Barbara Shoup

Inspired by Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," Paul Carpetti, who is disillusioned with his life in 1964 suburbia, and fellow Kerouac enthusiast Duke Walczek begin hitchhiking to Florida to find their literary hero.

Looking for Jack Kerouac

Margaret Love Denman

Contemporary Authors

Novel Ideas

Eighteen-year-old Emma, a freshman at Indiana University, has enough trouble trying to figure out relationships but when her father wins fifty million dollars in a lottery, life becomes even more confusing and complicated.

Everything you want

While reluctantly accompanying her husband and daughter to freshman orientation at Indiana University, Nora Quillen hears someone call her name, a name she has not heard in more than 25 years. Not even her husband knows that back in the ‘60s she was Jane Barth, a student deeply involved in the antiwar movement. An American Tune moves back and forth in time, telling the story of Jane, a girl from a working-class family who fled town after she was complicit in a deadly bombing, and Nora, the woman she became, a wife and mother living a quiet life in northern Michigan. An achingly poignant account of a family crushed under the weight of suppressed truths, An American Tune illuminates the irrevocability of our choices and how those choices come to compose the tune of our lives.

A Novel

An American Tune

Moving back and forth in time, the author tells the story of Jane Barth, a girl from a working-class family who fled town after she was complicit in a deadly bombing, and Nora Quillen, a wife and mother living a quiet life in northern Michigan and the woman that Jane became to hide her past. Original.

With high school mercifully drawing to a close, Emma's only question is, "What next? And can it please be completely unlike what happened before?" Then one lucky little lotto ticket seems to give the answer—there are suddenly fifty million reasons for Emma to be happy. So what’s the problem?

Everything You Want

Jackson Watt’s senior year should have been a blast. Then Jax’s best friend Brady runs away without telling anyone. His mom gets remarried, which means a new family, a new house, and a new role as well-adjusted stepbrother. Not until a life-changing road trip to Graceland does Jax learn to accept the past year—and what it means to grow up.

Wish You Were Here

Margaret-Love Denman

Novel Ideas provides a substantial introduction to the elements of fiction followed by in-depth interviews with successful novelists who speak with candor and insight into the complex process by which a novel is made. This edition includes new and updated interviews as well as writing exercises to enhance its use in the writing classroom. Dorothy Allison recalls "deliciously self-indulgent" days of writing in her bathrobe, wrapped in misery and exultation; Peter Cameron explains how he made the move from short fiction to the novel with the aid of a music composer's notebook to track the movement of his characters. Writers as different as Ha Jin, Jill McCorkle, Richard Ford, and Michael Chabon describe their unique approaches to their work while consistently affirming the necessity of committing to the hard effort of it while also remaining open to surprise. Aspiring novelists will find hands-on strategies for beginning, working through, and revising a novel; accomplished novelists will discover new ways to solve the problems they face in process; and serious readers of contemporary fiction will enjoy a glimpse into the way novels are made. Includes interviews with: Dorothy Allison Larry Brown Peter Cameron Michael Chabon Michael Cunningham Robb Forman Dew Richard Ford Ha Jin Patricia Henley Charles Johnson Wally Lamb Valerie Martin Jill McCorkle Sena Jeter Naslund Lewis Nordan Sheri Reynolds S. J. Rozan Jane Smiley Lee Smith Theodore Weesner

Barbara Shoup

About

Books

Join the club