Frederick Busch

A maimed Civil War Veteran returns to New York from the war determined to make it and there meets a Creole prostitute and a deputy inspector of customs named Herman Helville. Reader's Guide enclosed. Reprint.

A Novel

The Night Inspector

The Night Inspector (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Contributors include Lee K. Abbott, Charles Baxter, Ray Bradbury, Raymond Carver, Shelby Foote, John Gardner, Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, Tobias Wolff, and Flannery O'Connor, among others.

Letters to a Fiction Writer

Returning from his Carolina coast security job to upstate New York, Jack, haunted by memories of his dead wife and child, is hired to search for a lawyer's missing nephew, a search that brings Jack into the dark underworld of his hometown. By the author of Girls and A Memory of War. Reader's Guide included. Reprint. 40,000 first printing.

North

Catherine, a strong-willed, middle-aged woman with two sons--one in high school, one just off to college--has enjoyed an on-again, off-again love affair for many years with Harry. Reader's Guide available. Reprint.

A Love Story

Harry and Catherine

Frederick Busch has a voracious appetite for reading and writing great literature. A Dangerous Profession explores this passion in a series of thoughtful, funny, insightful essays on topics ranging from books encountered during his boyhood in Brooklyn to the etiquette of literary critique learned once he had become a published author. Vividly describing his career's growth as he coped with financial insecurity and scavenged for private writing spaces (such as his bathroom), Busch's lovingly written memoir also encompasses the quirky hardships encountered by his heroes, who include Dickens, Melville, Hemingway, and Graham Greene. This affectionate and inspiring tribute to those who live the writing life is also a celebration of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature at its finest. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

A Book About the Writing Life

A Dangerous Profession

In a new compilation of short fiction, the award-winning late author of North introduces a variety of characters who seek to save or comfort another in such works as the title story, narrated by a man who runs an upstate New York rescue mission and who attempts to save a young woman from her brutal boyfriend.

Stories

Rescue Missions

Sarah abandons her family to search for her biological mother, while her husband takes off across country in pursuit, leaving their son to stay behind with his in-laws. Reprint.

Long Way from Home

Mark Twain

Shelley Fisher Fishkin

Judith Yaross Lee

Thirty-eight tales and sketches include "Advice to Little Girls," "A Dog's Tale," and "The Danger of Lying in Bed"

The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories

After his parents separate, Petey leaves Brooklyn and moves with his father, an ex-cop, to a rural village in upstate New York, where his adolescent depression prompts him to play suicidal games with his father's pistol

Sometimes I Live in the Country

Frederick Busch has an enduring love affair with great books, and here he brilliantly communicates his passion to us all. Whether expounding on Melville or Dickens, or celebrating Hemingway or O'Hara, he explains what literature can ineffably reveal about our own lives. For Busch, there was no other recourse save the "dangerous profession;" it was to be his calling, and in these piercing essays, he demonstrates that we as a culture ignore the fundamental truths about fiction only at our own peril. With keen ruminations that recall the critcs of yore- Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, and Irving Howe-Busch, in this era of moral indirection, has revealed how the literature of our past is the key to our survival in the future.

A new collection of short stories by the author of The Night Inspector explores the connections among people and asks why some succeed and others do not. Reader's Guide included. Reprint.

Don't Tell Anyone

Selected by a Pulitzer Prize winner, this collection of short stories from one of the greatest American storytellers, capturing single moments in so-called ordinary life, remind us that we have no idea what goes on behind closed doors. 10,000 first printing.

Frederick Busch

Books

Your next favorite book is out there