New Releases by Kevin Brockmeier

Ghost stories tap into our most primal emotions as they encourage us to confront the timeless question: What comes after death? Here, in tales that are by turn scary, funny, philosophic, and touching, you’ll find that question sharpened, split, reconsidered—and met with a multitude of answers. “Ghosts and Speculation,” an excerpt from Kevin Brockmeier’s extraordinary compendium of one hundred ghost stories, The Ghost Variations, discovers new ways of looking at who we are and what matters to us, exploring how mysterious, sad, strange, and comical it is to be alive—or, as it happens, not to be. A Vintage Short.

Ghost stories tap into our most primal emotions as they encourage us to confront the timeless question: What comes after death? Here, in tales that are by turn scary, funny, philosophic, and touching, you’ll find that question sharpened, split, reconsidered—and met with a multitude of answers. A spirit who is fated to spend eternity reliving the exact moment she lost her chance at love, ghostly trees that haunt the occupant of a wooden house, specters that snatch anyone who steps into the shadows, and parakeets that serve as mouthpieces for the dead: these are just a few of the characters in this extraordinary compendium of one hundred ghost stories. Kevin Brockmeier’s fiction has always explored the space between the fantastical and the everyday with profundity and poignancy. As in his previous books, The Ghost Variations discovers new ways of looking at who we are and what matters to us, exploring how mysterious, sad, strange, and comical it is to be alive—or, as it happens, not to be.

At age twelve, Kevin Brockmeier is ready to become a different person: not the boy he has always been—the one who cries too easily and laughs too easily, who lives in an otherland of sparkling daydreams and imaginary catastrophes—but someone else altogether. Over the course of one school year—seventh grade—he sets out in search of himself. Along the way, he happens into his first kiss at a church party, struggles to understand why his old friends tease him at the lunch table, becomes the talk of the entire school thanks to his Halloween costume, and booby-traps his lunch to deter a thief. With the same deep feeling and oddly dreamlike precision that are the hallmarks of his fiction, the acclaimed novelist now explores the dream of his own past and recovers the person he used to be.

Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Seattle Times, The Kansas City Star, and Philadelphia City Paper What if our pain was the most beautiful thing about us? At 8:17 on a Friday night, the Illumination begins. Every wound begins to shine, every bruise to glow and shimmer. And in the aftermath of a fatal car accident, a journal of love notes, written by a husband to his wife, passes into the keeping of Carol Ann Page, and from there through the hands of five other people—a photojournalist, a schoolchild, a missionary, a writer, and a street vendor. As their stories unfold, we come to understand how intricately and brilliantly they are connected, in all their human injury and experience. With the artistry and imagination that have become his trademark, Kevin Brockmeier reveals a world that only he could imagine, casting his gaze on the wounds we bear and the light that radiates from us all.

Stories by J. Robert Lennon, Kevin Brockmeier, Lynne Tillman, Carson Mell, and Ben Greenman.

Peering into the often unnoticed corners of life, Kevin Brockmeier has been consistently praised for the originality of his vision, the boundlessness of his imagination and the command of his craft. Once again, in this new collection of fiction, Brockmeier shows us a fantastical world that is intimately familiar but somehow distant and beautiful. From the touching title story, where a young, antisocial woman imagines her escape into the sky with an apparition only she can see, to the haunting story of a pastor tempted by something less than divine, Brockmeier moves effortlessly from the extraordinary to the everyday, while challenging us to see the world anew. Stunning, elegant, profound, and playful, The View from the Seventh Layer cements Kevin Brockmeier''s place as one of the most creative and compassionate writers of his generation.

Pour Laura Byrd, membre d''une expédition en Antarctique, le temps est compté. Prisonnière de la banquise, elle se retrouve seule après la tentative désespérée de ses deux collègues pour rejoindre la base. Livrée à elle-même, Laura égrène ses souvenirs pour rompre la monotonie de son isolement... Entre-temps, dans une cité des morts, affluent chaque jour de nouveaux arrivants. Ceux qui ont rendu l''âme s''y installent dans une vie provisoire, tant que subsistent leurs traces dans la mémoire d''un vivant. Mais, du jour au lendemain, les habitants commencent à disparaître un à un... Sans le savoir, Laura peuple l''au-delà de ses souvenirs et anime la ville aux battements de son coeur. Mais pour combien de temps encore ?

Weaving together loss and anxiety with fantastic elements and literary sleight-of-hand, Kevin Brockmeier’s richly imagined Things That Fall from the Sky views the nagging realities of the world through a hopeful lens. In the deftly told “These Hands,” a man named Lewis recounts his time babysitting a young girl and his inconsolable sense of loss after she is wrenched away. In “Apples,” a boy comes to terms with the complex world of adults, his first pangs of love, and the bizarre death of his Bible coach. “The Jesus Stories” examines a people trying to accelerate the Second Coming by telling the story of Christ in every possible way. And in the O. Henry Award winning “The Ceiling,” a man’s marriage begins to disintegrate after the sky starts slowly descending. Achingly beautiful and deceptively simple, Things That Fall from the Sky defies gravity as one of the most original story collections seen in recent years.

While playing alone in her backyard one afternoon, seven-year-old Celia suddenly disappears while her father Christopher is inside giving a tour of their historic house and her mother Janet is at an orchestra rehearsal. Utterly shattered, Christopher, a writer of fantasy and science fiction, withdraws from everyone around him, especially his wife, losing himself in his writing by conjuring up worlds where Celia still exists—as a child, as a teenager, as a young single mother—and revealing in his stories not only his own point of view but also those of Janet, the policeman in charge of the case, and the townspeople affected by the tragedy, ultimately culminating in a portrait of a small town changed forever. The Truth About Celia is a profound meditation on grief and loss and how we carry on in its aftermath.

After a seventh-grader discovers that the grooves in his Thigpen-brand blue jeans are encoded with a cry for help, he sets out to save the factory workers from greedy entrepreneur Howard Thigpen.

From Kevin Brockmeier, one of this generation''s most inventive young writers, comes a striking new novel about death, life, and the mysterious place in between. The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten. But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who produces the City’s only newspaper, are wondering what exactly is going on. Others, like Coleman Kinzler, believe it is the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is trapped in an Antarctic research station, her supplies are running low, her radio finds only static, and the power is failing. With little choice, Laura sets out across the ice to look for help, but time is running out. Kevin Brockmeier alternates these two storylines to create a lyrical and haunting story about love, loss and the power of memory.

A Laura Byrd se le esta acabando el tiempo. Hace tres semanas que ella y dos de sus colegas se encuentran solos en uno de los lugares mas frios y remotos de la Tierra.

A Laura Bird el temps se li està acabant. Fa tres setmanes que ella i dos dels seus col·legues es troben sols en un dels llocs més freds i remots de la Terra. Els dos homes surten a buscar ajuda i de sobte Laura s’adona que mai més no tornaran. De manera

Door een wereldwijde epidemie stroomt de stad der pas-overledenen vol; ieder van hen blijkt een vrouw te kennen die op de Noordpool verblijft, waar ze uit alle macht haar leven probeert te redden.

Howie Quackenbush gets a mysterious book that allows him to transport anywhere in town by just saying the destination''s name. But soon Howie thinks there is an ulterior motive behind the unusual gift. Full-color illustrations.