From the prize-winning fiction writer Richard Bausch (“A master of the novel as well as the story . . . Effortlessly engaging” —Sven Birkerts, The New York Times), a sharp, affecting, masterly new novel about a close-knit theater community in Memphis and one turbulent, transformative production of King Lear.As renovations begin at the Shakespeare Theater of Memphis, life for the core members of the company seems to be falling into disarray. Their trusted director has just retired, and theater manager Thaddeus Deerforth—staring down forty and sensing a rift growing slowly between himself and his wife, Gina—dreads the arrival of an imperious, inscrutable visiting director. Claudette, struggling to make ends meet as an actor and destabilized by family troubles, is getting frequent calls from her ex-boyfriend—and also the narcissistic, lecherous television actor who has been recruited to play King Lear in their fall...

A powerful coda to Richard Bausch’s “brilliant” (The New York Times Book Review) World War II novel, Peace, the basis for the film Recon.   Originally published in Living in the Weather of the World, this poignant short story picks up the tale of American GI Robert Marson, who was improbably saved from death by a German solider, Eugene Schmidt. Seventy-two years later, the two men are poised to reunite in Washington, D.C. Although they kept in touch after the war, it has been decades since their last meeting, a meeting which reshaped their relationship, and not for the better. Now old men with children and grandchildren, Marson and Schmidt brace themselves to speak one last time, with their families—and the world—watching.   A story of nostalgia and regret, of memories forgotten and not, and of how the past never really leaves us, no matter what we may hope, Still Here, Still There is the...

Richard Bausch is a master of the intimate moment, of the ways we seek to make lasting connections to one another and to the world. Few writers evoke the complexities of love as subtly, and few capture the poignancy of the sudden insight or the rhythms of ordinary conversation with such delicacy and humor. To read these twelve stories--of love and loss, of families and strangers, of small moments and enormous epiphanies--is to be reminded again of the power of short fiction to thrill and move us, to make us laugh, or cry. In these profound glimpses into the private fears, joys, and sorrows of people we know, we find revealed a whole range of human experience, told with extraordinary force, clarity, and compassion.

Richard Bausch calls this, his tenth novel, "a love comedy with sorrows." The story is set in the small Virginia valley town of Point Royal, where several of Bausch's other novels and many of his stories take place. It is 1999; predictions of catastrophe blare on the radio, and religious fanaticism is everywhere on the rise. The millennium is approaching. Oliver Ward and his divorced daughter, a young policewoman named Alison, and Oliver's two grandchildren become involved with Holly Grey and Holly's aunt Fiona, elderly ladies with a marked propensity for outlandish behavior. Holly's son, Will Butterfield, and Elizabeth, Will's second wife by that name, have been happily married for ten years but are about to discover how fragile happiness is. And in the middle of all of them is an old priest, Father John Fire, who is a good man, thinking of leaving the priesthood. He is called "Brother Fire" by everyone who knows him, after the famous words of Saint Francis when confronted with the burning brand with which he would be martyred. Close to both Holly and Fiona, Brother Fire also has a part to play in the rapidly unfolding family drama. Thanksgiving Night is a touching and empathetic portrayal of family$#8212;the one we have, and the ones we make. The people who populate these pages are flawed, wounded, stubborn, willful, scarred, often wildly eccentric, and all searching, in one way or another, for love.

A 2004 PEN/Malamud Award winner, this collection celebrates the work of American artist Richard Bausch—a writer the New York Times calls "a master of the short story." By turns tender, raw, heartbreaking, and riotously funny, the many voices of this definitive forty-two-story collection (seven of which appear here for the first time) defy expectation, attest to Bausch's remarkable range and versatility, and affirm his place alongside such acclaimed story writers as John Cheever, Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver, and Grace Paley.

