In Hotly in Pursuit of the Real, the beloved bestselling novelist Ron Hansen opens the doors of his writing studio to share with us his passions for history, scandal, theology, Jesuits, the American West, and golf (which he plays even in bad weather). If Hansen's novels explore people very different from himself--from a stigmatic nun to a Victorian poet to Billy the Kid, and even Hitler's niece--the meditations in this book do the opposite, allowing us to glimpse the wellsprings of his ima...

Once again, acclaimed novelist Ron Hansen demonstrates his masterful versatility as a writer, with Isn't It Romantic?, a screwball comedy in the tradition of filmmaker Preston Sturges. In this charming entertainment, mistaken identities, botched schemes, and hilarious misunderstandings all play a part as Parisian sophistication collides with the affability and simple pleasures of the Great Plains.Touring America was Natalie's idea. But she had not planned on being accompan...

Colorado rancher Atticus Cody receives word that his wayward younger son, Scott, has committed suicide in Resurrection, Mexico. When Atticus travels south to recover Scott's body, he is puzzled by what he finds there and begins to suspect murder. Illuminating those often obscure chambers of the human heart, Atticus is the story of a father's steadfast and almost unfathomable love for his son, a mystery that Ron Hansen's fiction explores with a passion and intensity no reader will be able t...

“A marvelous journey into both history and imagination…A perfectly compelling and fast-paced story” (San Francisco Chronicle) from Ron Hansen about an iconic American criminal of the old West: legendary outlaw, Billy the Kid.Born Henry McCarty, Billy the Kid was a diminutive, charming, blond-haired young man who, growing up in New York, Kansas, and later New Mexico, demonstrated a precocious dexterity at firing six-shooters with either hand—a skill that bo...

Stories of the heartland by the National Book Award finalist and author of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford." Nebraska captures a rowdy, changing America. Written with wit and brawny lyricism, in voices ranging from hip to tender, the stories gathered here are as diverse and expansive as the country they celebrate…References to America's heartland abound throughout the book and serve as a central metaphor for what's close ...

Aged 65, Emmett Dalton is the last survivor of the legendary Dalton gang. Now he lives off his memories in Hollywood. Combining fact and fiction, Ron Hansen depicts the outlaw past of the Daltons and the West they travelled. The Dalton brothers turn from being peace officers in the Indian territories to a life of rustling. When their leader, Bob, meets Eugenia Moore, a schoolteacher who begins to plan their robberies, they become the most notorious outlaws of their time.As their ra...

From the acclaimed author of Atticus and Mariette in Ecstasy comes a stylish novel set in the hard-drinking, fast-living New York City of the Jazz Age that follows two lovers in a torrid affair on an arc of murder and sexual self-destruction.Based on a real case whose lurid details scandalized Americans in 1927 and sold millions of newspapers, acclaimed novelist Ron Hansen’s latest work is a tour de force of erotic tension and looming violence. Tr...

The highly acclaimed and provocatively rendered story of a young postulant's claim to divine possession and religious ecstasy.

"A textured picture of Hitler's histrionic personality and his insane mission for glory, presaging the genocide to come in the cold-blooded obliteration of one young woman." — Publishers WeeklyHitler's Niece tells the story of the intense and disturbing relationship between Adolf Hitler and the daughter of his only half-sister, Angela, a drama that evolves against the backdrop of Hitler's rise to prominence and power from particularly inauspicious...

In this retelling of one of the great classic tales of the American West, James comes across as a complex character, a new age type with an interest in parapsychology and alternative medicine, a farmer, a family man and a stone-cold killer.

With Exiles, Ron Hansen tells the story of a notorious shipwreck that prompted Gerard Manley Hopkins to break years of "elected silence" with an outpouring of dazzling poetry.In December 1875 the steamship Deutschland left Bremen, bound for England and then America. On board were five young nuns who, exiled by Bismarck's laws against Catholic religious orders, were going to begin their lives anew in Missouri. Early one morning, the ship ran aground in the Thames an...

Is God for real? Is there any meaning to life? These are the questions that urged a nine-year-old to start a quest that has lasted over sixty-nine years. The journey goes from coast to coast and from border to border.The events run the gamut of the last half of the previous century: racial prejudice, school integration, Vietnam debates, and the place of Christianity in our sociopolitical society.The accounts describe facing violence without fear, and finding solutions to co...