New Releases by T.C. Boyle

"Keiner bringt das Talent der Menschheit, sich selbst zu versenken, so auf den Punkt wie T. C. Boyle." Financial Times »Das war der Tag, an dem die Hyäne kam, um ihn zu holen, und es spielte keine Rolle, dass es im Süden Frankreichs überhaupt keine Hyänen gab, vor allem nicht in Pont-Saint-Esprit, sie war da und wollte ihn holen.« Dreizehn neue brillante Storys vom Meister des Genres, surreal und abgründig witzig: Sie handeln von sprechenden Drohnenautos, die ihre Passagiere auf algorithmischen Routen durch die Landschaft führen, von bodenständigen Müttern, die sich mit jungen Incel-Männern anlegen, aber auch von Spaziergängen durch den kalifornischen Regen, während die Küste von Sturzfluten verwüstet wird. Kein Autor versteht es so komisch und schonungslos, ins Herz unserer aus den Fugen geratenen Gegenwart zu stechen wie T. C. Boyle.

An electric collection of new short stories from the inimitable, bestselling writer of Talk to Me and Outside Looking In In the title story of Walk Between the Raindrops, a woman sits down next to a man at a bar and claims she has ESP. In “Thirteen Days,” passengers on a cruise line are quarantined, to horrifying and hilarious effect. And “Hyena” begins simply: “That was the day the hyena came for him, and never mind that there were no hyenas in the South of France, and especially not in Pont-Saint-Esprit—it was there and it came for him.” A virtuoso of the short form, T.C. Boyle returns with an inventive, uproarious, and masterfully told collection of short stories characterized by biting satire, resonant wit, and a boundless, irrepressible imagination.

From bestselling and award-winning author T.C. Boyle, a lively, thought-provoking novel that asks us what it would be like if we could really talk to the animals When animal behaviorist Guy Schermerhorn demonstrates on a TV game show that he has taught Sam, his juvenile chimp, to speak in sign language, Aimee Villard, an undergraduate at Guy''s university, is so taken with the performance that she applies to become his assistant. A romantic and intellectual attachment soon morphs into an interspecies love triangle that pushes hard at the boundaries of consciousness and the question of what we know and how we know it. What if it were possible to speak to the members of another species—to converse with them, not just give commands or coach them but to really have an exchange of ideas and a meeting of minds? Did apes have God? Did they have souls? Did they know about death and redemption? About prayer? The economy, rockets, space? Did they miss the jungle? Did they even know what the jungle was? Did they dream? Make wishes? Hope for the future? These are some the questions T.C. Boyle asks in his wide-ranging and hilarious new novel Talk to Me, exploring what it means to be human, to communicate with another, and to truly know another person—or animal…

A provocative new novel from bestselling author T.C. Boyle exploring the first scientific and recreational forays into LSD and its mind-altering possibilities In this stirring and insightful novel, T.C. Boyle takes us back to the 1960s and to the early days of a drug whose effects have reverberated widely throughout our culture: LSD. In 1943, LSD is synthesized in Basel. Two decades later, a coterie of grad students at Harvard are gradually drawn into the inner circle of renowned psychologist and psychedelic drug enthusiast Timothy Leary. Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology Ph.D. student and his wife, Joanie, become entranced by the drug’s possibilities such that their “research” becomes less a matter of clinical trials and academic papers and instead turns into a free-wheeling exploration of mind expansion, group dynamics, and communal living. With his trademark humor and pathos, Boyle moves us through the Loneys’ initiation at one of Leary’s parties to his notorious summer seminars in Zihuatanejo until the Loneys’ eventual expulsion from Harvard and their introduction to a communal arrangement of thirty devotees—students, wives, and children—living together in a sixty-four room mansion and devoting themselves to all kinds of experimentation and questioning. Is LSD a belief system? Does it allow you to see God? Can the Loneys’ marriage—or any marriage, for that matter—survive the chaotic and sometimes orgiastic use of psychedelic drugs? Wry, witty, and wise, Outside Looking In is an ideal subject for this American master, and highlights Boyle’s acrobatic prose, detailed plots, and big ideas. It’s an utterly engaging and occasionally trippy look at the nature of reality, identity, and consciousness, as well as our seemingly infinite capacities for creativity, re-invention, and self-discovery.

