Showing results by author "Robert Butler" in All Categories

Robert Olen Butler, author of Perfume River, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, and A Small Hotel, teaches graduate fiction at Florida State University—his version of literary boot camp. In From Where You Dream, Butler reimagines the process of writing as emotional rather than intellectual and tells writers how to achieve the dream space necessary for composing honest, inspired fiction.

Robert Olen Butler's lyrical and poignant collection of stories about the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its impact on the Vietnamese was acclaimed by critics across the nation and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. This edition includes two subsequently published stories - "Salem" and "Missing" - that brilliantly complete the collection's narrative journey with a return to the jungles of Vietnam.

Winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, O. Henry Award and Edgar Awards, the 19 writers in this 2005 edition are not just considered some of the best Southern writers, but among the best American writers period. With works by such writers as Dennis Lehane, Moira Crone, Robert Olen Butler, Cary Holladay, Tom Franklin, and Rebecca Soppe, this collection provides an electrifying current of deep, dark subjects set in the brutal, but charming south.

★★★★★ "An interesting take on humanities future!" - Reader Review ___ A fresh take on science fiction and a glimpse at humanity through the eyes of an alien who doesn't know what 'family' is, until he finds one! "Humans are the only known intelligent species to actively create 'Found Families' in the form of parents, children, siblings, and more. If a human starts spending more time with you and initiating physical contact, they have probably adopted you." These were the words that caught my ears when attending the most prestigious university in my quadrant as a minor in alien ...

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler tells a magical and humorous contemporary fable that captures the state of humanity at the cusp of a new millennium - as seen through the uniquely sensitive perspective of an empathetic extraterrestrial. An audible.com audio exclusive!

My name is Aiko Tsuniki, and I was the unluckiest man on Earth. All of that changed when I found myself in another world. And I mean all of that changed. I was no longer a man, no longer a human, and no longer on Earth. I was, somehow, brought to the world of Manami, a steampunk fantasy world of industrialist goblins and elves, mechpilot dwarves, and adventurers of all kinds, plying their skills against dragons, monsters, and even international conspiracies. What's a brand new kitsune with no idea how to use magic, nothing to go home to, and no way back anyway, going to do? Become an ...

Join the last vestiges of Humanity and their alien allies (the reptilian Thrynn, the insectoid Velox, and the plant-based Elowan) as they attempt to carve out their own territory in a sector of space filled with wondrous opportunity and deadly threats. Brave explorers seek out new worlds to colonize while merchants cruise from starport to starport, their holds laden with exotic goods. Not all in this futuristic setting have noble intent. For every prospector and trader attempting to make a difference, a dozen pirates, smugglers, and mobsters engage in all manner of criminal enterprise.

Life is change, transition, evolution. As life has brought its challenges to the home of Albaer and his companions, the past comes into focus, offering a chance at revenge, justice, and a turning of the tables. It offers a chance to begin again, not as who they were, but as who they could be in their wildest dreams. But such growth is often a painful process, with tears to be shed, fears to be realized, and hope to be held on to. And for the people who are willing to risk everything for a better tomorrow, one dreamt of in some place far from past pains, hope can be realized. Follow along ...

Throw a rock into the water and you know there will be ripples. But in deep water you have no idea where the rock will land, and you don't know how many ripples your ill considered throw will make, nor what effect they will have. My actions in starting an interspecies fighting tournament has had unforeseen outcomes, and the export of human culture, as well as human diplomatic efforts, has only made things more chaotic. Add to that some disappearances, lost colonies, missing ships, and some very nervous prey evolved civilizations, and you have a recipe for disaster. And so, once more into ...

Now it comes down to it. I am coming to my final years, perhaps even my final days. Within these pages is the the last record I have the mental strength to add my reflections to. The ninth edition of the eighth publication of a study that spanned decades and reshaped the galaxy as I, and we, all knew it. I wish I could say I had all the answers, but I didn't then and I don't now. Perhaps you can succeed where I failed, and find them. If nothing else, these are a glimpse, one final glimpse, into lives well lived, and I hope you cherish them as I have, whether you have the lifespan of a human...

