Ron Hansen

Hansen re-creates the real West with his imaginative telling of the life of the most famous outlaw of them all, Jesse James, and of his death at the hands of the upstart Robert Ford. James, a charismatic, superstitious, and moody man, holds sway over a ragged gang who fear his temper and quick shooting. Robert Ford, a young gang member torn between worshipping Jesse and taking his place, guns him down in cold blood and lives out his days tormented by the killing.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

The highly acclaimed and provocatively rendered story of a young postulant's claim to divine possession and religious ecstasy.

Mariette in Ecstasy

At age 65, Emmett Dalton, the sole survivor of the infamous Dalton gang makes a living by selling his outrageous adventure stories to Hollywood. Desperadoes details his memories of the murders, bootlegging and thievery he and his posse committed. The grit and excitement of these violent times are expertly evoked by the sharp pen and authentic voice of HarperCollins' bestselling author Ron Hansen.

Desperadoes

A Novel

Hitler's Niece

Based on a true story from 1920s Manhattan, a latest historical work by the National Book Award finalist author of Atticus follows the affair between voluptuous Ruth Snyder and undergarment salesman Judd Gray, whose plot to kill Ruth's husband triggers an explosive police investigation.

A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion

Isn't It Romantic?

A Novel (P.S.)

Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The

Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe

You've Got to Read This

Colorado rancher Atticus Cody receives word that his wayward younger son, Scott, has committed suicide in Resurrection, Mexico. When Atticus travels south to recover Scott's body, he is puzzled by what he finds there and begins to suspect murder. Illuminating those often obscure chambers of the human heart, Atticus is the story of a father's steadfast and almost unfathomable love for his son, a mystery that Ron Hansen's fiction explores with a passion and intensity no reader will be able to resist.

Novel, A

Atticus

"Born Henry McCarty, Billy the Kid was a diminutive, charming, blond-haired young man who, growing up in New York, Kansas, and later New Mexico, demonstrated a precocious dexterity at firing six-shooters with either hand--a skill that both got him into and out of trouble and that turned him into an American legend of the old West. He was smart, well-spoken, attractive to both white and Mexican women, a good dancer, and a man with a nose for money, horses, and trouble. His spree of crimes and murders has been immortalized in dime westerns, novels, and movies. But the whole story of his short, epically violent life has never been told as it has been here"--

The Kid

“Beautifully crafted stories from one of our most honored authors” (The New York Times), Ron Hansen’s She Loves Me Not is an acclaimed collection of stunning fiction, three decades in the writing. Ron Hansen has long been celebrated as a master of both the novel and the short form. His stories have been called “extraordinary” (The New York Times Book Review) and “wise and smart” (The Washington Post). In She Loves Me Not, the subjects of Hansen’s scrutiny range from Oscar Wilde to murder to dementia to romance, and display Hansen at his storytelling best: These are “unforgettable stories, each utterly different from the one before….This is writing that slows the breathing” (San Francisco Chronicle). Readers will thrill to Hansen’s masterful attention to the smallest and most telling details, even as he plunges straight into the deepest recesses of desire, love, fury, and loss. Magisterial in its scope and surprising in its variety, She Loves Me Not shows an author at the height of his powers and confirms Hansen’s place as a major American writer. This breathtaking collection “should put him on the short-story map” (USA TODAY). She Loves Me Not contains an excerpt from Hansen’s new novel, The Kid, to be published in fall, 2016.

New and Selected Stories

She Loves Me Not

Touring America was Natalie's idea. But she had not planned on being accompanied on a cross-country bus by her playboy fiancé, Pierre. Nor had they anticipated being stranded in Seldom, Nebraska, population 395. But that is exactly what happens to this French couple, and they quickly find themselves being taken in by the obliging citizens of Seldom: Natalie by Mrs. Christiansen, a retired high school teacher who runs a rooming house for women, and Pierre by Owen, a gas station owner and ambitious winemaker in an unlikely part of the world. And here, also, the separated couple becomes enchanted by the locals. Natalie is soon being wooed by Dick Tupper, a handsome and honest rancher. Pierre falls quickly for Iona, a beautiful, no-nonsense waitress at the local diner. In this charming entertainment, mistaken identities, botched schemes, and hilarious misunderstandings abound as Parisian sophistication collides with the affability and simple pleasures of the Great Plains.

