A joyful, freewheeling, funny and profound new collection from ‘one of the most inventive, adventurous and accomplished fiction writers in the US today’ (Lionel Shriver) For one woman, a cross-country train ride becomes a parallel journey into the dark psyche of American manhood. An old man and his neighbour enter strike up a friendship that might a more sinister battle of wits than he first thinks. A man, waiting for his wife in a bar on Valentine's Day, is plagued by a stranger who claims to be clairvoyant. In electric prose T. C. Boyle explores myriad facets of society: greed and excess, parenthood and responsibility, the digital world and the way we understand our mortality. Roaming unrestrainedly through the present and near future, he inhabits his characters’ minds with a ventriloquist’s flair, skewering human motivations and revealing us to ourselves with empathy and wry humour.

Denied a dog, a baby, and even a faithful boyfriend, Cat decides that she needs a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like "jewelry, living jewelry." But when the budding social influencer finally gives in to impulse, buying a Burmese python from a local pet shop, she sets in motion a chain of increasingly dire events that culminates in one of the most memorable denouements in recent fiction, one that ensnares her entire family, from her eco-obsessed parents, Ottilie and Frank, to her frat-boy-turned-husband, Todd. But there's more than meets the eye in this compulsive family drama. Lurking beneath the banal facade of twenty-first-century California and Florida is a caricature of materialist American society that doubles as a prophetic warning about our planet's future. An ecothriller with teeth, Blue Skies is vibrant, penetrating satire that reveals the inexpressible sadness at the heart of our existence.

'Howlingly marvellous ... Gripping and inescapably bittersweet' Boston Globe 'Hits the mark ... Real and relevant' BookTrib ____________________ Guy Schermerhorn, brilliant young professor of psychology and disciple of the pioneering Dr Moncrieff, is making a name for himself on the talk show circuit with an unusual protege in tow: a chimp by the name of Sam. Sam lives in Guy's apartment, wears diapers and neckties, devours pizza and Macdonalds - and, through Guy's careful training, can communicate through sign language. But living with Sam is wreaking havoc on Guy's personal life, and when shy, meek undergraduate Aimee Villard volunteers to take on babysitting for him, he can't believe his luck. Aimee and Sam have an immediate rapport, and before Guy knows it she's moved in, proudly devoting herself to Sam's care and Guy's project. Aimee has never known purpose and happiness like this; but when Guy's funding is imperilled, and Sam is taken away by the sinister Moncrief, her world falls apart. Aimee discovers just how far she'll go to, and just what she'll risk, to be united with the chimp she's come to love so much. _____________ 'Boyle tells this story with clear-eyed, flinty intelligence' Spectrum, Sydney Morning Herald 'An engaging tale' The Blurb, Australia

Set in 1795, Water Music is the rambunctious account of two men's wild adventures through the gutters of London and the Scottish Highlands to their unlikely meeting in darkest Africa. Boyle's other works include The Tortilla Curtain.

A deep-dive into human behavior in an epic story of science, society, sex, and survival, from one of the greatest American novelists today, T. C. Boyle, the acclaimed, bestselling, author of the PEN/ Faulkner Award–winning World’s End and The Harder They Come.

It is 1994, and in the desert near Tillman, Arizona, forty miles from Tucson, a grand experiment involving the future of humanity is underway. As climate change threatens the earth, eight scientists, four men and four women dubbed the "Terranauts," have been selected to live under glass in E2, a prototype of a possible off-earth colony. Their sealed, three-acre compound comprises five biomes—rainforest, savanna, desert, ocean, and marsh—and enough wildlife, water, and vegetation to sustain them.

Closely monitored by an all-seeing Mission Control, this New Eden is the brainchild of ecovisionary Jeremiah Reed, aka G.C.—"God the Creator"—for whom the project is both an adventure in scientific discovery and a momentous publicity stunt. In addition to their roles as medics, farmers, biologists, and survivalists, his young, strapping Terranauts must impress watchful visitors and a skeptical media curious to see if E2’s environment will somehow be compromised, forcing the Ecosphere’s seal to be broken—and ending the mission in failure. As the Terranauts face increased scrutiny and a host of disasters, both natural and of their own making, their mantra: "Nothing in, nothing out," becomes a dangerously ferocious rallying cry.

