"Jim Shepard is a fiction writer of peculiar but tantalizing gifts." The New York Times In a tiny settlement on the west coast of Greenland, 11-year-old Aleq and his best friend, frequent trespassers at a mining site exposed to mountains of long-buried and thawing permafrost, carry what they pick up back into their village, and from there Shepard's harrowing and deeply moving story follows Aleq, one of the few survivors of the initial outbreak, through his identification and radical isolation as the likely index patient. While he shoulders both a crushing guilt for what he may have done and the hopes of a world looking for answers, we also meet two Epidemic Intelligence Service investigators dispatched from the CDC--Jeannine, an epidemiologist and daughter of Algerian immigrants, and Danice, an MD and lab wonk. As they attempt to head off the cataclysm, Jeannine--moving from the Greenland hospital overwhelmed with the first patients to a Level 4 high-security facility in the Rocky Mountains--does what she can to sustain Aleq. Both a chamber piece of multiple intimate perspectives and a more omniscient glimpse into the megastructures (political, cultural, and biological) that inform such a disaster, the novel reminds us of the crucial bonds that form in the midst of catastrophe, as a child and several hyper-educated adults learn what it means to provide adequate support for those they love. In the process, they celebrate the precious worlds they might lose, and help to shape others that may survive.

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE AWARD** 'Powerful . . . shattering . . . a masterpiece' The Times 'Testament of love and sacrifice . . . a masterpiece' Joshua Ferris, Guardian 'Transcendent and timeless . . . masterpiece' Washington Post Aron is a nine-year-old Polish Jew, and a troublemaker. His mother despairs of him. His father beats him. He tries to be good. But in 1939, as the walls go up around the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, as lice and typhus rage, families starve and fight, it is Aron who finds a way - however dangerous, however treacherous - to survive. It isn't until he lands at the feet of Janusz Korczak - orphanage director and reluctant hero - that he learns of something greater than survival. **With new exclusive endmatter, featuring a biography of Korczak and questions for book clubs**

A fantastic writer - compassionate, funny and fearless' George Saunders 'One of the US's finest writers' according to Joshua Ferris, Jim Shepard now delivers a new collection that spans borders and centuries with unrivalled mastery. These ten stories ring with voices as diverse as those belonging to Arctic explorers in history's most nightmarish expedition, the Montgolfier brothers competing to be the first man to fly, and two American frontierswomen whose passionate connection is severed by jealous husbands and a deadly snowstorm. In each case the personal is the political as these humans, while falling in love or negotiating marital pitfalls or simply coming to terms with their own failings, face the tidal wave of nature's indifference and cruelty. History has swept them from our sympathy; Jim Shepard has reached into the past and sought them out. In his first collection to be published in the UK, this celebrated master of the short story displays his formidable acuity in imagining these wildly different worlds, and what our various lives feel like in the grip of catastrophe.

A rediscovered masterpiece: an unblinking view of the Holocaust through a child's eyes
Told from the perspective of a child slowly awakening to the atrocities surrounding him, "Childhood "is a searing story of the Holocaust that no reader will soon forget. As five-year-old Jona waits with his mother and father to emigrate from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam to Palestine, they are awakened at night, put on a train, and eventually interred in the camps at Bergen-Belsen. There, what at first seems to be a merely dreary existence soon reveals itself to be one of the worst horrors humanity has ever created. A triumph of heartrending clarity and dispassionate amazement, "Childhood "stands tall alongside such monuments of Holocaust literature as "The Diary of Anne Frank, "Elie Wiesel's" Night, "and "Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz."

"Jim Shepard is a fiction writer of peculiar but tantalizing gifts." The New York Times In a tiny settlement on the west coast of Greenland, 11-year-old Aleq and his best friend, frequent trespassers at a mining site exposed to mountains of long-buried and thawing permafrost, carry what they pick up back into their village, and from there Shepard's harrowing and deeply moving story follows Aleq, one of the few survivors of the initial outbreak, through his identification and radical isolation as the likely index patient. While he shoulders both a crushing guilt for what he may have done and the hopes of a world looking for answers, we also meet two Epidemic Intelligence Service investigators dispatched from the CDC--Jeannine, an epidemiologist and daughter of Algerian immigrants, and Danice, an MD and lab wonk. As they attempt to head off the cataclysm, Jeannine--moving from the Greenland hospital overwhelmed with the first patients to a Level 4 high-security facility in the Rocky Mountains--does what she can to sustain Aleq. Both a chamber piece of multiple intimate perspectives and a more omniscient glimpse into the megastructures (political, cultural, and biological) that inform such a disaster, the novel reminds us of the crucial bonds that form in the midst of catastrophe, as a child and several hyper-educated adults learn what it means to provide adequate support for those they love. In the process, they celebrate the precious worlds they might lose, and help to shape others that may survive.

