Beneath the Bonfire

Beneath the Bonfire
Author: Nickolas Butler
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2015-05-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250039835

Butler writes about the Midwest, but his themes are universal. The stories in this collection will be recognizable to anyone who has traveled the backroads and highways of America.

Beneath the Bonfire

Beneath the Bonfire
Author: Nickolas Butler
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2015-05-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1466875534

Nickolas Butler's debut novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, has become an international bestseller and won numerous accolades, including France's Prix PAGE/America. Now, in Beneath the Bonfire, he demonstrates his talent for portraying "a place and its people with such love that you'll find yourself falling for them, too" (Josh Weil, author of The Great Glass Sea). Young couples gather to participate in an annual "chainsaw party," cutting down trees for firewood in anticipation of the winter. A group of men spend a weekend hunting for mushrooms in the wilderness where they grew up and where some still find themselves trapped. An aging environmentalist takes out his frustration and anger on a singular, unsuspecting target. One woman helps another get revenge against a man whose crime extends far beyond him to an entire community. Together, the ten stories in this dazzling, surprising collection evoke a landscape that will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has traveled the back roads and blue highways of America, and they completely capture the memorable characters who call it home.

The Bonfire of the Vanities

The Bonfire of the Vanities
Author: Tom Wolfe
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 708
Release: 2002-02-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429960566

Vintage Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities, the #1 bestseller that will forever define late-twentieth-century New York style. "No one has portrayed New York Society this accurately and devastatingly since Edith Wharton" (The National Review) “A page-turner . . . Brilliant high comedy.” (The New Republic) Sherman McCoy, the central figure of Tom Wolfe's first novel, is a young investment banker with a fourteen-room apartment in Manhattan. When he is involved in a freak accident in the Bronx, prosecutors, politicians, the press, the police, the clergy, and assorted hustlers high and low close in on him, licking their chops and giving us a gargantuan helping of the human comedy, of New York in the 1980s, a city boiling over with racial and ethnic hostilities and burning with the itch to Grab It Now. Wolfe's novel is a big, panoramic story of the metropolis that reinforces the author's reputation as the foremost chronicler of the way we live in America. Adapted to film in 1990 by director Brian De Palma, the movie stars Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, and Morgan Freeman.

Shotgun Lovesongs

Shotgun Lovesongs
Author: Nickolas Butler
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2014-03-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 146684079X

NATIONAL BESTSELLER "Impressively original." —The New York Times "Sparkles in every way. A love letter to the open lonely American heartland...A must-read." —People "The kind of book that restores your faith in humanity." —Toronto Star Welcome to Little Wing. It's a place like hundreds of others, nothing special, really. But for four friends—all born and raised in this small Wisconsin town—it is home. And now they are men, coming into their own or struggling to do so. One of them never left, still working the family farm that has been tilled for generations. But others felt the need to move on, with varying degrees of success. One trades commodities, another took to the rodeo circuit, and one of them even hit it big as a rock star. And then there's Beth, a woman who has meant something special in each of their lives. Now all four are brought together for a wedding. Little Wing seems even smaller than before. While lifelong bonds are still strong, there are stresses—among the friends, between husbands and wives. There will be heartbreak, but there will also be hope, healing, even heroism as these memorable people learn the true meaning of adult friendship and love. Seldom has the American heartland been so richly and accurately portrayed. Though the town may have changed, the one thing that hasn't is the beauty of the Wisconsin farmland, the lure of which, in Nickolas Butler's hands, emerges as a vibrant character in the story. Shotgun Lovesongs is that rare work of fiction that evokes a specific time and place yet movingly describes the universal human condition. It is, in short, a truly remarkable book—a novel that once read will never be forgotten.

