In a famous but declining Hollywood bar works A Barman. Morbidly amused by the decadent decay of his surroundings, he watches the patrons fall into their nightly oblivion, making notes for his novel. …
Jesus' Son, the first collection of stories by Denis Johnson, presents a unique, hallucinatory vision of contemporary American life unmatched in power and immediacy and marks a new level of achievemen…
With this, his first collection, Carver breathed new life into the short story. In the pared-down style that has since become his hallmark, Carver showed us how humour and tragedy dwelt in the hearts …
The second book of Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove tetralogy, Comanche Moon takes us once again into the world of the American West. Texas Rangers August McCrae and Woodrow Ca…
The marathon dance craze flourished during the 1930s, but the underside was a competition and violence unknown to most ballrooms—a dark side that Horace McCoy's classic American novel powerfully captu…
Duncan took almost 10 years to follow up the publication of his much-praised first novel, The River Why, but this massive second effort is well worth the wait. It is a stunning work: a complex tapestr…
A big and big-hearted novel—one enthralling, transformative year in the life of a child actor coming of age in a bygone Manhattan, from the critically acclaimed author of Mr. Peanut (“A brilliant, pow…
Dead Man's Walk is the first, extraordinary book in the epic Lonesome Dove tetralogy, in which Larry McMurtry breathed new life into the vanished American West and created two of the most memorable he…
In his second collection, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated and beloved short-story writers in American literature—a haunting me…
Denis Johnson's Train Dreams is an epic in miniature, one of his most evocative and poignant fictions. It is the story of Robert Grainier, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twenti…
All too often, this brilliant novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried has been read for its political implications. Now though, a quarter century after The Joke was first published, and several …
