Robert Olen Butler's Books

From Where You Dream

The Process of Writing Fiction

By: Robert Olen Butler

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From Where You Dream

The Process of Writing Fiction

By: Robert Olen Butler

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author “shares his insights into—and passion for—the creation and experience of fiction with total openness” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Robert Olen Butler, author of Perfume River, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, and A Small Hotel, teaches graduate fiction at Florida State University—his version of literary boot camp. In From Where You Dream, Butler reimagines the process of writing as emotional rather than intellectual, and tells writers how to achieve the dreamspace necessary for composing honest, inspired fiction. Proposing that fiction is the exploration of the human condition with yearning as its compass, Butler reinterprets the traditional tools of the craft using the dynamics of desire. Offering a direct view into the mind and craft of a literary master, From Where You Dream is an invaluable tool for the novice and experienced writer alike. “Incisive and provocative, Butler’s tutorials are a must for anyone even thinking about writing fiction, and readers, too, will benefit from his passionate exhortations.” —Booklist

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256

Publisher

Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published Date

ISBN 10

155584619X

ISBN 13

9781555846190

Severance

By: Robert Olen Butler

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Severance

By: Robert Olen Butler

The human head is believed to remain in a state of consciousness for one and one-half minutes after decapitation. In a heightened state of emotion, people speak at the rate of 160 words per minute. Inspired by the intersection of these two seemingly unrelated concepts, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler wrote sixty-two stories, each exactly 240 words in length, capturing the flow of thoughts and feelings that go through a person's mind after their head has been severed. The characters are both real and imagined Medusa (beheaded by Perseus, 2000 BC), Anne Boleyn (beheaded at the behest of Henry VIII, 1536), a chicken (beheaded for Sunday dinner, Alabama, 1958), and the author (decapitated, on the job, 2008). Told with the intensity of a poet and the wit of a great storyteller, these final thoughts illuminate and crystallize more about the characters' own lives and the worlds they inhabit than many writers manage to convey in full-length biographies or novels. The stories, which have appeared in literary magazines across the country, are a delightful and intriguing creative feat from one of today's most inventive writers.

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144

Publisher

Bedford Square Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1843447568

ISBN 13

9781843447566

A Small Hotel

A Novel

By: Robert Olen Butler

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A Small Hotel

A Novel

By: Robert Olen Butler

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author comes this “fascinating . . . intense portrayal of the collapse of a marriage . . . [that] delivers a surprising charge” (Jane Smiley, The Washington Post). An O, The Oprah Magazine “Summer Reading List” pick Set in contemporary New Orleans but working its way back in time, A Small Hotel chronicles the relationship between Michael and Kelly Hays, who have decided to separate after twenty-four years of marriage. The book begins on the day that the Hays are to finalize their divorce. Kelly is due to be in court, but instead she drives from her home in Pensacola, Florida, across the panhandle to New Orleans. There she checks into Room 303 at the Olivier House in the city’s French Quarter—the hotel where she and Michael fell in love some twenty-five years earlier. She now finds herself about to make a decision that will forever affect her, Michael, and their nineteen-year-old daughter, Samantha. “From each spouse’s point of view we witness the feelings that didn’t break the surface at the time, but never went away.” —The New York Times “Intelligent, deeply moving . . . A Small Hotel is a masterful story that will remind readers once again why Robert Olen Butler has been called ‘the best living American writer.’” —Fort Worth Star-Telegram

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202

Publisher

Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802195644

ISBN 13

9780802195647

The Deep Green Sea

By: Robert Butler

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The Deep Green Sea

By: Robert Butler

A slim, erotic and fable-like . . . book that picks up on many of Butler's abiding themes—the legacy of the Vietnam War, the clash of Vietnam's folklore and mysticism with American manners . . . [Butler is] a writer working to cast a spell." —New York Times Book Review "In a deceptively understated manner, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Robert Olen Butler introduces us to a pair of improbable modern lovers . . . [he] plants the seeds of a tragedy that will haunt his readers long after they finish this lyrical love story." —People In The Deep Green Sea, Robert Olen Butler has created an incandescent tale of modern love between a Vietnamese woman, orphaned in 1975 when Saigon fell to the Communists, and a Vietnam War veteran, returning from America to seek closure for decades-old emotional wounds. The more they nurture the love between them, the more they learn about each other, the more complex and dangerous their relationship becomes, and what follows conjures classical tragedy, infused with intense eroticism and with Butler’s reverence for Vietnamese mythology and history. The Deep Green Sea is a landmark work in the literature of love and war.

