Curtis Bauer

A brilliant, unsettling collection of 18 stories about deception, translation, loneliness, and connection, from one of Mexico's greatest modern writers. Why is grass in airports so important? Can you be an extraordinary copyist without knowing how to read or write? Are there successful musicians who only play a single note in their life? Book after book, Fabio Mor bito's stories have become increasingly radical in their way of showing us that imagination is not a curious feature of the mind, but perhaps the only way to not feel excluded from the real world. With prose free of unnecessary explanation and descriptive embellishments, The Shadow of the Mammoth insists once again on the guiding principle of Mor bito's work: playing fair with the reader, who advances in reading these stories as he did when writing them, open to any direction they could take. For this reason, these stories are as unexpected as they are different from each other, all united by that pleasure of storytelling that has always been Mor bito's unmistakable hallmark.

Heady and unsettling, a couple's new life in Lisbon unravels in this psychological thriller from one of Spain's most celebrated writers. A man travels to Lisbon ahead of his wife to prepare their newly purchased home, while she stays in New York to oversee a research project on the neuroscience of memory and fear. Leaving behind a phase of their relationship indelibly marked by 9/11, he revels in the Portuguese capital's temperate weather and the neighborhood's calm, meticulously planning the details of their future. Yet beneath the peace and quiet of this routine, he feels a growing unease he can't explain. Is it the similarity between the two cities, and the two apartments? A mysterious threat waiting in the wings? A brilliant, deceptively simple novel of psychological suspense, Your Steps on the Stairs explores how our emotions and memories shape our perception of reality. With his subtle, masterful style, Antonio Mu oz Molina lays bare the fragility of the stories we so carefully craft about ourselves.

A collection of the best short stories by the author of the unforgettable novel The Postman. Each of the stories in this book is an extraordinary piece of literature. Love, youth, desire, and freedom, coupled with versatile prose, sensitivity, and a subtle irony that sometimes morphs into dark humor, confirm Antonio Sk rmeta's position as one of the greatest storytellers in contemporary literature. Juan Villoro has selected and written a prologue for this collection, originally published in five books that influenced an entire generation of writers and brought about a renewal of Latin American prose.

Drawing from everyday life in Mexico and abroad, these subtle, unsettling stories probe the boundaries between sanity and madness, life and death, safety and danger. The first story collection from prize-winning author Fabio Mor bito available in English, Mothers and Dogs features fifteen tales that show the emotional extremes in seemingly trivial details and quotidian situations: two brothers worry more about a dog locked in an apartment who hasn't been fed than they do about their dying mother; when the lights go out on a racetrack, a man's evening jog turns into a savage battle between runners; a daughter learns to draft business letters as an homage to her mother. As he deftly explores feelings of loneliness and despair endemic in modern society, Mor bito weaves threads of unexpected humor and lightness.

In this poignant novel, a man guilty of a minor offense finds purpose unexpectedly by way of his punishment--reading to others. After an accident--or "the misfortune," as his cancer-ridden father's caretaker, Celeste, calls it--Eduardo is sentenced to a year of community service reading to the elderly and disabled. Stripped of his driver's license and feeling impotent as he nears thirty-five, he leads a dull, lonely life, chatting occasionally with the waitresses of a local restaurant or walking the streets of Cuernavaca. Once a quiet town known for its lush gardens and swimming pools, the "City of Eternal Spring" is now plagued by robberies, kidnappings, and the other myriad forms of violence bred by drug trafficking. At first, Eduardo seems unable to connect. He movingly reads the words of Dostoyevsky, Henry James, Daphne du Maurier, and more, but doesn't truly understand them. His eccentric listeners--including two brothers, one mute, who moves his lips while the other acts as ventriloquist; deaf parents raising children they don't know are hearing; and a beautiful, wheelchair-bound mezzo soprano--sense his detachment. Then Eduardo comes across a poem his father had copied by the Mexican poet Isabel Fraire, and it affects him as no literature has before. Through these fascinating characters, like the practical, quick-witted Celeste, who intuitively grasps poetry even though she never learned to read, Fabio Mor bito shows how art can help us rediscover meaning in a corrupt, unequal society.

Poetry. In this beautifully balanced, elegiac book Curtis Bauer revisits the American sublime and restores to us, in our battered, bewildered moment, its clarity and dignity and honor. These are poems of an enduring human accuracy and a restrained, muted joy.--Vijay Seshadri

Poetry. "Curtis Bauer is precise about birds, be they crows, chimney swifts, sparrows, swallows, starlings, cardinals, doves, or grackles. Like Robert Frost, he knows the phoebe doesn't weep, for like him he is deeply versed in country things. But Bauer is wide-ranging and doesn't make a moral distinction between Iowa and New York, any more than he does between America and Spain, where he lives part of the year. He is one of the most tender new poets I know, yet when the subject calls for it, he can be as harsh as necessary, for he is a keen observer, and he is sane, a sane realist with a vivid imagination." Gerald Stern"Velocity, vigor, heartbreak and vibrancy: you'll find all that and more in THE REAL CAUSE FOR YOUR ABSENCE. This book is full of astounding surprises. Sometimes Curtis Bauer plays sentence against line to shake things up before he sets everything right. Sometimes, with just a word, he knocks you out." Camille T. Dungy"

"It isn't often you come across poetry that makes you want to turn to the stranger next to you on the bus, grab him by the collar, and say, 'You have to read this ' Stern's encompassing embrace allows us to step into his delirium and experience both." Deborah Garrison (The New Yorker) No es frecuente encontrarse con poes a que haga que quieras volverte hacia un desconocido en el autob s, agarrarlo por la solapa y decirle: "Tienes que leer esto". La profundidad del abrazo po tico de Stern nos permite sumergirnos tanto en su delirio como en su sabidur a. Deborah Garrison (The New Yorker)

Poetry. FENCE LINE is a terrific first book by a young poet with a uniquevoice and burgeoning powers --Thomas Lux. Curtis Bauer's poems are as abundant in feeling and imaginative energy as the soil of his native Midwest is abundant in natural life--Vijay Seshadri.