Books by Robert Stone
Bay Of Souls: A Novel
by Robert Stone
Robert Stone’s remarkable novel is a psychological thriller of razor-sharp intensity: mysterious, erotic, and deeply readable.
Michael Ahearn, a professor at a rural college, sheds his comfortable assumptions when he becomes obsessed with a new faculty member from the Caribbean, Lara Purcell. An expert in Third World politics, Lara is seductive, dangerous — and in thrall, she claims, to a voodoo spirit who has taken possession of her soul.
Impassioned and determined, Michael pursues Lara to her native island of St. Trinity, heedless of the political upheaval there. Together they desperately attempt to reclaim all that Lara has lost. Yet island intrigue ensnares them. Lara sacrifices herself to ritual and superstition. Michael is caught unawares in a high-stakes smuggling scheme. In his feverish state of mind, the world becomes an ever-shifting phantasmagoria. He is, himself, possessed.
In Bay of Souls, readers will recognize the trademarks of Stone’s greatest fiction: the American embroiled in Third World corruption, the diplomats and covert operatives, the idealists and opportunists. Yet here the author’s sights are set inward, to a place where politics is superfluous, experience unreliable. Never before has Stone probed so powerfully the psychological depths of one man’s mind. What he finds there defies expectations.
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Day Hikes on the California Central Coast
by Robert Stone
Day Hikes on the California Central Coast provides access to 71 of the coast's best day hikes. This comprehensive guide includes coastline hikes in the scenic counties of Monterey, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara. Emphasis is placed on outstanding views and the incredible diversity of scenery along this section of the Califonia coast. The trails meander across rocky promontories to cool canyons and waterfalls, from white sand beaches to redwood forests, and from tidepools to panoramic mountain peaks. Each hike includes a summary of its highlights, a trail map, and concise driving and hiking directions. Additional county maps identify major access roads and the location of hikes in the overall area. Both visitors and residents will benefit from this guide's clear directions to the area's best day hikes. Easy to moderate hikes accommodate every level of experience.
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Day Hikes Around Santa Barbara California: 82 great hikes
by Robert Stone
Santa Barbara is a captivating, inviting community that is located in a beautiful, natural setting along the Pacific coast. The temperate climate and refreshing ocean breezes, very similar to the Mediterranean, have distinguished this area as "the jewel of the American Riviera." The landscape around the city includes mountainous terrain, preserved forests and wilderness areas, and stretches of undeveloped coast, allowing this scenic area to have miles of quiet, secluded hiking trails.
Day Hikes Around Santa Barbara is a comprehensive guide to 82 day hikes within a 50-mile radius of the city. The hikes include an excellent cross section of scenery and difficulty level, ranging from coastal beach walks to steep canyon climbs. Highlights include oceanside bluffs; beaches; tide pools; wetland preserves; sculpted gorges; rock outcroppings with caves; numerous waterfalls and secluded pools in mossy canyons; mountain ridge trails; historical sites; and stunning overlooks of wide mountain valleys, towns, and the Pacific Ocean. All hikes can be completed within a day (although map sources and references are included for extending the hike).
Each hike includes its own map, accurate driving and hiking directions, and a quick overview of distance/time/elevation. The summaries allow the hiker to choose a trail appropriate to their ability and desire. This 184-page book is a comprehensive hiker's guide to the area around Santa Barbara.
Companion hiking guides, also by Stone, include Day Hikes on the California Central Coast, Day Hikes Around San Luis Obispo County, and Day Hikes Around Ventura County.
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Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties
by Robert Stone
A memoir of America's most turbulent, whimsical decade, in the words of the man who experienced it all...
From the New York City of Kline and De Kooning to the jazz era of New Orleans's French Quarter to Ken Kesey's psychedelic California, Prime Green explores the 1960s in all its weird, innocent, fascinating glory. An account framed by two wars, it begins with Robert Stone's last year in the Navy, when he took part in an Antarctic expedition navigating the globe, and ends in Vietnam, where he was a correspondent in the days following the invasion of Laos. Told in scintillating detail, Prime Green zips from coast to coast, from days spent in the raucous offices of Manhattan tabloids to the breathtaking beaches of Mexico, and merry times aboard the bus with Kesey and the Pranksters.
Building on personal vignettes from Stone's travels across America, this powerful memoir offers the legendary novelist's inside perspective on a time many understand only peripherally. These accounts of the 1960s are riveting not only because Stone is a master storyteller but because he was there, in the thick of it, through all the wild times. From these incredible experiences, Prime Green forges a moving and adventurous portrait of a unique moment in American history.
