A surreal and magical novel of hope in the midst of apocalypse by the acclaimed author of Gob's Grief—"one of the most revelatory novels in recent memory" ( San Francisco Chronicle).Chris Adrian's debut novel, Gob's Grief, was hailed as "a work unlike any that has come before it" ( The Economist). Now, Adrian delivers a second work of visionary imagination in this magnificent tale of a children's hospital that survives, afloat, a...

Acclaimed as a "gifted, courageous writer"( The New York Times), Chris Adrian brings all his extraordinary talents to bear in The Great Night—a brilliant and mesmerizing retelling of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream."On Midsummer Eve 2008, three people, each on the run from a failed relationship, become trapped in San Francisco's Buena Vista Park, the secret home of Titania, Oberon, and their court. On this night, something awful is happeni...

In the summer of 1863, Gob and Tomo Woodhull, eleven-year-old twin sons of Victoria Woodhull, agree to together forsake their home and family in Licking County, Ohio, for the glories of the Union Army. But on the night of their departure for the war, Gob suffers a change of heart, and Tomo is forced to leave his brother behind. Tomo falls in as a bugler with the Ninth Ohio Volunteers and briefly revels in camp life; but when he is shot clean through the eye in his very first battle, Gob is...

The stories in A Better Angel describe the terrain of human suffering—illness, regret, mourning, sympathy—in the most unusual of ways. In "Stab," a bereaved twin starts a friendship with a homicidal fifth grader in the hope that she can somehow lead him back to his dead brother. In "Why Antichrist?" a boy tries to contact the spirit of his dead father and finds himself talking to the Devil instead. In the remarkable title story, a ne'er do well pediatrician returns home to take ca...

In the summer of 1863, Gob and Tomo Woodhull, eleven-year-old twins, agree to forsake their home and family for the glories of the Union Army. But on the night of their departure, Gob suffers a change of heart, and Tomo leaves his brother behind. When Tomo is shot clean through the eye in his very first battle, Gob is left to endure the guilt and grief that will later come to fuel his obsession with building a vast machine that will bring Tomo - indeed, all the Civil War dead - back to lif...

A hospital is preserved, afloat, after the Earth is flooded beneath seven miles of water. Inside, assailed by mysterious forces, doctors and patients are left to remember the world they've lost and to imagine one to come. At the centre, a young medical student finds herself gifted with strange powers and a frightening destiny. Simultaneously epic and intimate, wildly imaginative and unexpectedly relevant, The Children's Hospital is a work of stunning scope, mesmerizing detail, and...

With Gob's Grief, The Children's Hospital, and The Great Night Chris Adrian announced himself as a writer of rare talent and originality. The stories in A Better Angel, various of which have appeared in the New Yorker, Tin House and McSweeney's, demonstrate more of his endless inventiveness and wit, and confirm his growing reputation as a most exciting and unusual literary voice, and a writer of heartbreaking, magical and darkl...

San Francisco,midzomernacht 2008. Driemensen dieelkaar niet kennen zijn op weg naar hetzelfde feest. Geenvan drieën heeft zin,maar een feest kan helpen het verdrietover hun verloren liefdes te verwerken.Omdat ze laat zijn,besluiten ze de kortere route door het Buena Vista Park tenemen.Maar daar is ook de sprookjeswereld van de rouwendeTitania. Juist dezemidzomernacht verbreekt zij eenoude bezwering en raakt het park in de ban van dewraakzuch...

On Midsummer's Eve three heartsick lovers are trapped in San Francisco's Buena Vista Park. Ill met by moonlight, they are stalked by a psychopathic Puck, in thrall to a beautiful Titania, and ambushed by a homeless musical theatre troupe. Together they must survive a night that might just repair their hearts, if it doesn't destroy them first.Selected by the New Yorker as one of the best young writers in America, Adrian has created a singularly playful, moving and humorous ...

The New World presents an innovative story of love, decapitation, cryogenics, and memory by two of our most creative literary minds.Jorie has just received some terrible news. A phone full of missed calls and sympathetic text messages seem to indicate that her husband, Jim, a chaplain at the hospital where she works as a surgeon, is dead. Only, not quite—rather, his head has been removed from his body and cryogenically frozen. Jim awakes ...

What does love feel like beyond death?Jane's husband Jim has just died - or not quite. For Jim, a mild-mannered chaplain at the hospital where Jane works as a surgeon, has left his body to Polaris, a shadowy cryonics organisation that promises to do away with mortality forever. Stranded in the realm of the living, reeling from the loss of her husband, Jane sets out to confront Polaris and to discover just where, exactly, his body is now. Meanwhile, awake in a strange new w...

A comprehensive illustrated guide to the Old World family of birds in the Helm Identification series.Starlings range from familiar species such as Common Starling and Common Myna, which are closely associated with people and have been introduced to many parts of the world, to little-known forest birds with a very restricted distribution. The family is centred on tropical Asia and tropical Africa, where two separate evolutionary radiations have occurred.This...