Kevin Brockmeier

"The author of the acclaimed novel The Brief History of the Dead now gives us one hundred funny, poignant, scary, and thought-provoking ghost stories that explore all aspects of the afterlife. A spirit who appears in a law firm reliving the exact moment she lost her chance at love, a man haunted by the trees cut down to build his house, nefarious specters that snatch anyone who steps into the shadows in which they live, and parakeets that serve as mouthpieces for the dead--these are just a few of the characters Kevin Brockmeier presents in this extraordinary compendium of spectral emanations and their wildly various purposes in (after) life. These tales are by turns playful, chilling, and philosophical, paying homage to the genre while audaciously subverting expectations. The ghosts in these pages are certain to haunt you well after you've closed the book"--

One Hundred Stories

The Ghost Variations

A journal of private love notes written by a husband to his wife in the wake of a fatal car accident passes through the hands of a hospital patient and five other suffering people whose respective experiences connect them to each other in poignant and complex ways. By the author of The Brief History of the Dead.

The Illumination

The View from the Seventh Layer

At age twelve, Kevin Brockmeier is ready to become a different person: not the boy he has always been—the one who cries too easily and laughs too easily, who lives in an otherland of sparkling daydreams and imaginary catastrophes—but someone else altogether. Over the course of one school year—seventh grade—he sets out in search of himself. Along the way, he happens into his first kiss at a church party, struggles to understand why his old friends tease him at the lunch table, becomes the talk of the entire school thanks to his Halloween costume, and booby-traps his lunch to deter a thief. With the same deep feeling and oddly dreamlike precision that are the hallmarks of his fiction, the acclaimed novelist now explores the dream of his own past and recovers the person he used to be.

A Memoir of Seventh Grade

A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip

A compilation of short fiction features the title story about an a troubled young woman who imagines an escape with an apparition she calls the Entity, as well as "The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device" and "Father John Melby and the Ghost of Amy Elizabeth."

An award-winning author presents a debut collection of short fiction that features "These Hands" about a male baby-sitter and his relationship with the young girl in his care, "A Day in the Life of Half of Rumpelstilskin" that continues the tale of the famous imp, "The Ceiling," and "The Jesus Stories." Reprint.

Things that Fall from the Sky

Surnute lühiajalugu

The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device

A novel about the disappearance of a young girl, narrated from her father's point of view as he struggles to come to terms with her vanishing.

The Truth about Celia

From the author of the widely praised "The Truth About Celia" comes a mesmerizing new work that imagines the world of the afterlife and its stark relation to the world of the living.

The Brief History of the Dead

From Kevin Brockmeier, one of this generation's most inventive young writers, comes a striking new novel about death, life, and the mysterious place in between. The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten. But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who produces the City’s only newspaper, are wondering what exactly is going on. Others, like Coleman Kinzler, believe it is the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is trapped in an Antarctic research station, her supplies are running low, her radio finds only static, and the power is failing. With little choice, Laura sets out across the ice to look for help, but time is running out. Kevin Brockmeier alternates these two storylines to create a lyrical and haunting story about love, loss and the power of memory.

A Novel

A journal of private love notes written by a husband to his wife in the wake of a fatal car accident passes through the hands of a hospital patient and five other suffering people whose respective experiences connect them to each other in poignant and complex ways. By the author of The Brief History of the Dead. Reprint.

Something strange is going on. All over the world, pain is manifesting itself as light. Cuts and bruises blaze and flash. Arthritic joints glow. Injured troops emit radiant white shards into the desert night. On the news, they're calling it 'The Illumination'. As this breathtaking phenomenon takes holds, a private journal of love notes passes into the keeping of Carol Ann Page, a lonely hospital patient, and from there through the hands of five other people. Each of them will find their lives changed forever in this masterful novel of human warmth and sheer invention - a story which spans decades and continents, telescopes from the global to the most intimate scale, and shines a spectacular light on the wounds we all bear.

Roman

Die Stadt der Toten

What if our pain was the most beautiful thing about us? From best-selling and award-winning author Kevin Brockmeier: a new novel of stunning artistry and imagination about the wounds we bear and the light that radiates from us all. At 8:17 on a Friday night, the Illumination commences. Every wound begins to shine, every bruise to glow and shimmer. And in the aftermath of a fatal car accident, a private journal of love notes, written by a husband to his wife, passes into the keeping of a hospital patient and from there through the hands of five other suffering people, touching each of them uniquely. I love the soft blue veins on your wrist. I love your lopsided smile. I love watching TV and shelling sunflower seeds with you. The six recipients—a data analyst, a photojournalist, a schoolchild, a missionary, a writer, and a street vendor—inhabit an acutely observed, beautifully familiar yet particularly strange universe, as only Kevin Brockmeier could imagine it: a world in which human pain is expressed as illumination, so that one’s wounds glitter, fluoresce, and blaze with light. As we follow the journey of the book from stranger to stranger, we come to understand how intricately and brilliantly they are connected, in all their human injury and experience.

At age twelve, Kevin Brockmeier is ready to become a different person: not the boy he has always been—the one who cries too easily and laughs too easily, who lives in an otherland of sparkling daydreams and imaginary catastrophes—but someone else altogether. Over the course of one school year—seventh grade—he sets out in search of himself. Along the way, he happens into his first kiss at a church party, struggles to understand why his old friends tease him at the lunch table, becomes the talk of the entire school thanks to his Halloween costume, and booby-traps his lunch to deter a thief. With the same deep feeling and oddly dreamlike precision that are the hallmarks of his fiction, the acclaimed novelist now explores the dream of his own past and recovers the person he used to be. From the Hardcover edition.

J. Robert Lennon

Lynne Tillman

Ben Greenman

Carson Mell

Stories by J. Robert Lennon, Kevin Brockmeier, Lynne Tillman, Carson Mell, and Ben Greenman.

Electric Literature No. 5

Matthew Cheney

Presents stories combining fantasy and realistic fiction that offer twists on the afterlife, the human body, religion, literary icons, enlightenment, and society.

Kevin Brockmeier

Books

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