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Ten years after the death of the magnetic Donald 'Sully' Sullivan,
the town of North Bath is going through a major transition as it is
taken over by its much wealthier neighbour, Schuyler Springs.
Peter, Sully's son, is still grappling with his father's tremendous
legacy as well as his relationship to his own son, Thomas,
wondering if he has been all that different a father than Sully was
to him. Meanwhile, the towns' newly consolidated police department
falls into the hands of Charice Bond following the resignation of
Doug Raymer, the former North Bath police chief and Charice's
ex-boyfriend. When a decomposing body turns up in the abandoned
hotel situated between the two towns, Charice and Raymer are drawn
together again and forced to address their complicated attraction
to one another. Across town, Ruth, Sully's married ex-lover,
struggles to understand her granddaughter, Tina, and her growing
obsession with Peter's other son, Will. Amidst the turmoil, the
town's residents speculate on the identity of the unidentified body
and wonder who among their number could have disappeared unnoticed.
Brimming with warmth, wisdom and Russo's signature wry humour,
Somebody's Fool is another classic from a modern master of
storytelling.
Ten years after the death of the magnetic Donald 'Sully' Sullivan,
the town of North Bath is going through a major transition as it is
taken over by its much wealthier neighbour, Schuyler Springs.
Peter, Sully's son, is still grappling with his father's tremendous
legacy as well as his relationship to his own son, Thomas,
wondering if he has been all that different a father than Sully was
to him. Meanwhile, the towns' newly consolidated police department
falls into the hands of Charice Bond following the resignation of
Doug Raymer, the former North Bath police chief and Charice's
ex-boyfriend. When a decomposing body turns up in the abandoned
hotel situated between the two towns, Charice and Raymer are drawn
together again and forced to address their complicated attraction
to one another. Across town, Ruth, Sully's married ex-lover,
struggles to understand her granddaughter, Tina, and her growing
obsession with Peter's other son, Will. Amidst the turmoil, the
town's residents speculate on the identity of the unidentified body
and wonder who among their number could have disappeared unnoticed.
Brimming with warmth, wisdom and Russo's signature wry humour,
Somebody's Fool is another classic from a modern master of
storytelling.
One beautiful September day, three sixty-six-year-old men convene
on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college in the
1960s. They couldn't have been more different then, or even today -
Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press
publisher and Mickey an ageing musician. But each man holds his own
secrets, in addition to the monumental mystery that none of them
has ever stopped puzzling over since 1971: the disappearance of
their friend Jacy. Now, decades later, the distant past interrupts
the present as the truth about what happened to Jacy finally
emerges, forcing the men to reconsider everything they thought they
knew about each other. Shot through with Russo's trademark comedy
and humanity, Chances Are also introduces a new level of suspense
and menace that will quicken the reader's heartbeat throughout this
absorbing saga of how friendship's bonds are every bit as
constricting and rewarding as those of family. For both longtime
fans and lucky newcomers, Chances Are is a stunning demonstration
of a highly-acclaimed author deepening and expanding his remarkable
body of work.
In this uproarious new novel, Richard Russo performs his characteristic high-wire walk between hilarity and heartbreak.Russo's protagonist is William Henry Devereaux, Jr., the reluctant chairman of the English department of a badly underfunded college in the Pennsylvania rust belt.Devereaux's reluctance is partly rooted in his character--he is a born anarchist-- and partly in the fact that his department is more savagely divided than the Balkans.
In the course of a single week, Devereaux will have his nose mangled by an angry colleague, imagine his wife is having an affair with his dean, wonder if a curvaceous adjunct is trying to seduce him with peach pits, and threaten to execute a goose on local television.All this while coming to terms with his philandering father, the dereliction of his youthful promise, and the ominous failure of certain vital body functions.in short, Straight Man is classic Russo--side-splitting and true-to-life, witty, compassionate, and impossible to put down.
