New Releases by Richard Ford

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Independence Day and The Sportswriter brings back the unforgettable Frank Bascombe in this astonishing meditation on modern-day America. A sportswriter and a real estate agent, husband and father—Frank Bascombe has been many things to many people. His uncertain youth behind him, we follow him through three days during the autumn of 2000, when his trade as a realtor on the Jersey Shore is thriving. But as a presidential election hangs in the balance, and a post-nuclear-family Thanksgiving looms before him, Frank discovers that what he terms “the Permanent Period” is fraught with unforeseen perils. An astonishing meditation on America today and filled with brilliant insights, The Lay of the Land is a magnificent achievement from one of the most celebrated chroniclers of our time. Also available in the Bascombe Trilogy: The Sportswriter and Independence Day

A tense and brutal yet moving tale unfolds on an uncharted hunting island in the Mississippi.

En El Día de la Independencia, Richard Ford recupera a Frank Bascombe, protagonista de El periodista deportivo. Es el verano de 1988, Frank sigue viviendo en Haddam, Nueva Jersey, pero ahora se dedica al negocio inmobiliario y, tras el divorcio, mantiene una relación sentimental con otra mujer, Sally. Mientras busca una casa para unos insoportables clientes, Frank aguarda ilusionado la llegada del fin de semana del 4 de julio, Día de la Independencia, que va a pasar en compañía de Paul, su conflictivo hijo adolescente. Ford retoma a su antihéroe y lo lanza a una nueva aventura cotidiana, en la que se entremezclan desolación, melancolía, humor y esperanza.

Frank Bascombe tiene treinta y ocho años y un magnífico porvenir como escritor a sus espaldas. Disfrutó de un breve instante de gloria, tras la publicación de un libro de cuentos. Ahora escribe sobre deportes y entrevista a atletas. Escribir sobre victorias y derrotas, sobre triunfadores del futuro o del ayer le ha permitido aprender una escueta lección: «En la vida no hay temas trascendentales. Las cosas suceden y luego se acaban, y eso es todo.» Lección que podría aplicarse a su fugaz fama como escritor, a su breve matrimonio o a la corta vida de su hijo mayor, Ralph, que murió a los nueve años. Un implacable testimonio de los desencantos inevitables, de la corrosión de las ambiciones, del aprendizaje de los placeres mínimos que permiten sobrevivir.

The Pulitzer-Prize Winning novel for 1996.In this visionary sequel to The Sportswriter, Richard Ford deepens his portrait of one of the most unforgettable characters in American fiction, and in so doing gives us an indelible portrait of America.Frank Bascombe, in the aftermath of his divorce and the ruin of his career, has entered an "Existence Period," selling real estate in Haddam, New Jersey, and mastering the high-wire act of normalcy. But over one Fourth of July weekend, Frank is called into sudden, bewildering engagement with life.Independence Day is a moving, peerlessly funny odyssey through America and through the layered consciousness of one of its most compelling literary incarnations, conducted by a novelist of astonishing empathy and perception.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Independence Day and The Sportswriter comes a novel of menace and eroticism set in Oaxaca, Mexico. • "His prose has a taut, cinematic quality that bathes his story with the same hot, mercilessly white light that scorches Mexico." —The New York Times Book Review In this novel, Richard Ford updates the tradition of Conrad for the age of cocaine smuggling. Harry Quinn has come to free his girlfriend''s brother, Sonny, from jail and, ideally, to get him away form the suavely sadistic drug dealer who suspects Sonny of having cheated him.