Kirjahaku

With the publication of 1983's The Annunciation, Ellen Gilchrist established herself as a teller of charming, bittersweet tales of the modern South. Since then, her works of fiction - sixteen in all - have built up a solid base of dedicated fans. With her uncanny insights into human character and the bittersweet complications of love, Ellen Gilchrist occupies a unique place in American fiction.

A single-volume anthology of Nora Jane Harwood stories follows the character from her scrappy adolescence in New Orleans through her eccentric life as a wife, mother, and independent spirit in California.

With the publication of 1983's The Annunciation, Ellen Gilchrist established herself as a teller of charming, bittersweet tales of the modern South. Since then, her works of fiction - sixteen in all - have built up a solid base of dedicated fans. With her uncanny insights into human character and the bittersweet complications of love, Ellen Gilchrist occupies a unique place in American fiction.

The "funny, wise, and wonderful" (USA Today) book of short stories that won the National Book Award and established Ellen Gilchrist as a leading writer of the American South. In her second collection, Ellen Gilchrist creates an unforgettable group of Southern women, enchanted and enchanting, who cavort through life, in and out of bars, marriages, and divorces, through the world of art and culture, drug busts, lovers' arms, and even earthquakes, in an attempt to find, if not happiness, at least some satisfaction. Throughout these stories, one hears echoes of Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty, but Ms. Gilchrist has her own unique literary voice -- and it is outrageously funny, moving, tragic, and always appealing. "Ellen Gilchrist is terrific." --Norman Mailer"This book is a delight." --Cleveland Plain Dealer

Enhanced with fifteen new essays, the benchmark of an acclaimed writer's spunk and sense of place Ellen Gilchrist has amassed a nationwide following, and her readers eagerly anticipate each new short story collection and novel. The sassy and moving commentaries she recorded for National Public Radio were a large part of the original kindling for this intense interest. In Falling Through Space the spark that first attracted this audience flashes again in fifty-eight short essays drawn from those enormously successful broadcasts. To update and continue the dialogue she has always maintained with her fans, Gilchrist has added fifteen new essays. Originally published in 1987 by Little, Brown and Company, Falling Through Space provides a funny and intimate diary of a writer's self-discovery. Author of more than a dozen books and winner of the National Book Award, Gilchrist is a beloved and distinctive southern voice whose life and memories are every bit as entertaining as the wild and poignant short stories for which she is famous. The short essays that anchor this book vividly explore the Mississippi plantation life of her childhood; the books, teachers, and artists who influenced her development; and her thoughts about writing and life in general. Coupled with forty-two pictures from Gilchrist's youth and adulthood, these slices of life create a running autobiography. In new essays, originally published in such magazines as Vogue, Outside, New Woman, and the Washington Post Sunday Magazine, Gilchrist reveals her origins, influences, and the way she works when she writes. Required reading for any fan, this book is Ellen Gilchrist at her funniest and best. For her readers it confirms her spontaneity and her talent for finding life at its zaniest and brightest. Ellen Gilchrist is the author of several collections of short stories and novellas including: The Cabal and Other Stories, Flights of Angels, The Age of Miracles, The Courts of Love, In the Land of Dreamy Dreams, Victory Over Japan (winner of the National Book Award), Drunk With Love, and I Cannot Get You Close Enough. She has also written several novels, including The Anna Papers, Net of Jewels, Starcarbon, and Sarah Conley. Her 1994 novel, Anabasis: A Journey to the Interior, was published by University Press of Mississippi. She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

In her 1981 collection of stories, In the Land of Dreamy Dreams, Ellen Gilchrist writes about New Orleans as no other writer. Laced with envy, greed, lust, terror, and self-deceit, her stories will shock and compel readers. Gilchrist's characters, women who dream of independent lives beyond the shadows of their husbands and fathers, resort to outrageous schemes in pursuit of freedom and fulfillment, despite the consequences. The range of emotions and realities encompassed by Gilchrist's work is suggested by the story titles: ""Rich,"" ""There's a Garden of Eden,"" ""The Famous Poll at Jody's Bar,"" ""In the Land of Dreamy Dreams,"" ""Suicides,"" ""1957, a Romance,"" ""Generous Pieces,"" ""Indignities,"" ""Revenge,"" ""Perils of the Nile,"" ""Traveler,"" and ""Summer, an Elegy.

The winner of the National Book Award returns with a moving story of a family of women drawn together by the trials of the times. The women in the Hand family are no strangers to either controversy or sadness. Those traits seem, in fact, to be a part of their family's heritage, one that stretches back through several generations and many wars. A Dangerous Age is a celebration of the strength of these women and of the bonds of blood and shared loss that hold them together. Louise, Winifred, and Olivia are reconnecting the pieces of their lives and rediscovering love, but each is unwittingly on a collision course with a seemingly distant war that is really never more than a breath away. By turns humorous and heartbreaking, this finely honed novel about the centuries-old struggle for women who are left to carry on with life when their men go off to war is by a writer the Washington Post says "should be declared a national cultural treasure."

In her first story collection in over eight years, National Book Award winner Ellen Gilchrist presents readers with ten different scenarios in which people dealing with forces beyond their control somehow manage to survive, persevere, and triumph, even if it is only a triumph of the will. From the very young to the very old, in one way or another, they are fighters and believers, survivors who find the strength to go on when faced with the truth of their mortality. And they are given vivid life in these stories told with Ellen Gilchrist's clear-eyed optimism and salty sense of humor. "Reading Ellen Gilchrist is addictive . . . Her new work is filled with good people who show fortitude and even heroism under duress . . . In this age of edgy irony, her warm-hearted view of humanity is refreshing." --NPR.org "Gilchrist manages to cut through the loud tussle of the world to present truths made even more striking by how conventional they are . . . The stories in Acts of God are great postcards from the world of Ellen Gilchrist. It's a world of war and strife and surprises, and it is, yes, marvelous to behold." --The New York Times Book Review "Refreshing, engaging, and inspiring." --Library Journal "Beautiful, smart, phenomenally rich."--Booklist, starred review "Gilchrist is at her best when the wry and satirical mood strikes her, especially when she is pricking the balloons of pride that the white Southern upper middle class inflates in its own honor . . . The best of the stories in Acts of God rank with the best in her first collection and in her second, Victory Over Japan, for which she was awarded a richly deserved National Book Award." --The Washington Post "The salty wit of her] characters will make you laugh; their bravery can be breathtaking."--Birmingham magazine