Books by Steve Almond

Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America

by Steve Almond

A self-professed candyfreak, Steve Almond set out in search of a much-loved candy from his childhood and found himself on a tour of the small candy companies that are persevering in a marketplace where big corporations dominate.

From the Twin Bing to the Idaho Spud, the Valomilk to the Abba-Zaba, and discontinued bars such as the Caravelle, Marathon, and Choco-Lite, Almond uncovers a trove of singular candy bars made by unsung heroes working in old-fashioned factories to produce something they love. And in true candyfreak fashion, Almond lusciously describes the rich tastes that he has loved since childhood and continues to crave today. Steve Almond has written a comic but ultimately bittersweet story of how he grew up on candy-and how, for better and worse, the candy industry has grown up, too.

Candyfreak is the delicious story of one man's lifelong obsession with candy and his quest to discover its origins in America.

Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America

by Steve Almond

Perhaps you remember the whipped splendor of the Choco-Lite, or the luscious Caravelle bar, or maybe the sublime and perfectly balanced Hershey's Cookies 'n Mint. The Marathon, an inimitable rope of caramel covered in chocolate. Oompahs. Bit-O-Choc. The Kit Kat Dark.

Steve Almond certainly does. In fact, he was so obsessed by the inexplicable disappearance of these bars—where'd they go?—that he embarked on a nationwide journey to uncover the truth about the candy business. There, he found an industry ruled by huge conglomerates, where the little guys, the last remaining link to the glorious boom years of the candy bar in America, struggle to survive.

Visiting the candy factories that produce the Twin Bing, the Idaho Spud, the Goo Goo Cluster, the Valomilk, and a dozen other quirky bars, Almond finds that the world of candy is no longer a sweet haven. Today's precious few regional candy makers mount daily battles against corporate greed, paranoia, and that good old American compulsion: crushing the little guy.

Part candy porn, part candy polemic, part social history, part confession, Candyfreak explores the role candy plays in our lives as both source of pleasure and escape from pain. By turns ecstatic, comic, and bittersweet, Candyfreak is the story of how Steve Almond grew up on candy—and how, for better and worse, candy has grown up, too.

My Life in Heavy Metal

by Steve Almond

Steve Almond’s collection My Life in Heavy Metal presents twelve passion-fueled stories (including his Pushcart Prize-winning story “The Pass”) that take a clear-eyed view of relationships between young men and women who have come of age in an era without innocence. These are powerful and resonant stories of love and lust, that bring to life a generation desperately searching for connection in a fragmented world.
In the title story, an El Paso newspaper clerk assigned to review the heavy metal bands playing local arenas is drawn in by the primal music, fueling a torrid affair with a Mexican-American woman that will change him forever. In “Geek Player, Love Slayer,” a thirty-three-year-old woman harbors a secret crush on the young computer repairman in her office–until her ardor is unleashed at an after-work party, with unexpected consequences. In “Valentino,” two teenagers spending their last summer together before heading off to college experience a sexual awakening inspired by the romantic legend of a movie star from long ago.
By turn tender and raw, visceral and other-worldly, the stories of My Life in Heavy Metal capture the moments when the fires of passion burn over and subside into embers of pain and longing. It is a dazzling debut by a vibrant new writer.

The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories

by Steve Almond

Steve Almond, the man whose candy jones fueled the bestseller Candyfreak, returns with a collection of stories that both seals his reputation as a master of the modern form and risks getting him arrested. The cast of characters in The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories includes a wealthy family certain they have been abducted by space aliens, a sexy magazine editor who falls for a worldclass cad, and a beleaguered dentist who refuses to read his best friend’s novel. Michael Jackson and Abraham Lincoln make cameos, as do a variety of desperate and beautiful loonies, all of whom are laid bare, often literally. In these twelve stories, Almond refuses to let his characters off the hook, or to abandon them, until we have seen the full measure of ourselves within their struggle.

The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories

by Steve Almond

Steve Almond, the man whose candy jones fueled the bestseller Candyfreak, returns with a collection of stories that both seals his reputation as a master of the modern form and risks getting him arrested. The cast of characters in The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories includes a wealthy family certain they have been abducted by space aliens, a sexy magazine editor who falls for a worldclass cad, and a beleaguered dentist who refuses to read his best friend's novel. Michael Jackson and Abraham Lincoln make cameos, as do a variety of desperate and beautiful loonies, all of whom are laid bare, often literally. In these twelve stories, Almond refuses to let his characters off the hook, or to abandon them, until we have seen the full measure of ourselves within their struggle.