A deep-dive into human behavior in an epic story of science, society, sex, and survival, from one of the greatest American novelists today, T. C. Boyle, the acclaimed, bestselling, author of the PEN/ Faulkner Award–winning World’s End and The Harder They Come. It is 1994, and in the desert near Tillman, Arizona, forty miles from Tucson, a grand experiment involving the future of humanity is underway. As climate change threatens the earth, eight scientists, four men and four women dubbed the "Terranauts," have been selected to live under glass in E2, a prototype of a possible off-earth colony. Their sealed, three-acre compound comprises five biomes—rainforest, savanna, desert, ocean, and marsh—and enough wildlife, water, and vegetation to sustain them. Closely monitored by an all-seeing Mission Control, this New Eden is the brainchild of ecovisionary Jeremiah Reed, aka G.C.—"God the Creator"—for whom the project is both an adventure in scientific discovery and a momentous publicity stunt. In addition to their roles as medics, farmers, biologists, and survivalists, his young, strapping Terranauts must impress watchful visitors and a skeptical media curious to see if E2’s environment will somehow be compromised, forcing the Ecosphere’s seal to be broken—and ending the mission in failure. As the Terranauts face increased scrutiny and a host of disasters, both natural and of their own making, their mantra: "Nothing in, nothing out," becomes a dangerously ferocious rallying cry. Told through three distinct narrators—Dawn Chapman, the mission’s pretty, young ecologist; Linda Ryu, her bitter, scheming best friend passed over for E2; and Ramsay Roothorp, E2’s sexually irrepressible Wildman—The Terranauts brings to life an electrifying, pressured world in which connected lives are uncontrollably pushed to the breaking point. With characteristic humor and acerbic wit, T.C. Boyle indelibly inhabits the perspectives of the various players in this survivalist game, probing their motivations and illuminating their integrity and fragility to illustrate the inherent fallibility of human nature itself.

Acclaimed New York Times bestselling author T.C. Boyle makes his Ecco debut with a powerful, gripping novel that explores the roots of violence and anti-authoritarianism inherent in the American character. Set in contemporary Northern California, The Harder They Come explores the volatile connections between three damaged people—an aging ex-Marine and Vietnam veteran, his psychologically unstable son, and the son''s paranoid, much older lover—as they careen towards an explosive confrontation. On a vacation cruise to Central America with his wife, seventy-year-old Sten Stensen unflinchingly kills a gun-wielding robber menacing a busload of senior tourists. The reluctant hero is relieved to return home to Fort Bragg, California, after the ordeal—only to find that his delusional son, Adam, has spiraled out of control. Adam has become involved with Sara Hovarty Jennings, a hardened member of the Sovereign Citizens’ Movement, right-wing anarchists who refuse to acknowledge the laws and regulations of the state, considering them to be false and non-applicable. Adam’s senior by some fifteen years, Sara becomes his protector and inamorata. As Adam''s mental state fractures, he becomes increasingly schizophrenic—a breakdown that leads him to shoot two people in separate instances. On the run, he takes to the woods, spurring the biggest manhunt in California history. As he explores a father’s legacy of violence and his powerlessness in relating to his equally violent son, T. C. Boyle offers unparalleled psychological insights into the American psyche. Inspired by a true story, The Harder They Come is a devastating and indelible novel from a modern master.

T. Coraghessan Boyle is regarded as one of America''s greatest living short-story writers. This publication brings together all his stories into one volume.

Set in 1795, "Water Music" is the rambunctious account of two men''s wild adventures through the gutters of London and the Scottish Highlands to their unlikely meeting in darkest Africa.

The second volume of collected short fiction from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tortilla Curtain, featuring fifty-eight short stories that “mix brilliance with high-concept pyrotechnics” (Los Angeles Times), including fourteen never-before-published tales “Whether he’s writing about survival in a wasted environment or people and animals coming unhinged, Boyle never fails to captivate, to deliver his ideas within the conveyance of first-class storytelling.”—San Francisco Chronicle By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, T.C. Boyle’s stories map a wide range of human emotions. The fifty-eight stories in this volume, gathered from Wild Child, Tooth and Claw, and After the Plague, plus fourteen marvelous new tales, reflect his mordant wit, emotional power, and exquisite prose. Along with the satires and tall tales that established his reputation, T.C. Boyle Stories II includes stories speaking to contemporary social issues, from air rage to abortion doctors, and character-driven tales of quiet power and passion. Others capture timeless themes, from first love and its consequences to confrontations with mortality, or explore the conflict between civilization and wildness. Boyle engagingly tests his characters’ emotional and physical endurance, whether a group of giants being bred as weapons of war in a fictional Latin American country, a Russian woman who ignores dire warnings in returning to her radiation-contaminated home, a hermetic writer who gets more than a break in his routine when he travels to receive a minor award, or a man in a California mountain town who goes a little too far in his concern for a widow. T.C. Boyle Stories II is a grand career statement from a writer whose creativity knows no bounds.

