The young Robert Louis Stevenson, living in a boarding house in San Francisco while waiting for his beloved's divorce from her feckless husband, dreamed of writing a soaring novel about his landlady's adventurous and globe-trotting husband but he never got around to it. And very soon thereafter he was married, headed home to Scotland, and on his way to becoming the most famous novelist in the world, after writing such classics as Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Kidnapped. But now Brian Doyle brings Stevenson's untold tale to life, braiding the adventures of seaman John Carson with those of a young Stevenson, wandering the streets of San Francisco, gathering material for his fiction, and yearning for his beloved across the bay. An adventure tale, an elegy to one of the greatest writers of our language, a time-traveling plunge into The City by the Bay during its own energetic youth, The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World is entertaining, poignant, and sensual.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Declan O Donnell has sailed out of Oregon and deep into the vast, wild ocean, having had just finally enough of other people and their problems. He will go it alone, he will be his own country, he will be beholden to and beloved of no one. But the galaxy soon presents him with a string of odd, entertaining, and dangerous passengers, who become companions of every sort and stripe. The Plover is the story of their adventures and misadventures in the immense blue country one of their company calls Pacifica. Hounded by a mysterious enemy, reluctantly acquiring one new resident after another, Declan's lonely boat is eventually crammed with humour, argument, tension, and a resident herring gull.

A collection of headlong tales by Oregon author Brian Doyle-exploring such riveting and peculiar topics as chess in the Levant, tailors who specialize in holes, how to report stigmata to your attending physician, the intense hilarity of basketball, how to have a bitter verbal marital fight in your car, an all-Chinese football team in Australia, soccer and Catholicism, what it's like to be in a ska band, a singing Korean baker, an archbishop who loses his faith between the salad and the entree, genius Girl Scouts who save a radio station, and a baby born from a lake in Illinois. And some other fascinating stories. Really. Trust us.

Nominated for the Hercule Poirot Award: Commissioner Pieter Van In must find the link between members of a satanic conspiracy and a young woman's death A young woman is found dead in the canal outside her Bruges apartment building. But what seems like a clear-cut suicide evolves into something much more complex when Commissioner Pieter Van In uncovers the girl's involvement in a satanic sect. Who is the mysterious Venex, and why does he inspire such devotion from his disciples? Complicating the investigation further, Van In's boss allows beautiful journalist Saartje Maes to profile the case, sparking tension with the commissioner's expectant wife, District Attorney Hannelore Martens. As a horrific tragedy shocks the city, Van In seems to be surrounded by secrets. And though exposing them will lead him to the truth, it will also pit him against the very police force to which he's devoted his life. A Belgian national bestseller, The Fourth Figure has been reprinted in Dutch seventeen times. It is the 4th book in the Pieter Van In Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

First published in 2002. This volume is part of the New Accent series looking at English and popular culture, language, policy, fiction and democracy. Each volume in the series will seek to encourage rather than resist the process of change; to stretch rather than reinforce the boundaries that currently define literature and its academic study.

Moronic metalheads Wayne (Mike Myers) and Garth (Dana Carvey) broadcast a cable-access show from Wayne's basement. Their wisecracks about youth, music and girls are picked up on by a TV executive (Rob Lowe), who pays them to produce a 'new, improved' programme for national TV. But the pair discover that fame has its price when they lose control of the show and the TV executive starts pursuing Wayne's girlfriend.

Welcome to the peculiar and headlong world of Brian Doyle's fiction, where the odd is happening all the time, reported upon by characters of every sort and stripe. Swirling voices and skeins of story, laughter and rage, ferocious attention to detail and sweeping nuttiness, tears and chortling--these stories will remind readers of the late giant David Foster Wallace, in their straightforward accounts of anything-but-straightforward events; of modern short story pioneer Raymond Carver, a bit, in their blunt, unadorned dialogue; and of Julia Whitty, a bit, in their willingness to believe what is happening, even if it absolutely shouldn't be.

Funny, piercing, unique, memorable, this is a collection of stories readers will find nearly impossible to forget:

... The barber who shaves the heads of the thugs in Bin Laden's cave tells cheerful stories of life with the preening video-obsessed leader, who has a bald spot shaped just like Iceland.

... A husband gathers all of his wife's previous boyfriends for a long day on a winery-touring bus.

... A teenage boy drives off into the sunset with his troubled sister's small daughters...and the loser husband locked in the trunk of the car.

... The late Joseph Kennedy pours out his heart to a golf-course bartender moments before the stroke that silenced him forever.