RTE Guide's Book of the Year, 2018 Richard Russo's characters in
these four expansive stories bear little similarity to the
blue-collar citizens we're familiar with from many of his novels.
In 'Horseman,' a professor confronts a young plagiarist as well as
her own weaknesses as the Thanksgiving holiday looms closer and
closer. In 'Intervention,' a real estate agent facing an ominous
medical prognosis finds himself in his father's shadow while he
presses forward - or not. In 'Voice,' a semi-retired academic is
conned by his estranged brother into joining a group tour of the
Venice Biennale, fleeing a mortifying incident with a traumatised
student back in Massachusetts but encountering further
complications in the maze of Venice. And in 'Milton and Marcus,' a
lapsed novelist tries to rekindle his screenwriting career, only to
be stymied by the pratfalls of that trade when he's called to an
aging, iconic star's mountaintop retreat in Wyoming. Each of these
stories is shot through with the humour, wisdom and surprise for
which Richard Russo has long been acclaimed as Trajectory continues
to extend the breadth of his achievements.
History and humanity flow through Empire Falls, Maine, like the strange flotsam washed up at the bend of the vast, slow-moving Knox River. The Whiting family, owners of the mills and the shirt factory, have sold out to a multinational. The Whiting men have invariably married women who make their lives a misery. C. B. Whiting was no exception. Now his wife, Francine, the last Mrs Whiting, presides like a black widow spider over the declining fortunes of the town. Its hub is the Empire Grill, with a view down the avenue to the abandoned mill and factory. Miles Roby, a gentle, funny loser runs the grill and hopes one day to own it. Meantime, though, his wife has run off with his worst customer, he's anxious about his adored teenage daughter and his one-handed brother, his incorrigible father sponges off everyone, the police have Miles in their sights, and Mrs Whiting has her own plans for him. Here is a huge-hearted and magnificent novel by a master storyteller, marked by comic genius and a love of humankind with all its flaws and foibles. As it builds inexorably to a shocking climax, Russo constantly surprises with characters who creep under your guard to disarm you, a plot with as many twists and falls as the Knox River itself, and an ending that makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.
A master of the novel, short story and memoir, the Pulitzer
Prize-winning author of Everybody's Foolnow gives us his very first
collection of personal essays, thoughts on writing, reading and
living. In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into
his life as a writer, teacher, friend and reader. From a
commencement speech to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made
him reevaluate the purpose of humour in art and life, to a
comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain's value, to his harrowing
journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued
gender-reassignment surgery, The Destiny Thief reflects the broad
interests and experiences of one of America's most beloved authors.
Warm, funny, wise and poignant, the essays included here traverse
Russo's writing life, expanding our understanding of who he is and
how his singular, incredibly generous mind works. An utter joy to
read, they give deep insight into the creative process from the
perspective of one of our greatest writers.
One beautiful September day, three sixty-six-year-old men convene
on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college in the
1960s. They couldn't have been more different then, or even today -
Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press
publisher and Mickey an ageing musician. But each man holds his own
secrets, in addition to the monumental mystery that none of them
has ever stopped puzzling over since 1971: the disappearance of
their friend Jacy. Now, decades later, the distant past interrupts
the present as the truth about what happened to Jacy finally
emerges, forcing the men to reconsider everything they thought they
knew about each other. Shot through with Russo's trademark comedy
and humanity, Chances Are also introduces a new level of suspense
and menace that will quicken the reader's heartbeat throughout this
absorbing saga of how friendship's bonds are every bit as
constricting and rewarding as those of family. For both longtime
fans and lucky newcomers, Chances Are is a stunning demonstration
of a highly-acclaimed author deepening and expanding his remarkable
body of work.
With Empire Falls Richard Russo cements his reputation as one of America’s most compelling and compassionate storytellers.
Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it’s Janine, Miles’ soon-to-be ex-wife, who’s taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it’s the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town–and seems to believe that “everything” includes Miles himself. In Empire Falls Richard Russo delves deep into the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with hilarity, heartache, and grace.
