
Jerome Charyn is an award-winning American author. With more than 50 published works, Charyn has earned a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon calls him "one of the most important writers in American literature." New York Newsday hailed Charyn as "a contemporary American Balzac," and the Los Angeles Times described him as "absolutely unique among American writers." Since the 1964 release of Charyn's first novel, Once Upon a Droshky, he has published thirty novels, three memoirs, eight graphic novels, two books about film, short stories, plays, and works of non-fiction. Two of his memoirs were named New York Times Book of the Year. Charyn has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was named Commander of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture. Charyn is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at the American University of Paris. In addition to writing and teaching, Charyn is a tournament table tennis player, once ranked in the top ten percent of players in France. Noted novelist Don DeLillo called Charyn's book on table tennis, Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins, "The Sun Also Rises of ping-pong." Charyn's most recent novel, Jerzy, was described by The New Yorker as a "fictional fantasia" about the life of Jerzy Kosinski, the controversial author of The Painted Bird. In 2010, Charyn wrote The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, an imagined autobiography of the renowned poet, a book characterized by Joyce Carol Oates as a "fever-dream picaresque." Charyn lives in New York City. He's currently working with artists Asaf and Tomer Hanuka on an animated television series based on his Isaac Sidel crime novels.
by Jerome Charyn
Rating: 3.6 ⭐
• 2 recommendations ❤️
Ping-pong, played in every corner of the world by over 250 million people, cast a hypnotic spell on Jerome Charyn's imagination early on. Sizzling Chops and Devilish Spins portrays the great pongistes, from Ruth Aaron, the Ginger Rogers of table tennis, to writer Henry Miller. From ping-pong detente in China to the underground bars of New York, the playlands of Las Vegas, and the convention centers of Florida, Charyn details the sport's history while passionately arguing for its benefits in combating aging-related depression. The book includes photographs of ping-pong's champions.
An astonishing novel that removes Emily Dickinson’s own mysterious mask and reveals the passions and heartbreak of America’s greatest poet.What if the old maid of Amherst wasn’t an old maid at all? Her older brother, Austin, spoke of Emily as his “wild sister.” Jerome Charyn, continuing his exploration of American history through fiction, has written a startling novel about Emily Dickinson in her own voice, with all its characteristic modulations that he learned from her letters and poems. The poet dons a hundred veils, alternately playing wounded lover, penitent, and female devil. We meet the significant characters of her life, including her tempestuous sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert; her brooding father, Edward; and the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, who may have inspired some of her greatest letters and poems. Charyn has also invented characters, including an impoverished fellow student at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, who will betray her; and a handyman named Tom, who will obsess Emily throughout her life. Charyn has written an extraordinary adventure that will disturb and delight. 9 illustrations.
A serial killer haunts the city streets, a stalker of isolated women who leaves a Santa Claus hat at the scene of his crimes. Pavel, a Russian émigré, assists the police investigation as a sketch artist. But Pavel's true calling is as a tattoo artist, and the so-called Bad Santa killings conjure up memories of the nightmarish world in which he learned his craft: a Russian prison camp that shattered his childhood and destroyed his family. Shifting between the living hell of a 1940s Siberian gulag and the crime-ridden chaos of New York City during the 1970s, this graphic novel's stunning artwork provides an atmospheric backdrop to its tale of corruption, murder, and revenge.Author Jerome Charyn was acclaimed by The New York Review of Books as "a fearless writer. Brave and brazen." This edition of Little Tulip, which was originally published in French, features Charyn's new English translation. Award-winning illustrator François Boucq also collaborated with Charyn on the acclaimed graphic novels The Magician's Wife and Billy Budd, KGB. Suggested for mature readers.
