Will Boast

In mesmerizing prose, best-selling and Rome Prize-winning author Will Boast reimagines the myth of Daphne and Apollo in this much-anticipated debut novel.

Daphne

“This remarkable memoir is writtenwith extraordinary care, intelligence,and honesty. . . . In short, it's fullyalive.”—Phillip Lopate

A Memoir

Epilogue

In this “elegant meditation on modern-day emotion” (San Francisco Chronicle), best-selling, prize-winning author Will Boast reimagines the myth of Daphne and Apollo. Will Boast’s long-anticipated first novel is an “outright marvelous debut [that] breathes fresh vigor into timeless questions of love and risk” (Laura van den Berg). Born with a rare condition in which she suffers degrees of paralysis when faced with intense emotion, Daphne has had few close friends and fewer lovers. Like her mythic namesake, one touch can freeze her. But when Daphne meets shy, charming Ollie, her well-honed defenses falter, and she’s faced with a critical choice: cling to her protective isolation or risk the recklessness of real intimacy. Set against the backdrop of a San Francisco flush with money and pulsing with protest, Daphne is “an amiable exploration of how humans might come to manage their raucous hearts” (NewYorker.com).

Daphne: A Novel

Winner, The Rome Prize “This remarkable memoir is written with extraordinary care, intelligence, and honesty. . . . In short, it’s fully alive.”—Phillip Lopate For Will Boast, what looked like the end turned out to be a new beginning. After losing his mother and only brother, twenty-four-year-old Boast finds himself absolutely alone when his father dies of alcoholism. Numbly settling the matters of his father’s estate, Boast stumbles upon documents revealing a closely guarded secret his father had meant to keep: he’d had another family entirely, a wife and two sons. Setting out to find his half-brothers, Boast struggles to reconcile their family history with his own and to begin a chapter of his life he never imagined. “Riveting, soulful, and courageously told” (Maggie Shipstead), Epilogue is the stunning account of a young man’s journey through grief in search of a new, unexpected love.

Epilogue: A Memoir

Real musicians don’t sign autographs, date models, or fly in private jets. They spend their lives in practice rooms and basement clubs or toiling in the obscurity of coffee-shop gigs, casino jobs, and the European festival circuit. The ten linked stories in Power Ballads are devoted to this unheard virtuoso: the working musician. From the wings of sold-out arenas to hip-hop studios to polka bars, these stories are born out of a nocturnal world where music is often simply work, but also where it can, in rare moments, become a source of grace and transcendence, speaking about the things we never seem to say to each other. A skilled but snobby jazz drummer joins a costumed heavy metal band to pay his rent. A country singer tries to turn her brutal past into a successful career. A vengeful rock critic reenters the life of an emerging singer-songwriter, bent on wreaking havoc. The characters in Power Ballads—aging head-bangers, jobbers, techno DJs, groupies, and the occasional rock star (and those who have to live with them)—need music to survive, yet find themselves lost when the last note is played, the lights go up, and it’s time to return to regular life. By turns melancholy and hilarious, Power Ballads is not only a deeply felt look at the lives of musicians but also an exploration of the secret music that plays inside us all.

Will Boast

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