From the award-winning “master of the short story” (The New York Times Book Review)—nine shattering, hilarious tales of men on the outskirts of America, habituating the motels, hot dog stands, and dive bars time forgot, grappling with a world that is swiftly changing, and dreaming of a return to the wooded shores of their youthIn these nine peerless stories, a family boating trip veers into emotional disaster while very narrowly avoiding the physical; a wo...

"Full of surprises and rewards and an exhilaration one feels only rarely." Newsweek on Ninety-Two in the Shade.Tiring of the company of junkies and burn-outs, Thomas Skelton goes home to Key West to take up a more wholesome life. But things fester in America's utter South. And Skelton's plans to become a skiff guide in the shining blue subtropical waters place him on a collision course with Nichol Dance, who has risen to the crest of the professio...

From the acclaimed author of Ninety-two in the Shade: Set in the seedy corners of Key West, the remote shore towns of the Bahamas, and the unforgiving landscape of Big Sky Country, a “uniformly brilliant” collection (The New York Times Book Review) of familial dysfunction, emotional failure, and American loneliness that celebrates the human ability to persist through life's absurditiesFor more than four decades, Thomas McGuane has been heralded as...

From the highly acclaimed author of Ninety-two in the Shade and Cloudbursts comes a collection of alternately playful and exquisite essays—including seven collected here for the first time—borne of a lifetime spent fishing."Thomas McGuane writes about fishing better than anyone else in the history of mankind." —Jim Harrison, New York Times bestselling author of Legends of the FallThe forty extraordinary p...

A collection of thirteen stories of great range, verve, and humor from the highly acclaimed author of Cloudbursts and Ninety-two in the ShadeThomas McGuane's first short story collection is "a cornucopia of McGuane's grace, humor, gusto, and smarts" (Philadelphia Inquirer), and McGuane is a writer who “makes the page, the paragraph, the sentence itself a record of continuous imaginative activity.... [He is] an important as well as a brill...

A man sails into the Gulf from Key West in the magisterial, penultimate story from Gallatin Canyon by the acclaimed award-winning author who has been called the “Flannery O’Connor of the New West.” • A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection“Errol Healy was going sailing to evade custody in one of the several institutions recommended for his care.” Haunted by memories of his best friend’s death and the witch, Miss Florence Ewing, Errol sets forth from...

A novel about a former soldier in Big Sky Country whose life is spiraling out of control, from the acclaimed author of Ninety-two in the Shade and Cloudbursts, who is "among the most arresting and fascinating [writers] of his generation" (San Francisco Chronicle).In McGuane's first novel set in his famed American West, Patrick Fitzpatrick is a former soldier, a fourth-generation cowboy, and a whiskey addict. His grandfather wants to run away to act in movi...

Panama is the harrowing and hilarious story of a washed-up rock star with kamikaze passion in Key West—and is widely considered to be the most autobiographical novel of one of our most important Americal writers, the author of Ninety-two in the Shade and CloudburstsChester Pomeroy is a one-time rock star turned casualty of illicit substances. In the hands of Thomas McGuane, Chester's story is a high-wire act of extravagant emotion and ste...

This is the story of the Whitelaws, a family whose values are as far flung as the territory they helped settle, and whose most recent generations have pioneered the landscape of dysfunction. The patriarch, Sunny Jim, exerts his perverse control even posthumously, by means of a last will and testament that binds the family fortune to a marriage that ought, by general consent, to be rent asunder.The charms of this particular son-in-law, lately released from prison, are potent if shor...

This brilliant story of one man’s struggle to change his life, from the acclaimed author of Ninety-two in the Shade and Cloudbursts, is “full of wry wit and graceful depictions of family relations, first love and the stark beauty of the Montana prairie” (Wall Street Journal).Joe Starling, a man teetering on the edge of spectacular failures—as an artist, rancher, lover, and human being—is also a man of noble ambitions. His struggle to righ...

Place exerts the power of destiny in these ten stories of lives uncannily recognisable and unforgettably strange: a boy makes a surprising discovery skating at night on Lake Michigan; an Irish clan in Massachusetts gathers at the bedside of its dying matriarch; a battered survivor of the glory days of Key West washes up on other shores.Several of the stories unfold in Big Sky country, McGuane's signature landscape: a father tries to buy his adult son out of virginity; a convict-tur...

Set in Big Sky Country, a triumphant collection of stories written with a comic genius in the vein of Twain and Gogol—from from the acclaimed author of Ninety-two in the Shade and Cloudbursts, “one of America's best short-story writers of the last 50 years" (The Boston Globe)These stories attest to the generous compass of Thomas McGuane's fellow feeling, as well as to his unique way with words. In this collection, filled with grace and hu...