Since publishing his first novel in 1964, Jerome Charyn has established himself as one of the most inventive and prolific literary chroniclers of the American landscape. Here in I Am Abraham, Charyn returns with an unforgettable portrait of Lincoln and the Civil War. Narrated boldly in the first person, I Am Abraham effortlessly mixes humor with Shakespearean-like tragedy, in the process creating an achingly human portrait of our sixteenth President.Tracing the historic arc of Lincoln's life from his picaresque days as a gangly young lawyer in Sangamon County, Illinois, through his improbable marriage to Kentucky belle Mary Todd, to his 1865 visit to war-shattered Richmond only days before his assassination, I Am Abraham hews closely to the familiar Lincoln saga. Charyn seamlessly braids historical figures such as Mrs. Keckley—the former slave, who became the First Lady's dressmaker and confidante—and the swaggering and almost treasonous General McClellan with a parade of fictional extras: wise-cracking knaves, conniving hangers-on, speculators, scheming Senators, and even patriotic whores.We encounter the renegade Rebel soldiers who flanked the District in tattered uniforms and cardboard shoes, living in a no-man's-land between North and South; as well as the Northern deserters, young men all, with sunken, hollowed faces, sitting in the punishing sun, waiting for their rendezvous with the firing squad; and the black recruits, whom Lincoln’s own generals wanted to discard, but who play a pivotal role in winning the Civil War. At the center of this grand pageant is always Lincoln himself, clad in a green shawl, pacing the White House halls in the darkest hours of America’s bloodiest war.Using biblically cadenced prose, cornpone nineteenth-century humor, and Lincoln’s own letters and speeches, Charyn concocts a profoundly moral but troubled commander in chief, whose relationship with his Ophelia-like wife and sons—Robert, Willie, and Tad—is explored with penetrating psychological insight and the utmost compassion. Seized by melancholy and imbued with an unfaltering sense of human worth, Charyn’s President Lincoln comes to vibrant, three-dimensional life in a haunting portrait we have rarely seen in historical fiction.
"A rollicking tale."―Stacy Schiff, New York Times Book Review , Editors' Choice Johnny One-Eye is bringing about the rediscovery of one of the most "singular and remarkable [careers] in American literature" (Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World ). In this picaresque tour de force that reanimates Revolutionary Manhattan through the story of double agent John Stocking, the bastard son of a whorehouse madam and possibly George Washington, Jerome Charyn has given us one of the most memorable historical novels in years. As Johnny seeks to unlock the mystery of his birth and grapples with his allegiances, he falls in love with Clara, a gorgeous, green-eyed octoroon, the most coveted harlot of Gertrude's house. The wild parade of characters he encounters includes Benedict Arnold, the Howe brothers, "Sir Billy" and "Black Dick," and a manipulative Alexander Hamilton.Not since John Barth's The Sotweed Factor and Gore Vidal's Burr has a novel so dramatically re-created America's historical beginnings. Reading group guide included.
« Bouche du diable », c'est le surnom que vaut son bec-de-lièvre au jeune Youri, orphelin recueilli en Ukraine, dans les décombres de la guerre. Mais qu'importe, puisque la nation soviétique a rêvé un destin d'exception pour cet enfant perdu : devenir l'un de ses envoyés les plus secrets de l'autre côté du monde, dans l'enfer capitaliste américain. Et voilà comment Youri, alias Billy, débarrassé de son bec-de-lièvre mais la tête farcie de l'endoctrinement communiste, se retrouve en plein New York, acteur d'une guerre secrète qui fait aussi rage dans son propre esprit…Magnifiée par le trait flamboyant de Boucq et l'humanité à fleur de peau de Charyn, une somptueuse histoire d'espionnage et de destinée qui transcende avec grâce toutes les règles du genre.
