America Fantastica

America Fantastica
Author: Tim O'Brien
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2023-10-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0063318520

“Tim O'Brien is the one American author whose works I look forward to the most. His new novel’s ironic depiction of a post-Iraq war, mid-COVID, and mid-Trump world is piercing and razor-sharp.” —HARUKI MURAKAMI An American Master returns: the author of The Things They Carried delivers his first new novel in two decades, a brilliant and rollicking odyssey, in which a bank robbery sparks “a satirical romp through a country plagued by deceit” (Kirkus, starred review) One of Esquire's 20 Best Books of the Year * Named one of Fall 2023's most anticipated books: New York Times, Associated Press, Kirkus, Goodreads, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and more At 11:34 a.m. one Saturday in August 2019, Boyd Halverson strode into Community National Bank in Northern California. “How much is on hand, would you say?” he asked the teller. “I’ll want it all.” “You’re robbing me?” He revealed a Temptation .38 Special. The teller, a diminutive redhead named Angie Bing, collected eighty-one thousand dollars. Boyd stuffed the cash into a paper grocery bag. “I’m sorry about this,” he said, “but I’ll have to ask you to take a ride with me.” So begins the adventure of Boyd Halverson—star journalist turned notorious online disinformation troll turned JCPenney manager—and his irrepressible hostage, Angie Bing. Haunted by his past and weary of his present, Boyd has one goal before the authorities catch up with him: settle a score with the man who destroyed his life. By Monday the pair reach Mexico; by winter, they are in a lakefront mansion in Minnesota. On their trail are hitmen, jealous lovers, ex-cons, an heiress, a billionaire shipping tycoon, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, and the ghosts of Boyd’s past. Everyone, it seems, except the police. In the tradition of Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain, America Fantastica delivers a biting, witty, and entertaining story about the causes and costs of outlandish fantasy, while also marking the triumphant return of an essential voice in American letters. And at the heart of the novel, amid a teeming cast of characters, readers will delight in the tug-of-war between two memorable and iconic human beings—the exuberant savior-of-souls Angie Bing and the penitent but compulsive liar Boyd Halverson. Just as Tim O’Brien’s modern classic, The Things They Carried, so brilliantly reflected the unromantic truth of war, America Fantastica puts a mirror to a nation and a time that has become dangerously unmoored from truth and greedy for delusion.

Fantastica

Fantastica
Author: Robert Nichols
Publisher:
Total Pages: 536
Release: 1923
Genre: English fiction
ISBN:

America Magica (2nd edition)

America Magica (2nd edition)
Author: Jorge Magasich-Airola
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2007-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1843312921

An enthralling account of the conflicting experiences of discovering the New World, drawing upon the intriguing tales of early discovery and amazing illustrations of the day. The authors invoke the unique exhilaration of exploration, investigating the conflict between the ambitious idealism and harsh realities that have always characterized and torn the country. After all, did people not go to America in search of both the Garden of Eden and the tribes of the damned?

Dad's Maybe Book

Dad's Maybe Book
Author: Tim O'Brien
Publisher: Mariner Books
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2019
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0618039708

A bestselling author shares wisdom from a life in letters, lessons learned inwartime, and the challenges, humor, and rewards of raising two sons.

America Pacifica

America Pacifica
Author: Anna North
Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2011-05-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316134120

Eighteen-year-old Darcy lives on the island of America Pacifica -- one of the last places on earth that is still habitable, after North America has succumbed to a second ice age. Education, food, and basic means of survival are the province of a chosen few, while the majority of the island residents must struggle to stay alive. The rich live in "Manhattanville" mansions made from the last pieces of wood and stone, while the poor cower in the shantytown slums of "Hell City" and "Little Los Angeles," places built out of heaped up trash that is slowly crumbling into the sea. The island is ruled by a mysterious dictator named Tyson, whose regime is plagued by charges of corruption and conspiracy. But to Darcy, America Pacifica is simply home -- the only one she's ever known. In spite of their poverty she lives contentedly with her mother, who works as a pearl diver. It's only when her mother doesn't come home one night that Darcy begins to learn about her past as a former "Mainlander," and her mother's role in the flight from frozen California to America Pacifica. Darcy embarks on a quest to find her mother, navigating the dark underbelly of the island, learning along the way the disturbing truth of Pacifica's early history, the far-reaching influence of its egomaniacal leader, and the possible plot to murder some of the island's first inhabitants -- including her mother.

