Search results for ""Author Elizabeth McCracken""
Vintage Publishing The Souvenir Museum
Book SynopsisOne of the most acclaimed writers of our day, award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken is an undisputed virtuoso of the short story, and this new collection features her most vibrant and heartrending work to date.In these stories, the mysterious bonds of family are tested, transformed, fractured, and fortified. A recent widower and his adult son ferry to a craggy Scottish island in search of puffins. An actress who plays a children''s game-show villainess ushers in the New Year with her deadbeat half brother. A mother, pining for her children, feasts on loaves of challah to fill the void. A new couple navigates a tightrope walk toward love. And on a trip to a Texas water park with their son, two fathers each confront a personal fear.With sentences that crackle and spark and showcase her trademark wit, McCracken traces how our closely held desires-for intimacy, atonement, comfort-bloom and wither against the indifferent passing of time. Her characters em
£14.24
Vintage Publishing A Long Game
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£13.49
HarperCollins A Long Game
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£20.24
HarperCollins Publishers Inc The Hero of This Book
Book Synopsis
£21.74
HarperCollins Publishers Inc The Souvenir Museum Stories
Book SynopsisTrade Review“This incisive, warm-blooded collection of stories is populated by outsiders: expatriates and repatriates, Vikings, travelling ventriloquists. . . . Whether it’s over the course of a honeymoon in Amsterdam or a day at a Texas water park, McCracken illuminates qualities of human nature through fragments of her characters’ lives.” — The New Yorker “Charming and sly, these 12 far-flung stories—from a Texas water park to a rugged Scottish island—share McCracken’s tender appreciation for flawed people (struggling lovers, a grieving mother, a puppeteer) just trying to communicate.” — People “Elizabeth McCracken’s impressive third story collection evoke moving depictions of marriage and parenthood, and love, betrayal, and loneliness…A steady stream of exquisite writing.” — The Boston Globe “The Souvenir Museum is McCracken's third story collection, and her understanding of how we stumble up against these painful realities unfurls on every page. Tuned into absurdities and disasters, she knows our losses are calamitous, our connections precarious…McCracken's prose is wry and exquisite, a good companion to her generous, comic observations.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune “You know how Aaron Sorkin tilt-shifts reality to bring idealism to the forefront? McCracken is like that but for humor. In her realm, everything is funny — to somebody, if not always to the protagonist. Even the darkest and saddest moments may be laced with sweet, tall-tale absurdity. Her new collection The Souvenir Museum has more of what made her 2019 novel Bowlaway such a hit. It’s full of stories set in the real world but just cockeyed enough to pass as apocryphal family folklore told at a Thanksgiving dinner table once everybody’s full of pie and wine.” — Philadelphia Inquirer “McCracken knows all kinds of subtle, enticing secrets of the heart and conveys them in silky, transparent language.” — San Francisco Chronicle “If you’re tired of trying to pick something to watch on one of your half a dozen streaming services, maybe it’s time to read a short story instead. They may just be the perfect antidote to binge watching. Elizabeth McCracken’s latest collection ‘The Souvenir Museum,’ is a good place to start….Do yourself a favor and read the book. McCracken has delivered a lovely collection of stories.” — Associated Press “Deftly melding tragedy and comedy, McCracken displays her signature wit while examining how the bonds of family are tested and transformed over time.” — Austin Monthly “McCracken, herself, is a hard-working performer, an acrobat who dazzles with her verbal flexibility and lands the end of each tightly composed story with incredible skill — and feeling. Her inimitable images heighten the delight…McCracken's writing is never dull…[a]fantastic collection.” — NPR.org “Elizabeth McCracken’s latest (and best, so far) collection…there is, in these stories, a kind of compulsive noticing, and the resultant prose is so plush that it may be read happily for the language alone, though there is much more at work here….a novel’s worth of humor, tension, love, sorrow, and irrationality.” — Harvard Review “Wry, emotionally complex family stories. . . . McCracken is a tremendously sharp, soulful, and witty writer, rightfully considered one of finest American short story practitioners at work today.” — Literary Hub "I love short stories, I think that we’re not reading enough of them . . . [Elizabeth McCracken] is one of my favorites . . . her stories are about family and redemption, intimacy…Dive into this collection.” — Harlan Coben (on Today) “The master stylist and author of Bowlaway rolls another strike with this magnificent array of idiosyncratic love stories.” — Oprah Daily “Elizabeth McCracken is a master of the short story and each of the stories in this gem of a collection shows a different facet of the human experience, shining all the brighter for having had McCracken's attention paid to it for a little while.” — Refinery 29 “[A]n assured collection… McCracken opens up worlds in a mere sentence, and every page is illuminated with nuanced observations of human behavior.” — Booklist “McCracken’s sly, emotionally complex collection (after Bowlaway) focuses on characters uprooted from their usual surroundings. . . . Each story opens to reveal a whole life spent within the web of a family, chosen or not. Full of gems, this collection is a winner.