T. C. Boyle

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK - A lyrical and intimate novel following two families as they struggle to heal, from the award-winning author of The Tortilla Curtain "Boyle portrays the heartbreaking toll San Miguel takes on these couples in a novel as beguiling as the island itself."--O, The Oprah Magazine Just off the coast of Southern California, two families--one in the late 1880s and one in the 1930s--come to desolate, windswept San Miguel Island in search of self-reliance, freedom, and a new start in their lives. In failing health, Marantha Waters arrives with her husband, a stubborn Civil War veteran who plans to take over the island's sheep ranch. Some forty years later, Elise Lester settles the island with her husband, a World War I veteran full of manic energy. Both Marantha and Elise strive to help their husbands pursue their dreams but must themselves grapple with the more nebulous hardships of raising a family in brutal isolation.

The joyfully freewheeling, funny and profound new novel from â??one of the most inventive, adventurous and accomplished fiction writers in the US todayâ?? (Lionel Shriver)

Denied a dog, a baby, and even a faithful fianc , Cat suddenly craves a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like "jewelry, living jewelry" to match her black jeans. But when the budding social media star promptly loses the young "Burmie" she buys from a local pet store, she inadvertently sets in motion a chain of increasingly dire and outrageous events that comes to threaten her very survival. "Brilliantly imaginative . . . in a terrifying way" (Annie Proulx), Blue Skies follows in the tradition of T. C. Boyle's finest novels, combining high-octane plotting with mordant wit and shrewd social commentary. Here Boyle, one of the most inventive voices in contemporary fiction, transports us to water-logged and heat-ravaged coastal America, where Cat and her hapless, nature-loving family--including her eco-warrior parents, Ottilie and Frank; her brother, Cooper, an entomologist; and her frat-boy-turned-husband, Todd--are struggling to adapt to the "new normal," in which once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters happen once a week and drinking seems to be the only way to cope. But there's more than meets the eye to this compulsive family drama. Lurking beneath the banal fa ade of twenty-first-century Californians and Floridians attempting to preserve normalcy in the face of violent weather perturbations is a caricature of materialist American society that doubles as a prophetic warning about our planet's future. From pet bees and cricket-dependent diets to massive species die-off and pummeling hurricanes, Blue Skies deftly explores the often volatile relationships between humans and their habitats, in which "the only truism seems to be that things always get worse." An eco-thriller with teeth, Boyle's Blue Skies is at once a tragicomic satire and a prescient novel that captures the absurdity and "inexpressible sadness at the heart of everything."

An electric collection of new short stories from the inimitable, bestselling writer of Talk to Me and Outside Looking InIn 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.

The joyfully freewheeling, funny and profound new novel from ‘one of the most inventive, adventurous and accomplished fiction writers in the US today’ (Lionel Shriver) Welcome to America. On the east coast, homes are being swallowed by the ocean; on the west coast, California is engulfed with wildfire. But for one family, the impending environmental disaster is the least of their worries. Party girl Cat just impulse-purchased a snake; her pious brother Cooper is wrestling with a tic bite; and their mom Ottilie has resorted to cooking with crickets. Everyone is drinking too much – and the bugs seems to be disappearing. It seems as if it's anything but blue skies ahead... A delightfully dark comedy of manners about family life at the end of the world, Blue Skies is a masterful new adventure from one of the America’s great comic writers. _______________ 'Always enjoyable, virtually incapable of dullness or slack sentences … His stories reveal truths about modern life while still feeling beautifully invented' - NEW YORK TIMES 'A virtuoso craftsman' - ANNIE PROULX 'Boyle is a writer who chooses a large canvas and fills it to the edges' - BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Denied a dog, a baby, and even a faithful fianc , Cat suddenly craves a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like "jewelry, living jewelry" to match her black jeans. But when the budding social media star promptly loses the young "Burmie" she buys from a local pet store, she inadvertently sets in motion a chain of increasingly dire and outrageous events that comes to threaten her very survival. "Brilliantly imaginative . . . in a terrifying way" (Annie Proulx), Blue Skies follows in the tradition of T. C. Boyle's finest novels, combining high-octane plotting with mordant wit and shrewd social commentary. Here Boyle, one of the most inventive voices in contemporary fiction, transports us to water-logged and heat-ravaged coastal America, where Cat and her hapless, nature-loving family--including her eco-warrior parents, Ottilie and Frank; her brother, Cooper, an entomologist; and her frat-boy-turned-husband, Todd--are struggling to adapt to the "new normal," in which once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters happen once a week and drinking seems to be the only way to cope. But there's more than meets the eye to this compulsive family drama. Lurking beneath the banal fa ade of twenty-first-century Californians and Floridians attempting to preserve normalcy in the face of violent weather perturbations is a caricature of materialist American society that doubles as a prophetic warning about our planet's future. From pet bees and cricket-dependent diets to massive species die-off and pummeling hurricanes, Blue Skies deftly explores the often volatile relationships between humans and their habitats, in which "the only truism seems to be that things always get worse." An eco-thriller with teeth, Boyle's Blue Skies is at once a tragicomic satire and a prescient novel that captures the absurdity and "inexpressible sadness at the heart of everything."

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 animalsWhen 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...

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 animalsWhen 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...