Search results for ""author jim harrison""

New York Times bestselling author Jim Harrison was one of America's most beloved and critically acclaimed writers. The classic Legends of the Fall is Harrison at his most memorable: a striking collection of novellas written with exceptional brilliance and a ferocious love of life. The title novella, "Legends of the Fall"--which was made into the film of the same name--is an epic, moving tale of three brothers fighting for justice in a world gone mad. Moving from the raw landscape of early twentieth-century Montana to the blood-drenched European battlefields of World War I and back again to Montana, Harrison's powerful story explores the theme of revenge and the actions to which people resort when their lives or goals are threatened, painting an unforgettable portrait of the twentieth-century man. Also including the novellas "Revenge" and "The Man Who Gave Up His Name," Legends of the Fall confirms Jim Harrison's reputation as one of the finest American voices of his generation.

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'The late Jim Harrison was one of the true greats when it came to writing about food. He combined an attention to detail with a glorious prose style and a massive appetite... A must read.' - ObserverNew York Times bestselling author Jim Harrison was one of America's most beloved writers, a muscular, brilliantly economic stylist with a salty wisdom. He also wrote some of the best essays on food around, earning praise as 'the poet laureate of appetite' (Dallas Morning News). A Really Big Lunch collects many of his food pieces for the first time - and taps into his larger-than-life appetite with wit and verve. Jim Harrison's legendary gourmandise is on full display in A Really Big Lunch. From the titular New Yorker piece about a French lunch that went to thirty-seven courses, to pieces from Brick, Playboy, the Kermit Lynch Newsletter and more on the relationship between hunter and prey, or the obscure language of wine reviews, A Really Big Lunch is shot through with Harrison's pointed aperçus and keen delight in the pleasures of the senses. And between the lines the pieces give glimpses of Harrison's life over the last fifteen years. A Really Big Lunch is a literary delight that will satisfy every appetite.

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New York Times bestselling author Jim Harrison was one of America's most beloved and critically acclaimed writers. The classic Legends of the Fall is Harrison at his most memorable: a striking collection of novellas written with exceptional brilliance and a ferocious love of life.The title novella, 'Legends of the Fall' - which was made into the film of the same name - is an epic, moving tale of three brothers fighting for justice in a world gone mad. Moving from the raw landscape of early twentieth-century Montana to the blood-drenched European battlefields of World War I and back again to Montana, Harrison's powerful story explores the theme of revenge and the actions to which people resort when their lives or goals are threatened, painting an unforgettable portrait of the twentieth-century man.Also including the novellas 'Revenge' and 'The Man Who Gave Up His Name,' Legends of the Fall confirms Jim Harrison's reputation as one of the finest American voices of his generation.

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“What Harrison does on every page of Brown Dog is have fun . . . not simply for the sake of delight but because he believes delight is as close to sublimity as humans can get. . . . The great project of life, he reminds us, is to sit still long enough to appreciate it.” —Anthony Doerr, The New York Times Book Review“Brown Dog is . . . an everyman on the most fundamental level . . . vividly, evocatively, alive. . . . These novellas read like a nuanced conversation between author and character. . . . Masterful.” —David Ulin, Los Angeles TimesNew York Times best-selling author Jim Harrison is one of America’s most beloved writers. Of all his creations, Brown Dog has earned cult status with readers in the more than two decades since his first appearance, scrambling to stay out of jail after his salvage-diving operation uncovers the frozen body of an Indian man in the waters of Lake Superior. A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, now in paperback, this book gathers together all the Brown Dog novellas, including one that has never been published.Brown Dog is a bawdy, reckless, down-on-his-luck Michigan Indian, a former pulp cutter who looks on work as something to do when he needs money, far inferior to the pleasures of fishing. Of course, the flip side of this is that he’s never far from catastrophe. Overindulging in food, drink, and women while just scraping by, B.D. meets a nubile archaeologist who presses him for the location of a sacred Native American burial ground; the ensuing flirtation with radicalization results in B.D. wandering Los Angeles in search of a stolen bearskin. When he returns home a little older and wiser, B.D. will seek out family and end up pining for the lesbian social worker who’s pushing him toward stability. The collection culminates with “He Dog,” written for this book, which finds B.D. still marginally employed and looking for love (or sometimes just a few beers and a roll in the hay) as he goes on a road trip from Michigan to Montana and back, in search of an answer to the riddle of family and, perhaps, a chance at redemption.Witty and poignantly human, Brown Dog underscores Harrison’s place as one of America’s most irrepressible writers, and one of our finest practitioners of the novella form. It is the ideal introduction (or reintroduction) to Harrison’s irresistible everyman.