An Entertainment

"Born Henry McCarty, Billy the Kid was a diminutive, charming, blond-haired young man who, growing up in New York, Kansas, and later New Mexico, demonstrated a precocious dexterity at firing six-shooters with either hand--a skill that both got him into and out of trouble and that turned him into an American legend of the Old West. He was smart, well-spoken, attractive to both white and Mexican women, a good dancer, and a man with a nose for money, horses, and trouble. His spree of crimes and murders has been immortalized in dime westerns, novels, and movies. But the whole story of his short, epically violent life has never been told as it has been here"--

A powerful novel of the infamous Western outlaw and his killer: “The best blend of fiction and history I’ve read in a long while” (John Irving). By age thirty-four, Jesse James was already one of the most notorious and admired men in America. Bank robber, train bandit, gang leader, killer, and beloved son of Missouri— James’s many epithets live on in newspapers and novels alike. As his celebrity was reaching its apex, James met Robert Ford, the brother of a James gang member—an awkward, antihero-worshipping twenty-year-old with stars in his eyes. The young man’s fascination with the legend borders on jealous obsession: While Ford wants to ride alongside James as his most-trusted confidant, sharing his spotlight is not enough. As a bond forms between the two men, Ford realizes that the only way he’ll ever be as powerful as his idol is to become him; he must kill James and take his mantle. In the striking novel that inspired the film of the same name starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, bestselling author Ron Hansen retells a classic Wild West story that has long captured the nation’s imagination, and breathes new life into the final days and ignoble death of an iconic American man.

“A marvelous journey into both history and imagination…A perfectly compelling and fast-paced story” (San Francisco Chronicle) from Ron Hansen about an iconic American criminal of the old West: legendary outlaw, Billy the Kid. Born Henry McCarty, Billy the Kid was a diminutive, charming, blond-haired young man who, growing up in New York, Kansas, and later New Mexico, demonstrated a precocious dexterity at firing six-shooters with either hand—a skill that both got him into and out of trouble and that turned him into an American legend of the old West. He was smart, well-spoken, attractive to both white and Mexican women, a good dancer, and a man with a nose for money, horses, and trouble. His spree of crimes and murders has been immortalized in dime westerns, novels, and movies. “The Kid’s story has been told many times. But not like this” (The New York Times Book Review). In his incredible novel, Ron Hansen showcases his masterful research and inimitable style as he breathes life into history, bringing readers back into Billy’s boyhood as a ranch hand just trying to wrest a fortune from an unforgiving landscape. We are with Billy in every gunfight and horse theft and get to know him in full before his grand death in a hail of bullets in 1881 at the age of twenty-one. Original, powerful, and swiftly told, The Kid is “entertaining and lively…an excellent, transportive read” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

An anthology of stories reflecting more than twenty years of writing explores a diverse range of topics, from Oscar Wilde and murder to dementia and romance.

Jim Shepard

"An exciting new anthology of short fiction chosen by thirty-five of this country's most distinguished and popular fiction writers, You've Got to Read This offers readers an unusually intimate glimpse into how accomplished writers experience literature." "Here are stories that inspired today's leading novelists and short-story writers to embark on their own writing careers, stories that took their breath away and changed them, or the way they responded to literature, forever. Oscar Hijuelos confesses his debt to the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, whose brilliant story "The Aleph" inspired him to become a writer himself. Mary Gordon stands in awe of what James Joyce wrought in "The Dead," and wonders how writers who come after him can equal it. Robert Coover writes movingly of Angela Carter and her mysterious story "Reflections," while Kenneth A. McClane says that "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin literally saved his life." "Some of the stories presented here are classics, like Anton Chekhov's "Gooseberries," introduced by Eudora Welty, or Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," selected by Sue Miller. Some are less well known, like Lars Gustafsson's "Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases," introduced by Charles Baxter, or John Updike's "Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, a Dying Cat, a Traded Car," whose beauty stunned Lorrie Moore." "All were critically important to some of our finest contemporary writers - among them Annie Dillard, John Irving, Amy Tan, Louise Erdrich, Russell Banks, Jane Smiley, Bobbie Ann Mason, Tobias Wolff - and their comments about the selections offer fascinating entrances into the stories. For lovers of fiction, You've Got to Read This is a treasure trove, a dazzling collection of stories passionately and imaginatively chosen."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

You've Got to Read this

After receiving word that his artist son has committed suicide, Colorado rancher Atticus Cody makes a painful journey to Mexico to recover the body, but baffled by what he finds, he soon begins to suspect that his son has been murdered. 50,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo. Tour.

In Hotly in Pursuit of the Real, the beloved bestselling novelist Ron Hansen opens the doors of his writing studio to share with us his passions for history, scandal, theology, Jesuits, the American West, and golf (which he plays even in bad weather). If Hansen's novels explore people very different from himself--from a stigmatic nun to a Victorian poet to Billy the Kid, and even Hitler's niece--the meditations in this book do the opposite, allowing us to glimpse the wellsprings of his imagination, the places and traditions and books that drive him to create made-up worlds. In that sense, the reflections in these pages truly serve as "notes toward a memoir." As each section unfolds, we gain a clearer sense of Hansen's aesthetic, the parallels he sees between writing and the sacraments, between literature's capacity to make history present to us and the Church's rich array of traditions, including the Jesuit charism that has inspired great writers, such as Gerard Manley Hopkins (and himself). Equally adept at telling a hilarious anecdote and guiding us through a complex, ambiguous episode in history, Hansen's language remains fresh and invigorating. Hotly in Pursuit of the Real takes you inside one writer's imagination, only to send you back out into the wide world with new eyes.

Ron Hansen

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