Jayne Anne Phillips

In 1931, Emily Thornhill, one of the few women in the Chicago press, covers the murders of Asta Eicher and her three children and, obsessed with finding out what happened to this beautiful family, allies herself with the man funding the investigation who is wracked with guilt for not saving Asta himself.

A Novel

Quiet Dell

Set against the backdrop of the Korean War in the 1950s, a novel about family, the repercussions of war, and the bonds that sustain personal relationships focuses on a single family--Lark, her brother Termite, their mother Lola, and Termite's soldier father, Robert Leavitt.

Lark and Termite

A collection of short stories and vignettes reveals the daily life and loneliness of common people in town and country settings.

Black Tickets

Conalees Journey

Shelter

Lark and Termite (Vintage Contemporaries)

Jayne Anne Phillips has always been a master of portraiture, both in her widely acclaimed novels and in her short fiction. The stories in Fast Lanes demonstrated the breadth of her talent in a tour de force of voices, offering elegantly rendered views into the lives of characters torn between the liberation of detachment and the desire to connect. Three stories are collected in this edition for the first time: in "Alma," and adolescent daughter is made the confidante of her lonely mother; "Counting" traces the history of a dommed love affair; and "Callie" evokes memories of the haunting death of a child in 1920's West Virginia. Along with the original seven stories from Fast Lanes--each told in extraordinary first person narratives that have been hailed by critics as virtuoso performances--these incandescent portraits offer windows into the lives of an entire generation of Americans, demonstrating again and again why Jayne Anne Phillips remains one of our most powerful writers.

Fast Lanes

bell hooks

Dorothy Allison

Connie May Fowler

Michael Croley

Silas House

Carter Sickels

Chris Offutt

Jason Howard

Julia Watts

Ann Pancake

Jeff Mann

Aaron Smith

Lisa Lewis

Crystal Wilkinson

Charles Dodd White

Pinckney Benedict

Mary Crockett Hill

Melissa Range

Kathryn Stripling Byer

Joyce Dyer

Jacinda Townsend

Jessie van Eerden

David Huddle

Sheldon Lee Compton

Sarah Einstein

Jane Springer

Richard Currey

Rob Amberg

RJ Gibson

Tennessee Jones

Ida Stewart

In Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean, Adrian Blevins and Karen Salyer McElmurray collect essays from today’s finest established and emerging writers with roots in Appalachia. Together, these essays take the theme of silencing in Appalachian culture, whether the details of that theme revolve around faith, class, work, or family legacies.

In essays that take wide-ranging forms—making this an ideal volume for creative nonfiction classes—contributors write about families left behind, hard-earned educations, selves transformed, identities chosen, and risks taken. They consider the courage required for the inheritances they carry.

Toughness and generosity alike characterize works by Dorothy Allison, bell hooks, Silas House, and others. These writers travel far away from the boundaries of a traditional Appalachia, and then circle back—always—to the mountains that made each of them the distinctive thinking and feeling people they ultimately became. The essays in Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean are an individual and collective act of courage.

Meditations on the Forbidden from Contemporary Appalachia

Walk Til the Dogs Get Mean

With this brilliant collection of short stories, Jayne Anne Phillips immediately established herself as one of the most gifted young writers of her generation. Resonating with the undeniable power of myth, these tales of initiation and betrayal focus on an astonishing gallery of characters: a rootless young woman confronts her divorced parents, a fourteen-year-old girl leaves a series of foster homes for the bleak and compelling world of two drug addicts, a mass murderer recites a hypnotic monologue of obsession and alienation. In this, her fictional debut, Jayne Anne Phillips paints an unforgettable portrait of the men and women who, though stranded on the dark side fo the American dream, continue to seach for love and redemption.

In her highly acclaimed debut novel, the bestselling author of Shelter introduces the Hampsons, an ordinary, small-town American family profoundly affected by the extraordinary events of history. Here is a stunning chronicle that begins with the Depression and ends with the Vietnam War, revealed in the thoughts, dreams, and memories of each family member. Mitch struggles to earn a living as Jeans becomes the main breadwinner, working to complete college and raise the family. While the couple fight to keep their marriage intact, their daughter Danner and son Billy forge a sibling bond of uncommon strength. When Billy goes off to Vietnam, Danner becomes the sole bond linking her family, whose dissolution mirrors the fractured state of America in the 1960s. Deeply felt and vividly imagined, this lyrical novel is "among the wisest of a generation to grapple with a war that maimed us all" (The Village Voice), by a master of contemporary fiction.

Machine Dreams

Two children: Lark and her brother, Termite, a child unable to walk and talk but full of radiance. Two women: Lola, their mother, and Nonie, their aunt, who for mysterious reasons is the one to raise them. Lark and Termite imaginatively enters the

A rich, many-layered novel from one of our major writers, her first in nine years. Set in the 1950s in West Virginia and Korea, it is a story of the power of loss and love, the echoing ramifications of war, family secrets, dreams and ghosts, and the unseen, almost magical bonds that unite and sustain us. At its center: Lark and her brother, Termite, a child unable to walk and talk but full of radiance; their mother, Lola; their aunt, Nonie, who raises them; and Termite’s father, Corporal Robert Leavitt, who finds himself caught up in the chaotic early months of the Korean War. Told with enormous imagination and deep feeling, the novel invites us into the hearts and thoughts of each of the leading characters; even into Termite’s intricate, shuttered consciousness. We are with Leavitt, trapped by friendly fire. We see Lark’s hopes for herself and Termite, and how she makes them happen. We learn of Lola’s love for her soldier husband and children, and unravel the mystery of her relationship with Nonie. We discover the lasting connections between past and future on the night the town experiences an overwhelming flood, and we follow Lark and Termite as their lives are changed forever.

Lark & Termite

Traduit de l'anglais (États-Unis) par Marc Amfreville. En 1931, à Park Ridge (Illinois), un certain Cornelius O. Pierson assassina une jeune veuve, Asta Eicher, et ses trois enfants. En enquêtant sur leur disparition, la police découvrit que Pierson n'était autre que Harry Powers, un serial killer qui recrutait ses victimes par le biais d'annonces matrimoniales. Cette affaire qui bouleversa l'Amérique inspira à Charles Laughton son admirable film, La Nuit du chasseur. Tous les vivants est le " roman vrai " de cette histoire. Jayne Anne Phillips reconstitue avec minutie le déroulement de la tragédie, la traque du meurtrier et son arrestation. Mais c'est d'abord son extraordinaire imagination romanesque qui frappe à la lecture de ce livre. La voix de la petite Annabel, assassinée par Powers, se mêle à celle des vivants, qu'ils soient réels ou inventés de toutes pièces, comme Emily Thornhill, la journaliste qui mène les investigations. Porté par un souffle puissant, Tous les vivants explore un territoire où se mêlent le réel et le surnaturel, l'innocence et la perversité, la beauté et l'horreur. C'est aussi une radiographie de l'Amérique profonde des années 30, de ses peurs et de ses espoirs, au lendemain de la " Grande Dépression " qui l'a dévastée.

Le Crime de Quiet Dell

Tous les vivants - Le Crime de Quiet Dell

Jayne Anne Phillips

About

Books

Join the club