by Jerome Charyn
Rating: 3.3 ⭐
"Charyn, like Nabokov, is that most fiendish sort of writer―so seductive as to beg imitation, so singular as to make imitation impossible." ―Tom Bissell Raising the literary bar to a new level, Jerome Charyn re-creates the voice of Theodore Roosevelt, the New York City police commissioner, Rough Rider, and soon- to-be twenty-sixth president through his derring-do adventures, effortlessly combining superhero dialogue with haunting pathos. Beginning with his sickly childhood and concluding with McKinley’s assassination, the novel positions Roosevelt as a “perfect bull in a china shop,” a fearless crime fighter and pioneering environmentalist who would grow up to be our greatest peacetime president. With an operatic cast, including “Bamie,” his handicapped older sister; Eleanor, his gawky little niece; as well as the devoted Rough Riders, the novel memorably features the lovable mountain lion Josephine, who helped train Roosevelt for his “crowded hour,” the charge up San Juan Hill. Lauded by Jonathan Lethem for his “polymorphous imagination and crack comic timing,” Charyn has created a classic of historical fiction, confirming his place as “one of the most important writers in American literature” (Michael Chabon). 6 black and white illustrations
Apple Books • Best Books of the MonthA Publishers Weekly Summer Reads SelectionNarrated by a starry-eyed lesbian, Big Red reimagines the tragic career of Rita Hayworth and her indomitable husband, Orson Welles. Since he first appeared on the American literary scene, Jerome Charyn has dazzled readers with his “blunt, brilliantly crafted prose” ( Washington Post ). Yet Charyn, a beloved comedic novelist, also possesses an extraordinary knowledge of Golden Age Hollywood, having taught film history both in the United States and France. With Big Red , Charyn reimagines the life of one of America’s most enduring icons, “Gilda” herself, Rita Hayworth, whose fiery red tresses and hypnotic dancing graced the silver screen over sixty times in her nearly forty-year career. The quintessential movie star of the 1940s, Hayworth has long been objectified as a sex symbol, pin-up girl, and so-called Love Goddess. Here Charyn, channeling the ghosts of a buried past, finally lifts the veils that have long enshrouded Hayworth, evoking her emotional complexity―her passions, her pain, and her inner turmoil. Charyn’s reimagining of Hayworth’s story begins in 1943, in a roomette at the Hollywood Hotel, where narrator Rusty Redburn―an impetuous, second-string gossip columnist from Kalamazoo, Michigan―bides her time between working as a gofer in the publicity offices of Columbia Pictures, volunteering at an indie movie house, and pursuing dalliances with young women on the Sunset Strip. Called upon by the manipulative Columbia movie mogul Harry “The Janitor” Cohn to spy on Hayworth―then, the Dream Factory’s most alluring “dame,” and Cohn’s biggest movie star―Rusty becomes Rita’s confidante, accompanying her on a series of madcap adventures with her indomitable husband, the “boy genius” Orson Welles. But Rusty, an outlaw who can see beyond the prejudices of Hollywood’s male-dominated hierarchy, quickly becomes disgusted with the way actresses, and particularly Rita, are exploited by men. As she struggles to balance the dangerous politics of Tinseltown with her desire to protect Rita from ruffians and journalists alike, Rusty has her own encounters―some sweet, some bruising―with characters real and imagined, from Julie Tanaka, an interned Japanese-American friend, to superstars like Clark Gable and Tallulah Bankhead, as well as notorious Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons. Reanimating such classic films as Gilda and The Lady from Shanghai , Big Red is a bittersweet paean to Hollywood’s Golden Age, a tender yet honest portrait of a time before blockbusters and film franchises―one that promises to consume both Hollywood cinephiles and neophytes alike. Lauded for his “polymorphous imagination” (Jonathan Lethem), Charyn once again has created one of the most inventive novels in recent American literature. Frontispiece
“Remarkable insight ... [a] unique meditation/investigation ... Jerome Charyn the unpredictable, elusive, and enigmatic is a natural match for Emily Dickinson, the quintessence of these.” —Joyce Carol Oates, author of Wild Nights! and The Lost LandscapeWe think we know Emily Dickinson: the Belle of Amherst, virginal, reclusive, and possibly mad. But in A Loaded Gun, Jerome Charyn introduces us to a different Emily Dickinson: the fierce, brilliant, and sexually charged poet who wrote: My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—…Though I than He— may longer liveHe longer must—than I—For I have but the power to kill,Without—the power to die—Through interviews with contemporary scholars, close readings of Dickinson’s correspondence and handwritten manuscripts, and a suggestive, newly discovered photograph that is purported to show Dickinson with her lover, Charyn’s literary sleuthing reveals the great poet in ways that have only been hinted at previously: as a woman who was deeply philosophical, intensely engaged with the world, attracted to members of both sexes, and able to write poetry that disturbs and delights us today.Jerome Charyn is the author of, most recently, Bitter Bronx: Thirteen Stories, I Am Abraham: A Novel of Lincoln and the Civil War, and The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson: A Novel. He lives in New York.
