Jess Walter

"The best novel of the year." — Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh AirA #1 New York Times bestseller, this “absolute masterpiece” (Richard Russo) is the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 and resurfaces fifty years later in Hollywood. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to the back lots of contemporary Hollywood, this is a dazzling, yet deeply human roller coaster of a novel.The acclaimed author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets returns with his funniest, most romantic, and most purely enjoyable novel yet. Hailed by critics and loved by readers of literary and historical fiction, Beautiful Ruins is gloriously inventive and constantly surprising—a story of flawed yet fascinating people navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.

We Live in Water is a darkly comic, moving collection of short stories that veer from comic tales of love to social satire to suspenseful crime fiction, from hip Portland to once-hip Seattle to never-hip Spokane, from a condemned casino in Las Vegas to a bottomless lake in the dark woods of Idaho. This is a world of lost fathers and redemptive con men, of meth tweakers on desperate odysseys and men committing suicide by fishing.In "Thief," an aluminum worker turns unlikely detective to solve the mystery of which of his kids is stealing from the family vacation fund. In "We Live in Water," a lawyer returns to a corrupt North Idaho town to find the father who disappeared thirty years earlier. In "Anything Helps," a homeless man has to "go to cardboard" to raise enough money to buy his son the new Harry Potter book. In "Virgo," a local newspaper editor tries to get back at his superstitious ex-girlfriend by screwing with her horoscope. Also included are the stories "Don't Eat Cat" and "Statistical Abstract of My Hometown, Spokane, Washington," both of which achieved a cult following after publication online.

The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Beautiful Ruins delivers another “literary miracle” (NPR)—a propulsive, richly entertaining novel about two brothers swept up in the turbulent class warfare of the early twentieth century.The Dolans live by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his older brother, Gig, dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar and introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: a mining magnate determined to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula.Dubious of Gig’s idealism, Rye finds himself drawn to a fearless nineteen-year-old activist and feminist named Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. But a storm is coming, threatening to overwhelm them all, and Rye will be forced to decide where he stands. Is it enough to win the occasional battle, even if you cannot win the war?An intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice, and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early twentieth-century America that eerily echoes our own time, The Cold Millions offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, between harsh realities and simple dreams. Featuring an unforgettable cast of cops and tramps, suffragists and socialists, madams and murderers, it is a tour de force from a “writer who has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors” (Boston Globe

A reclusive journalist is suddenly thrown into a wild, suspenseful journey to rescue his kidnapped grandchildren.A few weeks after the 2016 election, at Thanksgiving with his daughter and her belligerent new husband, Rhys Kinnick finally snapped. After an escalating fight about politics, he hauled off and punched the jerk. Immediately horrified by what he'd done, by the state of the world around him, and by his own spiraling mental health, Rhys chucked his smartphone out the car window and fled for a remote cabin in the woods of the Pacific Northwest.Seven years later, when his grandchildren show up on his doorstep, Rhys barely recognizes them. Their mother has disappeared, and they need a safer place to stay than with their father, who has taken up with a Christian Nationalist militia. So what if Rhys’s cabin has no electricity or indoor plumbing, and the raccoons help themselves to the monthly grocery haul? He'll do whatever he needs to for these sweet kids.But when the militia members show up and kidnap the children, Rhys realizes he'll have to re-enter the broken world. With the help of a bipolar retired detective and his caustic ex-girlfriend, Rhys reluctantly heads off on a madcap journey through the rubble of the life he left behind.

The Financial Lives of the Poets is a comic and heartfelt novel from National Book Award nominee Jess Walter, author of Citizen Vince and The Zero, about how we get to the edge of ruin—and how we begin to make our way back. Walter tells the story of Matt Prior, who’s losing his job, his wife, his house, and his mind—until, all of a sudden, he discovers a way that he might just possibly be able to save it all . . . and have a pretty damn great time doing it.

