Without a Hero

Without a Hero PDF Author: T.C. Boyle
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101651571
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
T.C. Boyle was first feted as a master of the short story for his critically acclaimed Greasy Lake. With these stories applauded by People magazine as "wickedly comical," he displays once again a virtuosity and versatility rare in literary America today. Without a Hero zooms in on American phenomena such as a center for the treatment of acquisitive disorders; a couple in search of the last toads on earth; and a real estate wonder boy on a dude safari near convenient Bakerfield, California. Sharp, guileful, and malevolently funny, Boyle's stories are "more than funny, better than wicked," says The Philadelphia Inquirer. "They make you cringe with their clarity."

Without a Hero

Without a Hero PDF Author: T.C. Boyle
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101651571
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
T.C. Boyle was first feted as a master of the short story for his critically acclaimed Greasy Lake. With these stories applauded by People magazine as "wickedly comical," he displays once again a virtuosity and versatility rare in literary America today. Without a Hero zooms in on American phenomena such as a center for the treatment of acquisitive disorders; a couple in search of the last toads on earth; and a real estate wonder boy on a dude safari near convenient Bakerfield, California. Sharp, guileful, and malevolently funny, Boyle's stories are "more than funny, better than wicked," says The Philadelphia Inquirer. "They make you cringe with their clarity."

Greasy Lake and Other Stories

Greasy Lake and Other Stories PDF Author: T.C. Boyle
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101462183
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Mythic and realist, farcical and tragic, these fifteen “fables of contemporary life [are] so funny and acutely observed that they might have been written [for] Saturday Night Live” (The New York Times)—from the award–winning author of The Tortilla Curtain. “Boyle . . . owns a ferocious, delicious imagination, often darkly satirical and always infatuated with language.”—The Los Angeles Times Book Review In “The Hector Quesadilla Story,” T.C. Boyle writes of an aging Latin ballplayer, long past his best stuff, who on his birthday is put into an endless rotation in a game that goes on forever; in “All Shook Up,” he tells of the doomed affair between his narrator and the sweet, feckless wife of an aspiring Elvis Presley look-alike; in “On for the Long Haul,” he describes the grim scenarios enacted by a credulous survivalist and his family in their nuclear-holocaust-proof haven in the sticks; and in the title story, he portrays a terrifying and violent encounter between a bunch of late-adolescent layabouts and a murderous drug-dealing biker.

World's End

World's End PDF Author: T.C. Boyle
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0140299939
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
WINNER OF THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD • In this stunning novel, one man traces the tangled histories of three very different families—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tortilla Curtain “Boyle has emerged as one of the most inventive and verbally exuberant writers of his generation.”—The New York Times Haunted by the burden of his family’s traitorous past, woozy with pot, cheap wine, and sex, and disturbed by a frighteningly real encounter with some family ghosts, Walter Van Brunt is about to have a collision with history. It will lead Walter to search for his lost father. And it will send the story into the past of the Hudson River Valley, from the 1960s back to the anticommunist riots of the 1940s to the late seventeenth century, where the long-hidden secrets of three families—the aristocratic Van Warts, the Native American Mohonks, and Walter’s own ancestors, the Van Brunts—will be revealed.

T.C. Boyle Stories II

T.C. Boyle Stories II PDF Author: T.C. Boyle
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143125869
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 944

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Book Description
The second volume of collected short fiction from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tortilla Curtain, featuring fifty-eight short stories that “mix brilliance with high-concept pyrotechnics” (Los Angeles Times), including fourteen never-before-published tales “Whether he’s writing about survival in a wasted environment or people and animals coming unhinged, Boyle never fails to captivate, to deliver his ideas within the conveyance of first-class storytelling.”—San Francisco Chronicle By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, T.C. Boyle’s stories map a wide range of human emotions. The fifty-eight stories in this volume, gathered from Wild Child, Tooth and Claw, and After the Plague, plus fourteen marvelous new tales, reflect his mordant wit, emotional power, and exquisite prose. Along with the satires and tall tales that established his reputation, T.C. Boyle Stories II includes stories speaking to contemporary social issues, from air rage to abortion doctors, and character-driven tales of quiet power and passion. Others capture timeless themes, from first love and its consequences to confrontations with mortality, or explore the conflict between civilization and wildness. Boyle engagingly tests his characters’ emotional and physical endurance, whether a group of giants being bred as weapons of war in a fictional Latin American country, a Russian woman who ignores dire warnings in returning to her radiation-contaminated home, a hermetic writer who gets more than a break in his routine when he travels to receive a minor award, or a man in a California mountain town who goes a little too far in his concern for a widow. T.C. Boyle Stories II is a grand career statement from a writer whose creativity knows no bounds.