RTE Guide's Book of the Year, 2018 Richard Russo's characters in
these four expansive stories bear little similarity to the
blue-collar citizens we're familiar with from many of his novels.
In 'Horseman,' a professor confronts a young plagiarist as well as
her own weaknesses as the Thanksgiving holiday looms closer and
closer. In 'Intervention,' a real estate agent facing an ominous
medical prognosis finds himself in his father's shadow while he
presses forward - or not. In 'Voice,' a semi-retired academic is
conned by his estranged brother into joining a group tour of the
Venice Biennale, fleeing a mortifying incident with a traumatised
student back in Massachusetts but encountering further
complications in the maze of Venice. And in 'Milton and Marcus,' a
lapsed novelist tries to rekindle his screenwriting career, only to
be stymied by the pratfalls of that trade when he's called to an
aging, iconic star's mountaintop retreat in Wyoming. Each of these
stories is shot through with the humour, wisdom and surprise for
which Richard Russo has long been acclaimed as Trajectory continues
to extend the breadth of his achievements.
Hank Devereaux, a fifty-year-old, one-time novelist now serving as temporary chair of the English department, has more than a mid-life crisis to contend with when he learns that he must cull 20 per cent of his department to meet budget. Half in love with three women, unable to understand his younger daughter or come to terms with his father, he has a dangerous philosophy that life, and academic life, could be simpler, but he fails to see the larger consequences of his own actions or of the small-world politics that ebb and flow around him, as his colleagues jostle for position and marriages fall apart and regroup. The despair of his wife, and the scourge of the campus geese, he is a man at odds with himself and caught somewhere between cause and effect.
Richard Russo's new novel takes place in the decaying American town
of North Bath over the course of a very busy weekend, ten years
after the events of Nobody's Fool. Donald 'Sully' Sullivan is
trying to ignore his cardiologist's estimate that he has only a
year or two left. Ruth, his long-time lover, is increasingly
distracted by her former son-in-law, fresh out of prison and intent
on making trouble. Police chief Doug Raymer is tormented by the
improbable death of his wife, while local wiseguy Carl Roebuck
might finally be running out of luck. Filled with humour, heart and
hard-luck characters you can't help but love, Everybody's Fool is a
crowning achievement from one of the great storytellers of our
time.
Richard Russo's slyly funny and moving novel follows the unexpected
workings of grace in a deadbeat town in upstate New York - and in
the life of one of its unluckiest citizens, Sully, who has been
doing the wrong thing triumphantly for fifty years. Divorced from
his own wife and carrying on halfheartedly with another man's,
saddled with a bum knee and friends who make enemies redundant,
Sully now has one new problem to cope with: a long-estranged son
who is in imminent danger of following in his father's footsteps.
With its sly and uproarious humour and a heart that embraces
humanity's follies as well as its triumphs, Nobody's Fool is
storytelling at its most generous.
Following" Bridge of Sighs"--a national best seller hailed by" The
Boston Globe" as "an astounding achievement" and "a
masterpiece"--Richard Russo gives us the story of a marriage, and
of all the other ties that bind, from parents and in-laws to
children and the promises of youth.
Griffin has been tooling around for nearly a year with his father's
ashes in the trunk, but his mother is very much alive and not shy
about calling on his cell phone. She does so as he drives down to
Cape Cod, where he and his wife, Joy, will celebrate the marriage
of their daughter Laura's best friend. For Griffin this is akin to
driving into the past, since he took his childhood summer vacations
here, his parents' respite from the hated Midwest. And the Cape is
where he and Joy honeymooned, in the course of which they drafted
the Great Truro Accord, a plan for their lives together that's now
thirty years old and has largely come true. He'd left screenwriting
and Los Angeles behind for the sort of New England college his
snobby academic parents had always aspired to in vain; they'd moved
into an old house full of character; and they'd started a family.
Check, check and check.
