Search results for ""Author Richard Ford""
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Be Mine
'A masterful writer' - RAYMOND CARVER Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost forty years, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive and singular view of American life as lived. Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is, here, once more our guide to the great American midway. Now in the twilight of life, a man who has occupied many colourful lives — sportswriter, father, husband, ex-husband, friend, real estate agent — Bascombe finds himself in the most sorrowing role of all; caregiver to his son, Paul, diagnosed with ALS. On a shared winter's odyssey to Mount Rushmore, Frank in typical Bascombe fashion faces down the mortality that is assured each of us, and in doing so confronts what happiness might signify at the end of days. In this memorable novel, Richard Ford puts on display the prose, wit and intelligence that make him one of the world's most acclaimed living writers. Be Mine is a profound, funny, poignant love letter to our beleaguered world. ‘One of the finest achievements of modern American fiction’ The Independent
£18.99
Titan Books Ltd A Demon in Silver (War of the Archons)
In a world where magic has disappeared, rival nations vie for power in a continent devastated by war. When a young farm girl, Livia, demonstrates magical powers for the first time in a century there are many across the land that will kill to obtain her power. The Duke of Gothelm’s tallymen, the blood-soaked Qeltine Brotherhood, and cynical mercenary Josten Cade: all are searching for Livia and the power she wields. But Livia finds that guardians can come from the most unlikely places… and that the old gods are returning to a world they abandoned.
£8.42
Bloomsbury Publishing Wildlife
£8.99
Granta Books The Granta Book Of The American Short Story: V. 1
Richard Ford, who is among the finest of American novelists and short-story writers, edits and introduces this volume. First published by Granta Books in 1992, it became the definitive anthology of American short fiction written in the last half of the twentieth century - an 'exemplary choice' in the words of the Washington Post - with stories by writers such as Eudora Welty, John Cheever and Raymond Carver (and forty others) demonstrating how much memorable power can lie in the briefest narration. Along with The New Granta Book of the American Short Story, this book constitutes an important reflection and judgement of recent American writing - as well as the superb pleasure yielded by the stories themselves.
£12.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Sorry For Your Trouble
‘The god of small stories … A set of polished gems from a master craftsman’ Sunday Times ‘An American master’ Daily Telegraph A woman and man, parted a quarter of a century, reunite in a bar in New Orleans as the St Patrick’s Day parade goes by. A group of friends, all once promising, reunite for dinner when one of their number loses her husband, but the gathering splinters when bitter revelations about their shared past emerge. Two teenage boys sit in a drive-in, the air thick with the scent of gin and popcorn and longing. A visionary collection of luminous stories, imprinting landscape, and great moments in small lives – and of the people we carry with us long after they are gone – Sorry For Your Trouble reconfirms Richard Ford as the master of contemporary American fiction. ‘He writes about human beings and their disappointments with unfailing insight and, while he never mocks his characters, is keenly aware of the absurdity involved in being alive … Exemplary in its nuanced understanding of the relationships between men and women’ Observer
£8.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Independence Day
Frank Bascombe, in the aftermath of his divorce and the ruin of his career, has entered an 'Existence Period' - selling real estate in New Jersey and mastering the high-wire act of normalcy. But, over one Fourth of July weekend, Frank is called into sudden, bewildering engagement with life. "Independence Day" is a moving, peerlessly funny odyssey through America and through the layered consciousness of one of its most compelling literary incarnations, conducted by a novelist of extraordinary empathy and perception.
£10.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Rock Springs
In these ten stories, Ford mines literary gold from the wind-scrubbed landscape of the American West - and from the guarded hopes and gnawing loneliness of the people who live there. A refugee from justice driving across Wyoming with his daughter, an unhappy girlfriend and a stolen Mercedes; a boy watching his family dissolve in a night of tragicomic violence; two men and a woman swapping hard-luck stories in a frontier bar as they try to sweeten their luck. "Rock Springs" is a masterpiece of taut narration, cleanly chiselled prose, and empathy so generous that it feels like a kind of grace.
