Showing results for "Michael Rosen" in Literary Fiction

Eliot Rosewater, a drunk volunteer fireman and president of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation, is about to attempt a noble experiment with human nature, with a little help from writer Kilgore Trout. The result is Kurt Vonnegut's funniest satire, an etched-in-acid portrayal of the greed, hypocrisy, and follies of the flesh we are all heir to.

Once an amusing extrovert with a reputation as a prankster, Mr. Rosen is entering his senior years as a stoic, thirty-year converted introvert who hates change, has little to no interest in people and is more than content to have his wife sit in the navigator's seat of his life. Since becoming a practising introvert, there have been almost no changes in his life, and for the few that there were, his wife had walked him through them, including the recent move to a much smaller home in a lower/middle-class neighbourhood.

A boy in Texas waits for a Christmas present he chose from a Montgomery Ward catalog. The present, a brand new, lever action Winchester 1886 and a box of .50-caliber slugs, never makes it there. Instead, the rifle is caught up in a train robbery and starts a long and violent journey of its own - from the hands of a notorious, kill-crazy outlaw to an Apache renegade to a hardscrabble rancher and beyond. But while the prized Winchester is wandering the West - aimed, fired, battered and bartered - Deputy U.S. Marshal Jimmy Mann is hunting for the outlaw who robbed the train in Texas.

The New York Times has hailed Joyce Carol Oates as "a dangerous writer in the best sense of the word, one who takes risks almost obsessively with energy and relish." Black Dahlia & White Rose, a collection of 11 previously uncollected stories, showcases the keen rewards of Oates's relentless brio and invention. In one beautifully honed story after another, Oates explores the menace that lurks at the edges of and intrudes upon even the seemingly safest of lives - and maps with rare emotional acuity the transformational cost of such intrusions.