Told through three distinct narrators—Dawn Chapman, the mission’s pretty, young ecologist; Linda Ryu, her bitter, scheming best friend passed over for E2; and Ramsay Roothorp, E2’s sexually irrepressible Wildman—The Terranauts brings to life an electrifying, pressured world in which connected lives are uncontrollably pushed to the breaking point. With characteristic humor and acerbic wit, T.C. Boyle indelibly inhabits the perspectives of the various players in this survivalist game, probing their motivations and illuminating their integrity and fragility to illustrate the inherent fallibility of human nature itself.

An ecological black comedy and provocative modern morality tale; 'Boyle's prose is so good and his imagination so fertile that after a while you just sit back and are swept along' (Daily Telegraph)

It's 2025, and 75-year-old environmentalist Ty Tierwater is eking out a bleak loving managing a pop star's private zoo. It is the last one in southern California and vital for the cloning of its captive species. Once, Ty was so serious about environmental causes that as an eco-terrorist committed to Earth Forever! he endangered the lives of both his daughter, Sierra, and his wife, Andrea. Now, when he's just trying to survive in a world cursed by storm and drought, Andrea returns to his life. Frightening, funny, surreal and gripping, T.C. Boyle's story is both a modern morality tale, and a provocative vision of the future

A dazzlingly written and wickedly sexy read from one of the giants of American contemporary fictions; 'Boyle just gets better and better' (Daily Mail) In 1939, on the campus of Indiana University, a revolution has begun. The stir is caused by Alfred Kinsey, a zoologist who is determined to take sex out of the bedroom. John Milk, a freshman, is enthralled by the professor's daring lectures and over the next two decades becomes Kinsey's right hand man. But Kinsey teaches Milk more than the art of objective enquiry. Behind closed doors, he is a sexual enthusiast of the highest order and as a member of his 'inner circle' of researchers, Milk is called on to participate in experiments that become increasingly uninhibited ...

There's more than one to way to take a life in this masterful thriller from one of the greatest voices in American contemporary fiction

Dana sits in a courtroom with her legs shackled as a long list of charges is read out, many of them dangerous. But the panic that grips her is not because she has been caught. She knows there has been a terrible mistake - she didn't commit any of these crimes. As Dana and her lover Bridger set out to clear her name and find the person who is living a blameless life of criminal excess at her expense, they begin to test the life they have built together to its limits.

Winner of the Prix Medicis Etranger; 'examines America's guerilla war between the haves and have-notes with a zing unequalled since The Bonfire of the Vanities'(Observer) When Delaney Mossbacher knocks down a Mexican pedestrian, he neither reports the accident nor takes his victim to hospital. Instead the man accepts $20 and limps back to poverty and his pregnant 17-year-old wife, leaving Delaney to return to his privileged life in California. But these two men are fated against each other, as Delaney attempts to clear the land of the illegal immigrants who he thinks are turning his state park into a ghetto, and a boiling pot of racism and prejudice threatens to spill over.

BY THE WINNER OF THE JONATHAN SWIFT PRIZE 2017

A dynamic new collection from one of our most original storytellers: satirical, surreal and very much of the moment.

In these stories, T. C. Boyle focuses hisunerring eye on humanity's relationship with nature, and the unintended consequences of our efforts to control it. The prize-winning 'Are We Not Men?' reflects on the impact of new gene-editing technologies while 'The Relive Box' parodies our obsession with electronic games.

In 'She's the Bomb', a young woman waits on her graduation day, heart in mouth, for an explosive event. A burrito-seller has a killer business idea in 'The Five-Pound Burrito', but learns that success comes at a price. An Italian couple moves south for a fresh start in 'The Argentine Ant', but finds that paradise holds a nasty sting. And in the chilling 'The Designee', a lonely widower can't believe his luck when he receives a mysterious letter from England.

In electric prose T. C. Boyle explores myriad facets of society: greed and excess, parenthood and responsibility, the digital world and the way we understand our mortality. Roaming unrestrainedly through the present and near future, he inhabits his characters' minds with a ventriloquist's flair, skewering human motivations and revealing us to ourselves with empathy and wry humour.