Darkly hilarious and unexpectedly profound, Citizen Vince is an irresistible tale about the price of freedom and the mystery of salvation, by an emerging writer of boundless talent.Eight days before the 1980 presidential election, Vince Camden wakes up at 1:59 A.M. in a quiet house in Spokane, Washington. Pocketing his stash of stolen credit cards, he drops by an all-night poker game before heading to his witness-protection job dusting crullers at Donut Make You Hungry. This is the sum of Vince's new life: donuts and forged credit cards—not to mention a neurotic hooker girlfriend.But when a familiar face shows up in town, Vince realizes that his sordid past is still close behind him. During the next unforgettable week, on the run from Spokane to New York, Vince Camden will negotiate a maze of obsessive cops, eager politicians, and assorted mobsters, only to find that redemption might just exist—of all places—in the voting booth. Sharp and refreshing, Citizen Vince is the story of a charming crook chasing the biggest score of his life: a second chance.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins and The Cold Millions comes a stunning collection about those moments when everything changes--for the better, for the worse, for the outrageous--as a diverse cast of characters bounces from Italy to Idaho, questioning their roles in life and finding inspiration in the unlikeliest places.We all live like we're famous now, curating our social media presences, performing our identities, withholding those parts of ourselves we don't want others to see. In this riveting collection of stories from acclaimed author Jess Walter, a teenage girl tries to live up to the image of her beautiful, missing mother. An elderly couple confronts the fiction writer eavesdropping on their conversation. A son must repeatedly come out to his senile father while looking for a place to care for the old man. A famous actor in recovery has a one-night stand with the world's most surprising film critic. And in the romantic title story, a shy twenty-one-year-old studying Latin in Rome during "the year of my reinvention" finds himself face-to-face with the Italian actress of his adolescent dreams.Funny, poignant, and redemptive, this collection of short fiction offers a dazzling range of voices, backdrops, and situations. With his signature wit and bighearted approach to the darkest parts of humanity, Walter tackles the modern condition with a timeless touch, once again "solidifying his place in the contemporary canon as one of our most gifted builders of fictional worlds" (Esquire).

Sleet in Mississippi? In March? A crazy ice storm lays waste to the South in a #1 New York Times bestselling author’s invigorating, touching story of one slippery night, an open bar, and total abandon.For three strangers whose paths will cross, the storm hasn’t even reached its peak. Two of them are the kind of climate scientists no one ever listens to in disaster movies. The third, against even icier opposition, has just moved to the Magnolia State to come out. Soon they’ll all be pushed closer to the edge, where the bracing winds of cataclysmic change can be so wildly liberating.Jess Walter’s The Way the World Ends is part of Warmer, a collection of seven visions of a conceivable tomorrow by today’s most thought-provoking authors. Alarming, inventive, intimate, and frightening, each story can be read, or listened to, in a single breathtaking sitting.

What's left of a place when you take the ground away?Answer: The Zero.Brian Remy has no idea how he got here. It's been only five days since his city was attacked, and Remy is experiencing gaps in his life--as if he were a stone skipping across water. He has a self-inflicted gunshot wound he doesn't remember inflicting. His son wears a black armband and refuses to acknowledge that Remy is still alive. He seems to be going blind. He has a beautiful new girlfriend whose name he doesn't know. And his old partner in the police department, who may well be the only person crazier than Remy, has just gotten his picture on a box of First Responder cereal.And these are the good things in Brian Remy's life. While smoke still hangs over the city, Remy is recruited by a mysterious government agency that is assigned to gather all of the paper that was scattered in the attacks. As he slowly begins to realize that he's working for a shadowy operation, Remy stumbles across a dangerous plot, and soon realizes he's got to track down the most elusive target of them all--himself. And the only way to do that is to return to that place where everything started falling apart.