Following "Like You'd Understand, Anyway"--awarded the Story Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award--Jim Shepard returns with an even more wildly diverse collection of astonishingly observant stories. Like an expert curator, he populates the vastness of human experience--from its bizarre fringes and lonely, breathtaking pinnacles to the hopelessly mediocre and desperately below average--with brilliant scientists, reluctant soldiers, workaholic artists, female explorers, depraved murderers, and deluded losers, all wholly convincing and utterly fascinating.

From this prodigiously talented writer comes a stunningly original fictional life of the German director F. W. Murnau (1888-1931). Murnau ranks as a founding father of the cinema, not least for his legendary horror film, "Nosferatu." Here he is revealed as a hermetic genius who turns against himself, becoming in a sense his own vampire. What shadows Jim Shepard's Murnau--through the airfields of the Great War to Berlin in the twenties and to the virtual invention of filmmaking--is the conflict between his impossibly high ideals and his heartbreaking memories of love betrayed and love lost. From provincial Germany through Hollywood in its early days to the South Seas, "Nosferatu" charts a life at once artistic, intellectual, and deeply human. Ron Hansen provides an introduction to this Bison Books edition.

"I've been a problem baby, a lousy son, a distant brother, an off-putting neighbor, a piss-poor student, a worrisome seatmate, an unreliable employee, a bewildering lover, a frustrating confidante and a crappy husband. Among the things I do pretty well at this point I'd have to list darts, re-closing Stay-Fresh boxes, and staying out of the way.
"This is the self-eulogy offered early on by the unwilling hero of the opening story in this collection, a dazzling array of work in short fiction from a master of the form. The stories in Love and Hydrogen--familiar to readers from publications ranging from "McSweeney's" to "The""New Yorker" to "Harper's" to "Tin House"--encompass in theme and compassion what an ordinary writer would seem to need several lifetimes to imagine.
A frustrated wife makes use of an enterprising illegal-gun salesman to hold her husband hostage; two hapless adult-education students botch their attempts at rudimentary piano but succeed in a halting, awkward romance; a fascinated and murderous Creature welcomes the first human visitors to his Black Lagoon; and in the title story, the stupefyingly huge airship Hindenburg flies to its doom, representing in 1937 mankind's greatest yearning as well as its titanic failure.
Generous in scope and astonishing in ambition, Shepard's voice never falters; the virtuosity of Love and Hydrogen cements his reputation as, in the words of Rick Bass, "a passionate writer with a razor-sharp wit and an elephantine heart"--in short, one of the most powerful talents at work today.

In this anthology twenty-six contemporary fiction writers and poets offer short essays on a single movie that inspired, seduced, horrified, or fascinated them, giving readers a rare glimpse of the writer's perspective on film.

"The Writer's Notebook" combines the best craft seminars from the Summer Writers Workshop's history with craft essays by some of Tin House's favorite authors and features a list of contributors that reads like a veritable who's who of contemporary poets and prose writers. Jim Shepard, Aimee Bender, Steve Almond, D. A. Powell, Chris Offutt, and others distill elements of writing and share insights into the joys and pains of their own work. They explore a wide range of topics, everything from writing dialogue to the do's and don'ts of writing about sex. With how-tos, close readings, and personal anecdotes, "The Writer's Notebook" offers aspiring wordsmiths advice and inspiration to hone their own craft. Included is a CD of workshop discussions and panels

Shepard is a terrific mimic, and manages to give each one of his narrators a slightly different voice, wrinkling some stories with subtle irony, leading others the pomp and swagger of a professional boxer--"The Boston Globe."

n the wilderness of junior high, Edwin Hanratty is at the bottom of the food chain. His teachers find him a nuisance. His fellow students consider him prey. And although his parents are not oblivious to his troubles, they can't quite bring themselves to fathom the ruthless forces that demoralize him daily.
Sharing in these schoolyard indignities is his only friend, Flake. Branded together as misfits, their fury simmers quietly in the hallways, classrooms, and at home, until an unthinkable idea offers them a spectacular and terrifying release.
From Jim Shepard, one of the most enduring and influential novelists writing today, comes an unflinching look into the heart and soul of adolescence. Tender and horrifying, prescient and moving, Project X will not easily be forgotten.