... A man digging in his garden finds a brand-new baby boy, still alive, and has a chat with the teenage neighbor girl whose son it is.

... A man born on a Greyhound bus eventually buys the entire Greyhound Bus Company and revolutionizes Western civilization.

... A mountainous bishop dies and the counting of the various keys to his house turns... tense.

... A man discovers his wife having an affair, takes up running to grapple with his emotions, and discovers everyone else on the road is a cuckold too.

And many others.

When Brian Doyle passed away at the age of sixty after a bout with brain cancer, he left behind a cult-like following of devoted readers who regard his writing as one of the best-kept secrets of the twenty- first century. Doyle writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the sanctity of everyday things, and about love and connection in all their forms: spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon. At a moment when the world can sometimes feel darker than ever, Doyle's writing, which constantly evokes the humor and even bliss that life affords, is a balm. His essays manage to find, again and again, exquisite beauty in the quotidian, whether it's the awe of a child the first time she hears a river, or a husband's whiskers that a grieving widow misses seeing in her sink every morning. Through Doyle's eyes, nothing is dull. David James Duncan sums up Doyle's sensibilities best in his introduction to the collection: "Brian Doyle lived the pleasure of bearing daily witness to quiet glories hidden in people, places and creatures of little or no size, renown, or commercial value, and he brought inimitably playful or soaring or aching or heartfelt language to his tellings." A life's work, One Long River of Song invites readers to experience joy and wonder in ordinary moments that become, under Doyle's rapturous and exuberant gaze, extraordinary.

When Brian Doyle died of brain cancer at the age of sixty, he left behind dozens of books -- fiction and nonfiction, as well as hundreds of essays -- and a cult-like following who regarded his writing on spirituality as one of the best-kept secrets of the 21st century. Though Doyle occasionally wrote about Catholic spirituality, his writing is more broadly about the religion of everyday things. He writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the holiness of small things, and about love in all its forms: spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, friendly love, love of nature, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon. At a time when our world feels darker than ever, Doyle's essays are a balm for the tired soul. He finds beauty in the quotidian: the awe of a child the first time she hears a river, the whiskers a grieving widow misses seeing in her sink every day -- but through his eyes, nothing is ordinary. David James Duncan sums up Doyle's sensibilities best in his introduction to the collection: "Brian Doyle lived the pleasure of bearing daily witness to the glories hidden in people, places and creatures of little or no size or renown, and brought inimitably playful or soaring or aching or heartfelt language to his tellings." In a time when wonder seems to be in short supply, Your One Wild and Precious Life, Doyle and Duncan invite readers to experience it in the most ordinary of moments, and allow themselves joy in the smallest of things.

On the last day of summer, some years ago, a young college graduate moves to Chicago and rents a small apartment on the north side of the city, by the vast and muscular lake. This is the story of the five seasons he lives there, during which he meets gangsters, gamblers, policemen, a brave and garrulous bus driver, a cricket player, a librettist, his first girlfriend, a shy apartment manager, and many other riveting souls, not to mention a wise and personable dog of indeterminate breed. A love letter to Chicago, the Great American City, and a wry account of a young man's coming-of-age during the one summer in White Sox history when they had the best outfield in baseball, Brian Doyle's Chicago is a novel that will plunge you into a city you will never forget, and may well wish to visit for the rest of your days.

In this rich treasury of prose poems on matters theological, spiritual, mystical, and everyday, popular Catholic author Brian Doyle offers readers a lyrical but common-sense take on the ways grace, prayer, sin, love, boredom, joy, suffering and redemption play out in our daily lives. Doyle's hundred-plus proems are lyrical creations resembling poetry, but devoid of any meter or typical poetic structure-and yet they are not strictly prose either. Some are droll and acid takes on modern life; others spirit-lifting paeans to the joy of creation; still others humorous and light appreciations of the grace-filled moments that can fill the day of any person paying close enough attention.

In the third instalment of the Vacation series the Griswold family decide to spend the Christmas season at home. Needless to say it is not as quiet as they had planned. Unexpected relatives and a catalogue of disasters create enough pandemonium to keep them busy.

An anthology of 36 astonishing personal stories and essays from some of America's best writers that first appeared in Portland Magazine, "the best university magazine in America" (Newsweek).