After the Plague

After the Plague PDF Author: T.C. Boyle
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110157383X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Few authors in America write with such sheer love of story, language, and imagination as T.C. Boyle, and nowhere is that passion more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and widely praised short stories. In After the Plague, Boyle speaks of contemporary social issues in a range of emotional keys. The sixteen stories gathered here address everything from air rage to abortion doctors to first love and its consequences. The collection ends with the brilliant title story, a whimsical and imaginative vision of a disease-ravaged Earth. Presented with characteristic wit and intelligence, these stories will delight readers in search of the latest news of the chaotic, disturbing, and achingly beautiful world in which we live. "Boyle's imagination and zeal for storytelling are in top form here."—Publishers Weekly

The Relive Box and Other Stories

The Relive Box and Other Stories PDF Author: T.C. Boyle
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062673408
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
While T.C. Boyle is known as one of our greatest American novelists, he is also an acknowledged master of the short story and is perhaps at his funniest, his most moving, and his most surprising in the short form. In The Relive Box, Boyle's sharp wit and rich imagination combine with a penetrating social consciousness to produce raucous, poignant, and expansive short stories defined by an inimitable voice. From the collection's title story, featuring a Halcom X1520 Relive Box that allows users to experience anew almost any moment from their past to "The Five-Pound Burrito," the tale of a man aiming to build the biggest burrito in town, the twelve stories in this collection speak to the humor, the pathos, and the struggle that is part of being human while relishing the whimsy of wordplay and the power of a story well told. In stories that span a variety of styles and genres, Boyle addresses the enduring concerns of the human mind and heart while taking on timely social concerns. The Relive Box is an exuberant, linguistically dazzling effort from a "vibrant sensibility fully engaged with American society." (The New York Times)

Descent of Man

Descent of Man PDF Author: T.C. Boyle
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0140299947
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Seventeen short stories from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tortilla Curtain, “the sort of writer who inspires even poker-faced writers to grin and start dusting off their superlatives” (The Washington Post Book World). “Descent of Man is loaded with energetic language. . . . Boyle is capable of the sublime.”—The New York Times Book Review In seventeen slices of life that defy the expected and launch us into the absurd, T.C. Boyle offers his unique view of the world. A primate-center researcher becomes romantically involved with a chimp; a Norse poet overcomes bard-block; collectors compete to snare the ancient Aztec beer can, Quetzalcóatl Lite; and Lassie abandons Timmy for a randy coyote. Dark humor, delirious fantasy, and surreal satire come together in this collection that brilliantly expresses just what the “evolution” of mankind has wrought.

Talk to Me

Talk to Me PDF Author: T.C. Boyle
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063052849
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
From bestselling and award-winning author T.C. Boyle, a lively, thought-provoking novel that asks us what it would be like if we could really talk to the animals When animal behaviorist Guy Schermerhorn demonstrates on a TV game show that he has taught Sam, his juvenile chimp, to speak in sign language, Aimee Villard, an undergraduate at Guy's university, is so taken with the performance that she applies to become his assistant. A romantic and intellectual attachment soon morphs into an interspecies love triangle that pushes hard at the boundaries of consciousness and the question of what we know and how we know it. What if it were possible to speak to the members of another species—to converse with them, not just give commands or coach them but to really have an exchange of ideas and a meeting of minds? Did apes have God? Did they have souls? Did they know about death and redemption? About prayer? The economy, rockets, space? Did they miss the jungle? Did they even know what the jungle was? Did they dream? Make wishes? Hope for the future? These are some the questions T.C. Boyle asks in his wide-ranging and hilarious new novel Talk to Me, exploring what it means to be human, to communicate with another, and to truly know another person—or animal…

A Friend of the Earth

A Friend of the Earth PDF Author: T. C. Boyle
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408826836
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
_______________________ 'A comedy with teeth ... razor sharp and darkly funny' (TIMES) 'Boyle's prose is so good and his imagination so fertile that after a while you just sit back and are swept along' (TELEGRAPH) 'Surreal, daring and compassionate. Easily one of the best books of the year' (MAIL) 'Superb ... if Boyle was from this side of the pond, this is the book they'd all have to beat for the Booker Prize' (SUNDAY TIMES) It's 2025, and 75-year-old environmentalist and retired eco-terrorist Ty Tierwater is eking out a bleak living managing a pop star's private zoo. It is the last one in southern California, and vital for the cloning of its captive species. Once, Ty was so serious about environmental causes that as a radical activist committed to Earth Forever! he endangered the lives of both his daughter, Sierra, and his wife, Andrea. Now, when he's just trying to survive in a world cursed by storm and drought, Andrea re-enters his life. Frightening, funny, surreal and gripping, T.C. Boyle's story is both a modern morality tale, and a provocative vision of the future.

If the River Was Whiskey

If the River Was Whiskey PDF Author: T.C. Boyle
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101651024
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
In sixteen stories, T.C. Boyle tears through the walls of contemporary society to reveal a world at once comic and tragic, droll and horrific. Boyle introduces us to a death-defying stuntman who rides across the country strapped to the axle of a Peterbilt, and to a retired primatologist who can’t adjust to the “civilized” world. He chronicles the state of romance that requires full-body protection in a disease-conscious age and depicts with aching tenderness the relationship between a young boy and his alcoholic father. These magical and provocative stories mark yet another virtuoso performance from one of America’s most supple and electric literary inventors.