Es ist das Jahr 1939, und auf dem Campus der Universität Indiana ist eine Revolution ausgebrochen. Alfred Kinsey, Zoologe, beschäftigt sich mit dem sexuellen Verhalten von Männern und Frauen - rein empirisch natürlich. John Milk, Student und ehrgeiziger Provinzler, gerät in seinen Bann und in seinen engsten Forscherkreis. T. C. Boyle erzählt die Geschichte eines genialen, fanatischen Helden und porträtiert dabei die prüde und heuchlerische Gesellschaft des Amerikas der vierziger und fünfziger Jahre.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Women, a historical novel about three women’s lives on a California island On a tiny, desolate, windswept island off the coast of Southern California, two families, one in the 1880s and one in the 1930s, come to start new lives and pursue dreams of self-reliance and freedom. Their extraordinary stories, full of struggle and hope, are the subject of T. C. Boyle’s haunting new novel. Thirty-eight-year-old Marantha Waters arrives on San Miguel on New Year’s Day 1888 to restore her failing health. Joined by her husband, a stubborn, driven Civil War veteran who will take over the operation of the sheep ranch on the island, Marantha strives to persevere in the face of the hardships, some anticipated and some not, of living in such brutal isolation. Two years later their adopted teenage daughter, Edith, an aspiring actress, will exploit every opportunity to escape the captivity her father has imposed on her. Time closes in on them all and as the new century approaches, the ranch stands untenanted. And then in March 1930, Elise Lester, a librarian from New York City, settles on San Miguel with her husband, Herbie, a World War I veteran full of manic energy. As the years go on they find a measure of fulfillment and serenity; Elise gives birth to two daughters, and the family even achieves a celebrity of sorts. But will the peace and beauty of the island see them through the impending war as it had seen them through the Depression? Rendered in Boyle’s accomplished, assured voice, with great period detail and utterly memorable characters, this is a moving and dramatic work from one of America’s most talented and inventive storytellers.

''How can you talk about being civil when innocent animals are being tortured to death? Civil? I''ll be civil when the killing''s done.'' The island of Anacapa, off the coast of California, is overrun with black rats which are threatening the ancient population of ground-nesting birds. Alma Boyd Takesue of the National Park Service is the spokesperson for a campaign to exterminate these man-introduced rodents once and for all. Alma, highly self-disciplined with a stubborn streak, speaks as a conservationist, though the fact that her grandmother was once stranded on Anacapa for three weeks with nothing but thousands of crawling rats for company might explain some of her zeal. With days to go before the aerial rat-poisoning, Alma''s plan is in danger of sabotage. Dave LaJoy and Anise Reed, a pair of notorious environmental activists, are recognisable from a distance by his knotted dreadlocks and her flame-red cyclone of hair. Dave is an electronics salesman with barely-controlled rages, for whom the plight of the rats is yet another of life''s many injustices, along with lazy tramps and second-rate wine. Anise is a struggling folk singer with her own, terrible reasons for getting involved in ''the cause''. From the outset, Alma, Dave and Anise are at ideological loggerheads. But when Alma''s sights turn to the infestation of non-native pigs on Santa Cruz - where Anise was brought up by her single mother and a clan of ranchers - the stakes are raised, and the debate threatens to boil over into something much more real... When the Killing''s Done is T.C. Boyle''s blistering new novel, a sweeping epic of family, ecology and the right to life - no matter what the fallout.

A superb new collection from ''a writer who can take you anywhere'' (The New York Times) .