But be careful what you pray for, especially if you manage to
achieve it. By the end of this perfectly lovely weekend, the past
has so thoroughly swamped the present that the future suddenly
hangs in the balance. And when, a year later, a far more important
wedding takes place, their beloved Laura's, on the coast of Maine,
Griffin's chauffeuring two urns of ashes as he contends once more
with Joy and her large, unruly family, and both he and she have
brought dates along. How in the world could this have happened?
"That Old Cape Magic" is a novel of deep introspection and every
family feeling imaginable, with a middle-aged man confronting his
parents and their failed marriage, his own troubled one, his
daughter's new life and, finally, what it was he thought he wanted
and what in fact he has. The storytelling is flawless throughout,
moments of great comedy and even hilarity alternating with others
of rueful understanding and heart-stopping sadness, and its ending
is at once surprising, uplifting and unlike anything this Pulitzer
Prize winner has ever written.
"From the Hardcover edition."
A master of the novel, short story and memoir, the Pulitzer
Prize-winning author of Everybody's Foolnow gives us his very first
collection of personal essays, thoughts on writing, reading and
living. In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into
his life as a writer, teacher, friend and reader. From a
commencement speech to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made
him reevaluate the purpose of humour in art and life, to a
comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain's value, to his harrowing
journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued
gender-reassignment surgery, The Destiny Thief reflects the broad
interests and experiences of one of America's most beloved authors.
Warm, funny, wise and poignant, the essays included here traverse
Russo's writing life, expanding our understanding of who he is and
how his singular, incredibly generous mind works. An utter joy to
read, they give deep insight into the creative process from the
perspective of one of our greatest writers.
Exquisitely powerful short stories by the masterful Andre Dubus.
Originally published in two volumes, The Times Are Never So Bad and
Finding a Girl in America. This collection includes some of Andre
Dubus’s most celebrated stories including “A Father’s
Story,” “The Pretty Girl,” and “Killings”—the basis of
the Academy Award-nominated film In the Bedroom—a swift tale of
revenge that leaves readers wondering what they might do in the
name of family love. “Dubus’s stories feel as fresh today as
they did when I first read them, three decades ago,” Richard
Russo writes in the introduction. “One reason is the delight he
takes in playing off readers’ genre expectations. Conventional
robbery stories, for example, are almost always concerned with
whether the thieves will get caught. Here [in ‘Anna’] it’s
the exact opposite. Dubus doesn’t care whether Anna and Wayne get
caught; not getting caught actually deepens their predicament.
Similarly, ‘Townies,’ which at first appears to be the story of
a murdered college girl, turns out to be about the unexpected link
between the campus cop who finds her body and the boy who kills
her, both of whom have been excluded from the privileged girl’s
world by virtue of their class.” Collected Short Stories and
Novellas by Andre Dubus includes We Don’t Live Here Anymore, The
Winter Father, and The Cross Country Runner. All three contain work
by an American master, perfect for anyone who loves stories of the
human heart and where it can lead us.
Edited by the award-winning, best-selling author Richard Russo,
this year's collection boasts a satisfying "chorus of twenty
stories that are by turns playful, ironic, somber, and meditative"
("Wall Street Journal"). With the masterful Russo picking the best
of the best, America's oldest and best-selling story anthology is
sure to be of "enduring quality" ("Chicago Tribune") this year.
The literary event of 2001 is now the paperback event of 2002: The Collected Stories of Richard Yates gathers thelate author's powerful and peerless short fiction in one comprehensive volume. Praised by such authors as Michael Chabon, Stewart O'Nan, Robert Stone, and Richard Russo, and universally acclaimed in reviews across the country, The Collected Stories is the crowning jewel in what has been the rediscovery of one of our greatest American writers.
In his slyly funny and moving new novel, the author of The Risk Pool follows the unexpected operation of grace in a deadbeat, upstate New York town--and in the lives of the unluckiest of its citizens. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Paul Newman, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, and Jessica Tandy. Author reading tour.
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