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “McCracken . . . proves her mastery of short fiction with these 12 tightly structured, searingly realistic stories. . . . Enduring love—along with the urge to resist it—is this volume’s common theme, whether in relationships between parents and children, lovers, ex-lovers, friends, and even in-laws. . . . An astonishingly powerful collection worth multiple readings.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “The 12 stories collected in Elizabeth McCracken's The Souvenir Museum are skillfully crafted miniatures that feature unfailingly ordinary characters whose lives she uses to illuminate truths about love, longing and the elusive search for connection…The personal discoveries unearthed by characters like these may seem inconsequential, but they are anything but that. They're the stories of choices, turning points and epiphanies that are the stuff of life itself, and of indelible moments Elizabeth McCracken preserves in these unpretentious tales…In a dozen stories, Elizabeth McCracken excels at capturing the kinds of moments that often escape our notice.” — Shelf Awareness “There’s good reason a new Elizabeth McCracken book is cause for celebration: everything she writes—her short stories, her novels, and, hey, also a memoir—is consistently brilliant. Her work is the perfect amount of odd, witty, tender, and deceptively heart-splitting. I can’t wait.” — The Millions
£18.99
Vintage Publishing Thunderstruck Other Stories
Book SynopsisFrom the author of the beloved novel The Giant''s House - finalist for the National Book Award - comes a beautiful new story collection, her first in twenty years. Laced through with humour, empathy, and rare and magical descriptive powers these nine vibrant stories navigate the fragile space between love and loneliness. In ''Property'', a young scholar, grieving the sudden death of his wife, decides to refurbish the Maine rental house they were to share together by removing his landlord''s possessions. In ''Peter Elroy: A Documentary by Ian Casey'', the household of a successful filmmaker is visited years later by his famous first subject, whose trust he betrayed. And in the unforgettable title story, a family makes a quixotic decision to flee to Paris for a summer, only to find their lives altered in an unimaginable way by their teenage daughter''s risky behaviour.In Elizabeth McCracken''s universe, heartache is always interwoven with strange, charmed moments of joyTrade ReviewThese nine stories are filled with longing, guilt and violence. * New York Times *Jewelled and barbed with the beauty and brutality of real life, these are sentences of perfect weight and understanding. There are no fillers here, no stories that disappoint: the nine coalesce into something rare and understatedly breathtaking. Like the missing who haunt these stories, Thunderstruck is unforgettable. -- Stuart Evers * Observer *Wonderful, moving tales. -- Erica Wagner * Financial Times *An electric blend of hilarity and despair. -- Bonnie Jo Campbell * O, The Oprah Magazine *[A] powerful collection. -- John Self * Independent on Sunday *
£14.39
Vintage Publishing Bowlaway
Book SynopsisFrom the day she is discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery at the beginning of the twentieth century nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin and fifteen pounds of gold on her person Bertha Truitt is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts. She has no past to speak of, or at least none she is willing to reveal, and her mysterious origin scandalises and intrigues the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But Bertha is plucky, tenacious and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford's most defining landmark with Bertha its most notable resident. She changes the town forever: her singular spirit resonating powerfully through every board and brick and bone.In a voice laced with insight and her signature sharp humour, Elizabeth McCracken has written an epic family saga set against the backdrop of twentieth-century America. Bowlaway is both a stunning
£15.29
Little, Brown & Company An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination
Book Synopsis
£14.39
Vintage Publishing The Giants House
