Collected Fictions Vol. 2

Please see also: Collected fictions – Volume 1 and Selection of short stories read by Gordon Lish.

This definitive collection of Lish’s short work includes a new foreword by the author and 106 stories, many of which Lish has revised exclusively for this edition. His observations are in turn achingly sad and wryly funny as they spark recognition of our common, clumsy humanity. There are no heroes here, except, perhaps, for all of us, as we muddle our way through life: these are stories of unfaithful husbands, inadequate fathers, restless children and men lost in their middle age: more often than not first-person tales narrated by one “Gordon Lish.” The take on life is bemused, satirical, and relentlessly accurate; the language unadorned. The result is a model of modernist prose and a volume of enduring literary craftsmanship.

The second volume includes the stories from “After the Beanstalk” to “How the Sophist Got Spotted”.

Cover image adapted from a photo by Lainey Powell.

Collected Fictions Vol. 1

Please see also: Collected Fictions – Volume 2 and Selection of short stories read by Gordon Lish.

This definitive collection of Lish’s short work includes a new foreword by the author and 106 stories, many of which Lish has revised exclusively for this edition. His observations are in turn achingly sad and wryly funny as they spark recognition of our common, clumsy humanity. There are no heroes here, except, perhaps, for all of us, as we muddle our way through life: these are stories of unfaithful husbands, inadequate fathers, restless children and men lost in their middle age: more often than not first-person tales narrated by one “Gordon Lish.” The take on life is bemused, satirical, and relentlessly accurate; the language unadorned. The result is a model of modernist prose and a volume of enduring literary craftsmanship.

The first volume includes the stories from “How to Write a Poem” to “Fish Story”.

Cover image adapted from a photo by Lainey Powell.

Collected Fictions

This audiobook includes both volumes of the Collected Fictions, as well as a FREE audiobook of a selection of short stories narrated by Gordon Lish himself.

Each volume is also available separately for purchase. Just follow the links below!
– Collected Fictions Vol. 1
– Collected Fictions Vol. 2
Selection of Short Stories read by Gordon Lish

This definitive collection of Lish’s short work includes a new foreword by the author and 106 stories, many of which Lish has revised exclusively for this edition. His observations are in turn achingly sad and wryly funny as they spark recognition of our common, clumsy humanity. There are no heroes here, except, perhaps, for all of us, as we muddle our way through life: these are stories of unfaithful husbands, inadequate fathers, restless children and men lost in their middle age: more often than not first-person tales narrated by one “Gordon Lish.” The take on life is bemused, satirical, and relentlessly accurate; the language unadorned. The result is a model of modernist prose and a volume of enduring literary craftsmanship.

Cover image adapted from a photo by Lainey Powell.

Fire Logic (Elemental Logic Book 1)

This is the first book of the Elemental Logic series. The second book is Earth Logic.

Earth * Air * Water * Fire

These elements have sustained the peaceful people of Shaftal for generations, with their subtle powers of healing, truth, joy, and intuition.

But now, Shaftal is dying.

The earth witch who ruled Shaftal is dead, leaving no heir. Shaftal’s ruling house has been scattered by the invading Sainnites. The Shaftali have mobilized a guerrilla army against these marauders, but every year the cost of resistance grows, leaving Shaftal’s fate in the hands of three people: Emil, scholar and reluctant warrior; Zanja, the sole survivor of a slaughtered tribe; and Karis the metalsmith, a half-blood giant whose earth powers can heal, but only when she can muster the strength to hold off her addiction to a deadly drug.

Separately, all they can do is watch as Shaftal falls from prosperity into lawlessness and famine. But if they can find a way to work together, they just may change the course of history.

Original background cover art by Big Grey Mare.

Amphibian

Nine-year-old Phineas William Walsh has an encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world. He knows that if you wet a dog’s food with your saliva and he refuses to eat it then he’s top dog, and he knows that dolphins can sleep half a brain at a time. What he doesn’t know, though, is why his grandfather died, or why waste-of-flesh Lyle always picks on him. Or why his parents can’t live together — after all, when other mate-for-life animals have a fight, it’s not like one of them just packs his bags and leaves the country.

To make it to-infinity worse, he’s worried sick about what humans are doing to the planet, and his mother is worried sick about him. But shouldn’t everyone be losing sleep over the fact that a quarter of all Earth’s mammals are on the Red List of Threatened Species? So, when a White’s tree frog ends up in an aquarium in his fourth-grade classroom, it’s the last straw, and he and his best friend, Bird, are spurred to action.

Around the World in Stilettos

Twenty Three year old Sophie Farrier has everything a girl could want; the perfect job, the perfect flat and the perfect set of friends. As a travel writer, Sophie gets to fly around the world, meet new people, see new places and most importantly buy more shoes! When she is home her life speeds past in a blur of boozy nights, girly lunches and maxing her cards in her favourite shops. There are only two problems in her otherwise blissful life; dealing with the curse of being the clumsiest person alive, and the man she is obsessively in love with, Dan Shorely, already has a perfect girlfriend. The one aspect of Sophie s life that is not perfect and never has been is her love life. After years of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, are things about to change? Will she ever find and catch her perfect man? Or will the dream of a happy ending and the dream man always be that… just a dream?

Century

The fourth title in Biblioasis’s Renditions Series, Century begins with the nightmare visions of a young woman named Jane Seymour, catching the reader up in a chronicle of the Seymour family that moves from Austria, America and Africa, through Edinburgh and Venice, and then back through the Paris of the Belle Epoque and forward to 1923 Germany. Terrifying, powerful, slashing and satiric, yet at the same time musical and wonder-filled, Century remains the most important work of Ray Smith’s oeuvre, and one of the most impressive, and far-reaching novels ever published in Canada.

The Cry of The Sloth

ONE OF PUBLISHERS WEEKLY’S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

The four-month odyssey of a literary lowlife.

Set in middle America during the economic hard times of the Nixon era, this tragicomic, epistolary masterpiece chronicles everything Andrew Whittaker—literary journal editor, negligent landlord, and aspiring novelist—commits to paper over the course of four critical months.

From his letters, diary entries, and fragments of fiction, to grocery lists and posted signs, we find our hero hounded by tenants and creditors, harassed by a loathsome local arts group, tormented by his ex-wife, and living on a diet of fried Spam, cupcakes, and Southern Comfort. Determined to redeem his failures and eviscerate his enemies, Whittaker hatches a grand plan. But as winter nears, his difficulties accumulate, and the disorder of his life threatens to overwhelm him.

A send-up of the literary life and the loneliness and madness that accompanies it, Sam Savage proves that all the evidence is in the writing, that all the world is, indeed, a stage, and that escape from the mind’s prison requires a command performance.

Fight For Your Long Day

Fight For Your Long Day is a day-in-the-life tragicomedy that follows the eventful unraveling of Cyrus Duffleman, a portly, down-and-out educator who teaches classes at four urban universities and works the night shift, all so he could barely stay afloat in an increasingly “efficient” service economy.

This dark satire, set in the modern, super-information age of “terror squared,” embodies the American-made irony of being an overworked, overwrought and marginalized citizen in a once-wealthy and industrious country.

Watermark plot points twist and turn as students protest, get laid, practice murder, and commit suicide, while “Duff,” the novel’s lovable loser, trudges along from pillar to post with his overstuffed book bag and perversely cynical thoughts.