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Page Count

242

Publisher

Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802120962

ISBN 13

9780802120960

Perfume River

A Novel

By: Robert Olen Butler

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Perfume River

A Novel

By: Robert Olen Butler

A powerful novel of a family haunted by the aftershocks of the Vietnam War—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of a A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. “You share a war in one way. You pass it on in another.” Passionate student activism brought Robert Quinlan together with his future wife during the tumultuous years of the Vietnam War. But since then, the long-married Florida university professors have grown apart. Their crumbling relationship is mirrored by Robert’s estrangement from his brother . . . alienated by the same controversial war. Now, with their father—a World War II veteran—lying close to death, the rift in the family is sorely tested when Robert’s brother refuses to put the past aside and return to say goodbye. And when Robert mistakes a homeless stranger for a fellow Vietnam veteran, his unstable presence in their lives will further stir the emotional scars that shattered the Quinlan men . . . and take its toll on those they love most. “Butler’s Faulknerian shuttling back and forth across the decades has less to do with literary pyrotechnics than with cutting to the chase. Perfume River hits its marks with a high-stakes intensity . . . Butler’s prose is fluid, and his handling of his many time-shifts as lucid as it is urgent. His descriptive gifts don’t extend just to his characters’ traits or their Florida and New Orleans settings, but to the history he’s addressing.” —Michael Upchurch, New York Times Book Review “Butler moves easily among his characters to create a composite portrait of a family that has been wrecked by choices made during the Vietnam War.” —Beth Nguyen, San Francisco Chronicle “The story builds its force with great care . . . Its power is that we want to keep reading. The entire journey is masterfully rendered, Butler lighting a path back into the cave, completely unafraid.” —Benjamin Busch, Washington Post “Butler greatly enlarges our sense of what the Vietnam War cost to a generation . . . Perfume River tells a human story that sums up an entire era of American life.” —Miami Herald “Butler’s assured, elegant novel . . . speaks eloquently of the way the past bleeds into the present, history reverberates through individual lives, and mortality challenges our perceptions of ourselves and others.” —Publishers Weekly “A heartbreaking story of fathers and sons and their expectations and disappointments . . . Perfume River is a powerful work that asks profound questions about betrayal and loyalty.” —BookPage

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Page Count

233

Publisher

Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802190103

ISBN 13

9780802190109

Late City

A Novel

By: Robert Olen Butler

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Late City

A Novel

By: Robert Olen Butler

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author shares an “exceptionally nuanced, tender, funny, tragic, and utterly transfixing portrait” of one man’s troubled century (Booklist, starred review). At 115 years old, former newspaperman Sam Cunningham is also the last surviving veteran of World War I. As he prepares to die in a Chicago nursing home, the results of the 2016 presidential election come in—and he finds himself in a wide-ranging conversation with a surprising God. As the two review Sam’s life, the grand epic of the twentieth century comes sharply into focus. Sam grows up in Louisiana under the flawed morality of an abusive father. Eager to escape, Sam enlists in the army while still underage. Though the hardness his father instilled in him helps him make it out of World War I alive, it also prevents him from contending with the emotional wounds of war. Back in the United States, Sam moves to Chicago to begin a career as a newspaperman that will bring him close to the major historical turns of the twentieth century. There he meets his wife and has a son, whose fate counters Sam’s at almost every turn. As he contemplates his relationships—with his parents, his brothers in arms, his wife, his editor, and most importantly, his son—Sam is amazed at what he still has left to learn about himself after all these years.