Book SynopsisEvery so often a novel comes along which transcends whimsy with the beauty of its writing. Elizabeth McCracken''s small masterpiece is one of these'' GuardianA powerful and unique story about connection, showing that miracles can happen even across a library circulation desk.The year is 1950, and in a small town on Cape Cod twenty-eight year old librarian Peggy Cort feels as if love and life have stood her up. That is, until the day James Carlson Sweatt the ''over-tall'' eleven year old boy who''s the talk of the town walks into her library and changes her life for ever. Two misfits whose lonely paths cross at the circulation desk, Peggy and James are odd candidates for friendship. In James, Peggy discovers the one person who''s ever really understood her, and as he grows six foot five at age twelve, then seven foot, then eight so does their most singular romance. Trade ReviewThe most original and enchanting romance I have read in a long time -- Erica Wagner * The Times *McCracken avoids the temptations of easy humour and writes with great pathos and delicacy about the complexities of love * Observer *The lucid, compelling prose convinces us that this mismatched pair do become a real couple: improbably, disturbingly, and very movingly, theirs is a true love story * Sunday Times *The Giant's House is the work of a writer who is as singular and astute as the characters she creates... funny, ambitious and precise... a beautifully composed portrait of people struggling against themselves with the full force of their courage and desire * Times Literary Supplement *Every so often a novel comes along which transcends whimsy with the beauty of its writing. Elizabeth McCracken's small masterpiece is one of these * G2 *
£11.07
HarperCollins Publishers Inc The Hero of This Book
Book Synopsis
£20.24
Vintage Publishing The Hero of this Book: 'A sublime gift’ Meg Mason
Book Synopsis‘A sublime gift’ MEG MASONA taut, ground-breaking new novel about a writer's relationship with her larger-than-life mother - and about the very nature of writing.Ten months after her mother’s death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book walks across London on a quiet Sunday. The city was a favourite of her mother’s, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she finds herself recalling all that made her complicated mother extraordinary. Even though the woman, a writer, wants to respect her mother’s nearly pathological sense of privacy, she must decide whether making a chronicle of this remarkable life constitutes an act of love or betrayal.* A New Yorker, Time, Washington Post, Oprah Daily and NPR Book of the Year *‘I absolutely loved it. A moving portrayal of daughterhood…suffused with warmth and love’ MEGAN HUNTER, author of The Harpy‘Confirms McCracken as among the finest contemporary chroniclers of everyday life… wonderful’ GUARDIAN‘Tender, funny, heartbreaking… a writer who always delights’ RUMAAN ALAM, author of Leave the World BehindTrade ReviewInto a single, most singular novel, McCracken fits everything we adult daughters know and feel and love and fear about our beautiful, complicated mothers, and could never say. A sublime gift. -- Meg Mason, author of Sorrow and BlissWhat could be better value than a book set over one day that you can read in one day, but that will stay in your heart and refuse to go... One of the greatest memoirs of a parent. * The Times *Confirms McCracken as among the finest contemporary chroniclers of everyday life. Like Elizabeth Strout and Ann Patchett, she combines a blistering intelligence with deep humanity. * Guardian *Easily one of the best novels (or is it actually a memoir?) that will be published this year... It is touching and funny, and full of sharp-eyed observations about family life and parents and how your childhood forms you. * The Times *A more loving and moving tribute to its subject is hard to imagine. * Guardian *
£9.49
Penguin Putnam Inc Bleak House
Book SynopsisIn the fog of London, lawyers enrich themselves with endless litigation over a dwindling inheritance. A sterling example of Dickens''s genius for character, dramatic construction, and social satire, this novel was hailed by Edmund Wilson as a masterpiece.
£8.95
HarperCollins Publishers Inc The Hero of This Book
Book SynopsisNamed a Top Ten Best Book of the Year by Time and PeopleNamed a Best Book of the Year by: Washington Post * Kirkus Reviews * New Yorker * Chicago Public Library * NPR * Oprah Daily * Philadelphia EnquirerA taut, groundbreaking, and highly acclaimed novel from bestselling and award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken, about a writer’s relationship with her larger-than-life mother—and about the very nature of writing, memory, and artTen months after her mother’s death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book takes a trip to London. The city was a favorite of her mother’s, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she finds herself reflecting on her mother’s life and their relationship. Thoughts of the past meld with questions of the future: Back in New England, the family home is now up for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed.The narrator, a writer, recalls all that made her complicated mother extraordinary—her brilliant wit, her generosity, her unbelievable obstinacy, her sheer will in seizing life despite physical difficulties—and finds herself wondering how her mother had endured. Even though she wants to respect her mother’s nearly pathological sense of privacy, the woman must come to terms with whether making a chronicle of this remarkable life constitutes an act of love or betrayal.The Hero of This Book is a searing examination of grief and renewal, and of a deeply felt relationship between a child and her parents. What begins as a question of filial devotion ultimately becomes a lesson in what it means to write. At once comic and heartbreaking, with prose that delights at every turn, this is a novel of such piercing love and tenderness that we are reminded that art is what remains when all else falls away.