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The New York Times bestselling author of thirty-nine books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry—including Legends of the Fall, Dalva, and Returning to Earth—Jim Harrison was one of our most beloved and acclaimed writers, adored by both readers and critics. Sundog is a powerful novel about the life and loves of a foreman named Robert Corvus Strang, who worked on giant dam projects around the world until he was crippled in a fall down a three-hundred-foot dam. Now as he tries to regain use of his legs, he has a chance to reassess his life, and a blasé journalist who has heard of Strang’s reputation in the field arrives to draw him out about his various incarnations. Strang—who has the violently heightened sensibilities of a man who has gone to the limits and back—recounts his monumental life moving from Michigan to Africa and the Amazon, including his several marriages and children, and dozens of lovers. “A feisty, passionate novel” (Newsday) from a writer whose “storytelling instincts are nearly flawless” (The New York Times), Sundog is a story as true and gripping as real life, and ultimately as victorious.

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From her home on the California coast, Dalva hears the broad silence of the Nebraska prairie where she was born and longs for the son she gave up for adoption years before. Beautiful, fearless, tormented, at forty-five she has lived a life of lovers and adventures. Now, Dalva begins a journey that will take her back to the bosom of her family, to the half-Sioux lover of her youth and to a pioneering great-grandfather whose journals recount the bloody annihilation of the Plains Indians. On the way, she discovers a story that stretches from East to West, from the Civil War to Wounded Knee and Vietnam, and finds the balm to heal her wild and wounded soul.One of Harrison's most ambitious novels, Dalva explores an extraordinary family through the strong, engaging voice of an unforgettable woman, confirming Harrison as one of America's most memorable writers.

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The New York Times bestselling author of thirty-nine books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry—including Legends of the Fall, Dalva, and Returning to Earth—Jim Harrison was one of our most beloved and acclaimed writers, adored by both readers and critics. In Farmer, he tells the story of Joseph, a forty-three-year-old farmer-schoolteacher who suddenly finds himself at a crossroads. Forced to choose between two lovers—one a younger woman, the other his beautiful childhood friend—he must also decide whether or not to stay on the farm or finally seek the wider, more broader horizons he has avoided all his life. Returning Harrison fans will be ecstatic to find this in print once again, and for new readers, this work serves as the perfect introduction to Harrison’s remarkable insight, storytelling, and evocation of the natural world.

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Rapturously received by critics and enthusiastically embraced by readers, The Great Leader is an enthralling, blackly comic take on the detective story that follows a retired detective in hilarious and bold pursuit of a sinister cult leader. Detective Sunderson is on the verge of retirement when he begins to investigate a hedonistic cult that has set up camp near his home in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. At first, the self-declared Great Leader seems merely a harmless oddball, but as Sunderson and his unlikely sixteen-year-old sidekick dig deeper, they find him more intelligent and sinister than they realized. Recently divorced and frequently pickled in alcohol, Sunderson tracks his quarry from the woods of Michigan to a town in Arizona, filled with professional and criminal border-crossers, and on to Nebraska where the Great Leader's most recent recruits have gathered to glorify his questionable religion. But Sunderson's demons are also in pursuit of him. Rich with character, unexpected twists, and Harrison's trademark wry wit, The Great Leader is at once a gripping American odyssey and the poignant story of a man grappling with age, lost love, and his own darker nature.

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“Mr. Harrison’s perceptions are jagged and cutting . . . a remarkably well-plotted story.”—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York TimesThe New York Times bestselling author of thirty-nine books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry—including Legends of the Fall, Dalva, and Returning to Earth—Jim Harrison was one of our most beloved and acclaimed writers, adored by both readers and critics. His novel A Good Day to Die centers on an unlikely trio: a poet with a tendency to lapse into beatific reveries of superb fishing in cold, fast streams; a Vietnam vet consumed by uppers, downers, and violence; and a girl who loved only one of them—at first. With plans conceived during the madness of one long drunken night, the three of them leave Florida, driving west to buy a case of dynamite, determined to save the Grand Canyon from a dam they believe is about to be built. A Good Day to Die is an unrelenting tour de force, and a dark exploration of what it means to live beyond the pale in contemporary America. Returning Harrison fans will be ecstatic to find this in print once again, and for new readers, this work serves as the perfect introduction to Harrison’s remarkable insight, storytelling, and evocation of the natural world.

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Johnny Lundgren, a.k.a. Warlock, is an unemployed foundation executive who, after surviving a midlife crisis, finally decides to get a job. Warlock soon gets hired by a crazy, but genius doctor as a trouble-shooter, where he's tasked with everything battling poachers in the haunted wilderness of northern Michigan to investigating his employer’s wife and son in the seamy underside of Key West. A comedy with one foot in the abyss, Warlock is what the New York Times called “farcical, reflective, luscious, gritty” entertainment from one of this country’s most beloved authors.