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206

Publisher

Atlantic Monthly Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802158838

ISBN 13

9780802158833

The Empire of Night

By: Robert Olen Butler

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The Empire of Night

By: Robert Olen Butler

“A cracking good spy thriller, with a cast of memorable characters and a terrifically suspenseful plot . . . Butler’s elegant writing elevates the book.” —Tampa Bay Times In the first two books of his acclaimed Christopher Marlowe Cobb series, The Hot Country and The Star of Istanbul, Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler captured the hearts of historical crime fiction fans with the artfulness of his World War I settings and his charismatic leading man, a Chicago journalist recruited by American intelligence. In The Empire of Night, it is 1915, and President Woodrow Wilson is still assessing the war’s threat to the United States. After proving himself during the Lusitania mission, Kit is now a full-blown spy, working undercover in a castle on the Kentish coast owned by a suspected British government mole named Sir Albert Stockman. And Kit is again thrown together with a female spy—his own mother, the beautiful and mercurial Isabel Cobb, who also happens to be a world-famous stage actress. Starring in a touring production of Hamlet, Isabel’s offstage role is to keep tabs on the supposed mole, an ardent fan of hers, while Kit tries to figure out Stockman’s secret agenda. Following his mother and her escort from the relative safety of Britain into the lion’s den of Berlin, Kit must remain in character, even under the very nose of the Kaiser. “[A] thrilling historical series . . . There’s something almost magical about the way the author re-creates this 1915 milieu.” —The Wall Street Journal

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405

Publisher

Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802191894

ISBN 13

9780802191892

Tabloid Dreams

Stories

By: Robert Olen Butler

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Tabloid Dreams

Stories

By: Robert Olen Butler

There are a dozen ways the American Dream can go awry in this “unrepeatable . . . tour de force” of short fiction from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author (The Washington Post Book World). “[With] touches of Italo Calvino, Roald Dahl, and Gabriel García Márquez” the Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award–winning author dazzles with his mastery of the short story and his ability to find humor and humanity in the extremes of the American way (San Francisco Chronicle). Using tabloid headlines for inspiration—among them, “Boy Born with Tattoo of Elvis,” “Woman Struck by Car Turns into Nymphomaniac,” and “Titanic Victim Speaks Through Waterbed”—Butler moves from the fantastic to the realistic, and from the lurid to the transcendent, as he explores exile, loss, aspiration, and the search for self. Along the way, we meet a wife who uses her glass eye to spy on her cheating husband; a widow who sets herself on fire after losing a baking competition; a nine-year-old hit man; a woman who dates an extraterrestrial she met at Walmart; and a furtive and mournful JFK who survived the assassination. “Butler peels back the sleazy veneer of the sensational to expose characters who long for love and the healing comfort of human compassion” —USA Today “Read all about it: if you’re frustrated by the way nothing much seems to happen in modern short fiction, you’ll find Tabloid Dreams a whole different story.” —The New York Times Book Review “These stories are masterpieces.” —South Florida Sun-Sentinel “Tabloid Dreams is full-blown American magical realism.” —Boston Review

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159

Publisher

Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802193641

ISBN 13

9780802193643

A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

Stories

By: Robert Olen Butler

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A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

Stories

By: Robert Olen Butler

Butler's Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of stories about the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its impact on the Vietnamese is reissued. Includes two subsequently published stories that complete the collection's narrative journey, returning to the jungles of Vietnam.

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294

Publisher

Grove Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802137989

ISBN 13

9780802137982

Intercourse

By: Robert Olen Butler

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Intercourse

By: Robert Olen Butler

What goes through the mind of a person while having sex? Acclaimed story teller Robert Olen Butler turns his daring imagination to the intimate in his latest collection that both dazzles and probes. He lays bare the most flagrant, personal thoughts and feelings of fifty often surprsing couples. The author's meitculous research reveals that these famous people actually did get together and, almost certainly (he wasn't there), consummated their relationship. Erotic, provocative, political, and funny, each story illuminates the inner workings of these well-known people and also reveals the delights, deviousness, and distractions of intercourse. Butler is at his most entertaining and insightful in this wild and engaging new collection.

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Page Count

180

Publisher

Bedford Square Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1843447533

ISBN 13

9781843447535

Had a Good Time

Stories from American Postcards

By: Robert Olen Butler

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Had a Good Time

Stories from American Postcards

By: Robert Olen Butler

”Gloriously imaginative and utterly hypnotizing short stories” inspired by vintage twentieth-century postcards, from a Pulitzer Prize-winning author (Booklist, starred review). For many years, author Robert Olen Butler has collected picture postcards from the early twentieth century—not so much for the pictures on the fronts but for the messages written on the backs, little bits of the captured souls of people long since passed away. Using these brief messages of real people from another age, Butler here creates fully imagined stories that speak to the universal human condition. In “Up by Heart,” a Tennessee miner is called upon to become a preacher, and then asked to complete an altogether more sinister task. In “The Ironworkers’ Hayride,” a young man named Milton embarks on a romantic adventure with a girl with a wooden leg. From the deeply moving “Carl and I,” in which a young wife writes a postcard in reply to a card from her husband who is dying of tuberculosis, to the eerily familiar “The One in White,” in which a newspaper reporter covers an incident of American military adventurism in a foreign land, these short stories are intimate and fascinating glimpses into the lives of ordinary people in an extraordinary age. “A wonderful collection.”—The Atlantic Monthly

