Jonathan Carroll is an American author celebrated for his modern fantasy and slipstream novels. His narratives often explore the intrusion of imagination into reality, blurring the lines between the ordinary world and the surreal. Frequently compared to magical realists of South America, Carroll masterfully employs elements like talking animals and realms that hover on the edge of dreams. His distinctive style probes the delicate boundary between what is real and what is imagined, offering readers a unique and captivating literary experience.
"Stuck in neutral, Graham Patterson finds his decision to get tattooed by a brilliant tattoo artist in North Carolina setting off a series of extraordinary events that changes his life forever in ways he never could have imagined, including the opportunity to choose from three different lives"-- Provided by publisher
Set in the 1940s, the story follows Davis Sterling, a privileged heir who shifts from a carefree lifestyle to a serious pursuit in sports writing, defying his father's expectations. His journey leads him to cover a baseball team, where he encounters the groundbreaking first white player in the Negro Baseball Leagues. Along the way, he also discovers love, challenging societal norms and personal ambitions. This narrative explores themes of identity, ambition, and the complexities of race in sports during a transformative era.
In Jonathan Carroll's surreal masterpiece, Bathing the Lion, five people who live in the same New England town go to sleep one night and all share the same hyper-realistic dream. Some of these people know each other; some don't. When they wake the next day all of them know what has happened. All five were at one time "mechanics," a kind of cosmic repairman whose job is to keep order in the universe and clean up the messes made both by sentient beings and the utterly fearsome yet inevitable Chaos that periodically rolls through, wreaking mayhem wherever it touches down—a kind of infinitely powerful, merciless tornado. Because the job of a mechanic is grueling and exhausting, after a certain period all of them are retired and sent to different parts of the cosmos to live out their days as "civilians." Their memories are wiped clean and new identities are created for them that fit the places they go to live out their natural lives to the end. For the first time all retired mechanics are being brought back to duty: Chaos has a new plan, and it's not looking good for mankind...
This publication documents Judith Raum's solo exhibitions at uqbar, Berlin, and The Return, Dublin, and translates her 2011 lecture performance, "harmless entrepreneurs," into book format. The works explore production modes and material culture within German economic imperialism in the Ottoman Empire during the early 20th century, highlighting improvisation and makeshift solutions in constructing the Baghdad Railway. This railway aimed to connect German businesses with the resources and markets of Anatolia. The book includes the complete script of the lecture performance, historical correspondences from German and Turkish archives detailing the technical and entrepreneurial exploitation of material and landscape by Deutsche Bank, photographic archival material, and essays by Suhail Malik examining the links between early global trade and modern international-financial-statehood. Additionally, Jonathan Carroll reflects on the precariousness of form in Raum's installations. The publication also references a statement from a German cotton production company owner in South-Eastern Anatolia, who, in a monthly report, expressed dissatisfaction with local production methods while assuring that new machines would ensure consistent cotton quality, termed "even running."
For connoisseurs of imaginative fiction, the novels of Jonathan Carroll are a special treat that occupy a space all their own. His surreal fictions, which deftly mix the everyday with the extraordinary, have won him a devoted following. Now, in Glass Soup, Carroll continues to astound . . . .The realm of the dead is built from the dreams--and nightmares--of the living. Octopuses drive buses. God is a polar bear. And a crowded highway literally leads to hell.Once before, Vincent Ettrich and his lover, Isabelle Neukor, crossed over from life to death and back again. Now Isabelle bears a very special child, who may someday restore the ever-changing mosaic that is reality. Unless the agents of Chaos can lure her back to the land of the dead--and trap her there forever.Glass Soup is another exquisite and singular creation from the author January magazine described as "incapable of writing a bad book much less an uninteresting one."
Vincent Ettrich, an engaging philanderer, discovers that he has died and come back to life - but he has no idea why. He gradually discovers that he was deliberately brought back to life by his one true love, Isabelle, so he could educate their son who, if correctly raised, would save the universe.
Cullen James is a young woman whose life dictates her dreams-and whose dreams control her life.In her first dream, she found the perfect man-and the same thing promptly happened in life. Now, she has begun to dream dreams set in Rondua, a fantasy world of high adventure, full of tests of her courage and strength. Slowly and quietly, her dream world is spilling over into her New York City reality and beginning to threaten everything she loves in life. Her friends are gathered to help her-but even her newfound courage may not be enough.
Frannie McCabe realizes something seriously weird is going on when the dead dog he buried keeps turning up again. The Sciavos, a couple whose domestic war has the police involved, disappear completely. And Frannie's teenage self arrives to help him sort out his mistakes - before its too late.
For schoolteacher Thomas Abbey there was no writer to equal Marshall France, a legendary author of children's books who hid himself away in the small town of Galen and died of a heart attack at the age of forty-four. Tom and his girlfriend Saxony, wanting to write France's biography, arrive in Galen, where they discover the writer's fiercely protective daughter Anna is waiting for them. Before long, they realise that this idyllic little town and its inhabitants - both human and animal - are not quite what they seem: France's magic has spread beyond the printed page . . .
Bestselling author Sam Bayer is stuck. Burned out from his third divorce, bored with the formulaic rut his writing has fallen into, and unable to deliver the manuscript for which he has been paid a stratospheric advance, he is desperate for inspiration. But a chance visit to his hometown of Crane's View, New York, sparks his imagination. Soon he immerses himself in an unsolved case of murder that took place when he was a teenager--Sam himself had discovered the body of the victim, a beautiful and wild teenage girl named Pauline. At the same time he is drawn into an explosive affair with a gorgeous but seriously loopy fan with the improbable name of Veronica Lake. As Sam learns the disturbing facts about his lover's past, Pauline's murderer reappears--not only endangering Sam but putting his beloved fifteen-year-old daughter in jeopardy as well. Not knowing whom to trust, Sam has to brace himself for the truly unexpected resolution to this decades-old mystery.