Little Faith

Little Faith
Author: Nickolas Butler
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2019-03-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062469738

In this moving new novel from celebrated author Nickolas Butler, a Wisconsin family grapples with the power and limitations of faith when one of their own falls under the influence of a radical church Lyle Hovde is at the onset of his golden years, living a mostly content life in rural Wisconsin with his wife, Peg, daughter, Shiloh, and six-year old grandson, Isaac. After a troubled adolescence and subsequent estrangement from her parents, Shiloh has finally come home. But while Lyle is thrilled to have his whole family reunited, he’s also uneasy: in Shiloh’s absence, she has become deeply involved with an extremist church, and the devout pastor courting her is convinced Isaac has the spiritual ability to heal the sick. While reckoning with his own faith—or lack thereof—Lyle soon finds himself torn between his unease about the church and his desire to keep his daughter and grandson in his life. But when the church’s radical belief system threatens Isaac’s safety, Lyle is forced to make a decision from which the family may not recover. Set over the course of one year and beautifully evoking the change of seasons, Little Faith is a powerful and deeply affecting intergenerational novel about family and community, the ways in which belief is both formed and shaken, and the lengths we go to protect our own.

The Hearts of Men

The Hearts of Men
Author: Nickolas Butler
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2017-03-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062469703

Camp Chippewa, 1962. Nelson Doughty, age thirteen, social outcast and overachiever, is the Bugler, sounding the reveille proudly each morning. Yet this particular summer marks the beginning of an uncertain and tenuous friendship with a popular boy named Jonathan. Over the years, Nelson, irrevocably scarred from the Vietnam War, becomes Scoutmaster of Camp Chippewa, while Jonathan marries, divorces, and turns his father’s business into a highly profitable company. And when something unthinkable happens at a camp get-together with Nelson as Scoutmaster and Jonathan’s teenage grandson and daughter-in-law as campers, the aftermath demonstrates the depths—and the limits—of Nelson’s selflessness and bravery. The Hearts of Men is a sweeping, panoramic novel about the slippery definitions of good and evil, family and fidelity, the challenges and rewards of lifelong friendships, the bounds of morality—and redemption.

Bonfire

Bonfire
Author: Krysten Ritter
Publisher:
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2017
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1524759848

Successful environmental lawyer Abby Williams is forced to confront her small-town past while investigating a high-profile corruption case back home.

The Bonfire

The Bonfire
Author: Marc Wortman
Publisher: Public Affairs
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 1586484826

In this history of Atlanta's destruction, the author offers points of view of Confederate and Union soldiers and officers during a pivotal moment in the Civil War. By the author of The Millionaire's Unit: The Aristocratic Flyboys Who Fought the Great War and Invented American Air Power, in development as a feature film.

To Build a Fire

To Build a Fire
Author: Jack London
Publisher: The Creative Company
Total Pages: 40
Release: 2008
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781583415870

Describes the experiences of a newcomer to the Yukon when he attempts to hike through the snow to reach a mining claim.

The Moon and the Bonfire

The Moon and the Bonfire
Author: Richard Bradley
Publisher: Society Antiquaries Scotland
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2005
Genre: Aberdeenshire (Scotland)
ISBN: 0903903334

Whilst a report on excavations at three stone circles and two fieldwalking projects in north-east Scotland may not seem very appealing this book does much to heighten public awareness and interest in such sites and re-connects us with the mysterious monuments of the past. This study of the sites of Tomnaverie (Deeside), Cothiemuir Wood (Donside) and Aikey Brae (Buchan) is written in an engaging and approachable style with plenty of illustrative material. Whilst the project was geared towards investigating the character, chronology, structural development and wider context of the stone circles, its results go much further in revealing how people used and perceived such sites and the landscape around them. Here, contextual information, discussion of methodology and objectives are combined with factual data and interpretation as the project members examine various aspects of the sites such as the characterisation (shape, colour and texture) of the stones used, construction techniques, evidence of burning, the presence of human remains and possible solar and lunar alignments. The proffering of new insights into the use and symbolism of the monuments is highly valuable, for example, the suggestion that we should perhaps consider the use of these stone circles during the hours of darkness rather than daylight, an idea first proposed by Aubrey Burl, requires us to re-think our preconceptions about monuments in the past. The rewards of painstaking excavation and trudging through muddy fields are evident in a publication such as this.