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246

Publisher

Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1555846203

ISBN 13

9781555846206

Paris in the Dark

By: Robert Olen Butler

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Paris in the Dark

By: Robert Olen Butler

In the new Christopher Marlowe Cobb thriller, Robert Olen Butler's intrepid newspaperman-turned-spy tracks a German saboteur through the streets of the Great War-dimmed City of Lights

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Page Count

240

Publisher

Mysterious Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802147704

ISBN 13

9780802147707

The Hemingway Valise

By: Robert Olen Butler

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The Hemingway Valise

By: Robert Olen Butler

An American spy in Paris solves a legendary mystery as the Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s “thrilling historical series” continues (The Wall Street Journal). Former Chicago journalist turned globe-trotting spy Christopher Marlowe Cobb has already lived many lives—from London to Mexico to Berlin—when he returns to France in 1922. Where better to work on his novel than among such literary expatriates as Ezra Pound and Ford Madox Ford, who convene at the Shakespeare & Company bookstore in postwar Paris? Among them is Ernest Hemingway, fellow lone-wolf war correspondent, new friend, and confidante. Like Cobb, Hemingway is writing a novel. Unlike Cobb, however, Hemingway’s manuscript has just been stolen off a train to Lausanne by what he’s sure were foreign agents. To know what Hemingway knows is risky enough. But to write about it is positively dangerous. Never one to shy away from a challenge, Cobb volunteers to retrieve the manuscript—but he’ll need all of his spycraft skills to infiltrate the compound where it’s cached.

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Open Road Media

Published Date

ISBN 10

1504055624

ISBN 13

9781504055628

Wabash

A Novel

By: Robert Olen Butler

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Wabash

A Novel

By: Robert Olen Butler

In 1932 Wabash, Illinois, Deborah and Jeremy Cole, estranged since the death of their daughter, try to work out their grief through involvement in family concerns and the labor movement

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Page Count

207

Publisher

Henry Holt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0805032002

ISBN 13

9780805032000

The Star of Istanbul

A Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller

By: Robert Butler

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The Star of Istanbul

A Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller

By: Robert Butler

American spy and war correspondent Christopher Marlowe Cobb follows a man who may be a German secret service agent with vital information on to the Lusitania during World War I in this sequel to The Hot Country. 20,000 first printing.

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386

Publisher

Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802121551

ISBN 13

9780802121554

The Deep Green Sea

A Novel

By: Robert Butler

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The Deep Green Sea

A Novel

By: Robert Butler

In The Deep Green Sea, Robert Olen Butler has created a memorable and incandescent love story between Tien, a contemporary Vietnamese woman orphaned in 1975, when the city finally fell to the Communists, and Ben, a Vietnam veteran who returns from America to a war-torn land, seeking closure and a measure of peace. Bit by bit they learn more of each other's pasts. Secrets are revealed: Ben's love affair with a Vietnamese prostitute in 1966; Tien's mixed racial heritage and her abandonment by her bar-girl mother, who feared retribution from the North Vietnamese for having given birth to one of the hated "children of dust." In Butler's hands, what follows conjures the stuff of classical tragedy and also achieves a classic reconciliation of once-warring cultures. Infused equally with eroticism and with Butler's deep and abiding reverence for Vietnamese myth and history, The Deep Green Sea is a landmark work in the literature of love and war.

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240

Publisher

Henry Holt and Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0805031308

ISBN 13

9780805031300

Mr. Spaceman

By: Robert Olen Butler

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Mr. Spaceman

By: Robert Olen Butler

A spaceman orbits the Earth, gently abducting people to study humanity, then erasing the event from their memories. Problems arise when he falls in love with a beautician from Alabama.