Best-selling and award-winning essayist Brian Doyle knows that the heartbeat of Catholicism is found not in papal decrees and pageantry, but in the parish halls, potluck dinners, and the believing community. In this spirited collection of more than 40 essays, Doyle employs his trademark wit, candor, and gusto for life and faith to reignite readers' excitement for Catholicism as he plumbs some of the stickier and trickier elements of the Catholic character.From preparing for his first confession with a fake laundry list of sins to his young observations of President Kennedy's assassination, Doyle's passionate writing makes for a heartfelt, genuine, and often laugh-out-loud read. "The Thorny Grace of It" reaffirms that the Catholic faith--imperfect as it is--is wildly aflame in hearts and lives everywhere."It is a boon, a blessing, to have Brian Doyle's vagabond essays now rubbing elbows in a single, handy, and altogether delightful volume."
- Kenneth L. Woodward, author of "The Book of Miracles"

Collection of four comedies following the Griswold family's vacations. In 'National Lampoon's Vacation' (1983), the West Coast Wally World theme park is the Griswold's holiday destination, and they intend to drive there cross-country all the way from their Chicago home. Father Clark (Chevy Chase) has planned the trip down to its last detail, but the trouble begins as soon as they hit the road. In 'National Lampoon's European Vacation' (1985), the family win a holiday to Europe. Contrary to their expectations, however, it is not a luxurious, all-expenses-paid kind of trip, but rather a cut-price, economy deal which takes them to some of the Old World's seedier locations. Of course, it's not long before they are caught up in all manner of misadventures. In 'National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation' (1989), the Griswolds decide to spend the Christmas season at home. Needless to say, it is not as quiet as they had planned. Finally, in 'Vegas Vacation' (1997), the clan head for the gleaming lights of Las Vegas. Unfortunately, Clark is soon transformed into a compulsive gambler, daughter Audrey (Marisol Nichols) becomes an exotic dancer and son Rusty (Ethan Embry) begins posing as a suave high roller.

In Children and Other Wild Animals, bestselling novelist Brian Doyle (Mink River, The Plover) describes encounters with astounding beings of every sort and shape. These true tales of animals and human mammals (generally the smaller sizes, but here and there elders and jumbos) delightfully blur the line between the two. In these short vignettes, Doyle explores the seethe of life on this startling planet, the astonishing variety of our riveting companions, and the joys available to us when we pause, see, savor, and celebrate the small things that are not small in the least. Doyle’s trademark quirky prose is at once lyrical, daring, and refreshing; his essays are poignant but not pap, sharp but not sermons, and revelatory at every turn. Throughout there is humor and humility and a palpable sense of wonder, with passages of reflection so true and hard earned they make you stop and reread a line, a paragraph, a page. Children and Other Wild Animals gathers previously unpublished work with selections that have appeared in Orion, The Sun, Utne Reader, High Country News, and The American Scholar, as well as Best American Essays (“The Greatest Nature Essay Ever”) and Best American Nature and Science Writing (“Fishering”). “The Creature Beyond the Mountain,” Doyle’s paean to the mighty and mysterious sturgeon of the Pacific Northwest, won the John Burroughs Award for Outstanding Nature Essay. As he notes in that tribute to all things “sturgeonness”: “Sometimes you want to see the forest and not the trees. Sometimes you find yourself starving for what’s true, and not about a person but about all people. This is how religion and fascism were born, but it’s also why music is the greatest of arts, and why stories matter, and why we all cannot help staring at fires and great waters.”

Oliver Stone's detailed examination of possible answers to unsolved mysteries surrounding John F. Kennedy's assassination. Kevin Costner plays New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who remained unconvinced by the Warren Commission Report and launched his own investigation. This film was released on a wave of controversy and led to calls for Congress to re-open government records from the 1977 House Select Committee on the assassination. Stone weaves actual archive footage with historical reconstruction and conjecture to present his argument that Kennedy was killed by the CIA due to his desire to withdraw troops from Vietnam. The film gained several Oscar nominations and Stone won a Golden Globe award for Best Director.

In this poignant and startlingly original book, Brian Doyle examines the heart as a physical organ—how it is supposed to work, how surgeons try to fix it when it doesn’t—and as a metaphor: the seat of the soul, the power house of the body, the essence of spirituality. In a series of profoundly moving ruminations, Doyle considers the scientific, emotional, literary, philosophical, and spiritual understandings of the heart—from cardiology to courage, from love letters and pop songs to botany and Jesus. Weaving these strands together is the torment of Doyle’s own infant son’s heart surgery and the inspiring story of the young heart doctor who saved Liam’s life. First published in 2005, The Wet Engineis a book that will change how you feel and think about the mysterious, fragile human heart. This new paperback edition includes a foreword by Dr. Marla Salmon, dean of the University of Washington School of Nursing.