Most Popular Books by Jim Shepard

Bursting with wicked humor and driven by an incomparable understanding of what it means to be human, The World to Come is the inimitable work of “the most ambitious story writer in America” (The Daily Beast). Now a major motion picture Shepard traverses both borders and centuries, seamlessly inhabiting a multitude of disparate men and women, and giving voice to visionaries, pioneers, and secret misfits—from nineteenth-century explorers departing on one of the Arctic’s most nightmarish expeditions to twentieth-century American military wives maintaining hope at home. Shepard’s characters confront everything from the emotional pitfalls of everyday life to colossal catastrophes, battling natural forces, the hazards of new technology, and their own implacable shortcomings. "[Shepard] has a knack for compressing a novel’s worth of life into 30 or 40 pages.” —The Boston Globe

I’ve been a problem baby, a lousy son, a distant brother, an off-putting neighbor, a piss-poor student, a worrisome seatmate, an unreliable employee, a bewildering lover, a frustrating confidante and a crappy husband. Among the things I do pretty well at this point I’d have to list darts, re-closing Stay-Fresh boxes, and staying out of the way. This is the self-eulogy offered early on by the unwilling hero of the opening story in this collection, a dazzling array of work in short fiction from a master of the form. The stories in Love and Hydrogen—familiar to readers from publications ranging from McSweeney’s to The New Yorker to Harper’s to Tin House—encompass in theme and compassion what an ordinary writer would seem to need several lifetimes to imagine. A frustrated wife makes use of an enterprising illegal-gun salesman to hold her husband hostage; two hapless adult-education students botch their attempts at rudimentary piano but succeed in a halting, awkward romance; a fascinated and murderous Creature welcomes the first human visitors to his Black Lagoon; and in the title story, the stupefyingly huge airship Hindenburg flies to its doom, representing in 1937 mankind''s greatest yearning as well as its titanic failure. Generous in scope and astonishing in ambition, Shepard’s voice never falters; the virtuosity of Love and Hydrogen cements his reputation as, in the words of Rick Bass, “a passionate writer with a razor-sharp wit and an elephantine heart”—in short, one of the most powerful talents at work today.

The acclaimed National Book Award finalist—“one of the United States’ finest writers,” according to Joshua Ferris, “full of wit, humanity, and fearless curiosity”—now gives us a novel that will join the short list of classics about children caught up in the Holocaust. Aron, the narrator, is an engaging if peculiar and unhappy young boy whose family is driven by the German onslaught from the Polish countryside into Warsaw and slowly battered by deprivation, disease, and persecution. He and a handful of boys and girls risk their lives by scuttling around the ghetto to smuggle and trade contraband through the quarantine walls in hopes of keeping their fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters alive, hunted all the while by blackmailers and by Jewish, Polish, and German police, not to mention the Gestapo. When his family is finally stripped away from him, Aron is rescued by Janusz Korczak, a doctor renowned throughout prewar Europe as an advocate of children’s rights who, once the Nazis swept in, was put in charge of the Warsaw orphanage. Treblinka awaits them all, but does Aron manage to escape—as his mentor suspected he could—to spread word about the atrocities? Jim Shepard has masterfully made this child’s-eye view of the darkest history mesmerizing, sometimes comic despite all odds, truly heartbreaking, and even inspiring. Anyone who hears Aron’s voice will remember it forever.