The critics have been effusive in their praise for Richard Bausch's Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America and All the Ships at Sea.His hardover sales have also never been higher. Taking its title from Walter Winchell's famous radio salutation, Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America opens in Washington, DC, in 1964, just after the Kennedy assassination, telling the story of Walter Marshall, an idealistic 19-year-old who lives with his widowed mother and studies to be a journalist like his hero, Edward R. Murrow. In this coming-of-age novel in the truest sense of the phrase, young Marshall fumbles toward manhood in a nation that is itself in the midst of cataclysmic change.With the same elegance and precision that has distinguished his other novels, Richard Bausch has evoked a sense of time and place in a different America and brings the last 30 years of history profoundly and vividly to life.

Wives & Lovers is a collection of three short novels from the author whom the Boston Globe calls "one of the most expert and substantial of our writers."Requisite Kindness — published here for the first time — tells the story of a man who must come to terms with a life of treating women badly when he goes to live with his sister and dying mother. Rare & Endangered Species demonstrates how a wife and mother's suicide reverberates in the small community where she lived, and affects the lives of people who don't even know her. Finally, Spirits is about the pain that men and women can — and do — inflict upon each other. These three very different works illuminate the unadorned core of love — not the showy, more celebrated sort but what remains when lust, jealousy, and passion have been stripped away.

From the prizewinning novelist and world-renowned short story writer, recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award and the Literature Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, comes a gorgeously rendered, emotionally devastating account of a relationship eroded by secrets, set against the backdrop of a national tragedy.When Natasha, a lonely congressional aide in D.C., meets Michael Faulk, an Episcopalian priest struggling with his faith, the stars seem to align. The blossoming of their love over the spring and summer of 2001 is unspeakably tender, both intellectually gratifying and intensely passionate. A month before their wedding, Natasha is vacationing in Jamaica and Faulk is in New York when the terrorist attacks of September 11 shatter the innocence of the nation and of the two lovers. Alone in a state of abject terror, cut off from America and convinced that Faulk is dead, Natasha endures a private trauma of her own at the hands of a young man on the Caribbean shore. A...

In these fourteen indelible stories, Richard Bausch once again proves himself a modern master.From the prize-winning novelist and universally acclaimed short story writer ("Richard Bausch is a master of the short story" —The New York Times Book Review), thirteen unforgettable tales that showcase his electrifying artistry. Bausch plumbs the depths of familial and marital estrangement, the violence of suicide and despair, the gulfs between friends and lovers, the complexities of divorce and infidelity, the fragility and impermanence of love. Wherever he casts his gaze, he illuminates the darkest corners of human experience with the bright light of wisdom and compassion, finding grace and redemption amidst sorrow and regret. Bausch's stories are simply extraordinary.

At first, all Lily Austin knows about 19th–century explorer Mary Kingsley is that, 100 years before, she was the first white woman to venture into the heart of Africa. But as Lily begins reading about Mary Kingsley, she becomes more and more fascinated – and discovers in Mary a kindred spirit. In her own life, Lily feels trapped – on the one hand, she craves family and intimate connection; on the other hand, she has no healthy or satisfying role models. Consequently, as she nears graduation from the University of Virginia, she finds herself uncertain about what to do with her life. As she researches Mary's life – she has begun writing a play about her – Lily comes to witness Mary's incredible bravery and startling originality, qualities that prove inspirational to Lily, whose own bravery is required as she attempts to navigate dysfunctional and destructive relationships with her young husband, her extended family – and a...

From the prizewinning novelist and world-renowned short-story writer, the author of 2008's universally acclaimed novel Peace ("A brilliant one-act drama depicting the futility and moral complexity of combat" --The New York Times), eleven indelible new tales that showcase the electrifying artistry of a master. A husband confronts the power of youth and the inexorable truths of old age. A son sits by his mother's bedside determined to give her what she needs in her final days, even though doing so means breaking his own heart. A brief adulterous tryst illuminates the fragility of our most intimate relations. A young man returns in the face of crisis to the parents he once rejected. A divorced young woman dealing with slowly increasing despair develops an obsesion about a note that fell from the pocket of a man who came to eat in the café where she works. A wife whose husband has been shot must weather a terrible snowstorm with her two sons, as...