Book picks similar to
Oversoul: Stories and Essays by Mitchell S. Jackson
short-stories
indie
fiction-and-memoir
book-cellar
Where the Money Went
Kevin Canty - 2009
In Where the Money Went, he surprises us with stories about love and the desertion of love, all written from a man’s point of view. Rarely is a man so revealing.A narrator struggles with his abiding loyalty to his ex-wife, even when he finds love with another woman. A newly divorced man learns more than he wants to know about his friends’ long-term marriages. In these nine stories, which incisively touch on the complex nature of love, we find men as fathers, as husbands, and as lovers, trying their best in a world that stubbornly refuses to make sense. Canty, whose writing has been praised as “smart, gritty, unsentimental” (New York Times), “lovely and unforgiving” (Boston Globe), and “enchanting and painful” (USA Today), powerfully conveys both the bitterness that can afflict romantic relationships, and the moments of humor and tenderness that cut through it.
Drinking, Smoking and Screwing: Great Writers on Good Times
Sara Nickles - 1994
From the classically libidinous Henry Miller to the hilariously contemporary Fran Lebowitz, Drinking, Smoking and Screwing includes novel excerpts, essays, poems, and short stories in a bawdy and thoroughly entertaining anthology with no warnings -- and no apologies.
The Secret Integration
Thomas Pynchon - 1964
The Secret Integration was first published in The Saturday Evening Post, December 19, 1964.
Novels in Three Lines
Félix Fénéon - 1906
This extraordinary trove, undiscovered until the 1940s and here translated for the first time into English, is the work of the mysterious Félix Fénéon. Dandy, anarchist, and critic of genius, the discoverer of Georges Seurat and the first French publisher of James Joyce, Fénéon carefully maintained his own anonymity, toiling for years as an obscure clerk in the French War Department. Novels in Three Lines is his secret chef-d’oeuvre, a work of strange and singular art that brings back the long-ago year of 1906 with the haunting immediacy of a photograph while looking forward to such disparate works as Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and the Death and Disaster series of Andy Warhol.
Godforsaken Idaho
Shawn Vestal - 2013
From "The First Several Hundred Years Following My Death," an absurd, profound vision of a hellish heaven, to "Winter Elders," in which missionaries calmly and relentlessly pursue a man who has left the fold, these nine stories illuminate the articles of faith that make us human. The concluding triptych tackles the legends and legacy of Mormonism head-on, culminating in "Diviner," a seriocomic portrait of the young Joseph Smith, back when he was not yet the founder of a religion but a man hired to find buried treasure. Godforsaken Idaho is an indelible collection by the writer you need to read next. Named an 'Outstanding 2013 Short Story Collection' by The Story Prize, winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, winner of the Pushcart Prize, shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.
If a Stranger Approaches You
Laura Kasischke - 2013
If A Stranger Approaches You reminds us that intersection of the bizarre and the quotidian is always at play. Memorial statues and raggedy dolls seem to come to life, a man listens to the electric menace of suburban power lines while he struggles with his failed marriage, and the little boy and his dog knocking on the door might be Death in disguise. Surreal and darkly comic, these are stories that know the unexpected graces and random collisions that drive and haunt us. As one of her narrators remarks, "What a thing, this life."
Thirteen Ways of Looking
Colum McCann - 2015
From the author of the award-winning novel Let the Great World Spin and TransAtlantic comes an eponymous novella and three stories that range fluidly across time, tenderly exploring the act of writing and the moment of creation when characters come alive on the page; the lifetime consequences that can come from a simple act; and the way our lives play across the world, marking language, image and each other.Thirteen Ways of Looking is framed by two author’s notes, each dealing with the brutal attack the author suffered last year and strikes at the heart of contemporary issues at home and in Ireland, the author’s birth place.Brilliant in its clarity and deftness, this collection reminds us, again, why Colum McCann is considered among the very best contemporary writers.
