Originally published in 1982 to wide acclaim, "The Good Son" remains Craig Nova's undisputed masterpiece. This classic explored the complicated entanglements of fathers and sons --expressed in the story of nouvue-riche father Pop Mackinnon, who used his wealth to manipulate his son Chip into the 'right' kind of marriage upon the young man's return from World War II.
Chip eventually gave up the love of his life and married to secure his future - and what were the consequences of that decision? "All the Dead Yale Men" answers that question in telling the story of Frank Mackinnon, son of Chip, a prosecutor in Boston with a happy marriage and a daughter set to follow his footsteps into law school. Chip's death throws Frank into his family's legacy, where he must contend with the inheritance of the Mackinnon's beloved land and a bevy of secrets that dates back three generations. And when Frank's daughter Pia falls under the sway of local bad boy Aurlon Miller, his grief over his father's death triggers the family legacy of social standing and manipulation to begin anew, leading Frank to the darkest edges of what a father will do to protect the ones he loves.
"All the Dead Yale Men" examines the end of an era, how privilege and inheritance often crumble in the face of the modern world, a story enriched by the setting and mythology of Boston and its surroundings. The novel not only moves the Mackinnon's story forward but will recast historical elements of the classic novel as well, heralding the arrival of a new American classic.

What does it mean to be a decent man? To love well, with fidelity and constancy? These are the lessons that Jake's father, a wildlife biologist, tries to impart to his son, often on fishing trips to their beloved Furnace Creek. Bound up in the laws of Einstein's theories, these lessons will ultimately influence Jake's own career as an astronomer. Out on the creek, both father and son conquer their greatest challenges: marital infidelity, professional setbacks, and Jake's long term, passionate obsession with his childhood crush.
The Constant Heart is a potent, and moving book that utilizes the laws of nature and science to illuminate what it means to be a man today. It is an inspiring book that most immediately celebrates the bonds of father and son while exploring the beauty and intensity of love and the profound attachments between human beings, even in the face of great disease and danger.

Warren Hodges, head of International Pictures, lives in a house like a Norman castle with a view of the Pacific. Marta Brooks, blonde and beautiful, takes classified ads for the Romance Advertiser. Victor Shaw has spent time in Soledad state prison but understands that his future lies in blackmail. Taylor Hayden, a good hit man, shines his shoes and doesn't ask questions. Zimba, a performing elephant, is not as reliable as he looks. This is Hollywood, and Craig Nova makes it seem perfectly logical that these creatures should find themselves in the same cast. In his swift, lyrical prose, comic and moving, Craig Nova weaves disparate lives together into a novel that makes utter beauty out of the gritty and grotesque. This is a story about people who are willing to take the chance they have been waiting for all their lives, men and women trying to live up to their dreams. The Book of Dreams is also a book about California, that youthful place prematurely aged by the burden of too much longing and desire. And the look of the place, with its heartbreaking, ever receding landscape (seen most often through car windows), haunts this novel. Like a jazz pianist, improvising snatches of other tunes while never straying far from the melody, Nova effortlessly echoes the writers who have helped us see the state in earlier times - Raymond Chandler, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nathanial West, all are acknowledged here in graceful, amusing riffs. "Using a handful of characters from a high-powered studio chief to a neat-freak hitman whose lives all intersect, Nova spins a gorgeous tale that fully rejuvenates in often surprising fashion the tired Hollywood-novel genre. Despite their familiarity, the characters and their backgrounds are marvelously detailed and ...cliche-free (no small feat in this genre). . . . Nova's eighth novel is so good that it reminds one of the great Day of the Locust." - Library Journal ..".These flawed but compelling characters are the walking wounded, limping and cringing with residual pain from their love-starved pasts. A potently visual writer, Nova is also adept at articulating the obtuseness of an obsessed or hopeless mind. His eighth novel, perhaps his best, is enticing, unsettling, and gratifyingly noir...." - Booklist

Tornado Alley is a story of a man and a woman who are on a dangerous collision course. Marie Boule is a love-starved young woman who grew up in a small, impoverished town in Pennsylvania, and her one desire is to find a comfortable, easy life. She thinks she is capable of hardening her heart and making any sacrifice necessary to get where she's going. It is only a matter of time before she meets Ben Lunn, a bright and responsible man who thinks he has made his peace with the woman he has married and the demands of being a father and husband. When Ben and Marie meet it is with all the unstoppable quality of a force of nature: at first, they are just pleased with each other's company, a kind of innocent companionship they both crave, but soon they enter into a secret bond. Benn Lunn's life has been marked by gifts, not the least of which is a kind of magical sense about the world. He is the son of a small-town doctor, and in the heat of the place where he grew up, in the scandals of those around him, there is always the constant presence of the effect of passion. His mother ran off to become an actress... his father keeps his own love alive, waiting for her return. Marie has seen, in her own youth, the result of love come to nothing, and she is determined to avoid this at all costs... Tornado Alley is a compelling novel about love and loss, honor and passion, and the mysteries of the human heart. It is told with drama and humor, and its characters are real people dealing with the recognizable problems of life.

"In the hands of this accomplished novelist, a love story becomes a thriller as a Los Angeles doctor tries to save a woman by tracking down the criminal psychopath who shares her rare blood type."—New York Times Book Review

Bitten by one of the snakes she is studying, Virginia Lee, an accomplished herpetologist, drives herself to the hospital, carrying a decaying antidote and using her pantyhose as a tourniquet to slow the poison's path in her bloodstream. Through the hideous traffic of L.A., she must reach her lover Terry McKechnie, who works as an emergency-room physician. Her hope and faith is in him, even as it has been withdrawn from her husband, Terry's college friend. After her arrival, Virginia desperately needs transfusions of her rare blood type-and only an explosive criminal-at-large with whom Terry has already clashed can save her life. In this "absolutely bewitching" (Jonathan Harr) novel, Craig Nova brings us into the moral morass of contemporary America, gripping us with the beauty of his exacting prose and the suspense of his riveting emotional drama.

"I wouldn't delay reading a novel of Nova's, not even to complete one of my own."—John Irving

"Craig Nova is a fine writer, one of our best, and if you haven't read him, the loss is yours."—Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World (1997 Critic's Choice)

"As skilled a piece of storytelling as Mr. Nova has yet pulled off."—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times