July, July

July, July
Author: Tim O'Brien
Publisher: HMH
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2002-10-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0547523726

A “perceptive, affectionate, and often very funny” novel about old college friends at a thirty-year reunion, by the author of The Things They Carried (Boston Herald). From a National Book Award winner who’s been called “the best American writer of his generation” (San Francisco Examiner), July, July tells the story of ten old friends who attended Darton Hall College together back in 1969, and now reunite for a summer weekend of dancing, drinking, flirting, reminiscing—and regretting. The three decades since graduation have brought marriage and divorce, children and careers, hopes deferred and replaced. This witty, heart-rending novel about men and women who came into adulthood at a moment when American ideals and innocence began to fade, a New York Times Notable Book, is “deeply satisfying” (O, the Oprah Magazine) and “almost impossible to put down” (Austin American-Statesman). “A symphony of American life.” —All Things Considered, NPR

Tomcat in Love

Tomcat in Love
Author: Tim O'Brien
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 366
Release: 1999-09-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0767902041

A CLASSIC FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE THINGS THEY CARRIED In this wildly funny, brilliantly inventive novel, Tim O'Brien has created the ultimate character for our times. Thomas Chippering, a 6'6" professor of linguistics, is a man torn between two obsessions: the desperate need to win back his former wife, the faithless Lorna Sue, and a craving to test his erotic charms on every woman he meets. But there are complications, including Lorna Sue's brother, Herbie, with whom she has an all-too-close relationship, and the considerable charms of Chippering's new love, the attractive, and of course already married, Mrs. Robert Kooshof, who may at last satisfy Chippering's longing for intimacy. In Tomcat in Love, Tim O'Brien takes on the battle of the sexes with astonishing results. By turns hilarious, outrageous, romantic, and deeply moving, this is one of the most talked about novels in years: a novel for this and every age.

Going After Cacciato

Going After Cacciato
Author: Tim O'Brien
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2009-02-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307485501

A CLASSIC FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE THINGS THEY CARRIED "To call Going After Cacciato a novel about war is like calling Moby-Dick a novel about whales." So wrote The New York Times of Tim O'Brien's now classic novel of Vietnam. Winner of the 1979 National Book Award, Going After Cacciato captures the peculiar mixture of horror and hallucination that marked this strangest of wars. In a blend of reality and fantasy, this novel tells the story of a young soldier who one day lays down his rifle and sets off on a quixotic journey from the jungles of Indochina to the streets of Paris. In its memorable evocation of men both fleeing from and meeting the demands of battle, Going After Cacciato stands as much more than just a great war novel. Ultimately it's about the forces of fear and heroism that do battle in the hearts of us all. Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content

Wayward

Wayward
Author: Dana Spiotta
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2022-06-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 059331249X

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A “furious and addictive new novel” (The New York Times) about mothers and daughters, and one woman's midlife reckoning as she flees her suburban life. “Exhilarating ... reads like a burning fever dream. A virtuosic, singular and very funny portrait of a woman seeking sanity and purpose in a world gone mad.” —The New York Times Book Review Samantha Raymond's life has begun to come apart: her mother is ill, her teenage daughter is increasingly remote, and at fifty-two she finds herself staring into "the Mids"—that hour of supreme wakefulness between three and four in the morning in which women of a certain age suddenly find themselves contemplating motherhood, mortality, and, in this case, the state of our unraveling nation. When she falls in love with a beautiful, decrepit house in a hardscrabble neighborhood in Syracuse, she buys it on a whim and flees her suburban life—and her family—as she grapples with how to be a wife, a mother, and a daughter, in a country that is coming apart at the seams. Dana Spiotta's Wayward is a stunning novel about aging, about the female body, and about female complexity in contemporary America. Probing and provocative, brainy and sensual, it is a testament to our weird times, to reforms and resistance and utopian wishes, and to the beauty of ruins.

The Making of James Agee

The Making of James Agee
Author: Hugh Davis
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2008
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1572336072

"In The Making of James Agee, Hugh Davis takes a comprehensive look at Agee's career, showing the interrelatedness of his concerns as a writer. A full view of Agee's oeuvre, Davis argues, illuminates its deeply political nature and reveals a debt to various sources, particularly European surrealism, that have been little noted by previous Agee scholars." "Davis challenges the view of Agee that has persisted since his death - that he is best understood primarily as a romantic individualist at odds with convention and the literary mainstream - and argues that this myth was largely constructed by friends and associates who were so immersed in the tenets of modernism that they distorted Agee's work (and aesthetic intent) in an attempt to purify it in modernist terms. In revealing a writer of far greater complexity than the myth allows, Davis explores, for example, the leftist poetry that Agee wrote in the 1930s, which was almost completely suppressed by his editors. He also throws a fresh light on Agee's collaboration with photographer Walker Evans on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and reevaluates A Death in the Family in light of recent scholarship that has produced an almost entirely new version of the novel, one much closer to Agee's original intentions."--BOOK JACKET.