501 Minutes To Christ

DUE OUT SEPTEMBER 2007, POE BALLANTINE’S second collection of personal essays follows in the tradition of Things I Like About America. Stories range from "The Irving," which details Mr. Ballantine’s diabolical plan to punch John Irving in the nose after opening for him before an audience of 2,000 people that launched the literary festival, Wordstock; to "Wide-Eyed in the Gaudy Shop," which tells how, in Mexico, the narrator met and later married his wife, Cristina; to "Blessed Meadows for Minor Poets," the devastating tale of how after years of sacrifice and persistence, Mr. Ballantine finally secured a contract with a major publisher for a short story collection that never came to fruition. Ever present in this collection of essays are the odd jobs, eccentric characters, boarding houses, buses, and beer that populate Mr. Ballantine’s landscape and make his stories uniquely his own. The title story, "501 Minutes to Christ," was included in the Houghton Mifflin anthology, Best American Essays 2006.

An injury at birth left Audrey with a wandering eye. Though flawed, the bad eye functions well enough to permit her an idiosyncratic view of the world, one she welcomes in the stifling postwar Brooklyn of the 1950s. During a journey to Manhattan to see a doctor about her sight, she begins to explore the sexual rites of adulthood. But can her romance last? In this beautifully observed novel, Lynne Sharon Schwartz raises themes of innocence and escape while illuminating the rich inner life of a singular girl.

Fans of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" and John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" will embrace Poe Ballantine's "Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere." Poe Ballantine's "Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel" included in Best American Essays 2013, and for well over twenty years, Poe Ballantine traveled America, taking odd jobs, living in small rooms, trying to make a living as a writer. At age 46, he finally settled with his Mexican immigrant wife in Chadron, Nebraska, where they had a son who was red-flagged as autistic. Poe published four books about his experiences as a wanderer and his observations of America. But one day in 2006, his neighbor, Steven Haataja, a math professor from the local state college disappeared. Ninety five days later, the professor was found bound to a tree, burned to death in the hills behind the campus where he had taught. No one, law enforcement included, understood the circumstances. Poe had never contemplated writing mystery or true crime, but since he knew all the players, the suspects, the sheriff, the police involved, he and his kindergarten son set out to find out what might have happened.

“I explained toTomthat dealing with the bully was no different than dealing with the mountain lion. They were both predators looking for easy prey.” Poe Ballantine visits his dying Grandfather Bing, receives free rent in return for evicting difficult tenants from the Totalitarian Hotel, models nude for budding artists, reconnects with his parents, befriends a lonely Austrian tourist on the Greyhound bus, cooks and gambles in Vegas, falls in love, returns to his wife’s homeland of Mexico to baptize his son, and discovers the true meaning of Guidelines for Mountain Lion Safety. In this new collection of essays, Ballantine is at his soulful and penetrating best. At once hilarious and heart wrenching, the author recounts the trajectory of his own journey from reckless adolescence to the responsibilities of parenthood with disarming honesty, always fearlessly confronting those bullies and demons that threaten to blow us all off course.

Clown Girl lives in Baloneytown, a seedy neighborhood where drugs, balloon animals, and even rubber chickens contribute to the local currency. Against a backdrop of petty crime, she struggles to live her dreams, calling on cultural masters Charlie Chaplin, Kafka, and da Vinci for inspiration. In an effort to support herself and her layabout performance-artist boyfriend, Clown Girl finds herself unwittingly transformed into a "corporate clown," trapping herself in a cycle of meaningless, high-paid gigs that veer dangerously close to prostitution. Monica Drake has created a novel that riffs on the high comedy of early film stars — most notably Chaplin and W. C. Fields — to raise questions of class, gender, economics, and prejudice. Resisting easy classification, this debut novel blends the bizarre, the humorous, and the gritty with stunning skill.

A novel about the aberration and endurance of the human condition translated by Tiina Nunnally. Soerine, a deformed female dwarf from Denmark, is given as a gift to the Russian Tsar, Peter the Great because he is taken by her freakishness and intellect. Against her will Peter takes her to St. Petersburg where she becomes a jester in his court, Forced to live a life that both compels and repels her, she gives in to the attentions of the Tsar’s favorite dwarf, Lukas and carves out an existence for herself amidst the squalor and lice-ridden life of dwarfs in early 18th century. Disaster eventually strikes in the shape of a priest who wants to “save” her.

During a fateful summer, 13-year-old Jake Weber witnesses the brutal murder of a Native American woman by the town banker. Jake's parents forbid him to speak of the killing or name its perpetrator, even as the woman's African American lover stands falsely accused. The crime and what follows it forever alter Jake's view of his parents and the world around him. Faraway Places won widespread praise for its vivid narrative and incantatory style, and Spanbauer displays singular skill in inhabiting the mind of a troubled adolescent boy.