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Kelsey Ford: Celebrate Short Story Month: 7 Recommendations Based on 7 Collections We Love (0 comment)
I love short story collections because of how much they manage to do with so little. They can dilate, expand, shatter, constellate. Within any given collection, you can move from the moon to a diner after midnight to that liminal minute right when you wake up but are still knee-deep in a dream..
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Descent

by Tim Johnston
Descent

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  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9781616204778
ISBN10: 161620477X
Condition: Like New


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Staff Pick

I haven't read with such urgency and dire need in a long while. Every scene, every sentence is unpredictable, beautifully written, and utterly captivating. Nothing will prepare you for the ending. I think I held my breath for the last 100 pages and then sobbed when I closed the book for the final time. Recommended By Heather A., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

The Rocky Mountains have cast their spell over the Courtlands, a young family from the plains taking a last summer vacation before their daughter begins college. For eighteen-year-old Caitlin, the mountains loom as the ultimate test of her runner’s heart, while her parents hope that so much beauty, so much grandeur, will somehow repair a damaged marriage. But when Caitlin and her younger brother, Sean, go out for an early morning run and only Sean returns, the mountains become as terrifying as they are majestic, as suddenly this family find themselves living the kind of nightmare they’ve only read about in headlines or seen on TV.

As their world comes undone, the Courtlands are drawn into a vortex of dread and recrimination. Why weren’t they more careful? What has happened to their daughter? Is she alive? Will they ever know? Caitlin’s disappearance, all the more devastating for its mystery, is the beginning of the family’s harrowing journey down increasingly divergent and solitary paths until all that continues to bind them together are the questions they can never bring themselves to ask: At what point does a family stop searching? At what point will a girl stop fighting for her life?

Written with a precision that captures every emotion, every moment of fear, as each member of the family searches for answers, Descent is a perfectly crafted thriller that races like an avalanche toward its heart-pounding conclusion, and heralds the arrival of a master storyteller.

Review

"The story unfolds brilliantly, always surprisingly...The magic of his prose equals the horror of Johnston’s story; each somehow enhances the other....Read this astonishing novel." The Washington Post

Review

"A riveting literary thriller of the can’t-stop-turning-the-page, stay-up-all-night variety." Alice LaPlante, author of A Circle of Wives

Review

"Tim Johnston’s high-wire literary thriller...will leave you gasping." Vanity Fair

Review

"Outstanding...The days when you had to choose between a great story and a great piece of writing? Gone." Esquire

About the Author

Tim Johnston is the author of the debut adult novel Descent, the story collection Irish Girl, and the young adult novel Never So Green. Published in 2009, the stories in Irish Girl won an O. Henry Prize, the New Letters Award for Writers, and the Gival Press Short Story Award, while the collection itself won the 2009 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. In 2005 the title story, “Irish Girl,” was included in the David Sedaris anthology of favorites Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules. Johnston’s stories have also appeared in New England Review, New Letters, the Iowa Review, the Missouri Review, DoubleTake, Best Life Magazine, and Narrative Magazine, among others. He holds degrees from the University of Iowa and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He currently teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Memphis.

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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 4.5 (2 comments)

`
Jeffrey Bluhm , January 03, 2017 (view all comments by Jeffrey Bluhm)
The reviews and ads for this book made me think it was a thriller and, while there are times it is thrilling, it's more a study on the devastation wrought when a child goes missing, even more traumatic for the circumstances being mysterious and thus leaving the remaining family members, initially, without closure. Once that becomes evident, the storytelling settles into a pace, and the character development into a depth, that keeps the reader's interest even in the more contemplative passages. The subjects evoke, where appropriate, sympathy and, elsewhere, the contempt they deserve. If you're a parent, you'll need to be able to separate the premise from the legitimate real life fears that does make this in many ways a horror story, but even though that's something I sometimes find challenging to do, I still found this to be a very worthwhile read.

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Kaye , September 02, 2016 (view all comments by Kaye)
What is one of the worst things that can happen to a family? The Courtland family gets an answer to that question when on vacation in the Rocky Mountains, their son and daughter go out for a run, and only their son returns, badly injured at that. Their family will never be the same again, as they try to come to grips with their missing daughter, their injured son, and their now dysfunctional family. This novel brings up one any family's worst fear, and plots out how this family dealt with it. Frightening in intensity and all too real family emotions, this keeps the reader on the edge of their seat.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9781616204778
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
12/01/2015
Publisher:
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Pages:
400
Height:
1.20IN
Width:
5.40IN
Thickness:
1.00
Author:
Tim Johnston
Media Run Time:
B

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List Price:$15.95
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More copies of this ISBN

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