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246

Publisher

Grove Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802137822

ISBN 13

9780802137821

Perfume River

By: Robert Olen Butler

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Perfume River

By: Robert Olen Butler

From one of America s most important writers, Perfume River is an exquisite novel that examines family ties and the legacy of the Vietnam War through the portrait of a single North Florida family. Robert Quinlan is a seventy-year-old historian, teaching at Florida State University, where his wife Darla is also tenured. Their marriage, forged in the fervor of anti-Vietnam-war protests, now bears the fractures of time, both personal and historical, with the couple trapped in an existence of morning coffee and solitary jogging and separate offices. For Robert and Darla, the cracks remain under the surface, whereas the divisions in Robert s own family are more apparent: he has almost no relationship with his brother Jimmy, who became estranged from the family as the Vietnam War intensified. Robert and Jimmy s father, a veteran of WWII, is coming to the end of his life, and aftershocks of war ripple across their lives once again, when Jimmy refuses to appear at his father s bedside. And an unstable homeless man whom Robert at first takes to be a fellow Vietnam veteran turns out to have a deep impact not just on Robert, but on his entire family.

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Page Count

338

Publisher

Thorndike Press Large Print

Published Date

ISBN 10

1410493652

ISBN 13

9781410493651

From Where You Dream

The Process of Writing Fiction

By: Robert Olen Butler

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From Where You Dream

The Process of Writing Fiction

By: Robert Olen Butler

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256

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Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published Date

ISBN 10

155584619X

ISBN 13

9781555846190

Had a Good Time

Stories from American Postcards

By: Robert Olen Butler

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Had a Good Time

Stories from American Postcards

By: Robert Olen Butler

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248

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Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1555846203

ISBN 13

9781555846206

A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

By: Robert Olen Butler

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A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

By: Robert Olen Butler

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize: “Uncannily perceptive stories written by an American from the viewpoint of Vietnamese citizens transplanted to Louisiana” (People). A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain is Robert Olen Butler’s Pulitzer Prize–winning collection of lyrical and poignant stories about the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its enduring impact on the Vietnamese. Written in a soaring prose, Butler’s haunting and powerful stories blend Vietnamese folklore and contemporary American realities, creating a vibrant panorama that is epic in its scope. This new edition includes two previously uncollected stories—“Missing” and “Salem”—that brilliantly complete the collection’s narrative journey, returning to the jungles of Vietnam to explore the experiences of a former Vietcong soldier and an American MIA. “Deeply affecting . . . A brilliant collection of stories about storytellers whose recited folklore radiates as implicit prayer . . . One of the strongest collections I’ve read in ages.” —Ann Beattie

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Page Count

195

Publisher

Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802193897

ISBN 13

9780802193896

Mr. Spaceman

By: Robert Olen Butler

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Mr. Spaceman

By: Robert Olen Butler

“A surprisingly sweet and droll first-person account of the vexed attempts of an alien to understand the bafflingly unpredictable human race.” —Kirkus Reviews The Pulitzer Prize–winning author “raises fin de siècle literature to new heights and turns inevitability on its head” in a novel of an alien named Desi (Publishers Weekly). For decades, Desi has kept a quiet vigil above the Earth while studying the confusing, fascinating, and frustrating primary species of our planet, occasionally venturing to the planet’s surface to hear their thoughts and experience their memories using his empathic powers. Now, on December 31, 2000, he prepares for the final phase of his mysterious mission, which begins when he beams a tour bus bound for a Louisiana casino aboard his ship. The twelve passengers will be the last humans whose lives he will experience before he positions his spaceship in full and irrefutable view of the people of Earth and descends to the planet’s surface to proclaim his presence to all of humanity at the turn of the millennium. Poignant, funny, and charming, Mr. Spaceman is filled with unexpected twists and turns, a tribute to the powers of love and understanding and the essence of what it means to be human. “Funny and humane, entertaining and touching.” —The New York Times