Following his widely acclaimed Project X and Love and Hydrogen—“Here is the effect of these two books,” wrote the Chicago Tribune: “A reader finishes them buzzing with awe”—Jim Shepard now gives us his first entirely new collection in more than a decade. Like You’d Understand, Anyway reaches from Chernobyl to Bridgeport, with a host of narrators only Shepard could bring to pitch-perfect life. Among them: a middle-aged Aeschylus taking his place at Marathon, still vying for parental approval. A maddeningly indefatigable Victorian explorer hauling his expedition, whaleboat and all, through the Great Australian Desert in midsummer. The first woman in space and her cosmonaut lover, caught in the star-crossed orbits of their joint mission. Two Texas high school football players at the top of their food chain, soliciting their fathers’ attention by leveling everything before them on the field. And the rational and compassionate chief executioner of Paris, whose occupation, during the height of the Terror, eats away at all he holds dear. Brimming with irony, compassion, and withering humor, these eleven stories are at once eerily pertinent and dazzlingly exotic, and they showcase the work of a protean, prodigiously gifted writer at the height of his form. Reading Jim Shepard, according to Michael Chabon, “is like encountering our national literature in microcosm.”

Following Like You’d Understand, Anyway—awarded the Story Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award—Jim Shepard returns with an even more wildly diverse collection of astonishingly observant stories. Like an expert curator, he populates the vastness of human experience—from its bizarre fringes and lonely, breathtaking pinnacles to the hopelessly mediocre and desperately below average—with brilliant scientists, reluctant soldiers, workaholic artists, female explorers, depraved murderers, and deluded losers, all wholly convincing and utterly fascinating. A “black world” operative at Los Alamos isn’t allowed to tell his wife anything about his daily activities, but he can’t resist sharing her intimate confidences with his work buddy. A young Alpine researcher falls in love with the girlfriend of his brother, who was killed in an avalanche he believes he caused. An unlucky farm boy becomes the manservant of a French nobleman who’s as proud of his military service with Joan of Arc as he’s aroused by the slaughter of children. A free-spirited autodidact, grieving her lost sister, traces the ancient steps of a ruthless Middle Eastern sect and becomes the first Western woman to travel the Arabian deserts. From the inventor of the Godzilla epics to a miserable G.I. in New Guinea, each comes to realize that knowing better is never enough. Enthralling and unfailingly compassionate, You Think That’s Bad traverses centuries, continents, and social strata, but the joy and struggle that Shepard depicts with such devastating sensitivity—all the heartbreak, alienation, intimacy, and accomplishment—has a universal resonance.

During the air war over Germany, the crew of a B-17 Flying Fortress tries to achieve some competence as a unit before their most catastrophic mission yet They call their plane “Paper Doll,” the joke being its suggestion of flimsiness, inconsequence, and perishability, and none of them, from the veterans to the newcomers, feel the bravery they’d like to project. But now, despite their myriad limitations, they’ve been tasked with living through the tension and boredom of base life, saving one another’s lives, and rejoicing at those missions they’ve survived—until they’re confronted by the shock of a mission directed against the ball-bearing factories in Schweinfurt, a mission that will outfly the capacities of their fighter escorts and take them hundreds of miles through the most heavily defended sectors of the German Air Defense. National Book Award finalist and author of The Book of Aron Jim Shepard brilliantly illustrates both the lunacy and intimacy of these young men’s lives on the ground as well as their growing disillusionment and terror at what lies ahead. Unsentimental and unsparing in its honesty, Paper Doll portrays with stirring clarity the realities of war and the bonds forged in the face of death.

The story, Reach for the Sky, is on the life of a worker in a home for abandoned dogs, while in Who We Are, What We''re Doing, a fighter pilot considers pulling eight G''s, "the real thing, the difference between thinking about kissing and kissing."

In the wilderness of junior high, Edwin Hanratty is at the bottom of the food chain. His teachers find him a nuisance. His fellow students consider him prey. And although his parents are not oblivious to his troubles, they can''t quite bring themselves to fathom the ruthless forces that demoralize him daily. Sharing in these schoolyard indignities is his only friend, Flake. Branded together as misfits, their fury simmers quietly in the hallways, classrooms, and at home, until an unthinkable idea offers them a spectacular and terrifying release. From Jim Shepard, one of the most enduring and influential novelists writing today, comes an unflinching look into the heart and soul of adolescence. Tender and horrifying, prescient and moving, Project X will not easily be forgotten.

