particularly bad: she dreams of becoming an astronaut. At school, Dolores finds herself caught between her desire for popularity and her secret friendship with the smartest and most unpopular boy in her class, whose father is NASA's Director of Launch Safety. At home, discord begins to grow between her parents when her father's job as a NASA technician is threatened. Looking for escape, Dolores loses herself in her scrapbook, where she files away newspaper articles about the astronauts and the shuttles, weather reports on launch scrubs, and stories about her idol, Judith Resnik. Then, on the morning of January 28, 1986, seventy-three seconds after liftoff, the space shuttle Challenger explodes, killing all seven astronauts on board -- including Judith Resnik. It is a moment that shakes America to its core, and nowhere is it more deeply felt than in central Florida. Dolores becomes determined to reconstruct what went wrong, both in her parent's marriage and at NASA, in the hope that she can save her father's job and keep her family together. The Time It Takes to Fall is a coming-of-age novel that deftly weaves the story of one family's drama into the larger picture of a touchstone event in American history. It is at once an intimate look at a young girl's loss of innocence and a portrait of America's loss of innocence -- the end of an era that romanticized manned space flight and would never be the same again.
Download or read book The Third Policeman written by Flann O'Brien and published by Pan. This book was released on 1974 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the publication of The Third Policeman, Dalkey Archive Press now has all of O'Brien's fiction back in print.
Download or read book Dreamers of the Day written by Mary Doria Russell and published by Random House. This book was released on 2008-03-11 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A schoolteacher still reeling from the tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic travels to the Middle East in this memorable and passionate novel “Marvelous . . . a stirring story of personal awakening set against the background of a crucial moment in modern history.”—The Washington Post Agnes Shanklin, a forty-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio, has come into a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference convenes, she is freed for the first time from her mother’s withering influence and finds herself being wooed by a handsome, mysterious German. At the same time, Agnes—with her plainspoken American opinions—is drawn into the company of Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence, and Lady Gertrude Bell, who will, in the space of a few days, redraw the world map to create the modern Middle East. As they change history, Agnes too will find her own life transformed forever. With prose as graceful and effortless as a seductive float down the Nile, Mary Doria Russell illuminates the long, rich history of the Middle East with a story that brilliantly elucidates today’s headlines.
Download or read book Palm Latitudes written by Kate Braverman and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written nearly a decade after Lithium for Medea, Palm Latitudes, Kate Braverman's second novel and arguably her chef d’oeuvre, explores the intertwined lives of three women who await absolution and revelation in the bougainvillea- and violence-filled "barrio" of Los Angeles. Frances Ramos is a voluptuous prostitute who flaunts her wealth and is held in high esteem by the local street gangs. Gloria Hernandez is a dutiful young wife and mother—until her husband’s act of betrayal sparks her growing estrangement and fury. Marta Ortega, a prophetic old woman connected viscerally with the forces/elements of nature, nods as past and present mingle and quietly charts the cross-pollenization of her turbulent neighborhood, and of human destiny.