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Jim Harrison is one of our most renowned and popular authors, and his last novel, The Great Leader, was one of the most successful in a decorated career: it appeared on the New York Times extended bestseller list, and was a national bestseller with rapturous reviews. His darkly comic follow-up, The Big Seven, sends Detective Sunderson to confront his new neighbors, a gun-nut family who live outside the law in rural Michigan. Detective Sunderson has fled troubles on the home front and bought himself a hunting cabin in a remote area of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. No sooner has he settled in than he realizes his new neighbors are creating even more havoc than the Great Leader did. A family of outlaws, armed to the teeth, the Ameses have local law enforcement too intimidated to take them on. Then Sunderson's cleaning lady, a comely young Ames woman, is murdered, and black sheep brother Lemuel Ames seeks Sunderson's advice on a crime novel he's writing which may not be fiction. Sunderson must struggle with the evil within himself and the far greater, more expansive evil of his neighbor. In a story shot through with wit, bedlam, and Sunderson's attempts to enumerate and master the seven deadly sins, The Big Seven is a superb reminder of why Jim Harrison is one of America's most irrepressible writers.

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In three novellas, Jim Harrison takes us on an American journey as he leads us through the wondrous landscape of the human heart. "Julip" follows a bright and resourceful young woman as she tries to spring her brother from a Florida jail--he shot three of her former lovers "below the belt." "The Seven-Ounce Man" continues the picaresque adventures of Brown Dog, a Michigan scoundrel who loves to eat, drink, and chase women, all while sailing along in the bottom 10 percent. "The Beige Dolorosa" is the haunting tale of an academic who, recovering from the repercussions of a sexual harassment scandal, turns to the natural world for solace. In each of these stories, the irresistible pull of nature becomes a magnificent backdrop for exploring the toughest questions about life and love.

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The New York Times bestselling author of thirty-nine books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry—including Legends of the Fall, Dalva, and Returning to Earth—Jim Harrison was one of our most beloved and acclaimed writers, adored by both readers and critics. Praised as “a raunchy, funny, swaggering, angry, cocksure book.” (The New York Times Book Review), Wolf tells the story of a man who—after too many nameless women and drunken nights—leaves Manhattan to roam the wilderness of northern Michigan, hoping to catch a glimpse of the rare wolves that prowl that territory. Returning Harrison fans will be ecstatic to find this in print once again, and for new readers, this work serves as the perfect introduction to Harrison’s remarkable insight, storytelling, and evocation of the natural world.

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A New York Times bestseller, The Ancient Minstrel is a stunning collection of novellas that highlight Jim Harrison's phenomenal range as a writer, shot through with his trademark wit and keen insight into the human condition. Harrison has tremendous fun with his own reputation in the title novella, about an aging writer in Montana who indulges his lifelong dream of raising pigs, struggles to write the "big novel" he's rashly promised his editor, and attempts to rekindle the long marriage that has sustained him. In Eggs, a Montana woman recalls a life spent collecting eggs--at her grandparents' farm in Montana and near Dorset, England, where she ends up during World War II. Eggs of a different sort preoccupy her when, unmarried but undeterred, she decides to try to have a baby. And in The Case of the Howling Buddhas, retired Detective Sunderson is hired as a private investigator to look into a bizarre cult that achieves satori by howling along with howler monkeys at the zoo. Fresh and entertaining, with moments of both profound wisdom and sublime humor, The Ancient Minstrel is an exceptional reminder of why Harrison was one of our most beloved and critically acclaimed writers.

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In the universally-praised Returning to Earth, Jim Harrison has delivered a masterpiece—a tender, profound, and magnificent novel about life, death, and the possibility of finding redemption in unlikely places. Donald is a middle-aged Chippewa-Finnish man slowly dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease. His condition deteriorating, he realizes no one will be able to pass on to his children their family history once he is gone. He begins dictating to his wife, Cynthia, stories he has never shared with anyone—as around him, his family struggles to lay him to rest with the same dignity with which he has lived. Over the course of the year following Donald’s death, his daughter begins studying Chippewa ideas of death for clues about her father’s religion, while Cynthia, bereft of the family she created to escape the malevolent influence of her own father, finds that redeeming the past is not a lost cause. Returning to Earth is a deeply moving book about origins and endings, making sense of loss, and living with honor for the dead. It is among the finest novels of Harrison’s long, storied career, and confirms his standing as one of the most important American writers now working.