This "novel of contagion and collapse is also the story of love’s unlikely survival in the most hostile conditions” (Karen Russell, bestselling author of Swamplandia!)—from the National Book Award-nominated author of The Book of Aron. In a tiny settlement on the west coast of Greenland, 11-year-old Aleq and his best friend, frequent trespassers at a mining site exposed to mountains of long-buried and thawing permafrost, carry what they pick up back into their village, and from there Shepard''s harrowing and deeply moving story follows Aleq, one of the few survivors of the initial outbreak, through his identification and radical isolation as the likely index patient. While he shoulders both a crushing guilt for what he may have done and the hopes of a world looking for answers, we also meet two Epidemic Intelligence Service investigators dispatched from the CDC--Jeannine, an epidemiologist and daughter of Algerian immigrants, and Danice, an M.D. and lab wonk. As they attempt to head off the cataclysm, Jeannine--moving from the Greeland hospital overwhelmed with the first patients to a Level 4 high-security facility in the Rocky Mountains--does what she can to sustain Aleq. Both a chamber piece of multiple intimate perspectives and a more omniscient glimpse into the megastructures (political, cultural, and biological) that inform such a disaster, the novel reminds us of the crucial bonds that form in the midst of catastrophe, as a child and several hypereducated adults learn what it means to provide adequate support for those they love. In the process, they celebrate the precious worlds they might lose, and help to shape others that may survive.

From this prodigiously talented writer comes a stunningly original fictional life of the German director F. W. Murnau (1888?1931). Murnau ranks as a founding father of the cinema, not least for his legendary horror film, Nosferatu. Here he is revealed as a hermetic genius who turns against himself, becoming in a sense his own vampire. What shadows Jim Shepard?s Murnau?through the airfields of the Great War to Berlin in the twenties and to the virtual invention of filmmaking?is the conflict between his impossibly high ideals and his heartbreaking memories of love betrayed and love lost. From provincial Germany through Hollywood in its early days to the South Seas, Nosferatu charts a life at once artistic, intellectual, and deeply human. Ron Hansen provides an introduction to this Bison Books edition.

A thirteen-year-old hatches a plan of escape, solace, and utter independence through a dream of flight that’s both literal and figurative in this engrossing novel by National Book Award finalist Jim Shepard As beset by the world as any thirteen-year-old—and maybe a little more so—Biddy Siebert does his best to negotiate both the intimacies and isolations of his world and his own maddening and slightly comical idiosyncrasies. His ferocious younger sister hates everyone, including him; his sprawling Italian family, when it comes to emotional matters, has the touch of a blacksmith; and his Catholic school education provides a ready framework against which he can measure himself as continually falling short of the ideal. As his grades slip and his family begins to come apart, Biddy searches for a focus and finds one during a trip in a family friend’s private plane: To rise above his troubles, he’s going to have to learn to fly. Biddy resolves to steal the plane, having taught himself as a pilot through manuals and observation, and as he moves through the progressions of his plan, he slowly develops the confidence and independence he’s going to need later in life. In this compassionate and honest portrait of the challenges, missteps, and small successes of adolescence, Biddy is an unforgettable character whose problems might seem common but whose solutions are often extraordinary.

A shy and apolitical herpetologist-in-training finds the weight of history bearing down on him as the effects of repression ramp up in his country In an unspecified country that combines elements of Chile under its military regime, South Africa under apartheid, and Italy under fascism, fifteen-year-old Karel Roeder asks only to be left alone to learn from Albert, his mentor at the zoo’s reptile house, and to devote himself to his girlfriend, Leda. But both Leda and Albert lead him into increasingly proscribed areas of thought and speech, and thus into conflict with a newly ascendant party that intends to prosecute a border war against an officially despised ethnic group and criminalize dissent. Citizens have been disappearing and surveillance in the name of safety has become all-pervasive. When Kehr, a special assistant of the civil guard, billets himself at Karel’s house for unknown reasons, Karel finds his already tenuous hold on his own innocence crushed as Kehr—tribune, inquisitor, and metaphysician of terror—instructs his unwilling protégé in those moments when history is let off the leash. Lights Out in the Reptile House is at once a dystopian political parable, a meditation on totalitarianism, and a moving coming-of-age story, as its protagonist struggles to understand his own values and meaning even in the most extreme of crucibles.