Welcome to the troubled, tempestuous world of Frank Lloyd Wright. Scandalous affairs rage behind closed doors, broken hearts are tossed aside, fires rip through the wings of the house and paparazzi lie in wait outside the front door for the latest tragedy in this never-ending saga. This is the home of the great architect of the twentieth century, a man of extremes in both his work and his private life: at once a force of nature and an avalanche of need and emotion that sweeps aside everything in its path. Sharp, savage and subtle in equal measure, "The Women" plumbs the chaos, horrors and uncontainable passions of a formidable American icon.

A "riveting" (Wall Street Journal) portrait of architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the women in his life - 2017 marks the 150th anniversary of Wright's birth Having brought to life eccentric cereal king John Harvey Kellogg in The Road to Wellville and sex researcher Alfred Kinsey in The Inner Circle, T.C. Boyle now turns his fictional sights on an even more colorful and outlandish character: Frank Lloyd Wright. Boyle's incomparable account of Wright's life is told through the experiences of the four women who loved him. There's the Montenegrin beauty Olgivanna Milanoff, the passionate Southern belle Maude Miriam Noel, the tragic Mamah Cheney, and his young first wife, Kitty Tobin. Blazing with his trademark wit and inventiveness, Boyle deftly captures these very different women and the creative life in all its complexity.

Winner of the Prix Medicis Etranger

Topanga Canyon is home to two couples on a collision course. Los Angeles liberals Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher lead an ordered sushi-and-recycling existence in a newly gated hilltop community: he a sensitive nature writer, she an obsessive realtor. Mexican illegals Candido and America Rincon desperately cling to their vision of the American Dream as they fight off starvation in a makeshift camp deep in the ravine. And from the moment a freak accident brings Candido and Delaney into intimate contact, these four and their opposing worlds gradually intersect in what becomes a tragicomedy of error and misunderstanding.

Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher A collection of great travel writing by authors from around the globe, including original stories set in Scotland, Thailand, Malaysia, Moldova, Tanzania, Austria and beyond, edited by long-term Lonely Planet collaborator Don George. The 35 impassioned stories included in this collection - of fortune tellers, tribal baboon hunters, a friendly Japanese family, and other notable characters - span a worldwide spectrum of themes, styles and settings, but all show how travel in its unexpected turns tests and teaches us, making us aware that we are resilient, that we are not alone, and that there is so much love and connection to be had if we open ourselves up. This collection affirms that if we follow the compass of the heart, we will always find our way. Whether you read the book on the road or in an armchair at home, these tales are sure to entertain, amuse and inform you, and resonate long after the book is finished. 'As you travel through these pages, may your mind be widened, your spirit enlivened, and your own path illuminated by these worldly word-journeys.' --Don George With sparkling contributions from some of the most acclaimed names in contemporary fiction and travel writing plus some new voices from around the world, including: Ann Patchett, Francine Prose, TC Boyle, Karen Joy Fowler, Pico Iyer, Torre DeRoche, Blane Bachelor, Rebecca Dinerstein, Jan Morris, Elizabeth George, Jane Hamilton, Alexander McCall Smith, Keija Parssinen, Mridu Khullar Relph, Yulia Denisyuk, Emily Koch, Carissa Kasper, Jessica Silber, Candace Rose Rardon, Marilyn Abildskov, Shannon Leone Fowler, Robin Cherry, Robert Twigger, Porochista Khakpour, Natalie Baszile, Suzy Joinson, Anthony Sattin, LH McMillin, Bridget Crocker, Maggie Downs, Bishwanath Ghosh, Jeff Greenwald, James Dorsey and Tahir Shah. About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, gift and lifestyle books and stationery, as well as an award-winning website, magazines, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places they find themselves in. 'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times 'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves, it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)

" A] rollicking collection of...good, old-fashioned, funny- suspenseful-head shaking stories." -"The New York Times"
There may be no one better than T.C. Boyle at engaging, shocking, and ultimately gratifying readers while at the same time testing his characters' emotional and physical endurance. The fourteen new stories gathered here display both Boyle's astonishing range and his imaginative muscle. From "Wild Child," a retelling of the story of Victor, the feral boy who was captured running naked through the forests of Napoleonic France, to "La Conchita," the tale of a catastrophic mudslide that allows a cynic to reclaim his own humanity, these tales are by turns magical and moving, showcasing the mischievous humor and socially conscious sensibility that have made Boyle one of the foremost living masters of the short story.