That’s not cool! #1 New York Times bestselling author Jess Walter finds his beloved Millie sleeping with his neighbor. On his porch!In this funny remembrance of an unusual triangle, Jess learns to accept what’s best for the one animal he has ever loved. After all, he gave his heart to the Australian shepherd mix he’d rescued. What alternative has he other than to give the restless girl her freedom? But in doing so, Jess discovers more about himself, the nature of affection and attachment, the inevitability of loss, and how much Millie means to so many.Jess Walter’s Parable is part of The One, a collection of seven singularly true love stories of friendship, companionship, marriage, and moving on. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single sitting, with or without company.

On the last hot day of summer in 1992, gunfire cracked over a rocky knob in northern Idaho, just south of the Canadian border. By the next day three people were dead, and a small war was joined, pitting the full might of federal law enforcement against one well-armed family. Drawing on extensive interviews with Randy Weaver's family, government insiders, and others, Jess Walter traces the paths that led the Weavers to their confrontation with federal agents and led the government to treat a family like a gang of criminals. This is the story of what happened on Ruby Ridge: the tragic and unlikely series of events that destroyed a family, brought down the number-two man in the FBI, and left in its wake a nation increasingly attuned to the dangers of unchecked federal power.

In Over Tumbled Graves, Jess Walter, National Book Award finalist and author of Citizen Vince and The Zero, confronts our fascination with pathology and murder. A thriller of extraordinary depth and dimension, Over Tumbled Graves follows Caroline Mabry, a Spokane police detective searching for a serial murderer.

In this fiendishly clever and darkly funny novel, Jess Walter speaks deeply to the bonds and compromises we make as children -- and the fatal errors we can make at any moment in our lives.While working the weekend night shift, Caroline Mabry, a weary Spokane police detective, encounters a seemingly unstable but charming derelict. "I'd like to confess," he proclaims. But he insists on writing out his confession in longhand. In the forty-eight hours that follow, the stranger admits to not just a crime, but an entire life: a wry and haunting tale of poverty and politics, of obsession and revenge. And as he writes, Caroline pushes herself to near collapse, racing against the clock to investigate not merely a murder, but the story of two men's darkly intertwined lives.

In this brilliantly entertaining send-up of zombie lit, Edgar Award winner and National Book Award finalist Jess Walter offers a twist on America’s favorite You don’t have to be dead to be a zombie. Walter creates a postapocalyptic nightmare that is as sidesplitting as it is moving—and all the more damning because it’s so recognizable.Set in the year 2040, amid rolling epidemics, economic collapses, ozone tumors, genetic piracy, and an Arizona border war, “Don’t Eat Cat” is the story of Owen, a guy who just wants to forget the results of his recent full-body scan with a grande soy latte before going to work in Seattle’s food/finance district. The world has gone straight to hell, and the most horrifying part of it is that not a damn thing has You still have to go to work, you still don’t have a girlfriend, and, unbelievably, the line at the Starbucks Financial still stretches on forever. Why? Because there’s a zombie working behind the counter, an addict of a club drug that causes its users to become aggressive, milk-pale, dead-eyed dimwits with an appetite for rodents and house pets—cats in particular (and, in very, very rare cases, humans).When Owen finally makes it to the head of the line, the afflicted barista’s people skills falter under pressure and he mauls the store manager. It’s the first documented zombie attack in months, and it sets the sim-tweets buzzing, ultimately ending in a vigilante killing. As for Owen, he gets more than a free latte out of the He’s forced to confront the brokenness of his present life by venturing into the past. With the help of a private investigator, he heads into Seattle’s Zombie Town to search for the only woman he has ever loved.In “Don’t Eat Cat,” some highs are better than a lifetime of being human.. . .Jess Walter is the author of “Citizen Vince,” “The Zero,” “The Financial Lives of the Poets,” and the forthcoming “Beautiful Ruins,” which will be published by HarperCollins in June. Praised by the “New York Times” as “a ridiculously talented writer,” he has won the Edgar Award for mystery writing and been named a finalist for the National Book Award. A former journalist, Walter lives with his family in Spokane, Washington. “Don’t Eat Cat” is his first zombie story.