"A dark, menacingly brilliant tale, tinged with the erotic . . . a kind of film noir between covers directed by Fellini." ― LA Times"Brilliant, funny, hallucinatory." ― Joyce Carol Oates"More engaging than 96 percent of the fiction published in France or North America today." ― Artform"The story and the art are both eerie and erotic." ― Publishers WeeklySpanning multiple decades and continents, this phantasmagorical epic is the result of a unique collaboration between an award-winning American author and the famous French illustrator of Alexandro Jodorowsky's Bouncer series. Writer Jerome Charyn and artist François Boucq combine their talents to recount a surrealistic tale about the wife of a philandering magician and her struggles with terrifying demons, both real and imaginary.Originally published as La Femme du magicien, The Magician's Wife was awarded the 1986 Prix Alfred (Angoulême) and the Grand Prix (Sierre). The English-language version has been out of print for three decades, during which time the graphic novel has developed a deep cult following ― this new edition promises to mesmerize a new generation of readers. Suggested for mature readers.
Vinte anos após a conclusão sangrenta de Little Tulip, Azami tornou-se polícia. Ganhou corpo e tomou demasiados esteroides. Por isso, quando encontra numa ruela o bebé que a sua condição física a impede de ter, decide adoptá-lo, tal como Pavel outrora fizera com ela.Entretanto, o velho tatuador fora apanhado pelo seu passado. Os fantasmas do Gulag ameaçam engolir os seus, e ele terá de usar tudo o que aprendeu para os enfrentar: a força mística da sua arte… e essa violência surda, que permanece a mesma, da Sibéria a Nova Iorque.Lançada em Portugal ao mesmo tempo que, em França, surge nas livrarias a edição francesa, e na linha de A Mulher do Mágico ou Boca do Diabo, New York Cannibals é a mais recente obra do desenhador François Boucq e do escritor Jerome Charyn.
"Charyn skillfully breathes life into historical icons." -- New Yorker J.D. Salinger, mysterious author of The Catcher in the Rye, is remembered today as a reclusive misanthrope. Jerome Charyn's Salinger is a young American WWII draftee assigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps, a band of secret soldiers who trained with the British. A rifleman and an interrogator, he witnessed all the horrors of the war--from the landing on D-Day to the relentless hand-to-hand combat in the hedgerows of Normandy, to the Battle of the Bulge, and finally to the first Allied entry into a Bavarian death camp, where corpses were piled like cordwood.After the war, interned in a Nuremberg psychiatric clinic, Salinger became enchanted with a suspected Nazi informant. They married, but not long after he brought her home to New York, the marriage collapsed. Maladjusted to civilian life, he lived like a "spook," with invisible stripes on his shoulder, the ghosts of the murdered inside his head, and stories to tell.Grounded in biographical fact and reimagined as only Charyn could, Sergeant Salinger is an astonishing portrait of a devastated young man on his way to becoming the mythical figure behind a novel that has marked generations.Jerome Charyn is the author of more than fifty works of fiction and nonfiction, including Cesare: A Novel of War-Torn Berlin. He lives in New York.