My Life in Heavy Metal: Stories

by Steve Almond

A debut anthology of short fiction explores the relationships between young men and women in a cynical era in such works as "Valentino," "Geek Player, Love Slayer," and the title story, about an El Paso newspaper clerk assigned to review heavy metal concerts whose attraction to the music fuels a life-altering love affair with a Chicana woman. A first collection. 25,000 first printing.

(Not That You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions

by Steve Almond

In (Not that You Asked), Steve Almond documents a life spent brawling with the idiot kings of modern culture. He squares off against Sean Hannity on national TV, takes on Oprah Winfrey, nearly gets kidnapped by a reality TV crew, and winds up in Boston, where he quickly enrages the entire population of Red Sox Nation. Amid the carnage, he finds time to celebrate his literary hero, the late Kurt Vonnegut. These are essays the Los Angeles Times has called “rich, fearless [and] cutting.”

Praise for (Not that You Asked)

“Refreshingly irreverent . . . absurdly funny.”
–The Boston Globe

“[Almond] scores big in every chapter of this must-have collection. Biting humor, honesty, smarts and heart: Vonnegut himself would have been proud.”
–Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Taunting, revealing, irreverent, and earnest.”
–The New York Times

“Steve Almond has created a distinctive voice and literary persona. Pleasure-obsessed, self-deprecating, horny, hilarious and always dedicated to parsing the messy terrain of the human heart.”
–Forward.com

Food and Booze: A Tin House Literary Feast

by Francine Prose, Steve Almond, Lydia Davis, Elissa Schappell, Anthony Swofford, Stuart Dybek, Grace Paley

Editors have assembled a delicious collection of food and drink writing that originally appeared in Tin House magazine. Food & Booze: A Tin House Literary Feast celebrates seven years of the dazzling writing and delicious recipes of Tin House magazine’s Readable Feast and Blithe Spirits departments. Literature and gastronomy converge in an idiosyncratic survey of everything from lotus fruit, elk, and absinthe to bread, eggs, and brandy Old-Fashioneds. Ranging from the humorous to the lyrical, the historic to the personal, and humble to haute cuisine, this elegant collection includes pieces by writers such as Steve Almond, Lan Samantha Chang, Lydia Davis, Chris Offutt, Grace Paley, Francine Prose, Elissa Schappell, and Michelle Wildgen.

(Not that You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions

by Steve Almond

How does Steve Almond get himself into so much trouble? Could it be his incessant moralizing? His generally poor posture? The fact that he was raised by a pack of wolves? Frankly, we haven’t got a clue. What we do know is that Almond has a knack for converting his dustups into essays that are both funny and furious. In (Not that You Asked), he squares off against Sean Hannity on national TV, nearly gets arrested for stealing “Sta-Hard” gel from his local pharmacy, and winds up in Boston, where he quickly enrages the entire population of the Red Sox Nation. Almond is, as they say in Yiddish, a tummler.

Almond on personal grooming: “Why, exactly, did I feel it would be ‘sexy’ and ‘hot’ to have my girlfriend wax my chest? I can offer no good answer to this question today. I could offer no good answer at the time.”
On sports: “To be a fan is to live in a condition of willed helplessness. We are (for the most part) men who sit around and watch other men run and leap and sweat and grapple each other. It is a deeply homoerotic pattern of conduct, often interracial in nature, and essentially humiliating.”
On popular culture: “I have never actually owned a TV, a fact I mention whenever possible, in the hopes that it will make me seem noble and possibly lead to oral sex.”
On his literary hero, Kurt Vonnegut: “His books perform the greatest feat of alchemy known to man: the conversion of grief into laughter by means of courageous imagination.”
On religion: “Every year, when Chanukah season rolled around, my brothers and I would make the suburban pilgrimage to the home of our grandparents, where we would ring in the holiday with a big, juicy Chanukah ham.”

The essays in (Not that You Asked) will make you laugh out loud, or, maybe just as likely, hurl the book across the room. Either way, you’ll find Steve Almond savagely entertaining. Not that you asked.