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Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties
by Robert Stone
From the New York City of Kline and De Kooning to the jazz era of New Orleans's French Quarter, to Ken Kesey's psychedelic California, Prime Green explores the 1960s in all its weird, innocent, turbulent, and fascinating glory. Building on personal vignettes from Robert Stone's travels across America, the legendary novelist offers not only a riveting and powerful memoir but also an unforgettable inside perspective on a unique moment in American history.
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Outerbridge Reach
by Robert Stone
In this towering story about a man pitting himself against the sea, against society, and against himself, Robert Stone again demonstrates that he is "one of the most impressive novelists of his generation" (New York Review of Books). Inviting comparison with the great sea novels of Conrad, Melville, and Hemingway, Outerbridge Reach is also the portrait of two men and the powerful, unforgettable woman they both love - and for whom they are both ready, in their very different ways, to stake everything. As the San Francisco Chronicle said, "Robert Stone asks questions of our time few writers could imagine and answers them in narratives few readers will ever quite forget."
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A Hall Of Mirrors
by Robert Stone
Rheinhardt, a disk jockey and failed musician, rolls into New Orleans looking for work and another chance in life. What he finds is a woman physically and psychically damaged by the men in her past and a job that entangles him in a right-wing political movement. Peopled with civil rights activists, fanatical Christians, corrupt politicians, and demented Hollywood stars, A Hall of Mirrors vividly depicts the dark side of America that erupted in the sixties. To quote Wallace Stegner, "Stone writes like a bird, like an angel, like a circus barker, like a con man, like someone so high on pot that he is scraping his shoes on the stars."
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Dog Soldiers: A National Book Award Winner
by Robert Stone
In Saigon during the waning days of the Vietnam War, a small-time journalist named John Converse thinks he'll find action - and profit - by getting involved in a big-time drug deal. But back in the States, things go horribly wrong for him. Dog Soldiers perfectly captures the underground mood of America in the 1970s, when amateur drug dealers and hippies encountered profiteering cops and professional killers - and the price of survival was dangerously high.
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Bear And His Daughter
by Robert Stone
The stories collected in Bear and His Daughter span nearly thirty years - 1969 to the present - and they explore, acutely and powerfully, the humanity that unites us. In "Miserere," a widowed librarian with an unspeakable secret undertakes an unusual and grisly role in the anti-abortion crusade. "Under the Pitons" is the harrowing story of a reluctant participant in a drug-running scheme and the grim and unexpected consequences of his involvement. The title story is a riveting account of the tangled lines that weave together the relationship of a father and his grown daughter.
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Death Of The Black-Haired Girl
by Robert Stone
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
“Fast-paced [and] riveting . . . Stone is one of our transcendently great American novelists.” — Madison Smartt Bell
“Brilliant.” — Washington Post
At an elite college in a once-decaying New England city, Steven Brookman has come to a decision. A brilliant but careless professor, he has determined that for the sake of his marriage, and his soul, he must end his relationship with Maud Stack, his electrifying student, whose papers are always late yet always incandescent. But Maud is a young woman whose passions are not easily curtailed, and their union will quickly yield tragic and far-reaching consequences.
Death of the Black-Haired Girl is an irresistible tale of infidelity, accountability, the allure of youth, the promise of absolution, and the notion that madness is everywhere, in plain sight.
“At once unsparing and generous in its vision of humanity, by turns propulsive and poetic, Death of the Black-Haired Girl is wise, brave, and beautifully just.” — Boston Globe
“Unsettling and tightly wrought—and a worthy cautionary tale about capital-C consequences.” — Entertainment Weekly
“A taut, forceful, lacerating novel, full of beautifully crafted language.” — Los Angeles Review of Books
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Damascus Gate
by Robert Stone
“A stunning novel by a great American writer.”—Washington Post
Jerusalem: home to seekers, heretics, hustlers, and madmen of many faiths. In this most fractious city, a plot unfolds to bomb the sacred Temple Mount.
Christopher Lucas, an expatriate American journalist, stumbles upon the plot while investigating religious fanatics. Entangled in the intrigue are a nightclub singer, an unstable Jewish guru, a strung-out Kabbalist seeking the messiah, and a soldier of fortune routinely found at the world’s violent clashes. A confrontation in Gaza, a chase through riot-filled streets, a cat-and-mouse game in an underground maze—as Lucas races against time, he uncovers the duplicity and depravity on all sides of Jerusalem’s sacred struggle.
An explosive bestseller, Damascus Gate lays bare the dangers at the fringes of faith.