Set in a shocking New York underworld populated by a constellation of punks, low lifes, thugs, nymphs, vice lords and bag men, Blue Eyes is the second book in Jerome Charyn's classic Isaac Quartet. Manfred 'Blue Eyes' Coen is a cop on loan to the First Deputy's office, sent to the mean streets of his old Bronx neighbourhood to do some very dirty business. Child brides are being kidnapped and are turning up in Mexico, and the daughter of a millionaire has gone missing. Are Coen's childhood friends, the Guzmanns, the key to this mystery? Coen's mentor, the disgraced First Deputy, Isaac Sidel, knew that there was only one man for the job. So, caught between his childhood loyalties and his reputation as the toughest, sharpest cop in New York City, it's up to Blue Eyes to solve the case. But too many people are double-crossing him - and too many people want him dead
In Bitter Bronx, one of our most gifted and original novelists depicts a world before and after modern urban renewal destroyed the gritty sanctity of a land made famous by Ruth, Gehrig, and Joltin' Joe.Bitter Bronx is suffused with the texture and nostalgia of a lost time and place, combining a keen eye for detail with Jerome Charyn's lived experience. These stories are informed by a childhood growing up near that middle-class mecca, the Grand Concourse; falling in love with three voluptuous librarians at a public library in the Lower Depths of the South Bronx; and eating at Mafia-owned restaurants along Arthur Avenue's restaurant row, amid a "land of deprivation…where fathers trundled home…with a monumental sadness on their shoulders."In "Lorelei," a lonely hearts grifter returns home and finds his childhood sweetheart still living in the same apartment house on the Concourse; in "Archy and Mehitabel" a high school romance blossoms around a newspaper comic strip; in "Major Leaguer" a former New York Yankee confronts both a gang of drug dealers and the wreckage that Robert Moses wrought in his old neighborhood; and in three interconnected stories—"Silk Silk," "Little Sister," and "Marla"—Marla Silk, a successful Manhattan attorney, discovers her father's past in the Bronx and a mysterious younger sister who was hidden from her, kept in a fancy rest home near the Botanical Garden. In these stories and others, the past and present tumble together in Charyn's singular and distinctly "New York prose, street-smart, sly, and full of lurches" (John Leonard, New York Times).Throughout it all looms the "master builder" Robert Moses, a man who believed he could "save" the Bronx by building a highway through it, dynamiting whole neighborhoods in the process. Bitter Bronx stands as both a fictional eulogy for the people and places paved over by Moses' expressway and an affirmation of Charyn's "brilliant imagination" (Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune).
On a windy night in 1937, a seventeen-year-old German naval sub-cadet is wandering along the seawall when he stumbles upon a gang of ruffians beating up a tramp, whose life he saves. The man is none other than spymaster Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the Abwehr, German military intelligence. Canaris adopts the young man and dubs him “Cesare” after the character in the silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari for his ability to break through any barrier as he eliminates the Abwehr’s enemies.Canaris is a man of contradictions who, while serving the regime, seeks to undermine the Nazis and helps Cesare hide Berlin’s Jews from the Gestapo. But the Nazis will lure many to Theresienstadt, a phony paradise in Czechoslovakia with sham restaurants, novelty shops, and bakeries, a cruel ghetto and way station to Auschwitz. When the woman Cesare loves, a member of the Jewish underground, is captured and sent there, Cesare must find a way to rescue her.Cesare is a literary thriller and a love story born of the horrors of a country whose culture has died, whose history has been warped, and whose soul has disappeared.
Near fine in a very good dustjacket (price-clipped, a small nick at the top of the spine) SIGNED hardcover first edition - New Arbor House,, (1976). SIGNED hardcover first edition -. Near fine in a very good dustjacket (price-clipped, a small nick at the top of the spine). First printing. "Isaac Sidel (know to his detractors as "Isaac the Pure" ) was a cop - the toughest, hardest and most incorruptible in the business, and he ruled the meanest kingdom of the city, the Lower East Side." The only one he couldn't handle was his daughter, Marilyn. INSCRIBED on the half title page to the late noted Oklahoma collector Larry Owens. 246 pp.
Jerzy Kosinski was a great enigma of post-WWII literature. When he exploded onto the American literary scene in 1965 with his best-selling novel The Painted Bird, he was revered as a Holocaust survivor and refugee from the world hidden behind the Soviet Iron Curtain. He won major literary awards, befriended actor Peter Sellers, who appeared in the screen adaptation of his novel Being There, and was a guest on talk shows and at the Oscars. But soon the facade began to crack, and behind the public persona emerged a ruthless social climber, sexual libertine, and pathological liar who may have plagiarized his greatest works.Jerome Charyn lends his unmistakable style to this most American story of personal disintegration, told through the voices of multiple narrators—a homicidal actor, a dominatrix, and Joseph Stalin’s daughter—who each provide insights into the shifting facets of Kosinski’s personality. The story unfolds like a Russian nesting doll, eventually revealing the lost child beneath layers of trauma, while touching on the nature of authenticity, the atrocities of WWII, the allure of sadomasochism, and the fickleness of celebrity.