A New York Times Notable Book:A lethal accident turns life into a waking nightmare for a mother and her son in this gripping novel of secrecy and dread Abandoned by her husband, Joanie Mucherino and her eleven-year-old son, Todd, struggle to cope while dealing with their comically tactless and intrusive Italian family. Further complicating things, Joanie now seems available to Bruno Minea, an old family friend whose two-decade passion for her has been unwavering and faintly frightening. When Joanie and Todd kill an acquaintance in a hit-and-run accident, they soon discover—to their horror—that they’re keeping it a secret. But as the weight of their lies becomes more than they can can bear, their crime connects them to something even more sinister, as the victim had powerful, dangerous friends who will go to great lengths to avenge his death. Part family drama, part thriller, Kiss of the Wolf exemplifies the talents of National Book Award finalist Jim Shepard, author of 2015 favorite The Book of Aron, who crafts hilarious, spot-on dialogue with the same mastery he lends to the ingenious, page-turning plot, in which a loving mother is forced to confront her role as the architect of her son’s anguished guilt.

A literary anthology featuring writing by: Michael Cunningham Jim Shepard T. Cooper Lydia Millet Diana Wagman

"Shepard may be the best lesser-known film critic." —The New York Times Book Review The first book of nonfiction from one of our great fiction writers. Given that most Americans proudly consider themselves non-political, where do our notions of collective responsibility come from? Which self-deceptions, when considering ourselves as actors on the world stage, do we cling to most tenaciously? Why do we so stubbornly believe, for example, that our country always means well when intervening abroad? The Tunnel at the End of the Light argues that some of our most persistent and destructive assumptions, in that regard, might come from the movies. In these ten essays Jim Shepard weaves close readings of film with cultural criticism to explore the ways in which movies work so ubiquitously to reflect how Americans think and act. Whether assessing the “high-spirited glee of American ruthlessness” captured in GoodFellas, or finding in Lawrence of Arabia a “portrait of the lunatic serenity of our leaders’ conviction in the face of all evidence and their own lack of knowledge,” he explores how we enter into conversations with specific genres and films—Chinatown, The Third Man, and Badlands among others—in order to construct and refine our most cherished illusions about ourselves.

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection Velibor Vasovic is not political. He is a soccer player; has played for Partizan Belgrade and his national team. Scored Partizan’s only goal against Real Madrid in the European Cup. He is the rock supporting any defense. But in 1966, he starts playing for Ajax Amsterdam, firmly in the West. And politics catches up to him. Jim Shepard is the wildly inventive guru of the historical fiction short story; a finalist for the National Book Award, and “one of the United States’ finest writers” (Joshua Ferris). “Ajax Is All About Attack” is classic Shepard, from the collection Love and Hydrogen. An eBook short.

The invasion of the future has begun. Literary legends including Steven Millhauser, Junot Diáz, Amiri Baraka, and Katharine Dunn have attacked the borders of the every day. Like time traveling mad-scientists, they have concocted outrageous creations from the future. They have seized upon tales of technology gone wrong and mandated that pulp fiction must finally grow up. In these wildly-speculative stories you will discover the company that controls the world from an alley in Greenwich Village. You’ll find nanotechnology that returns memories to the residents of a nursing home. You’ll rally an avian-like alien to become a mascot for a Major League Baseball team. The Invaders are here. But did science fiction colonize them first?

Presents a selection of the best works of short fiction of the past year from a variety of acclaimed sources.

