Robert Olen Butler Books

A collection of short stories features such tales as "Boy Born With Elvis Tattoo," "Titanic Victim Speaks Through Water Bed," and "Woman Uses Glass Eye to Spy on Cheating Husband"

The story of the love between a contemporary Vietnamese woman orphaned in 1975, when Hanoi finally fell to the Communists, and a Vietnam veteran who returns from America to a war-torn land seeking closure and a sense of peace.

The book features edited transcripts of Butler's lectures, offering insights for writers on creating an ideal mental space for crafting authentic and inspired fiction. Burroway highlights the importance of honesty in storytelling, guiding writers to tap into their creativity and explore deeper themes in their work.

Robert Olen Butler's lyrical and poignant collection of stories about the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its impact on the Vietnamese was acclaimed by critics across the nation and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. Now Grove Press is proud to reissue this contemporary classic by one of America's most important living writers, in a new edition of 'A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain' that includes two subsequently published stories -- "Salem" and "Missing" -- that brilliantly complete the collection's narrative journey, returning to the jungles of Vietnam.

A 115-year-old man lays on his deathbed as the 2016 US election results arrive, and revisits his life in this moving story of love, fatherhood, and the American century from Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler...

Set against the backdrop of World War I, the story follows foreign correspondent "Kit" Cobb as he navigates intrigue aboard the Lusitania. Tasked with tracking a German agent, Cobb becomes entangled with Selene Bourgani, a captivating actress with ties to German Intelligence. As he delves deeper into her secrets, the stakes escalate, leading him through London's dangerous streets to the volatile environment of Istanbul. Isolated and facing peril, Cobb must confront the truth that could ignite the war further.

The thrilling third installment of the Christopher Marlowe Cobb series sees Kit uncovering a covert scheme to weaponize Zeppelins, posing a significant threat to the war effort. As he navigates this dangerous revelation, the stakes are raised, and the potential for a shift in power dynamics in favor of Germany looms large, setting the stage for an intense confrontation.

The book features a captivating excerpt from "The Star of Istanbul," offering readers a glimpse into its rich narrative and vibrant characters. Set against a backdrop of intrigue and historical significance, it explores themes of adventure, identity, and the complexities of human relationships. The author weaves a compelling story that invites readers to immerse themselves in the world of the characters, promising a blend of excitement and emotional depth that will resonate long after reading.

As an alien visitor prepares to make contact with humanity on the eve of the millennium, he beams a tour bus onto his ship and communes with the outrageous assortment of passengers.

Imagine what a dictionary might look like about thirty years hence, when all of the world's problems are solved and our current dictionaries are a distant memory. Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss have lined up an incredible array of writers to bring you that futuristic dictionary and a vision of the world as it might be. Think of it as a dictionary of language for describing what the future could look like a dictionary that is both useful and romantic, hopeful and necessary, pragmatic and idealistic, and frequently funny. This is science fiction but with a difference.

Autumn 1915. The First World War is raging across Europe. Christopher Marlowe 'Kit' Cobb, a Chicago reporter and undercover agent for the US government, is in Paris when he meets an enigmatic nurse called Louise. Officially in the city for a story about American ambulance drivers, Cobb is grateful for the opportunity to get to know her. Soon his intelligence handler, James Polk Trask, extends his mission and he is active again. Parisians are meeting 'death by dynamite' in a new campaign of bombings, and the German-speaking Kit seems just the man to discover who is behind this.

Robert Quinlan is a seventy-year-old historian, teaching at Florida State University, where his wife Darla is also tenured. Their life is a picture of domestic industry: cups of freshly ground coffee fuel Robert?s research and writing during the days, while in the evenings the conversation flows freely over home-cooked dinner and wine. The marriage is a happy enough one, but Robert?s relationship with his father, a veteran of World War II, is strained. William is coming to the end of his life, but reconciliation with his other son Jimmy, whose path diverged from the rest of the family at the outbreak of the Vietnam War, does not seem close at hand. When Robert meets a homeless man whom he takes to be a Vietnam veteran, the past is set to suffuse the present, and the enduring legacy of war on these characters revealed. Profound and poignant, Perfume River is a portrait of family, personal choice, and how war resonates through the American experience.

Ten miles apart in a New Mexico desert, unknown to each other, two scientists are involved in secret work. One is engaged in unearthing the past, the other in shattering the present. Through the contrasting mysteries of their projects and the woman they both love, they come to a confrontation.

This may be the sexiest book you've ever read. It is also, at turns, among the funniest and the most harrowing and the most moving and the most lyrically beautiful of books. And it is also a book of uncompromising artistic integrity. They Whisper is an astonishingly rare thing in this sex-conscious age: a serious-work of literary art that directly and unflinchingly addresses the subject of modern heterosexuality. Butler's narrator is Ira Holloway, who as he moves into middle age is driven to examine his sexuality and its profound hold on him. Ira is, in many respects, an ordinary man: son of a steelworker, he is a husband and father; a Vietnam Vet, he works now as public relations man. But the details of Ira's quotidian life are of little real importance in his story. He lives - as so many men do - in an ongoing internal landscape populated by all the many women he has loved. And continues to love - instinctively, comprehensively, creatively, deeply. So deeply, in fact, that as he relives the moments of intimacy with them, Ira often speaks in the voices of these women. This weaving of the inner voices of both a man and the women he's loved creates a narrative driven by intuition and sensuality and free of theories and cant intellectualizing. The result is a compelling, profound, and timely examination of human sexuality and, not incidentally, one of the most rapturously erotic books of our time.

Wilson Hand, haunted by memories of his ex-wife's suicide and his captivity with the Viet Cong, leaves his urban industrial investigation business to become a troubleshooter for an Alaskan oil company

A collection of short fiction by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author offers a revealing look at what goes through a person's mind during sex as he captures the innermost thoughts of such couples as Bonnie and Clyde, Adam and Eve, and Richard Milhous Nixon and Pat Nixon.

The new novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain" is set in the underworld. Its main character, Hatcher McCord, is an evening-news presenter who has found himself in Hell and is struggling to explain his bad fortune.