£15.19
Vintage Publishing The Souvenir Museum
Book Synopsis'One of my favourite writers' Nick HornbyOne of the most acclaimed writers of our day, award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken is an undisputed virtuoso of the short story, and this new collection features her most vibrant and heartrending work to date.A recent widower and his adult son ferry to a craggy Scottish island in search of puffins. An actress who plays a children's game-show villainess ushers in the New Year with her deadbeat half-brother. And on a trip to a water park with their son, two fathers each confront a deep-rooted personal fear. With sentences that crackle and spark and showcase her trademark wit, McCracken shows how the mysterious bonds of family are tested, transformed, fractured, and fortified.'McCracken has a gift for spotting the comic potential in situations many of us have endured... Her prose is stippled with just-so observations' Observer'McCracken is a totally assured performer: even seemingly throwaway perceptions are often memorably poetic, and there is a hint of melancholy under the comedy' Sunday Times'This incisive, warm-blooded collection of stories is populated by outsiders... McCracken illuminates qualities of human nature through fragments of her characters' lives' New YorkerTrade ReviewMcCracken has a real talent for exploring what makes an individual unusual when they are entwined with another person, and her stories are sparkling gems of human eccentricity. * Independent *[McCracken] has a gift for spotting the comic potential in situations many of us have endured... Her prose is stippled with just-so observations. * The Observer *[A] sly, emotionally complex collection . . . Each story opens to reveal a whole life spent within the web of a family, chosen or not. Full of gems, this collection is a winner. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *McCracken is a totally assured performer: even seemingly throwaway perceptions are often memorably poetic, and there is a hint of melancholy under the comedy. * Sunday Times *It's pitch perfect; funny, melancholy and alight with the kind of sharp observations that reveal the fault lines in relationships and family dynamics... McCracken cracks open the hearts of her captivating characters. * Daily Mail *
£9.49
HarperCollins The Souvenir Museum
Book SynopsisTrade Review“This incisive, warm-blooded collection of stories is populated by outsiders: expatriates and repatriates, Vikings, travelling ventriloquists. . . . Whether it’s over the course of a honeymoon in Amsterdam or a day at a Texas water park, McCracken illuminates qualities of human nature through fragments of her characters’ lives.” — The New Yorker “Charming and sly, these 12 far-flung stories—from a Texas water park to a rugged Scottish island—share McCracken’s tender appreciation for flawed people (struggling lovers, a grieving mother, a puppeteer) just trying to communicate.” — People “Elizabeth McCracken’s impressive third story collection evoke moving depictions of marriage and parenthood, and love, betrayal, and loneliness…A steady stream of exquisite writing.” — The Boston Globe “The Souvenir Museum is McCracken's third story collection, and her understanding of how we stumble up against these painful realities unfurls on every page. Tuned into absurdities and disasters, she knows our losses are calamitous, our connections precarious…McCracken's prose is wry and exquisite, a good companion to her generous, comic observations.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune “You know how Aaron Sorkin tilt-shifts reality to bring idealism to the forefront? McCracken is like that but for humor. In her realm, everything is funny — to somebody, if not always to the protagonist. Even the darkest and saddest moments may be laced with sweet, tall-tale absurdity. Her new collection The Souvenir Museum has more of what made her 2019 novel Bowlaway such a hit. It’s full of stories set in the real world but just cockeyed enough to pass as apocryphal family folklore told at a Thanksgiving dinner table once everybody’s full of pie and wine.” — Philadelphia Inquirer “McCracken knows all kinds of subtle, enticing secrets of the heart and conveys them in silky, transparent language.” — San Francisco Chronicle “If you’re tired of trying to pick something to watch on one of your half a dozen streaming services, maybe it’s time to read a short story instead. They may just be the perfect antidote to binge watching. Elizabeth McCracken’s latest collection ‘The Souvenir Museum,’ is a good place to start….Do yourself a favor and read the book. McCracken has delivered a lovely collection of stories.” — Associated Press “Deftly melding tragedy and comedy, McCracken displays her signature wit while examining how the bonds of family are tested and transformed over time.” — Austin Monthly “McCracken, herself, is a hard-working performer, an acrobat who dazzles with her verbal flexibility and lands the end of each tightly composed story with incredible skill — and feeling. Her inimitable images heighten the delight…McCracken's writing is never dull…[a]fantastic collection.” — NPR.org “Elizabeth McCracken’s latest (and best, so far) collection…there is, in these stories, a kind of