“A pop-culture-saturated intellectual, a kindly grouch, vitriolic Boston Red Sox hater, neurotic new father and Kurt Vonnegut fanatic… [Almond] scores big in every chapter of this must-have collection. Biting humor, honesty, smarts and heart: Vonnegut himself would have been proud.”
—— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life: A Book by and for the Fanatics Among Us

by Steve Almond

Drooling fanatic, n. 1. One who drools in the presence of beloved rock stars. 2. Any of a genus of rock-and-roll wannabes/geeks who walk around with songs constantly ringing in their ears, own more than 3,000 albums, and fall in love with at least one record per week.

With a life that’s spanned the phonographic era and the digital age, Steve Almond lives to Rawk. Like you, he’s secretly longed to live the life of a rock star, complete with insane talent, famous friends, and hotel rooms to be trashed. Also like you, he’s content (sort of) to live the life of a rabid fan, one who has converted his unrequited desires into a (sort of) noble obsession.

Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life traces Almond’s passion from his earliest (and most wretched) rock criticism to his eventual discovery of a music-crazed soul mate and their subsequent production of two little superfans. Along the way, Almond reflects on the delusional power of songs, the awkward mating habits of drooling fanatics, and why Depression Songs actually make us feel so much better. The book also includes:

• sometimes drunken interviews with America’s finest songwriters
• a recap of the author’s terrifying visit to Graceland while stoned
• a vigorous and credibility-shattering endorsement of Styx’s Paradise Theater
• recommendations you will often choose to ignore
• a reluctant exegesis of the Toto song “Africa”
• obnoxious lists sure to piss off rock critics

But wait, there’s more. Readers will also be able to listen to a special free mix designed by the author, available online at www.stevenalmond.com, for the express purpose of eliciting your drool. For those about to rock—we salute you!

Which Brings Me to You: A Novel in Confessions

by Julianna Baggott, Steve Almond

Two rambunctious, romantic flameouts. One boring wedding. One heated embrace in a quiet coatroom. This is not exactly the recipe for true love. John and Jane’s lusty encounter at a friend’s wedding isn’t really the beginning of anything with any weight to it; even they know that. When they manage to pull back, it occurs to them that they might start this whole thing over properly. They might try getting to know one another first, through letters.

What follows is a series of traded confessions—of their messy histories, their past errors, their big loves, their flaws, and their passions. Each love affair, confessed as honestly as possible, reveals the ways in which Jane and John have grown and changed—or not changed—over the years; the people they’ve hurt, the ones still bruised. The ones who bruised them. Where all of this soul-baring will take them is the burning question behind every letter—a question that can only be answered when they meet again, finally, in the flesh.

Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country

by Steve Almond

Like a lot of Americans, Steve Almond spent the weeks after the 2016 election lying awake, in a state of dread and bewilderment. The problem wasn’t just the election, but the fact that nobody could explain, in any sort of coherent way, why America had elected a cruel, corrupt, and incompetent man to the Presidency. Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country is Almond’s effort to make sense of our historical moment, to connect certain dots that go unconnected amid the deluge of hot takes and think pieces. Almond looks to literary voices—from Melville to Orwell, from Bradbury to Baldwin—to help explain the roots of our moral erosion as a people.
The book argues that Trumpism is a bad outcome arising directly from the bad stories we tell ourselves. To understand how we got here, we have to confront our cultural delusions: our obsession with entertainment, sports, and political parody, the degeneration of our free press into a for-profit industry, our enduring pathologies of race, class, immigration, and tribalism. Bad Stories is a lamentation aimed at providing clarity. It’s the book you can pass along to an anguished fellow traveler with the promise, This will help you understand what the hell happened to our country.

Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto

by Steve Almond

A New York Times Best Seller

“Powerful...an important read." —Publishers Weekly

New York Times bestselling author Steve Almond takes on America’s biggest sacred cow: football

In Against Football, Steve Almond details why, after forty years as a fan, he can no longer watch the game he still loves. Using a synthesis of memoir, reportage, and cultural critique, Almond asks a series of provocative questions:

• Does our addiction to football foster a tolerance for violence, greed, racism, and homophobia?
• What does it mean that our society has transmuted the intuitive physical joys of childhood—run, leap, throw, tackle—into a billion-dollar industry?
• How did a sport that causes brain damage become such an important emblem for our institutions of higher learning?

