Stewart O'Nan
1) Ocean state
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"In the first line of Ocean State, we learn that a high school student was murdered, and we find out who did it. The story that unfolds from there with incredible momentum is thus one of the build-up to and fall-out from the murder, told through the alternating perspectives of the four women at its heart. Angel, the murderer, Carol, her mother, and Birdy, the victim, all come alive on the page as they converge in a climax both tragic and inevitable....
2) Emily, alone
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Newly independent widow Emily Maxwell dreams of visits by grandchildren and mourns changes in her quiet Pittsburgh neighborhood before realizing an inner strength to pursue developing opportunities.
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2015.
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"A "rich, sometimes heartbreaking" (Dennis Lehane) novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald's last years in Hollywood In 1937, F. Scott Fitzgerald was a troubled, uncertain man whose literary success was long over. In poor health, with his wife consigned to a mental asylum and his finances in ruins, he struggled to make a new start as a screenwriter in Hollywood. By December 1940, he would be dead of a heart attack. Those last three years of Fitzgerald's life,...
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Early in 2004, two writers and Red Sox fans, Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King, decided to chronicle the upcoming season, one of the most hotly anticipated in baseball history. They would sit together at Fenway. They would exchange emails. They would write about the games. And, as it happened, they would witness the greatest comeback ever in sports, and the first Red Sox championship in eighty-six years. What began as a Sox-filled summer like any other...
6) Snow angels
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Now a major motion picture from Warner Independent starring Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale
In Stewart O'Nan's Snow Angels, Arthur Parkinson is fourteen during the dreary winter of 1974. Enduring the pain of his parents' divorce, his world is shattered when his beloved former babysitter, Annie, falls victim to a tragic series of events. The interlinking stories of Arthur's unraveling family, and of Annie's fate, form the backdrop of this intimate...
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A year after the death of her husband, Emily Maxwell gathers her family by Lake Chautauqua in western New York for what will be a last vacation at their summer cottage. Joining is her sister-in-law, who silently mourns the sale of the lake house, and a long-lost love. Emily's firebrand daughter, a recovering alcoholic recently separated from her husband, brings her children from Detroit. Emily's son, who has quit his job and mortgaged his future to...
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New York Times Book ReviewNotable Book of the Year
"A new masterpiece of American literature." -Dennis Lehane, Entertainment Weekly
"A Prayer for the Dying reads like the amazing, unrelenting love child of Shirley Jackson and Cormac McCarthy. It's twisted proof that God will do worse to test a faithful man than the devil would ever do to punish a sinner." -Chuck Palahniuk
Set in Friendship, Wisconsin, just after the Civil War, A Prayer for...
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Marjorie Standiford has quite a story to tell. And on the eve of her execution for a sensational murder spree, she's giving every detail, just as she remembers them, to the famous novelist who has come to record it all. Of course, Marjorie contends that she didn't do any killing. That was all Lamont, her boyfriend, and Natalie, their girlfriend, while Marjorie got high and took care of the baby. But she was in it just the same, careening across the...
10) A world away
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A major novel by the award-winning author named by Granta as one of America's best young writers. Set at a remote beachfront cottage in the Hamptons one summer during the Second World War, A World Away follows the fortunes of the Langer family, whose oldest son, Rennie, is missing in action in the Pacific theater. As we are soon aware, there is another battle raging at the same time, this one on the domestic front, as Anne and James Langer's marriage...
11) Everyday people
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Pittsburgh, 1998: Chris "Crest" Tolbert is eighteen years old, a soon-to-be father, and partially paralyzed after a devastating accident that left his best friend dead. In Everyday People, acclaimed novelist Stewart O'Nan offers a multifaceted portrait of Crest and of East Liberty, the African American neighborhood he calls home. As he deals with the challenges of new fatherhood and life as a paraplegic, Crest must also negotiate his relationships...
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This volume features twelve journeys into the lives and souls of a broad range of characters-including a ruined farmer, a black day laborer, an old Chinese grocer, and a young policeman who has become separated from his family and is descending into madness. Intimate and generous, these stories illuminate the connections that bind us and the obligations and sorrows of love. From The Speed Queen to Names of the Dead to West of Sunset, O'Nan has dazzled...
13) Henry, himself
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"Soldier, son, lover, husband, breadwinner, churchgoer, Henry Maxwell has spent his whole life trying to live with honor. A native Pittsburgher and engineer, he's always believed in logic, sacrifice, and hard work. Now, seventy-five and retired, he feels the world has passed him by. It's 1998, the American century is ending, and nothing is simple anymore. His children are distant, their unhappiness a mystery. Only his wife Emily and dog Rufus stand...
14) City of secrets
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"In 1945, Jewish refugees by the thousands set out for Palestine. Those who made it relied on the underground to shelter them; taking false names, they blended with the population, joining the wildly different factions fighting for independence. "City of Secrets" follows one survivor, Brand, as he tries to regain himself after losing everyone he's ever loved. Now driving a taxi provided--like his new identity--by the underground, he navigates the...
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2003
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At Midnight on Halloween in a cloistered New England suburb, a car carrying five teenagers leaves a winding road and slams into a tree, killing three of them. One escapes unharmed, another suffers severe brain damage. A year later, summoned by the memories of those closest to them, the three that died come back on a last chilling mission among the living. A strange and unsettling ghost story creeps through the leaf-strewn streets and quiet cul-de-sacs...
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Managing a failed seafood restaurant in a run-down New England mall just before Christmas, Manny DeLeon coordinates a challenging final shift of mutinous staff members, an effort that is complicated by his love for a waitress, a pregnant girlfriend, and an elusive holiday gift.
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On the heels of the critically acclaimed and bestselling "Last Night at the Lobster" comes this honest, heartfelt account of one family's attempt to find its missing child. O'Nan's novel begins with the suspense of a thriller and soon deepens into an affecting family drama of loss.