Jim Shepard

Culling the vastness of experience--from its bizarre fringes and breathtaking pinnacles to the desperately below average--like an expert curator, Jim Shepard populates this collection wildly diverse and wholly fascinating characters, like the inventor of the Godzilla epics to a miserable G.I. in New Guinea, each complicit in his or her downfall.

"A spare and gripping novel about the next pandemic--completed by the award-winning Jim Shepard before COVID-19 even emerged--that reads like a fictional sequel to our current crisis. In a tiny settlement on the west coast of Greenland, 11-year-old Aleq and his best friend, frequent trespassers at a mining site exposed to mountains of long-buried and thawing permafrost, carry what they pick up back into their village, and from there Shepard's harrowing...

"Ive been a problem baby, a lousy son, a distant brother, an off-putting neighbor, a piss-poor student, a worrisome seatmate, an unreliable employee, a bewildering lover, a frustrating confidante and a crappy husband. Among the things I do pretty well at this point Id have to list darts, re-closing Stay-Fresh boxes, and staying out of the way. This is the self-eulogy offered early on by the unwilling hero of the opening story in this...