There has never been a book that exposes the dark underside of America’s favorite game with such searing candor.

William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life: Bookmarked (Bookmarked, 10)

by Steve Almond

Stoner is a 1965 novel by the American writer John Williams. It tells the story of William Stoner, who attends the state university to study agronomy, but instead falls in love with English literature and becomes an academic. The novel narrates the many disappointments and struggles in Stoner's academic and personal life, including his estrangement from his wife and daughter, set against the backdrop of the first half of the twentieth century.
In his entry in the Bookmarked series, author Steve Almond writes about why Stoner has endured, and the manner in which it speaks to the impoverishment of the inner life in America. Almond will also use the book as a launching pad for an investigation of America’s soul, in the process, writing about his own struggles as a student of writing, as a father and husband, and as a man grappling with his own mortality.

All the Secrets of the World

by Steve Almond

“A breathtaking success . . . dazzling.” ―San Francisco Chronicle

“[A] rollicking, wide-ranging, unpredictable novel―part crime story, part coming-of-age, part satire, part deadly serious.” ―Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer finalist for The Great Believers

Who pays for the secrets we keep? For the lies we tell ourselves?

Lorena Saenz has just been paired with Jenny Stallworth for a school project by a teacher hoping to unite two girls from starkly different backgrounds. Jenny is pretty and popular, and Lorena is quickly drawn into the family’s picture-perfect suburban lifestyle. Jenny’s mother, Rosemary, is glamorous, but needy―she treats Lorena like a friend, if only to break up the monotony of lonely afternoons. Jenny’s father, Marcus, spends his days teaching and his nights wandering the desert, absorbed in his research on the scorpions of Death Valley. Outwardly, they are the perfect family, poised for success in 1981 Sacramento at the dawn of a glorious American decade. Lorena finds her access intoxicating and alluring, a far cry from her life in the small apartment she shares with her single mother.

But the veneer is shattered when Marcus disappears. The prime suspect: Lorena’s troubled older brother, Tony.

To uncover the truth, Lorena must embark on an unforgiving odyssey into the desert, into the secrets and lies of the Stallworth family, and the dark heart of America’s criminal justice system. A shape-shifting social novel, All the Secrets of the World is a propulsive tour de force from a writer at the height of his powers.

Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories

by Steve Almond

“Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow is one of the best books on writing I’ve ever read. It’s also the funniest by a country mile.” ―Richard Russo, author of the North Bath trilogy

The long-awaited craft book from Steve Almond, based on three decades of writing, failing, and trying again.

In Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow, Steve Almond shares the insights gleaned from three decades as a beloved teacher and mentor, and a considerably less-beloved literary rabble rouser. His tone is irreverent. His ideas are iconoclastic. And his approach is stubbornly, radically, empathic. The goal is to explode the well-meaning but misguided myths that hold us back from writing our deepest and most honest work, to awaken the joys of storytelling while also confronting how grueling the process can be. Truth features chapters on plot, character, and chronology, but travels far beyond the earnest aims of most creative writing books, with essays about humor, sex, obsession, and writer’s block, as well as prompts to generate new work and a rollicking Frequently Asked Questions section. You’ll never think about writing the same way again.

Against Football One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto

by Steve Almond

A New York Times Best Seller

“Powerful...an important read." —Publishers Weekly

New York Times bestselling author Steve Almond takes on America’s biggest sacred cow: football

In Against Football, Steve Almond details why, after forty years as a fan, he can no longer watch the game he still loves. Using a synthesis of memoir, reportage, and cultural critique, Almond asks a series of provocative questions:

• Does our addiction to football foster a tolerance for violence, greed, racism, and homophobia?
• What does it mean that our society has transmuted the intuitive physical joys of childhood—run, leap, throw, tackle—into a billion-dollar industry?
• How did a sport that causes brain damage become such an important emblem for our institutions of higher learning?

There has never been a book that exposes the dark underside of America’s favorite game with such searing candor.

