Marisa Silver

"The story of a girl, scorned for her physical deformity, whose passion and salvation lie in her otherworldly ability to transform herself and the world around her"--Amazon.com.

Little Nothing

Imagines the lives of the subject of the photograph, photographer, and a college professor who finds a connection to a family legacy in the image of the iconic "Migrant Mother."

Mary Coin

An indelible collection of eight stories that mine the complexities of familial relationships and the surprising ways love manifests itself in our lives. In Alone with you, we emphasize as her brilliantly etched characters--a VA hospital nurse's aide numbed by her surroundings, a distant father saddled with care of his developmentally-challenged daughter following the death of his wife, a woman accompanying her mother, dying of cancer, to an alternative medicine clinic in Germany--struggle to deal with life's abrupt and painful changes.

stories

Alone with you

Prompted by the burden of responsibility he has assumed for his mentally handicapped younger brother, twelve-year-old Ares Ramirez is drawn into a dark and dangerous world of drugs, violence, and sex for which he is not prepared. By the author of Babe in Paradise and No Direction Home. 50,000 first printing.

The God of War

"Miggy Brenneman is a wild and reckless seven-year-old with a fierce imagination, hell-bent on pushing against the limits of childhood. Ellen is polite, cautious, and drawn to her friend's bright flame. While the adults around them adjust to unstable times and fractured relationships, the girls respond with increasingly dangerous play. When tragedy strikes, all the novel's characters grapple with questions of fate and individual responsibility, none more so than Miggy, who must make sense of a swiftly disappearing past and a radically transformed future"--Publisher's description.

The Mysteries

a novel

The god of war

Following her acclaimed, Los Angeles Times Book Prize–nominated novel, The God of War, Marisa Silver’s extraordinary book, Alone With You, is a starkly elegant and superbly rendered collection of short stories. Marisa Silver dazzled and inspired readers with her critically acclaimed The God of War (a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist), praised by Richard Russo as “a novel of great metaphorical depth and beauty.” In this elegant, finely wrought new collection, Alone With You, Silver has created eight indelible stories that mine the complexities of modern relationships and the unexpected ways love manifests itself. Her brilliantly etched characters confront life’s abrupt and unsettling changes with fear, courage, humor, and overwhelming grace. In the O. Henry Prize–winning story “The Visitor,” a VA hospital nurse’s aide contends with a family ghost and discovers the ways in which her own past haunts her. The reticent father in “Pond” is confronted with a Solomonic choice that pits his love for his daughter against his feelings for her young son. In “Night Train to Frankfurt,” first published in The New Yorker, a daughter travels to an alternative-medicine clinic in Germany in a gambit to save her mother’s life. And in the title story, a woman vacations in Morocco with her family while contemplating a decision that will both ruin and liberate them all. From “Temporary,” where a young woman confronts the ephemeral nature of companionship, to “Three Girls,” in which sisters trapped in a snowstorm recognize the boundaries of childhood, the nuanced voices of Alone With You bear the hallmarks of an instant classic from a writer with unerring talent and imaginative resource. Silver has the extraordinary ability to render her fictional inhabitants instantly relatable, in all their imperfections. Her stories have the singular quality of looking in a mirror. We see at once what is familiar and what is strange. In these stirring narratives, we meet ourselves anew.

Stories

Alone With You

The year is 1978. Ares Ramirez, age 12, lives with his mother, Laurel, and his younger brother Malcolm in a trailer at the edge of the Salton Sea, an unintentionally man-made body of water in the middle of the Southern California desert. It is a desolate, forgotten place, whose inhabitants thrive amidst seemingly impossible circumstances. Where birds fly by day across the desert sky, by night government fighter planes and helicopters make training runs using live ammunition, and an anonymous dead body floats in from the sea. These events inspire Ares, on the cusp of his adolescence, to enact elaborate fantasies of mortal combat. His membership in a troubled family marks Ares as a casualty of a different kind of war. Malcolm, age 7, is mentally handicapped, and his mother chooses not to do anything about it. Ares' struggle with the burden of responsibility -- to himself and to others -- draws him into a world of drugs, violence, and sex that he is not prepared for, launching him into a very personal battle for his own identity, one that has a lethal outcome.

A Novel

A debut collection of short stories journeys into the lives of characters who live on the periphery of the glamour and success of modern-day Los Angeles in such works as "What I Saw from Where I Stood" about a young couple confronting the loss of a child and the title story about a woman faced with the complete annihilation of her past as fire threatens to engulf her home. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Babe in Paradise

Colson Whitehead

Lydia Davis

5 Great Stories That Grab You. Colson Whitehead charts the rise to fame of a truth-telling comedian. Stephen Oâ€™Connor transports us to a cabin in the woods, where a young woman becomes increasingly convinced sheâ€™s not alone. Lydia Davisâ€™ narrator acutely details the behavior of three cows who live in a pasture just across the road. Plus inspiring work by Pasha Malla and Marisa Silver.

Marisa Silver

About

Books

Join the club