Freshwater Boys
Adam Schuitema - 2010
The opening narratives feature adolescent or pre-adolescent boys struggling with their conceptions of manhood: making sense of an old hermit whose life seems to have left no mark, or coexisting with a repulsive great-uncle in a world with no other male role model. Later, the stories depict grown men who find that these same struggles of manhood never go away: a man out of place among hunters and fathers in search of a missing child, or a man fighting through a blizzard to prove his worth to his own wife. The landscapes and lakescapes serve as recurring characters in the book. The boys and men wander forests—sometimes finding tranquility, sometimes finding tragedy. They climb and descend dunes. And often, they encounter the Big Lake: Lake Michigan. The idea of a Third Coast figures prominently in the book, the lake and its horizon serving as a kind of world’s end, where things pass away or come to life.
Miller's Secret
Tess Thompson - 2017
In an era when most are reeling from the impacts of World War II, Miller Dreeser is a man focused solely on an obsession born of ambition. Caroline Bennett's heart is as big as her father's fortune, but her insecurities make her susceptible to Miller's charms. Will the decisions of her youth destroy her family and her future? Set against the vibrant backdrop of the California coastline, Miller’s Secret spans more than two decades during some of the most defining moments of the 20th century as it follows the story of five intertwining lives from America’s Greatest Generation. Author Tess Thompson explores themes of power, deceit, and love lost and found in this suspenseful, page-turning post World War II drama.
The Moments
Natalie Winter - 2019
Moments that make us who we are. But what if they don't unfold the way they're supposed to...?What if you get on the wrong bus, or don't speak to the right person at a party, or stay in a job that isn't for you? Will you miss your one chance at happiness? Or will happiness find you eventually, when the moment is right?Meet Matthew and Myrtle. They have never really felt like they fitted - in life or with anyone else. But they are meant to be together - if only they can find each other.A powerful and emotional story about missed chances, interwoven lives and the moments that define us.
An Unexpected Twist
Andy Borowitz - 2012
In his first-ever work of autobiography, the comedian and New York Times bestselling author tells how a freakish medical condition descended upon him one October afternoon and led him to the brink of death – in a New York hospital “consistently rated one of the ten best in the country.” What happens when “one of the funniest people in America” (CBS News Sunday Morning) comes face to face with his own mortality? An Unexpected Twist is in equal parts harrowing and hilarious – and a moving affirmation of what it means to be alive.
Without Feathers
Woody Allen - 1986
From THE WHORE OF MENSA, to GOD (A Play), to NO KADDISH FOR WEINSTEIN, old and new Woody Allen fans will laugh themselves hysterical over these sparkling gems.
My Heart Is an Idiot: Essays
Davy Rothbart - 2012
Constantly. He falls helplessly in love with pretty much every girl he meets—and rarely is the feeling reciprocated. Time after time, he hops in a car and tears across half of America with his heart on his sleeve. He’s continually coming up with outrageous schemes, which he always manages to pull off. Well, almost always. But even when things don’t work out, Rothbart finds meaning and humor in every moment. Whether it’s humiliating a scammer who takes money from aspiring writers or playing harmless (but side-splitting) goofs on his deaf mother, nothing and no one is off-limits.But as much as Rothbart is a tragically lovable, irresistibly brokenhearted hero, it’s his prose that’s the star of the book. In the tradition of David Sedaris and Sloane Crosley but going places very much his own, his essays show how things that are seemingly so wrong can be so, so right.
Wilderness
Dean Koontz - 2013
He was born in an isolated home surrounded by a deep forest, never known to his father, kept secret from everyone but his mother, who barely accepts him. She is haunted by private demons and keeps many secrets—none of which she dreads more than the young son who adores her. Only in the woods, among the wildlife, is Addison truly welcome. Only there can he be at peace. Until the day he first knows terror, the day when his life changes radically and forever . .
Diva Diaries
Janine A. Morris - 2006
She's a successful marketing executive who still believes in sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.