“A transcendent thriller.”—Time
“Brims over with plots, subplots, and an impressive array of incisively drawn characters . . . The range of [Stone’s] knowledge is spectacular.”—The New Yorker
“Damascus Gate asks enormous questions about cosmic truth—and its effect on those who think they own it—with intensity, intellectual rigor and abiding morality.”—San Francisco Chronicle
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Damascus Gate
by Robert Stone
On the cusp of the millennium, Jerusalem has become a battleground in the race for redemption. American journalist Christopher Lucas is investigating religious fanatics when he discovers a plot to bomb the sacred Temple Mount. A violent confrontation in the Gaza Strip, a race through riot-filled streets, a cat-and-mouse game in an underground maze -- as Lucas follows his leads, he uncovers an attempt to seize political advantage that reveals duplicity and depravity on all sides of Jerusalem's sacred struggle.
Ambitious, passionate, darkly comic, Damascus Gate is not only Robert Stone's biggest and best novel to date, but a timely and brilliant story of belief, power, salvation, and apocalypse.
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Fun With Problems
by Robert Stone
In Fun with Problems, Robert Stone demonstrates once again that he is "one of our greatest living writers" (Los Angeles Times). The pieces in this new volume vary greatly in length—some are almost novellas, others no more than a page—but all share the signature blend of longing, violence, black humor, sex and drugs that has helped Stone illuminate the dark corners of the human soul. Entire lives are laid out with remarkable precision, in captivating prose: a screenwriter carries on a decades-long affair with a beautiful actress, whose descent into addiction he can neither turn from nor share; a bored husband picks up a mysterious woman only to find that his ego has led him woefully astray; a world-beating Silicon Valley executive receives an unwelcome guest at his mansion in the hills; a scuba dive guides uneasy newlyweds to a point of no return. Fun with Problems showcases Stone's great gift: to pinpoint and make real the impulses—by turns violently coercive and quietly seductive—that cause us to conceal, reveal, and betray our very selves.
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Fun with Problems
by Robert Stone
In Fun with Problems, Robert Stone demonstrates once again that he is "one of our greatest living writers" (Los Angeles Times). The pieces in this new volume vary greatly in length—some are almost novellas, others no more than a page—but all share the signature blend of longing, violence, black humor, sex and drugs that has helped Stone illuminate the dark corners of the human soul. Entire lives are laid out with remarkable precision, in captivating prose: a screenwriter carries on a decades-long affair with a beautiful actress, whose descent into addiction he can neither turn from nor share; a bored husband picks up a mysterious woman only to find that his ego has led him woefully astray; a world-beating Silicon Valley executive receives an unwelcome guest at his mansion in the hills; a scuba dive guides uneasy newlyweds to a point of no return. Fun with Problems showcases Stone's great gift: to pinpoint and make real the impulses--by turns violently coercive and quietly seductive--that cause us to conceal, reveal, and betray our very selves.
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The Eye You See With: Selected Nonfiction
by Madison Smartt Bell, Robert Stone
The definitive collection of nonfiction—from war reporting to literary criticism to the sharpest political writing—from the “legend of American letters” (Vanity Fair)
Robert Stone was a singular American writer, a visionary whose award-winning novels—including Dog Soldiers, Outerbridge Reach, and Damascus Gate—earned him comparisons to literary lions ranging from Samuel Beckett to Ernest Hemingway to Graham Greene. Stone had an almost prophetic grasp of the spirit of his age, which he captured with crystalline clarity in each of his novels. Of course, he was also a sharp and brilliant observer of American life, and his nonfiction writing is revelatory.
The Eye You See With—the first and only collection of Robert Stone’s nonfiction—was carefully selected by award-winning novelist and Stone biographer Madison Smartt Bell. Divided into three sections, the collection includes the best of Stone’s war reporting, his writing on social change, and his reflections on the art of fiction. This is an extraordinary volume that offers up a clear-eyed look at the 20th century and secures Robert Stone’s place as one of the most original figures in all of American letters.
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$27.00
Children of Light (Vintage International)
by Robert Stone
By "one of the most impressive novelists of his generation" (The New York Review of Books), Children of Light is a searing, indelible love story of two ravaged spirits, played out under the merciless, magnifying prism of Hollywood.
Gordon Walker, screenwriter and actor, has systematically ruined his family and his health with cocaine and alcohol. Lee Verger is an actress of uncommon and unfulfilled promise, whom Gordon has known since the days when they were both young and fearless, and whose New Orleans childhood has left her with a tenuous hold on sanity. During the shooting of a film on the Pacific coast of Mexico, they resume a ritual struggle in which their desperate love for each other will either save or destroy them.
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A Flag for Sunrise
by Robert Stone
An emotional, dramatic and philosophical novel about Americans drawn into a small Central American country on the brink of revolution.
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Chasing the Moon: The People, the Politics, and the Promise That Launched America into the Space Age
JFK issued the historic moon landing challenge. These are the stories of the visionaries who helped America complete his vision with the first lunar landing fifty years ago.