All the Secrets of the World A Novel

by Steve Almond

"A breathtaking success . . . dazzling." ―San Francisco Chronicle

"[A] rollicking, wide-ranging, unpredictable novel―part crime story, part coming-of-age, part satire, part deadly serious." ―Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer finalist for The Great Believers

Who pays for the secrets we keep? For the lies we tell ourselves?

Lorena Saenz has just been paired with Jenny Stallworth for a school project by a teacher hoping to unite two girls from starkly different backgrounds. Jenny is pretty and popular, and Lorena is quickly drawn into the family's picture-perfect suburban lifestyle. Jenny's mother, Rosemary, is glamorous, but needy―she treats Lorena like a friend, if only to break up the monotony of lonely afternoons. Jenny's father, Marcus, spends his days teaching and his nights wandering the desert, absorbed in his research on the scorpions of Death Valley. Outwardly, they are the perfect family, poised for success in 1981 Sacramento at the dawn of a glorious American decade. Lorena finds her access intoxicating and alluring, a far cry from her life in the small apartment she shares with her single mother.

But the veneer is shattered when Marcus disappears. The prime suspect: Lorena's troubled older brother, Tony.

To uncover the truth, Lorena must embark on an unforgiving odyssey into the desert, into the secrets and lies of the Stallworth family, and the dark heart of America's criminal justice system. A shape-shifting social novel, All the Secrets of the World is a propulsive tour de force from a writer at the height of his powers.

Best of the Web 2008

by Steve Almond, Nathan Leslie

This print anthology compiles the best fiction, poetry, and nonfiction that online literary journals have to offer in an eclectic collection in the manner of other broad-ranging anthologies such as thePushcart PrizeandThe Best American Non-Required Reading. This is the first substantial attempt at creating an annual print compilation of the best of material published online.

"[The] mingling and occasional blurring of genres distinguishesBest of the Web from any other print collections showcasing online literature...the book is heartily significant , featuring work that is sometimes surprising...and sometimes exhilarating--not unlike the Web itself."--Los Angeles Times

"The Internet is built for this work: short and weird, just what one's attention span wants when clicking through. And Almond and Leslie wisely pick up on that, making the book worth paging through, as well."--Time Out Chicago

"Such a development could not have come at a better time for online
literary publishing."--NewPages.com

"Though publishing online provides us the opportunity to present fiction free
from economic imperative, permitting us, our authors, and our readers to relish
in the experiment of expression, one of our great regrets is forgoing the sensation of binding it, printing it, holding the work we proudly select in our hands. Then along comes Dzanc Books, and this gift of a book, Best of the Web , that feels, to us, like the presentation of an award."--Aaron Petrovich andAlex Rose, editors, Hotel St. George

"While reading this anthology, you may find yourself muttering , 'Where
did Dzanc find such brilliant fiction and non-fiction-y writing? Are they
witches? ' I don't want to give away too much of the magic, but I will say
this...yes, they are witches."--Eric Spitznagel, web editor,Monkeybicycle.net

InBest of the Web 2008:

Zachary Amendt, Jonathan Ames, Arlene Ang, Michael Bahler, Robin Behn, David Bottoms, Kris Broughton, Benjamin Buchholz, Edward Byrne, Melanie Carter, Jared Carter, Nancy Cherry, Elaine Chiew, Andrea Cohen, Myfanwy Collins, Leigh Anne Couch, Elizabeth Crane, Stevie Davis, Bruce Fischer, Abby Frucht, Charlie Geoghegean-Clements, Garth Risk Hallberg, Seth Harwood, Edward Hirsch, Cara Hoffman, Sandra Huber, Richard Jespers, Christina Kallery, Thomas King, Anna Kushner, Frannie Lindsay, Valerie Loveland, Maurice Manning, LaTonya McQueen, Juan José Millás - translated by Peter Robinson, Amy Minton, Bill Mohr, Okey Ndibe, Stefani Nellen, Jenny Pritchett, Jacques Rancourt, Christopher Rizzo, Amy L. Sargent, George Saunders, R. T. Smith, Carmen Gimenez Smith, Andrew Sorge, Anne Dyer Stuart, Sarah Sweeney, Ron Tanner, Justin Taylor, Tess Taylor, Kim Whitehead, David Willems, Paul Yoon, J. W. Young, Claudia Zuluaga, introductions from series editor Nathan Leslie and edition editor Steve Almond, and interviews with select authors.