Arons bok är en mästerlig roman om Warszawas getto, sett ur ett barns ögon. Det är en fascinerande, hjärtskärande och - trots allt - bitvis komisk berättelse som kommer att bli en av förintelselitteraturens framtida klassiker. Aron är en egensinnig pojke som tillsammans med sin familj förs från den polska landsbygden till Warszawas getto. Där riskerar han sitt liv tillsammans med en handfull andra pojkar och flickor genom att smuggla varor över gettots murar. Barnen jagas av utpressare, konkurrerande gäng och såväl judisk, polsk som tysk polis. Så småningom räddas Aron från gatan av Janusz Korczak, en polsk-judisk läkare känd i hela Europa som en av de främsta förespråkarna för barns rättigheter. Efter den tyska invasionen av Polen tvingade nazisterna Korczak att flytta det judiska barnhemmet "De föräldralösas hus" till det nyinrättade gettot. Länge lyckades han hålla nazisterna på avstånd innan han och barnen med övrig personal till slut sattes på tåget till Treblinka.

Aron, a történet elbeszélője Lengyelország német megszállása idején családjával együtt Varsóba kényszerül, ahol nélkülözés vár rájuk. A gettóban élő gyerekekből összeverődő maroknyi csapat tagjai nap mint nap életüket kockáztatva szöknek át a falon, hogy csempészéssel és sefteléssel szerezzék meg a betevő falatot. Eközben a zsa- rolókkal, a zsidó, a lengyel és a német rendőrökkel, valamint nem utolsósorban a Gestapo fenyegetésével is meg kell küzdeniük. Családjának elvesztése után Aront a valóságos személyről mintázott, elismert orvos, Janusz Korczak veszi magához, aki a náci megszállás idején minden erejét a varsói árvaház fenntartásának szentelte. Mint tudjuk, mindannyiuk útja a treblinkai haláltáborba vezetett. Vajon Aronnak sikerül megmenekülnie, hogy hírét vigye, milyen megpróbáltatásokon mentek keresztül a gettó gyermekei? Jim Shepard gyermeki nézőpontból láttatja a történelem legsötétebb időszakát úgy, hogy a nyomasztó történetet megindító, izgalmas fordulatokkal teli regénnyé formálja, amelyből még a humor sem hiányzik. "Az Áron könyve kérlelhetetlen szenvedéllyel mutatja be, hogy mennyire bonyolult lény az ember. Nemcsak Janusz Korczak és a varsói gettó gyermekeinek testamentuma, hanem minden olyan gyermeké, aki a háború következtében magára maradt." (Anne Michaels)

Pela mão do pequeno Aron, somos levados a conhecer a Polónia de 1939, onde ele e a família vivem. Pouco tempo depois, enquanto judeus, são conduzidos ao gueto de Varsóvia, onde a crueldade, a fome e a doença destroem as vidas de quem aí foi aprisionado. Porém, Aron e um grupo de amigos conseguem ajudar as famílias, esgueirando-se do gueto para fazer contrabando. Num relato comovente e intenso, Jim Shepard mostra-nos, através da voz de uma criança, como é possível manter a dignidade humana nas condições mais adversas. Um romance notável destinado a juntar-se aos clássicos sobre o holocausto escritos na perspetiva de uma criança . Pela mão do pequeno Aron, somos levados a conhecer a Polónia de 1939, onde ele e a família vivem. Pouco tempo depois, enquanto judeus, são conduzidos ao gueto de Varsóvia, onde a crueldade, a fome e a doença destroem as vidas de quem aí foi aprisionado. Porém, Aron e um grupo de amigos conseguem ajudar as famílias, esgueirando-se do gueto para fazer contrabando. Num relato comovente e intenso, Jim Shepard mostra-nos, através da voz de uma criança, como é possível manter a dignidade humana nas condições mais adversas. Um romance notável destinado a juntar-se aos clássicos sobre o holocausto escritos na perspetiva de uma criança . O Livro de Aron venceu o prémio PEN New England AWARD em 2016 e foi considerado um dos 10 melhores livros de 2015 pela Amazon.