A Companion Book to the AMERICAN EXPERIENCE® Film on PBS®
Going in depth to explore their stories beyond the PBS series, writer/producer Robert Stone—called “one of our most important documentary filmmakers” by Entertainment Weekly—brings these important figures to brilliant life.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy proposed the nation spend twenty billion dollars to land a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. Based on eyewitness accounts and newly discovered archival material, Chasing the Moon reveals for the first time the unknown stories of the fascinating individuals whose imaginative work across several decades culminated in America’s momentous achievement. More than a story of engineers and astronauts, the moon landing—now celebrating its fiftieth anniversary—grew out of the dreams of science fiction writers, filmmakers, military geniuses, and rule-breaking scientists. They include
• Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, whose writing inspired some of the key players in the Moon race. A scientific paper he wrote in his twenties led to the U.S. beating Russia in one area of space: communications satellites.
• Wernher von Braun, the former Nazi military genius who oversaw Hitler's rocket weapons program. After working on ballistic missiles for the U.S. Army, he was recruited by NASA to manage the creation of the Saturn V moon rocket.
• Astronaut Frank Borman, commander of the first mission to circumnavigate the Moon, whose powerful testimony before Congress in 1967 decisively saved the U.S. lunar program from being cancelled.
• Poppy Northcutt, a young mathematician who was the first woman to work in Mission Control. Her media exposure as a unique presence in this all-male world allowed her the freedom to stand up for equal rights for women and minorities.
• Edward Dwight, an African American astronaut candidate, recruited at the urging of the Kennedy White House to further the administration’s civil rights agenda—but not everyone welcomed his inclusion.
Setting these key players in the political, social, and cultural climate of the time, and including captivating photographs throughout, Chasing the Moon focuses on the science and the history, but most important, the extraordinary individuals behind what was undoubtedly the greatest human achievement of the twentieth century.
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The World Split Open: Great Authors on How and Why We Write (A Literary Arts Reader)
by Ursula K. Le Guin, Marilynne Robinson, Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, Wallace Stegner, Jeanette Winterson, Robert Stone
Since 1984, Literary Arts has welcomed many of the world's most renowned authors and storytellers to its stage. In celebration of their thirty-year anniversary, Tin House Books has collected highlights from the series in a single volume. Since 1984, Literary Arts has welcomed many of the world’s most renowned authors and storytellers to its stage for one of the country’s largest lectures series. Sold-out crowds congregate at Portland’s Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall to hear these writers’ discuss their work and their thoughts on the trajectory of contemporary literature and culture. In celebration of Literary Arts’ thirty-year anniversary, Tin House Books has collected highlights from the series in a single volume. Whether it’s Wallace Stegner exploring how we use fiction to make sense of life or Ursula K. Le Guin on where ideas come from, Margaret Atwood on the need for complex female characters or Robert Stone on morality and truth in literature, Edward P. Jones on the role of imagination in historical novels or Marilynne Robinson on the nature of beauty, these essays illuminate not just the world of letters but the world at large.
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Robert Stone: Dog Soldiers, A Flag for Sunrise, Outerbridge Reach (LOA #328) (Library of America, 328)
by Robert Stone
For the first time in one volume, three modern masterworks from the National Book Award-winning writer who explored the dark undercurrents of the American Century
Blurring the boundaries between literary fiction and political and military thrillers, Robert Stone was one of the most dynamic and critically acclaimed American writers of the last fifty years. Here, released in conjunction with Madison Smartt Bell's major new biography, is a deluxe edition gathering Stone's three finest novels, modern masterpieces about the dark underside of the American century. Stone's own experiences in Saigon inspired Dog Soldiers (1974), in which an ill-fated scheme to smuggle three kilos of heroin from South Vietnam to California comes to the attention of a corrupt drug enforcement official, setting in motion a lethal chase across a nightmarish landscape populated by poseurs, hustlers, psychopathic criminals, and failed gurus. Winner of the National Book Award, Dog Soldiers ranks with the work of Michael Herr and Tim O'Brien as a psychological reckoning with how Vietnam changed America. A Flag for Sunrise (1981) depicts of a leftist revolution in the fictious Central American country of Tecan and its impact on three North Americans: Justin Feeney, an idealistic nun; Frank Holliwell, an anthropologist who does favors for the CIA; and Pablo Tabor, an enraged Coast Guard deserter. Through their fates Stone explores the search for moral order in a terrifying universe beset by fear and evil. In Outerbridge Reach (1992) Owen Browne, a Navy veteran of Vietnam turned boat salesman, seeks to test his courage amid the materialism, corruption, and superficiality of 1980s America by entering a solo around-the-world yacht race. Alone in the South Atlantic, Browne discovers his capacity for deception and enlightenment in a sea tale worthy of Melville and Conrad.
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