A Fan's Notes

Author	Amy Hempel
ISBN	0060976721

It is always "earthquake weather" in Amy Hempel's California, a landscape where everything can change without warning. Traditional resources—home, parents, lovers, friends, even willpower—are not dependable. And so the characters in these short, compelling stories have learned to depend...

Author	Arthur Rimbaud
ISBN	0060955503

Arthur Rimbaud is remembered as much for his volatile personality and tumultuous life as he is for his writings, most of which he produced before the age of eighteen.

This book brings together his poetry, prose, and letters, including "The Drunken Boat," "The Orphans' New Year," "After the...

Author	Richard Ford
ISBN	0394743253

As a sportswriter, Frank Bascombe makes his living studying people--men, mostly--who live entirely within themselves. This is a condition that Frank himself aspires to. But at thirty-eight, he suffers from incurable dreaminess, occasional pounding of the heart, and the not-too-distant losses...

Author	Brock Clarke
ISBN	1565126084

A nine-year-old boy named Miller, who lives in Watertown, NY, struggles to make sense of his father's disappearance, for which he blames himself. Later, when he is convinced that his father is lying in a coma in the local VA hospital, he searches for the one person he thinks can save his father, the famously...

Author	Russell Banks
ISBN	0060920076

Wade Whitehouse is an improbable protagonist for a tragedy. A well-digger and policeman in a bleak New Hampshire town, he is a former high-school star gone to beer fat, a loner with a mean streak. It is a mark of Russell Banks' artistry and understanding that Wade comes to loom in one's mind as a blue-collar...

Author	Denis Johnson
ISBN	0413772322

Leonard English, a sad and intense young man recovering from a suicide attempt, comes to Provincetown on Cape Cod to take a job as a disc jockey-cum-private detective. Provincetown is a last outpost of civilization, an end of the earth, a resort town emptied by autumn, where many of those who wear skirts...

Author	David Vann
ISBN	2351780302

Une île sauvage du Sud de l’Alaska, accessible uniquement par bateau ou par hydravion, tout en forêts humides et montagnes escarpées. C’est dans ce décor que Jim décide d’emmener son fils de treize ans pour y vivre dans une cabane isolée, une année durant. Après une succession d’échecs...

Author	Thom Jones
ISBN	0316473049

Thom Jones made his literary debut in The New Yorker in 1991. Within six months his stories appeared in Harper's, Esquire, Mirabella, Story, Buzz, and in The New Yorker twice more. "The Pugilist at Rest" - the title story from this stunning collection - took first place in Prize Stories 1993: The O. Henry...