Traduit de l''anglais (États-Unis) par Madeleine Nasalik. " Aron, c''est le nom que mes parents m''ont donné, mais mon père dit qu''ils auraient mieux fait de m''appeler "Dans quoi tu t''es encore fourré''. " Aron a 8 ans lorsqu''il se retrouve enfermé, avec toute sa famille, dans le ghetto de Varsovie. Pour ce petit garçon pauvre, habitué à se faire corriger, le ghetto est un autre terrain de jeux, nouveau et excitant. Mais très vite, l''horreur s''installe au coeur de la vie de tous les jours. La faim, le typhus font rage. Comment survivre ? Aron fait l''apprentissage du vol et du mensonge. Il découvre, mêlés l''un à l''autre, le sens de l''héroïsme et le goût de la trahison. Et rencontre l''homme qui va décider de son sort : le directeur de l''orphelinat, Janusz Korczak. Désormais, Aron a une mission. Saura-t-il se montrer à la hauteur de ce que l''on attend de lui ?

Aron is een innemende, maar ietwat eigenaardige jongen wiens joodse familie door de Duitse inval in 1939 van het Poolse platteland naar Warschau wordt verdreven. In het joodse getto in Warschau sluit Aron zich aan bij een groep jongens en meisjes waarmee hij al stelend de buurt afschuimt. Daarbij worden ze belaagd door afpersers, de politie en ten slotte ook de Gestapo, en is Aron getuige van de donkerste kant van de mens. Als Aron alleen overblijft wordt hij opgevangen door de arts Janusz Korczak, die een joods weeshuis leidt. Terwijl de arts zo veel mogelijk kinderen probeert te redden, is de dreiging van deportatie naar Treblinka constant aanwezig. Jim Shepard heeft dit hartverscheurende, tragische verhaal tot een fascinerende, bemoedigende roman gemaakt, die licht en komisch blijft. Wie eenmaal Arons stem heeft gehoord, zal hem nooit meer vergeten.

Chwytająca za serce powieść o chłopcu, który trafia pod skrzydła Janusza Korczaka Wzruszający obraz Holokaustu przedstawiony oczami dziecka. „Arcydzieło”. The Washington Post Ośmioletni Aron wraz z rodziną przeprowadza się z małej polskiej wioski do zatłoczonej Warszawy. Ojciec podejmuje pracę w fabryce, a chłopiec zaprzyjaźnia się z Lutkiem, który zdradza mu tajemnice podwórkowego życia. Szanse na szczęście przekreśla wybuch II wojny światowej. Opaski z gwiazdą Dawida, kradzieże i strach przed niemieckimi mundurami stają się codziennością, a wkrótce cały świat Arona zamyka się w ciasnych murach getta. By przeżyć, chłopiec musi podejmować okrutne decyzje – z wagi których często nawet nie zdaje sobie sprawy. Gdy traci bliskich, trafia pod opiekę Janusza Korczaka, który na nowo budzi w nim człowieczeństwo.

Below the sign welcoming the new eighth-grade class to school is one that promises to leave no child unsuccessful and a handout that offers eight ways of being smart. For Edwin Hanratty, at times as hilarious as he is miserable, this is part of what makes junior high pretty much a relentless nightmare. And so, with Flake, his only friend, he contends with clique upon clique-the jocks who pummel them, the girls who ignore or taunt them-as well as the dogged and disconcerting attentions of a sixth-grader who''s even more ferociously disaffected than they are. And while Edwin''s parents work hard to understand him, they face without fully realizing it demoralization so systemic that he and Flake have no recourse other than their own bitter and smart remarks, until they gradually begin flirting with the most horrible revenge of all. This lethal impulse, which has touched communities across America, has never been given such shocking credibility as it has in Project X, which suggests that these boys'' central predicament is not their hatred of the world but their agonized and enduring love of it. Never before has Jim Shepard''s compassionate virtuosity been on such conspicuous, unsettling, and haunting display.