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Jim Harrison's vivid, tender, and deeply felt fictions have won him acclaim as an American master of the novella. His latest highly acclaimed volume of novellas, The Summer He Didn't Die, is a sparkling and exuberant collection about love, the senses, and family, no matter how untraditional. In the title novella, "The Summer He Didn't Die," Brown Dog, a hapless Michigan Indian, is trying to parent his two stepchildren and take care of his family's health on meager resources — it helps a bit that his charms are irresistible to the new dentist in town. "Republican Wives" is a wicked satire on the sexual neuroses of the right, the emptiness of a life lived for the status quo, and the irrational power of love that, when thwarted, can turn so easily into an urge to murder. And "Tracking" is a meditation on Harrison's fascination with place, telling his own familiar mythology through the places his life has seen and the intellectual loves he has known. With wit as sharp and prose as lush as any Harrison has yet written, The Summer He Didn't Die is a resonant, warm, and joyful ode to our journey on this earth.

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“Among the most indelible American novelists of the last hundred years. . . . [Harrison] remains at the height of his powers.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times“Trenchant and visionary.”—Ron Carlson, The New York Times Book ReviewA New York Times best-seller, enthusiastically received by critics and embraced by readers, The River Swimmer is Jim Harrison at his most memorable: two men, one young and one older, confronting inconvenient loves and the encroachment of urbanity on nature, written with freshness, abundant wit, and profound humanity. In “The Land of Unlikeness,” Clive—a failed artist, divorced and grappling with the vagaries of his declining years—reluctantly returns to his family’s Michigan farmhouse to visit his aging mother. The return to familiar territory triggers a jolt of renewal—of ardor for his high school sweetheart, of his relationship with his estranged daughter, and of his own lost love of painting. In “The River Swimmer,” Harrison ventures into the magical as an Upper Peninsula farm boy is irresistibly drawn to swimming as an escape, and sees otherworldly creatures in the water. Faced with the injustice and pressure of coming of age, he takes to the river and follows its siren song all the way across Lake Michigan.The River Swimmer is an exceptional reminder of why Jim Harrison is one of the most cherished and important writers at work today.“Two years have gone by since I first suggested to President Obama that he create a new Cabinet post, and appoint distinguished fiction writer Jim Harrison as secretary for quality of life. The president still has not responded to my suggestion. . . . [The River Swimmer] deepens and broadens [Harrison’s] already openhearted and smart-minded sense of the way we live now, and what we might do to improve it.”—Alan Cheuse, NPR

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"Harrison's writing is always exhilarating. An added strength is his penchant for delightfully flawed but deeply human characters. Sunderson doesn't disappoint."--Seattle Times "The pleasures of The Big Seven are found most often in Sunderson's troubled, heavily marinated meditations ...Such is Harrison's gift for conveying human consciousness and all its vexing diversions and understatements and circular thoughts."--New York Times Book Review A national bestseller from one of our most renowned and popular authors, The Big Seven finds Detective Sunderson settling into a hunting cabin in a remote area of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where he soon realizes that his neighbors may be as dangerous as any maniac he faced in his cop days. A family of outlaws, armed to the teeth, the Ameses have local law enforcement too intimidated to take them on. Then Sunderson's cleaning lady, a comely young Ames woman, is murdered, and black sheep brother Lemuel Ames seeks Sunderson's advice on a crime novel he's writing which may not be fiction. Sunderson must struggle with the evil within himself and the greater, more expansive evil of his neighbor. "Harrison is an old master, here on top of his game ...Harrison is maybe a little bit like ...Elmore Leonard (to whom Sunderson pays tribute), in that both write prose, easy on the eye, that seems so natural as to be effortless. That kind of writing is, of course, anything but effortless--it takes genius, but mostly experience, intuition and discipline. And a somewhat raffish charm, like Harrison's, doesn't hurt."--The Cleveland Plain Dealer "Whimsical and bawdy fun ...Harrison writes beautifully about fishing and the outdoors."--Washington Post

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Jim Harrison is best known for his novels that speak wisdom and illuminate the soul. He now turns his hand to a child's tale, The Boy Who Ran to the Woods. Exquisitely illustrated by Tom Pohrt, The Boy Who Ran to the Woods recounts a childhood tragedy that ends in redemption. Harrison tells a personal story of little Jimmy, a boy who injures his eye and must learn life's meanings through adversity. It is this painful experience that leads to little Jimmy's discovery of nature -- animals, birds, and woods -- and ultimately to his ability to overcome intense suffering. Beautifully written with Harrison's quintessential style of writing about the natural world, combined with the unique illustrations of Tom Pohrt, The Boy Who Ran to the Woods promises to delight children of all ages and will appeal to all the devoted fans of Harrison's literature and poetry as well.

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