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Tortilla Curtain comes “a tense thriller” (San Francisco) about a woman in desperate pursuit of the man who has stolen her identity. “Boyle takes the reader on a wild ride. . . . No one writes better about the wages of American sin.”—The New York Times Book Review There’s more than one way to take a life . . . It was not until their first date that Bridger Martin learned that Dana Halter’s deafness was profound and permanent. By then he was falling in love. Now she is in a courtroom, accused of assault with a deadly weapon, auto theft, and passing bad checks, among other things. As Dana and Bridger eventually learn, William “Peck” Wilson has stolen Dana’s identity and has been living a blameless life of criminal excess at her expense. And as they set out to find him, they began to test to its very limits the life they have begun to build together. Both a suspenseful chase across America and a moving story about language, love, and identity, Talk Talk is a masterful, mind-bending novel from one of America’s most versatile and entertaining writers.

A “fierce [and] funny” (Entertainment Weekly) collection of fourteen stories exploring humanity’s wild side, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tortilla Curtain “Whether Boyle is breaking your heart or making you laugh, you just don’t care because he is so darned good at it.”—San Francisco Chronicle The fourteen stories gathered here display Boyle’s imaginative muscle, emotional sensitivity, and astonishing range. There are whimsical tales, including “Swept Away,” which tells of a female ornithologist who falls in love on the blustery island of Unst, and “The Kind Assassin,” about a bored and loveless radio shock jock who sets the world record for most continuous hours without sleep—and who may never sleep again. In the title story, a young man must contend with a vicious feral cat from Africa that he won in a bar bet. And in “Dogology,” a young woman in suburban New England becomes so obsessed with man’s best friend that she begins to lose her own identity to a pack of strays. Muscular, provocative, and blurring the boundaries between humans and nature, the funny and the shocking, Tooth and Claw is Boyle at his best.

New York Times bestselling author T.C. Boyle speaks to a brand-new audience in this anthology of his classic, richly imagined short fiction about teenagers. His many, varied novels are part of the American literary landscape—but one of the best ways to appreciate T. C. Boyle is through his richly imagined short fiction. Boyle''s kaleidoscopic humor and wit, his keen, unforgiving take on American life, and his all-too-human protagonists all combine to make his a singular voice. Here is a collection of classic Boyle stories about teenagers (including the O. Henry Award-winning "The Love of My Life") that will speak directly to them, as well as to anyone who was once a teenager. Includes the previously uncollected story, "Almost Shooting an Elephant." "Boyle repeatedly demonstrates his masterful grasp of human nature, exposing his characters'' foibles and eccentricities."—Publishers Weekly

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the award–winning author of The Tortilla Curtain comes “a fascinating, fictional rendering of what life might have been like doing research for infamous sex professor Alfred Kinsey” (Chicago Tribune). “A biting satire of emotional manipulation, sexual indiscretion, and scientific hubris.”—The Boston Globe A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune In 1940, John Milk, a virginal young man, accepts a job as an assistant to Dr. Alfred Kinsey, and extraordinarily charming professor of zoology at Indiana University who has just discovered his life’s true calling: sex. As a member of Kinsey’s “inner circle” of researchers, Milk and his beautiful new wife are called on to participate in sexual experiments that become increasingly uninhibited—and problematic for his marriage. For in his later years, Kinsey, who behind closed doors is a sexual enthusiast of the first order, ever more recklessly pushed the boundaries both personally and professionally. At heart a moving and compassionate look at sex, marriage, jealousy, and infidelity, The Inner Circle makes use of Alfred Kinsey’s controversial studies on human sexuality to create an irresistible tale about the interaction between our human and animal natures.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • From the award–winning author of The Tortilla Curtain comes a “gorgeously crafted epic” (People) about a band of hippies who attempt to establish themselves deep in the wilderness of Alaska. “Not only an entertaining romp through the madness of the countercultural ’70s, but a stirring parable about the American dream as well.”—The New York Times It is 1970, and a down-at-the-heels California commune devoted to peace, free love, and the simple life has decided to relocate to the last frontier—the unforgiving landscape of interior Alaska—in the ultimate expression of going back to the land. Armed with the spirit of adventure and naïve optimism, the inhabitants of “Drop City” arrive in the wilderness of Alaska only to find their utopia already populated by other young homesteaders. When the two communities collide, unexpected friendships and dangerous enmities are born as everyone struggles with the bare essentials of life: love, nourishment, and a roof over one’s head. Drop City is a surprising story that reveals human behavior at its rawest, most tender, and most compelling. It is also a rich, allusive, and unsentimental look at the ideals of a generation and their impact on today’s radically transformed world. Above all, it’s an epic and gripping novel infused with the lyricism and take-no-prisoners storytelling for which T.C. Boyle is justly famous.

