Showing results by narrator "Aasne Vigesaa" in Literature & Fiction

Reformed art forger Tilda Goodnight reluctantly joins forces with semi-reformed con man Davy Dempsey. They want to steal a dubious painting and several million embezzled dollars from a lethal widow named Clea, who has targeted a mild-mannered art collector as her next dearly departed. Complications include her sister, the female impersonator; his best friend, the reformed cat burglar; a recidivist embezzler named Rabbit; a hit man; some lousy sex; and a juke box.

At the Vis Ta Vie inn, Reneé and Jean-Paul De La Rue face the daunting decision to close their beloved home for good. They’re not the only ones going through a season of change, though. Their guests include three couples in crisis: Hollywood celebs Leo and Penny are spending their silver anniversary together while on the cusp of divorce. Lucy, a practical-minded therapist, and Henry, an astronomer with his head in the stars, are struggling to find common ground.

Sophie Dempsey wants to help her sister film a video and then get out of Temptation, Ohio. Mayor Phin Tucker wants to play pool with the police chief and keep things peaceful. But when Sophie and Phin meet, they both get more than they want. Gossip, blackmail, adultery, murder, vehicular abuse of a corpse, and slightly perverse but excellent sex: all hell breaks loose in Temptation.

Caroline Evans, a recently widowed mother of two, thinks things have finally fallen into place when she meets the charismatic Anthony Fleming. They are quickly married, and she and her two children move into his luxury apartment in the legendary Rockwell on Central Park West. Caroline dismisses the oddities of their new neighbors as pleasant eccentricities - until things begin to change.

Between life and death, dreaming and waking, at the train stop beyond the end of the world is the city of Palimpsest. To get there is a miracle, a mystery, a gift, and a curse - a voyage permitted only to those who’ve always believed there’s another world than the one that meets the eye. Those fated to make the passage are marked forever by a map of that wondrous city tattooed on their flesh after a single orgasmic night. To this kingdom of ghost trains, lion-priests, living kanji, and cream-filled canals come four travelers.

With rich, pure prose Hoffman charts the progress of Gretel Samuelson from the time she is a young girl already acquainted with betrayal and grief, until she finally leaves home. Gretel's sly, funny, knowing perspective is at the heart of this collection, as she navigates through loyalty and loss with the help of an unforgettable trio of women: her best friend, Jill, her romance-addled cousin Margot, and her mother, Franny, whose spiritual journey affects them all.

At first, June appears to be the ideal California girl - blond hair, blue eyes, a production assistant at a film company, and married to a hot property about to get his doctorate - but she abandons her home and job to follow her husband to Bulgaria. Within a month of their arrival, June turns 30 and her husband leaves her for a young local girl. As difficult as it is for her to be without him and virtually friendless in a country on the verge of civil war, June doesn't run home.

Carolina Fantoni, a young contessa in nineteenth-century Italy, is going blind. But nobody believes her: neither her parents nor her fiancé, the town’s most sought-after bachelor. Only her friend Turri, the eccentric local inventor, understands. But as darkness erases her world, Carolina discovers one place she can still see — in her dreams. In them, she can not only see, but fly, exploring new worlds in her own mind.

With springtime in the air, a toddler chases a ball onto a melting ice-covered lake far beyond his parents' reach. As the chill of Autumn comes to Minnesota, Max opens the door to find a grizzled drifter on the doorstep. Then Max realizes he knows the man. When Julie returns to her mother's home on the shores of Lake Superior, she sees an odd shape tossed by the waves onto the beach. What is it? Somewhere in Minnesota is a short story collection about the frenetic human experience and the ways in which life manifests itself and delivers defining moments.