You can't get too comfortable in this Universe, not anywhere, really. Every time you do, it has a way of shaking things up. In this volume, I, Bailey Walker, student of humanity, alien entrepreneur, and... who am I kidding? Sometimes thoroughly confused idiot, do my best to relay the events of an extraordinary time in the lives of I and my humans. Fauve Walker got the worst kind of attention, along with the rest of her family. She and they got the attention of the Earth First Movement, radicalized humans who sought to purge the world of all nonhumans, aspiring warmongers, aspiring gods, ...

Autumn 1915. World War I is raging across Europe, but Woodrow Wilson has kept Americans out of the trenches - though that hasn't stopped young men and women to volunteer at the front. Christopher "Kit" Cobb, a Chicago reporter with a second job as undercover agent for the US government, is officially in Paris doing a story on American ambulance drivers, but his intelligence handler, James Polk Trask, soon broadens his mission. City-dwelling civilians are meeting death by dynamite in a new string of bombings, and the German-speaking Kit seems just the man to figure out who is behind them.

A visionary and poignant novel centered around former newspaperman Sam Cunningham as he prepares to die, Late City covers much of the early 20th century, unfurling as a conversation between the dying man and a surprising God. As the two review Sam's life, from his childhood in the American South to his fledgling newspaper career in Chicago in the Roaring Twenties and the decades that follow, snippets of history are brought sharply into focus.

Hatcher McCord is an evening news presenter who has found himself in Hell and is struggling to explain his bad fortune. He's not the only one to suffer this fate - in fact, hes surrounded by an outrageous cast of characters, including Humphrey Bogart, William Shakespeare, and almost all of the popes and most of the U.S. presidents. The question may be not who is in Hell but who isn't.

A must-listen collection of four bibliomysteries by bestselling and award-winning authors

Christopher Marlowe Cobb ("Kit"), the swashbuckling early 20th-century American newspaper war correspondent, travels to Mexico in April and May of 1914, during that country’s civil war and the American invasion of Vera Cruz. But covering the war in enemy territory and in sweltering heat isn't enough of a challenge for Cobb. Soon, he's falling in love with a young Mexican laundress, Luisa, who may not be as innocent as she seems, and he's witnessing the inexplicable attempted sniper assassination of a priest (miraculously, the bullet rebounds off the cross around his neck, leaving him unharmed).

Carcosa is a fictional land that first appeared in Bierce’s 1886 story “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” (included in this collection), and later is appeared Robert W. Chambers’s The King in Yellow. It has since been used by many other fantasy and horror writers and poets. This collection explores Carcosa and other fictional cities found in nineteenth-century poetry and short stories. The works of these classic and innovative writers are given new life, and a new generation of listeners will have the chance to voyage to Carcosa … and beyond.

Time marches on, life continues, the world spins, the uncaring Universe never noticed when one little dot stopped moving, nor one young girl got older, one family was wounded, or one confused and struggling alien tried to make sense of everything going on around him. I wish I could say all of my time on Earth was easy, a joyful time filled with light and games and happiness. But the reason all of those times where life was marvelous shone so brightly is precisely because there was shadow too. Some darker than others, I admit. It's been a year since our time in Chi'cagoa Rea, and we were ...

What can anyone say about meeting a sibling you've forgotten that you even have? What do you say when they come to you for help? I didn't have any idea, that's for sure. Bau's arrival so soon after my recent victory in securing a long term stay on Earth, was nothing if not disruptive. Or so I thought at the time, but I had no idea how right I really was, 'disruptive' did not begin to cover it. Chaotic? Mad? Dangerous? All seemed better words. Bau's plea for help was not for her, but for 'her humans'. The surviving remnants of the people who once lived in Chicago, a forgotten people who ...

The story continues as I, we, all of us, strive to find a solution to the problems which plague Chi'cagoa Rea and the unfortunate demihumans who live here. Bonny Red, myself, my sister, Rebecca... all of us do our best, but sometimes good ideas can come from unexpected sources, and are all the more galling because they should have been expected. Fauve has an idea, an idea so crazy, so dangerous, so absurd, that it might just work. And because of what we learn, I a long buried truth of human nature comes to light, and it illuminates a buried truth of my own home world's distant past. In the ...