Few authors in America write with such sheer love of story, language, and imagination as T.C. Boyle, and nowhere is that passion more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and widely praised short stories. In After the Plague, Boyle speaks of contemporary social issues in a range of emotional keys. The sixteen stories gathered here address everything from air rage to abortion doctors to first love and its consequences. The collection ends with the brilliant title story, a whimsical and imaginative vision of a disease-ravaged Earth. Presented with characteristic wit and intelligence, these stories will delight readers in search of the latest news of the chaotic, disturbing, and achingly beautiful world in which we live. "Boyle''s imagination and zeal for storytelling are in top form here."—Publishers Weekly

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • “A flamboyant meditation on love in all of its absurdity and all its undeniability” (The Mercury News) set during America’s age of innocence—and against a backdrop of wealth and privilege—from the award–winning author of The Tortilla Curtain “As romantic as it is informative, as colorful as it is convincing. Boyle combines his gift for historical re-creation with his dazzling powers as a storyteller.”—The Boston Globe It is the dawn of the twentieth century when the beautiful, budding feminist Katherine Dexter falls in love with Stanley McCormick, son of a millionaire inventor. The two wed, but before the marriage is consummated, Stanley experiences a nervous breakdown and is diagnosed as a schizophrenic sex maniac. Stanley is locked up in his family’s Santa Barbara mansion and forbidden the mere sight of women—above all, his wife. Throughout her career as a scientist and a suffragette, Katherine’s faith never waiters: that, one day, one of the many psychiatrists she hires to try to cure her husband will free him of his demons. Blending social history with some of the most deliciously dark humor ever written, T.C. Boyle employs his hallmark virtuoso prose to tell the story of a love affair that is as extraordinary as it is unforgettable.

T.C. Boyle’s “irresistible” (Entertainment Weekly) classic bestseller, a tragicomic novel about assimilation, immigration, and the price of the American dream “A masterpiece of contemporary social satire.” —The Wall Street Journal WINNER OF THE PRIX MÉDICIS ÉTRANGER Topanga Canyon is home to two couples on a collision course. Los Angeles liberals Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher lead an ordered sushi-and-recycling existence in a newly gated hilltop community: he a sensitive nature writer, she an obsessive realtor. Undocumented immigrants Cándido and América Rincón desperately cling to their vision of the American Dream as they fight off starvation in a makeshift camp deep in the ravine. And from the moment a freak accident brings Cándido and Delaney into intimate contact, these four and their opposing worlds gradually intersect in what becomes a dramatic comedy of error and prejudice.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • From the award–winning author of The Tortilla Curtain comes fifteen “gloriously comic . . . stories [that] are more than funny, better than wicked” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). “Fifteen sterling tales marked . . . by a keen sense of the absurd and a . . . compassionate awareness of human frailty.”—The Washington Post The stunning stories in Without a Hero each, in their own way, display a virtuosity and versatility rare in literary America. T.C. Boyle takes chance after chance, even to the point of reexamining the ethos of Ernest Hemingway. In “Big Game,” the wild animal safari takes place not in Africa but on a pay-per-shoot ranch in Southern California and includes an elephant hunt and its vivid consequences. Boyle displays an astonishing range as he zooms in on such American specimens as the college football player who knows only defeat; the entrepreneur who creates a center for acquisitive disorders; the couple in search of the last toads on earth; and the boy caught between the ingenuousness of childhood and the cynicism of adulthood in “The Fog Man.” In some of these stories, Boyle makes you laugh out loud; in others, you come closer to understanding the human condition because of the way he cuts to the secret places in his peoples’ hearts.