£9.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Between Them
LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2017 From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sportswriter comes a deeply personal account of his parents – an intimate portrait of American mid-twentieth century life, and a celebration of family love Richard Ford’s parents volunteered little about their early lives – and he rarely asked.Later, he pieced their stories together from anecdote, history and the occasional photograph, frozen moments linking him to another time. Edna Akin, a dark-eyed Arkansas beauty whose convent education was cut short by her itinerant parents, fell in love aged only seventeen. Parker Ford was a tall country boy with a warm, hesitant smile, who was working at a grocery in Hot Springs. They married and began a life on the road in the American South, as Parker followed his travelling salesman's job. The 1930s were like one long weekend, a swirl of miles traversed, cocktails drunk and hotel rooms vacated: New Orleans, Memphis, Texarkana. Then a single, late child was born, changing everything. In this book, Richard Ford evokes a vivid panorama of mid-twentieth century America, and an intimate portrait of family life. Exploring children’s changing perception of their parents, he also reflects on the impact of loss and devotion. Written with the intelligence, precision and humanity for which Ford is renowned, Between Them is both a son’s great act of love and a redeeming meditation on family.
£8.32
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Canada
First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later. It was more bad instincts and bad luck that lead to Dell Parsons’ parents robbing a bank. They weren’t reckless people, but in an instant, their actions alter fifteen-year-old Dell’s sense of normal life forever. In the days that follow, he is saved before the authorities think to arrive. Driving across Montana, his life hurtles towards the unknown; a hotel in a deserted town, the violent and enigmatic Arthur Remlinger, and towards Canada itself. But, as Dell discovers, in this new world of secrets and upheaval, he is not the only one whose past lies on the other side of the border.
£10.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Let Me Be Frank With You: A Frank Bascombe Book
Richard Ford returns with four deftly linked Christmas stories narrated by the iconic Frank Bascombe. Now sixty-eight, Frank resides again in the New Jersey suburb of Haddam, and has thrived – seemingly but not utterly – amidst the devastations of Hurricane Sandy. The desolations of Sandy, which left countless lives unmoored, are the perfect backdrop for Ford – and Bascombe. With a flawless comedic sensibility and unblinking intelligence, these stories range over the full complement of universal subjects: ageing, race, loss, faith, marriage, the real estate debacle – the tumult of the world we live in.
£12.69
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC A Piece of My Heart
Robard Hewes has driven across the country in search of a woman named Buena who, twelve years ago, infused him with a feeling that has now turned into obsession. Sam Newel has travelled from Chicago seeking the missing piece of himself. They both find themselves on an uncharted hunting island in the Mississippi owned by an old man named Lamb. When these men converge on this strange land, each discovers the thing he's looking for yet triggers a conflagration of inevitable violence in this tense and brutal yet moving tale.
£9.99
HarperCollins Publishers Inc Let Me Be Frank with You: A Frank Bascombe Book
£8.63
Penguin Books Ltd Light Years
Nedra and Viri are a married couple whose favoured life is centred around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach. But fine cracks are beginning to spread through the shimmering surface of their life - flaws that will eventually mar the lovely picture beyond repair. Seductive, witty, tender and resonant, Light Years is an exquisite novel of lost lives and the elusiveness of happiness.
£9.99
Everyman The Bascombe Novels
A trilogy of brilliant novels-The Sportswriter, Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land-that charts the life and times of one of the most beloved and enduring characters in modern fiction.When we meet Frank Bascombe in The Sportswriter, his unguarded voice instantly wins us over and pulls us into a life that has been irrevocably changed-by the loss of a marriage, a career, a child. We then follow Frank, ever laconic and observant, through Independence Day and The Lay of the Land."In Haddam, summer floats over tree-softened streets like a sweet lotion balm from a careless, languorous god, and the world falls in tune with its own mysterious anthems. Shaded lawns lie still and damp in the early a.m." - Independence Day
£20.99