Even 45 years after her death, Marilyn Monroe fascinates young and older audiences. As Lee Strasberg wrote in his eulogy, “She had a luminous quality—a combination of wistfulness, radiance, yearning—that set her apart and yet made everyone wish to be part of it, to share in the childish naïveté which was at once so shy and yet so vibrant.” From her lonely childhood to the galaxy of celebrity, from the red-headed pinup girl to the blond actress, from Norma Jean to Marilyn, from Hollywood to the Actors Studio, from Joe DiMaggio to Arthur Miller, from Billy Wilder to Lee Strasberg, Jerome Charyn brilliantly tells the full story of this fascinating icon along with stunning photographs of Marilyn and documents about her life.
by Jerome Charyn
Rating: 3.5 ⭐
In this rousing tribute to an unforgettable time and place, Jerome Charyn picks up where Gangs of New York left off and transports readers back to a swaggering, golden era in American life—the Roaring Twenties—when Broadway the street exploded into Broadway the legend. Charyn looks at the men and women who helped make the Big Street the most glamorous place on the planet, from Mae West to Fanny Brice, Legs Diamond to Irving Berlin, Scott Fitzgerald to Arnold Rothstein, and many more. In cinematic prose and numerous photographs, Charyn captures Broadway's vagabondage, outlaw culture, and self-mythologizing. He brings a rollicking, rough-and-tumble period in New York history to life—conjuring an intoxicating portrait of Jazz Age excess by examining the denizens of that greatest of all "staggering machine[s] of desire," the street known as Broadway.
This riveting study of Joe DiMaggio offers a more sympathetic look at his life beyond the baseball field, a reversal of how the legendary sports icon has been portrayed in recent yearsAs the New York Yankees' star centerfielder from 1936 to 1951, Joe DiMaggio is enshrined in America's memory as the epitome in sports of grace, dignity, and that ineffable quality called "class." But his career after retirement, starting with his nine-month marriage to Marilyn Monroe, was far less auspicious. Writers like Gay Talese and Richard Ben Cramer have painted the private DiMaggio as cruel or self-centered. Now, Jerome Charyn restores the image of this American icon, looking at DiMaggio's life in a more sympathetic light.DiMaggio was a man of extremes, superbly talented on the field but privately insecure, passive, and dysfunctional. He never understood that for Monroe, on her own complex and tragic journey, marriage was a career move; he remained passionately committed to her throughout his life. He allowed himself to be turned into a sports memorabilia money machine. In the end, unable to define any role for himself other than "Greatest Living Ballplayer," he became trapped in "a horrible kind of minutia." But where others have seen little that was human behind that minutia, Charyn in Joe DiMaggio presents the tragedy of one of American sports' greatest figures.
A master storyteller’s novel of crime, corruption, and antisemitism in early 20th-century Manhattan Ravage & Son reflects the lost world of Manhattan’s Lower East Side—the cradle of Jewish immigration during the first years of the twentieth century—in a dark mirror.Abraham Cahan, editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, serves as the conscience of the Jewish ghetto teeming with rogue cops and swindlers. He rescues Ben Ravage, an orphan, from a trade school and sends him off to Harvard to earn a law degree. But upon his return, Ben rejects the chance to escape his gritty origins and instead becomes a detective for the Kehilla, a quixotic gang backed by wealthy uptown patrons to help the police rid the Lower East Side of criminals. Charged with rooting out the Jewish “Mr. Hyde,” a half-mad villain who attacks the prostitutes of Allen Street, Ben discovers that his fate is irrevocably tied to that of this violent, sinister man.A lurid tale of revenge, this wildly evocative, suspenseful noir is vintage Jerome Charyn.
In this beautiful memoir of a Bronx upbringing, Jerome Charyn evokes with extraordinary accuracy an unusual childhood during World War II. Charyn successfully peels back the years of his life to recapture the innate curiosity, sense of wonder, and uncommon reasoning that all young children possess. And he lovingly reproduces one of the most influential figures of his youth -- his mother, The Dark Lady of Belorusse.