In this “wildly funny” (People) novel, an eccentric cast of characters navigates a world obsessed with health and longevity—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tortilla Curtain. “Boyle’s send-up of dietary fanaticism cleverly reminds us of the extremes to which Americans will go in pursuit of perfection.”—Glamour The year is 1907, and the boom town of Battle Creek, Michigan, is attracting a formidable array of visitors—the rich, the preposterously rich, and the merely famous, from California, Chicago, New York, and even Europe. What draws them to this place? And what inspires them to trade in their steaks and oysters, their martinis and champagne, for a diet of bran and yogurt and a regimen of five enemas a day? Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, of course, inventor of the corn flake, peanut butter, and the coffee substitutes that have ruined so many a bright morning. Will Lightbody is a man with an undiagnosed stomach ailment whose only sin is loving his wife too much. Eleanor Lightbody, despite her upper-crust credentials, her capability and beauty, is a health nut of the first stripe—and when she journeys to Dr. Kellogg’s infamous Battle Creek Spa to live out the vegetarian ethos, poor Will goes too. Wickedly comedic, The Road to Wellville overflows with a Dickensian cast of characters—all in search of the magic pill to prolong their lives, or the profit to be had from manufacturing it.

Seventeen short stories from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tortilla Curtain, “the sort of writer who inspires even poker-faced writers to grin and start dusting off their superlatives” (The Washington Post Book World). “Descent of Man is loaded with energetic language. . . . Boyle is capable of the sublime.”—The New York Times Book Review In seventeen slices of life that defy the expected and launch us into the absurd, T.C. Boyle offers his unique view of the world. A primate-center researcher becomes romantically involved with a chimp; a Norse poet overcomes bard-block; collectors compete to snare the ancient Aztec beer can, Quetzalcóatl Lite; and Lassie abandons Timmy for a randy coyote. Dark humor, delirious fantasy, and surreal satire come together in this collection that brilliantly expresses just what the “evolution” of mankind has wrought.

Haunted by the burden of his family''s traitorous past, woozy with pot, cheap wine and sex, and disturbed by a frighteningly real encounter with some family ghosts, Walter van Brunt is about to have a collision with history. It will lead Walter to search for his lost father. And it will send the story into the past of the Hudson River Valley, from the late 1960''s back to the anticommunist riots of the 1940''s to the late seventeenth century, where the long-hidden secrets of three families--the aristocratic van Warts, the Native-American Mohonks, and Walter''s own ancestors, the van Brunts--will be revealed.

An “irresistible” (Los Angeles Times), “riotous” (The Seattle Times) novel about the adventures of three men growing marijuana in Northern California, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tortilla Curtain “Consistently, effortlessly, intelligently funny.”—The New York Times All Felix Nasmyth and friends have to do is harvest a crop of Cannabis sativa and half a million tax-free dollars will be theirs. But they haven’t reckoned on nosy Northern California–style neighbors, torrential rain, demands of the flesh, and Felix’s improbable new love, a wayward sculptress on whose behalf he undertakes a one-man vendetta against a drug-busting state trooper named Jerpbak. As their deal escalates through crises into nightmare, their dreams of easy money get nipped in the bud.

In sixteen stories, T.C. Boyle tears through the walls of contemporary society to reveal a world at once comic and tragic, droll and horrific. Boyle introduces us to a death-defying stuntman who rides across the country strapped to the axle of a Peterbilt, and to a retired primatologist who can’t adjust to the “civilized” world. He chronicles the state of romance that requires full-body protection in a disease-conscious age and depicts with aching tenderness the relationship between a young boy and his alcoholic father. These magical and provocative stories mark yet another virtuoso performance from one of America’s most supple and electric literary inventors.

Mythic and realist, farcical and tragic, these fifteen “fables of contemporary life [are] so funny and acutely observed that they might have been written [for] Saturday Night Live” (The New York Times)—from the award–winning author of The Tortilla Curtain. “Boyle . . . owns a ferocious, delicious imagination, often darkly satirical and always infatuated with language.”—The Los Angeles Times Book Review In “The Hector Quesadilla Story,” T.C. Boyle writes of an aging Latin ballplayer, long past his best stuff, who on his birthday is put into an endless rotation in a game that goes on forever; in “All Shook Up,” he tells of the doomed affair between his narrator and the sweet, feckless wife of an aspiring Elvis Presley look-alike; in “On for the Long Haul,” he describes the grim scenarios enacted by a credulous survivalist and his family in their nuclear-holocaust-proof haven in the sticks; and in the title story, he portrays a terrifying and violent encounter between a bunch of late-adolescent layabouts and a murderous drug-dealing biker.