The schooner from Santa Barbara arrives at the tiny, desolate island on New Year's Day, 1888. As the trunks are unloaded onto the wet sand, thirty-eight-year-old Marantha Waters looks at the cliffs falling away into the churning sea. This is the first day of her new life on San Miguel. Joined by her husband, a fiercely possessive Civil War veteran who will take over the operation of the sheep ranch on the island, Marantha strives to persevere in the face of brutal isolation. But the constant wind and sheep-ravaged wasteland shatter her illusions; her husband promised paradise. As he obsessively resolves to stay - and becomes increasingly distant from her and their adopted daughter Edith - Marantha's blighted lungs grow weaker in the dampness. Two years later, Edith, now a spirited teenager and an aspiring actress, will exploit every opportunity to escape the captivity her father has imposed on her. March, 1930. Another family - and another bride - arrives on San Miguel. Elise Lester, a librarian from New York City, and her husband Herbie, a World War I veteran full of manic energy, achieve a celebrity of sorts as the news cameras take an interest in these wayward people living in the wild. But the unyielding island is haunted by its history. Will the family be able to cling together as the war threatens to pull everything apart? San Miguel is a vivid and gripping story of hard lives pitched against the elements, the desires of stubborn men and the unbearable burden of love, from master American storyteller T. C. Boyle.

One family's adventures in LSD: the brilliantly strange new novel from the mind of 'one of the most inventive, adventurous and accomplished fiction writers in the US today' (Lionel Shriver)

Chosen as a Book of the Year 2019 by the Herald

It is Harvard in the early 1960s. Just off campus, Dr Timothy Leary plays host for his PhD students, laying on a spread of cocktails, pizza and LSD. Among the guests is Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology student, and his librarian wife Joanie. Married young, and both diligently and unglamorously toiling to support their son, they are not the sort of people one would expect to be seduced by the nascent drug culture. But their nights on LSD prove so extraordinary - so revelatory, so earth-shattering, so downright seductive - that Fitzhugh and Joanie are soon captive to the whims of the charismatic and subversive Dr Tim.

Follow Fitzhugh and Joanie on their quest for transcendence, as sultry Mexican nights at Hotel Catalina give way to a ramshackle mansion in upstate New York, where thirty devotees - students, wives and children - play out the final act of a terrible, beautiful experiment.

Join us, won't you? It's going to be one hell of a trip.

'One of the funniest, most subtle novels we've had about the hippy era's slow fade to black ... this may be his most affecting emotionally complex novel' (New York Times Book Review) Star has travelled to Drop City - forty-seven sun-washed acres of commune in California - to be free from her home, from society's constraints, and to feel part of something important. But she starts to suspect that free love was invented by some spotty dude who couldn't get laid any other way, and that chilled out means lazy. And as for peace-living, there seems to be an ugly undercurrent of violence. Then, when rape charges are brought and the police threaten to close down Drop City, the hippies decamp to the wilds of Alaska where they intend to live off the land. But instead the community runs into trouble, unexpected friendships are made and dangerous enemies are born.

The joyfully freewheeling, funny and profound new novel from ‘one of the most inventive, adventurous and accomplished fiction writers in the US today’ (Lionel Shriver) Welcome to America. On the east coast, homes are being swallowed by the ocean; on the west coast, California is engulfed with wildfire. But for one family, the impending environmental disaster is the least of their worries. Party girl Cat just impulse-purchased a snake; her pious brother Cooper is wrestling with a tic bite; and their mom Ottilie has resorted to cooking with crickets. Everyone is drinking too much – and the bugs seems to be disappearing. It seems as if it's anything but blue skies ahead... A delightfully dark comedy of manners about family life at the end of the world, Blue Skies is a masterful new adventure from one of the America’s great comic writers. _______________ 'Always enjoyable, virtually incapable of dullness or slack sentences … His stories reveal truths about modern life while still feeling beautifully invented' - NEW YORK TIMES 'A virtuoso craftsman' - ANNIE PROULX 'Boyle is a writer who chooses a large canvas and fills it to the edges' - BARBARA KINGSOLVER