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240

Publisher

Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published Date

ISBN 10

1555846211

ISBN 13

9781555846213

The Deep Green Sea

By: Robert Olen Butler

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The Deep Green Sea

By: Robert Olen Butler

“A wrenching love story” about the relationship between a Vietnam veteran and a woman who was orphaned when Saigon fell, by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author (Chicago Tribune). This is an incandescent tale of modern love between a Vietnamese woman, orphaned in 1975 when Saigon fell to the Communists, and a Vietnam War veteran, returning from America to seek closure for decades-old emotional wounds. The more they nurture the love between them, the more they learn about each other, the more complex and dangerous their relationship becomes—and what follows conjures classical tragedy, infused with intense eroticism and with Butler’s reverence for Vietnamese mythology and history. The Deep Green Sea is a landmark work in the literature of love and war, from the acclaimed author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. “A slim, erotic and fable-like...book that picks up on many of Butler's abiding themes—the legacy of the Vietnam War, the clash of Vietnam’s folklore and mysticism with American manners...[Butler is] a writer working to cast a spell.” —TheNew York Times Book Review “In a deceptively understated manner, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Robert Olen Butler introduces us to a pair of improbable modern lovers . . . [he] plants the seeds of a tragedy that will haunt his readers long after they finish this lyrical love story.” —People

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196

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Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802193498

ISBN 13

9780802193490

Hell

A Novel

By: Robert Olen Butler

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Hell

A Novel

By: Robert Olen Butler

“A novel that explores the darker side of human nature while making you laugh so hard iced tea almost comes out your nose.” —The Tampa Tribune One of American literature’s brightest stars and author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain reimagines the underworld in an uproarious novel. Its main character, Hatcher McCord, is an evening news presenter who has found himself in Hell and is struggling to explain his bad fortune. He’s not the only one to suffer this fate—in fact, he’s surrounded by an outrageous cast of characters, including Humphrey Bogart, William Shakespeare, and almost all of the popes and most of the US presidents. The question may be not who is in Hell, but who isn’t. McCord is living with Anne Boleyn in the afterlife but their happiness is, of course, constantly derailed by her obsession with Henry VIII (and the removal of her head at rather inopportune moments). One day McCord meets Dante’s Beatrice, who believes there is a way out of Hell, and the next morning, during an exclusive on-camera interview with Satan, McCord realizes that Satan’s omniscience, which he has always credited for the perfection of Hell’s torments, may be a mirage—and Butler is off on a madcap romp about good, evil, free will, and the possibility of escape. Butler’s depiction of Hell is original, intelligent, and fiercely comic, a book Dante might have celebrated. “I’ll never stop believing it: Robert Olen Butler is the best living American writer, period.” —Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

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Page Count

270

Publisher

Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802198937

ISBN 13

9780802198938

A Small Hotel

A Novel

By: Robert Olen Butler

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A Small Hotel

A Novel

By: Robert Olen Butler

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202

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Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802195644

ISBN 13

9780802195647

Tabloid Dreams

Stories

By: Robert Olen Butler

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Tabloid Dreams

Stories

By: Robert Olen Butler

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159

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Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802193641

ISBN 13

9780802193643

Severance

By: Robert Olen Butler

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Severance

By: Robert Olen Butler

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144

Publisher

Bedford Square Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1843447568

ISBN 13

9781843447566

Hicks, Tribes, and Dirty Realists

American Fiction after Postmodernism

By: Robert Rebein

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Hicks, Tribes, and Dirty Realists

American Fiction after Postmodernism

By: Robert Rebein

Robert Rebein argues that much literary fiction of the 1980s and 90s represents a triumphant, if tortured, return to questions about place and the individual that inspired the works of Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Faulkner, and other giants of American literature. Concentrating on the realist bent and regional orientation in contemporary fiction, he discusses in detail the various names by which this fiction has been described, including literary postmodernism, minimalism, Hick Chic, Dirty Realism, ecofeminism, and more. Rebein's clearly written, nuanced interpretations of works by Raymond Carver, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Louise Erdrich, Dorothy Allison, Barbara Kingsolver, E. Annie Proulx, Chris Offut, and others, will appeal to a wide range of readers.

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298

Publisher

University Press of Kentucky

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813184592

ISBN 13

9780813184593

Intercourse

By: Robert Olen Butler

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Intercourse

By: Robert Olen Butler

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180

Publisher

Bedford Square Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1843447533

ISBN 13

9781843447535

A Time for Peace

The Legacy of the Vietnam War

By: Robert D. Schulzinger

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A Time for Peace

The Legacy of the Vietnam War

By: Robert D. Schulzinger

Prominent American historian Robert D. Schulzinger sheds light on how deeply etched memories of the devastating conflict in Vietnam have altered America's political, social, and cultural landscape. Schulzinger examines the impact of the war from many angles. He ranges from the heated controversy over soldiers who were missing in action, to the influx of over a million Vietnam refugees into the US, to the many ways the war has continued to be fought in books and films and, perhaps most important, the power of the Vietnam War as a metaphor influencing foreign policy in places like Iraq.

