T. Coraghessan Boyle

A second volume of short fiction--featuring fourteen uncollected stories--from the bestselling author and master of the form.

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...

The story of illegal aliens in California, told through the eyes of two very different couples, one well-off Anglos, the other illegal Mexicans living in a canyon. The novel chronicles their relationship against the background of growing hostility between immigrants and natives. By the author of East Is East.

"It is the year 2025, and Tyrone O'Shaughnessy Tierwater is eking out a bleak living in Southern California, managing a pop star's private menagerie of the species "only a mother could love" - scruffy hyenas, jackals, warthogs and three down-at-the-mouth lions. Global warming is a reality. The biosphere has collapsed in a grim but pointed way, and most of the major mammalian species - not to mention fish, birds and frogs - are extinct." "At one time,...

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.

"From best-selling novelist T. C. Boyle, a satirical yet ultimately moving take on contemporary American life in the glare of climate change"-- Denied a dog, a baby, and even a faithful fianč, 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...

With trademark imagination, T.C. Boyle presents a collection of fourteen short stories. In the volume's title story, Victor, a feral boy in Napoleonic France, is captured and is introduced to civilization for the first time. However it is the child't captors that end up learning the most about humanity and civility.

The story of noncitizens in California, told through the eyes of two very different couples, one well-off Anglos, the other noncitizen Mexicans living in a canyon. The novel chronicles their relationship against the background of growing hostility between immigrants and natives. By the author of East Is East.

Presents twenty of the best works of short fiction of the past year from a variety of acclaimed sources.