From the bestselling author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Beautiful Ruins, a father-son story that underscores why Jess Walter is not only among the funniest writers working today but among the most bighearted and humane.Jay is nothing like his hard-drinking, skirt-chasing, blue-collar dad. He’s college-educated, works as a graphic designer, prefers white wine to whiskey, and is gay—a fact that’s been lost, with so much else, in the growing fog of his father’s dementia. When the woman with whom his dad has lived for decades throws him out (thanks to a little neighborly infidelity), Jay moves his dad in with him in Boise—at least temporarily—until he can find an eldercare facility for the old man. But the search turns out to be far more complicated than Jay realized—what place will not only care for his dad but let him be who he imperfectly is, bad habits and all? The answer to that question takes father and son to a 1950s-style motor inn, the Town & Country Senior Inn, where the only therapy on offer is nostalgia and happy hour starts at 3:30.In turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Town & Country describes a son’s greatest act of tolerance and acceptance in a world—a distinctly American one—that hasn’t always shown him the same. It’s a story, as only Jess Walter could write it, about all the ways we cannot help but love each other even when, owing to political, regional, and generational divisions, we do not, and maybe cannot, understand each other.

Smoor en Slipstream zijn twee novelles over wanhoop en veerkracht, waarin de dramatiek van de liefde op een humoristische wijze centraal staat.

A very short story written by Jess Walter

Since 1993, the Inlander has been sharing stories of the people and events that have made the Inland Northwest so unique. Now you can read 15 of them in Inlander Histories, Volume 2.You’ll meet the man who not only survived Prohibition, but thrived right on through the dry years. Read all about the Sisters of Providence, who built Spokane’s first hospital from the back of a pony. And then there’s the legend of Nat Park and how a certain couple’s connections brought the Looff Carrousel to Spokane.Local historians and authors first brought these people to life in the pages of the Inlander, and now they’re collected here, Jess Walter on Dashiell Hammett’s Davenport detour; Sheri Boggs on Bing Crosby’s deep ties to his hometown; Jack Nisbet on Mourning Dove’s mark on regional lit; and Robert Carriker on Lewis and Clark’s continental crossing.You’ll find that and more inside Inlander Histories, Vol. 2.

Als 1962 das Boot einer jungen amerikanischen Schauspielerin in Porto Vergogna anlegt, scheinen Pasquales kühnste Träume wahr zu werden. Eine echte Schauspielerin in seinem verschlafenen Fischerdorf, in der Pension, die er von seinem Vater übernommen hat. Dee Moray kommt direkt von Dreharbeiten – angeblich, um sich von einer Krankheit zu erholen – und bringt nicht nur Glamour, sondern auch den sturzbetrunkenen Hollywood-Star Richard Burton mit nach Ligurien. Als sie abreist, ist Pasquales Herz gebrochen. Fünfzig Jahre später überquert er den Atlantik und macht sich gemeinsam mit einem berühmten Filmproduzenten, dessen resignierter Assistentin und einem gescheiterten Schriftsteller auf die Suche nach seiner einstigen großen Liebe.

Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel of the Year“You just have to read it . . . . Utterly inventive. . . excruciatingly breathless."" —Maureen Corrigan, Washington PostFrom the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful a riveting story of witness protection, petty thievery, local politics, and murder—set against the turbulent backdrop of the 1980 presidential electionIt’s the fall of 1980, the last week before the presidential election that pits the downtrodden Jimmy Carter against the suspiciously sunny Ronald Reagan. In a seedy suburban house in Spokane, a small-time crook formerly from New York, Vince Camden, pockets his weekly allotment of stolen credit cards and heads off to his witness-protection job at a donut shop. At the shop he takes a shine to a regular named Kelly, who works for a local politician. Somehow he finds himself and the politician in a parking lot at three in the morning, giving the slip to a couple of menacing thugs. And then he crosses the path of a young detective—and discovers his credit-scam partner, lying dead in his passport-photo office with a Cheerio-size bullet-hole in his head. No one writing crime novels today tells a story or sketches a character with more freshness or élan than Jess Walter. Citizen Vince is his funniest and grittiest book yet.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year“Riveting. . . . Without ever taking the easy way out, the book explores the battle of good vs. evil on very human terms.” —Washington Post Book WorldDark in mood and rich in character, Over Tumbled Graves by #1 New York Times bestselling author Jess Walter is that rare thriller that manages to be at once viscerally gripping and deeply provocativeDuring a routine drug bust, on a narrow bridge over white-water falls in the center of town, Spokane detective Caroline Mabry finds herself face-to-face with a brutal murderer. Within hours, the body of a young prostitute is found on the riverbank nearby. What follows confronts our fascination with pathology and murder and stares it down, as Caroline and her cynical partner, Alan Dupree—thrown headlong into the search for a serial murderer who communicates by killing women—uncover some hard truths about their profession . . . and each other.Rich with the darkly muted colors of the Pacific Northwest skies, Over Tumbled Graves established Jess Walter as a novelist of extraordinary emotional depth and dimension.

Wanneer politieagent Brian Remy vijf dagen na 9/11 ontwaakt uit een coma, merkt hij dat zijn waarnemings- vermogen erg vreemd werkt. Zijn geheugen hapert en hij ziet vlekjes - als het dwarrelende puin dat van de ingestorte torens naar beneden viel - die voor eeuwig zijn beeld verstoren. De reconstructie van zijn eigen geschiedenis van 9/11 is in eerste instantie e_Žn grote dwaaltocht. Ook kan Remy een aantal zaken niet plaatsen. Zo verloopt het contact met zijn ex-vrouw opeens moeizaam, begrijpt hij niets van de gesprekken met zijn collega Guterak en is hem volstrekt onduidelijk wat de opdracht inhoudt, die hij kennelijk in het kader van de nationale veiligheid heeft gekregen. Laat staan dat hij nog weet van wie hij die belangrijke opdracht heeft gekregen. Tot overmaat van ramp negeert zijn zoon Edgar hem volledig; hij doet net alsof zijn vader is omgekomen bij de aanslag. Wat volgt is een intrigerende 'histoire noir' waarin Jess Walter met een zeker sarcasme en met humor vertelt over de chaotische dagen na sdie enorme tragedie. Een gebeurtenis die zoveel ouders van kinderen het leven nam en die het denken over orde en veiligheid in de wereld voorgoed heeft veranderd.

"Viviamo in acqua" è un piccolo trattato di sopravvivenza quotidiana inscenato nei sobborghi di un'America irrancidita, infestata da una panoplia di ragazzini molesti, ladri di bmx e alcolizzati all'ultimo stadio. I suoi protagonisti sono truffatori che fingendosi di Greenpeace gabbano i colletti bianchi pieni di sensi di colpa, giornalisti che si vendicano della ex manipolandole l'oroscopo, barboni in cerca di qualche spiccio per comprarsi l'ultimo Harry Potter. Sono recidivi della vita, gente abituata a deludere le aspettative per quanto basse possano essere, padri dal cuore spezzato che vedono sfilare dinnanzi a sé una lunga carrellata di occasioni perse, uomini in cerca di redenzione che falliscono, e falliscono di nuovo, stavolta meglio. Tutti membri di una comunità «troppo povera, troppo bianca, troppo ignorante». Qual è la loro versione dei fatti? Non c'è nessuna verità né la parvenza di un'agnizione che sistemi le cose e ci faccia tirare un sospiro di sollievo procrastinando l'inevitabile. In compenso «ci sono mondi interi sotto quella superficie». Magari noi non riusciamo a vedere nulla sotto le increspature dell'acqua, ma Walter sì. Abulie, dipendenze e un certo rammaricato cinismo animano una scrittura senza epifanie consolatorie, pungente di ironia e gravida di calor bianco, in cui l'umanità finalmente emerge da sott'acqua con una consapevolezza amara, ma insperata e nuova. O nuoti o affoghi.