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289

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0195365925

ISBN 13

9780195365924

Paris in the Dark

By: Robert Olen Butler

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Paris in the Dark

By: Robert Olen Butler

A novel of murder and espionage during the First World War: “Rich atmosphere and a propulsive plot...a satisfying, stylish thrill.”―The Tampa Bay Times Autumn 1915. World War I is raging across Europe, but Woodrow Wilson has kept Americans out of the trenches—though that hasn’t stopped young men and women from crossing the Atlantic to volunteer at the front. Christopher “Kit” Cobb, a Chicago reporter with a second job as undercover agent for the U.S. government, is officially in Paris doing a story on American ambulance drivers, but his intelligence handler, James Polk Trask, soon broadens his mission. City-dwelling civilians are meeting death by dynamite in a new string of bombings, and the German-speaking Kit seems just the man to figure out who is behind them—possibly a German operative who has snuck in with the waves of refugees coming in from the provinces and across the border in Belgium. But there are elements in this pursuit that will test Kit Cobb, in all his roles, to the very limits of his principles, wits, and talents for survival. With Paris in the Dark, Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler returns to his lauded Christopher Marlowe Cobb series and proves once again that he can craft “a ripping good yarn” (Wall Street Journal) with unmistakably literary underpinnings and a rich sense of the political and cultural atmosphere of the time. “Best is Butler's feel for the black-and-white-movie atmospherics of a war zone after hours: It's a thrill to follow Kit to German hangouts like Le Rouge et le Noir, where a password will get you in, but there’s no guarantee you'll get out.”―Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

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269

Publisher

Grove Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802146465

ISBN 13

9780802146465

Nitty Gritty Grammar Student's Book

Sentence Essentials for Writers

By: A. Robert Young,Ann O. Strauch

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Nitty Gritty Grammar Student's Book

Sentence Essentials for Writers

By: A. Robert Young,Ann O. Strauch

Nitty Gritty Grammar, Second Edition, focuses on essential areas of English grammar that cause difficulty for developing writers. Nitty Gritty Grammar, Second Edition focuses on essential areas of English grammar that cause difficulty for developing writers. It guides students through the learning process by exploring grammar in context, providing controlled practice, and giving students thought-provoking writing assignments in which they can practice grammar in a more open-ended format. The grammar points are illustrated in reading passages from a variety of genres, from comic strips to the 9/11 Commission Report. Nitty Gritty Grammar boxes summarize key grammar points and serve as easy reference. Five review sections are included for review and consolidation.

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300

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0521606543

ISBN 13

9780521606547

The Road to Somewhere

A Creative Writing Companion

By: Robert Graham,Helen Newall,Heather Leach

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The Road to Somewhere

A Creative Writing Companion

By: Robert Graham,Helen Newall,Heather Leach

This revised, updated and expanded new edition of The Road to Somewhere will help you to acquire the craft and disciplines needed to develop as a writer in today's world. It is ideal for anyone - student writers, writing teachers and seasoned authors - seeking practical guidance, new ideas and creative inspiration. The Road to Somewhere: A Creative Writing Companion, second edition offers: - New chapters on writing for digital media, flash fiction, memoir, style and taking your writing out into the world - updated chapters on fiction, scripts, poetry, and experimental forms - An examination of creative processes and advice on how to read as a writer - Many practical exercises and useable course materials - Extensive references and suggestions for further reading - Information on how to get work published or produced, in real and virtual worlds - Tips on how to set up and run writing workshops and groups - A complete Agony Aunt section to help with blocks and barriers - Guidance on the more technical aspects of writing such as layout and grammar And, to lighten your writing journey a little, we've tried to make this second edition even wittier and smarter than the first. So whether you see yourself as a published professional or a dedicated dabbler, this is the book to take along for the ride.

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Page Count

274

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1350309257

ISBN 13

9781350309258

Book's by Robert Olen Butler

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