compulsive noticing, and the resultant prose is so plush that it may be read happily for the language alone, though there is much more at work here….a novel’s worth of humor, tension, love, sorrow, and irrationality.” — Harvard Review “Wry, emotionally complex family stories. . . . McCracken is a tremendously sharp, soulful, and witty writer, rightfully considered one of finest American short story practitioners at work today.” — Literary Hub "I love short stories, I think that we’re not reading enough of them . . . [Elizabeth McCracken] is one of my favorites . . . her stories are about family and redemption, intimacy…Dive into this collection.” — Harlan Coben (on Today) “The master stylist and author of Bowlaway rolls another strike with this magnificent array of idiosyncratic love stories.” — Oprah Daily “Elizabeth McCracken is a master of the short story and each of the stories in this gem of a collection shows a different facet of the human experience, shining all the brighter for having had McCracken's attention paid to it for a little while.” — Refinery 29 “[A]n assured collection… McCracken opens up worlds in a mere sentence, and every page is illuminated with nuanced observations of human behavior.” — Booklist “McCracken’s sly, emotionally complex collection (after Bowlaway) focuses on characters uprooted from their usual surroundings. . . . Each story opens to reveal a whole life spent within the web of a family, chosen or not. Full of gems, this collection is a winner.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “McCracken . . . proves her mastery of short fiction with these 12 tightly structured, searingly realistic stories. . . . Enduring love—along with the urge to resist it—is this volume’s common theme, whether in relationships between parents and children, lovers, ex-lovers, friends, and even in-laws. . . . An astonishingly powerful collection worth multiple readings.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “The 12 stories collected in Elizabeth McCracken's The Souvenir Museum are skillfully crafted miniatures that feature unfailingly ordinary characters whose lives she uses to illuminate truths about love, longing and the elusive search for connection…The personal discoveries unearthed by characters like these may seem inconsequential, but they are anything but that. They're the stories of choices, turning points and epiphanies that are the stuff of life itself, and of indelible moments Elizabeth McCracken preserves in these unpretentious tales…In a dozen stories, Elizabeth McCracken excels at capturing the kinds of moments that often escape our notice.” — Shelf Awareness “There’s good reason a new Elizabeth McCracken book is cause for celebration: everything she writes—her short stories, her novels, and, hey, also a memoir—is consistently brilliant. Her work is the perfect amount of odd, witty, tender, and deceptively heart-splitting. I can’t wait.” — The Millions
£14.44
Vintage Publishing Bowlaway
Book SynopsisA big, glorious novel in every sense, this sprawling family sagais a funny and big-hearted epic from a seriously gifted wordsmith'Marie ClaireRead the sweeping and enchanting new novel from the author of The Giant's HouseBertha is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts ever since she was discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery with nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin and fifteen pounds of gold on her person. She has no past to speak of, and her mysterious origin scandalises the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But Bertha is plucky and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford's most defining landmark. As she changes the town forever, her singular spirit resonating through every board and brick and bone, an epic family saga unfolds, set against the backdrop of twentieth-century America.Trade ReviewMcCracken is a firecracker stylist and every sentence, every image, is crafted for physical impact… It is exuberant, a bit bonkers and raw and unflinching. It will find a great many fans – and no doubt some awards, too. -- Lucy Atkins * Sunday Times *A big, glorious novel in every sense, this sprawling family saga… is a funny and big-hearted epic from a seriously gifted wordsmith. -- Samantha Irby * Marie Claire *McCracken’s rambunctious saga [Bowlaway]… is a funhouse of a novel. Even the most incidental of characters are granted glorious vignettes… in [an] unpredictable and startling world. -- Wendy Erskine * Spectator *[McCracken has] considerable gifts as a novelist [and] instinctive access to the most intricate threads of human thought and feeling... This novel’s cast grows epic, but McCracken is always most impressive when she works small, when she is describing movie kisses or corsets or simply loneliness and longing. * New York Times *Death and life, frosted with macabre comedy: it’s why we’ve enjoyed Elizabeth McCracken since her debut novel, The Giant’s House… nothing is ordinary in this story… There’s a wickedness to McCracken’s technique, the way she lures us in with her witty voice and oddball characters but then kicks the wind out of us… endlessly surprising. -- Ron Charles * Washington Post *
£9.49
HarperCollins The Souvenir Museum: Stories
Book Synopsis
£29.99