A stylish killer makes the mistake of befriending a god. Though he doesn’t know mink from sable, Sidney Holden is the most important employee at Aladdin Furs. He is a bumper, a well-dressed killer who collects the debts that cannot be paid, and Aladdin would be nothing without him. After all, fur is murder. As Cuban refugees flood the United States, the New York criminal class is rocked by the appearance of a Santería sect that hails a young girl as the newest incarnation of Changó, their bloodthirsty thunder god. But after a routine hit, Holden finds the girl cowering under the kitchen table—a divine witness to a double murder. Unable to kill her, he takes her with him, sparking an all-out turf war so vicious that Holden will be happy to have any god on his side.
'A satiric hothouse of fast talk and low life' -- Washington Post'He writes like greased lightning' -- Time Out'Jerome Charyn is a realist of the urban nightmare' -- Chicago Tribune --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition. Isaac Sidel had been born into this world to plague the Guzmanns, a tribe of Peruvian pimps who operated out of the Bronx. His target was now Jeronimo Guzmann, but he was under the protection of a new bodyguard, a crazy Irish ex-cop called Patrick Silver.
by Jerome Charyn
Rating: 4.5 ⭐
The Isaac Quartet contains four detective stories from an internationally acclaimed master of the genre. Blue Eyes, the first book in Jerome Charyn’s legendary crime series, introduces Isaac Sidel — the toughest, most incorruptible police inspector in the biz. In Marilyn the Wild, Isaac confronts the hot-headed daughter of the first deputy police commissioner. The Education of Patrick Silver tells the story of a giant shoeless Irishman who becomes just another pawn in the war between Isaac and a gang of Peruvian pimps. And in Secret Isaac, a scar on a prostitute’s cheek sends Isaac on a desperate trip to Ireland in search of relief from the tightening grip on his soul. “Packed with manic energy, peopled with bizarre characters and outrageous situations. [Charyn] sounds like a ... Jewish Philip Marlowe.” — Chicago Sun-Times “These books constitute the highest kind of novelistic art ... absolutely unique among contemporary writers.” — Los Angeles Times
Jerome Charyn e Daniel Pennac, amici nella vita, hanno deciso di mescolare le loro fantasie letterarie e di "prestarsi" i personaggi. Da questo gioco sono nati Ultime notizie dalla famiglia e questo romanzo. Antonia è un'affascinante prostituta creola. Albert un "duro" pazzo di lei. I due hanno avuto l'incarico di prendersi cura di un bizzarro ometto che, a causa di un'amnesia, si comporta come un bambino ed è convinto di essere il protagonista dei suoi libri più amati. I tre sono a Parigi perché l'ometto vuole andare alla Fiera internazionale del libro per punire l'editore che si è permesso di infilare il suo amato Proust in un CD Rom. Strani ricordi si affollano nella testa dell'uomo: nel quartiere di Belleville gli pare di esserci già stato: è sicuro di conoscere bene un cagnone epilettico, portato a spasso da un ragazzino che potrebbe essere suo figlio.
Sent on a cross-country lecture tour after capturing the FBI's most wanted criminal, New York City Police Commissioner Isaac Sidel returns to the city and finds himself battling criminals, the establishment, and the Christy Mathewson Club
When Quentin Tarantino was eight years old, and all the regular kids were lining up to see the latest from Disney, Tarantino's mother took him to see Carnal Knowledge. Sound about right? A high-school dropout who never attended film school, Tarantino got all the education he needed while working the register at Los Angeles's fabled Video Archives. His enthusiasms — for pop culture (foreign and domestic), eye-popping aesthetics, and genre films — would become notorious and infectious. The outrageous success of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction essentially killed off Tarantino the man, and gave birth to Tarantino the myth. Here, from legendary novelist and historian Jerome Charyn, is a portrait of both the man AND the myth — and the mind behind them both. More than a biography, more than a critical study, Raised by Wolves is a feisty and astute reckoning with Tarantino en toto.
Venice is seen through the eyes of artist Fabrice Moireau, with sketches in watercolor and pencil. This resident of the world's most romantic city is the perfect guide to its streets, monuments, gardens and delightfully hidden corners.