In 1962, as a college sophomore, Eric Kraft fell asleep in the library. Among the books surrounding him, he began to dream...of a nameless boy, sitting on a dilapidated dock in the warm sun of a summer day, playing a game: He was trying to bring the soles of his bare feet as close as he could to the surface of the water, without touching it. That boy became Peter Leroy, and from Kraft's dream grew one of the most delightful, unusual projects in contemporary literature. Funny, touching, witty, mythic, and profound, Kraft's novels, featuring Peter, his friends and family, and the seaside town of Babbington create an alternate reality-a world in which we see ourselves, darkened and wavering, as reflected by deep water. Little Follies gathers nine Peter Leroy novellas into one volume: the perfect introduction to an irresistible cycle of books by an author sometimes compared to Cheever, Proust, Twain, Borges, Russel Baker, and Garrison Keillor, but who is uniquely Eric Kraft.

Little Follies

Literature & Fiction

KRAFT, Eric

Humor & Satire

Picador

"Where do you stop?" is the question posed by Miss Rheingold, the intoxicating new teacher of Peter Leroy's junior high school class. That question forms the basis of a science paper that Peter spends thirty years trying to complete-along the way exploring quantum physics, entropy, epistemology, principles of uncertainty and discontinuity, and a range of Life's Big Questions. Deceptively simple and warmly engaging, Eric Kraft's novel is an ingenious portrait of a small American town in the 1950s, when the atom seemed to hold the key to the mystery of creation, as well as the power to utterly destroy it.

Where Do You Stop?: The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences, and Observations of Peter Leroy (Continued)

Meet Ariane Lodkochnikov: clam-bar waitress, avant-garde actress, 1950s small-town bad girl, causeless rebel, boyhood crush, and ideal figment of the imagination of Peter Leroy. Peter is the engaging narrator of this novel; Ariane is the unreliable narrator of her own life. With Peter listening raptly, she weaves a tale of voyages -- some erotic, some poignant, some hilariously disastrous, all leading her back to the seaside town of Babbington. Eric Kraft's novels featuring Peter Leroy offer more than meets the eye, and What a Piece of Work I Am is a treasure trove for readers: a woman's quest to escape her reputation, an echo-chamber of myth, and a fascinating meditiation on the human urge to tell and hear stories.

What A Piece of Work I Am: A Novel (A Confabulation)

On the surface Herb and Lorna Piper are typically sunny 1950s American adults. Herbs sells Sudebakers to the citizens of Bebbington, a Long Island seaside town, and Lorna is his cheerfully coy and clever wife. Their story seems like an American myth: small-town origins, Jazz Age romance, Depression trials, postwar prosperity. But this book begins with the shocking, wondrous discovery, made by their grandson Peter Leroy after their death, "that my maternal grandparents were involved in--virtually the creators of--the animated erotic jewelry industry." And from that moment the story of Herb and Lorna takes on a tone of mingled awe and delight, propelled by a pair of secrets that dovetail, at the end, into a luscious and bawdy revelation.

Herb 'N' Lorna: A Novel

United States

Reservations Recommended is many things: a satire of the critical mind; a dark commentary on contemporary culture; a story of midlife crisis; a morality play; and a book that matches bleakness against humor with a grace rare among contemporary writers. Matthew Barber is a pseudonymous Boston restaurant reviewer who between (and sometimes during) meals at local eateries conducts affairs with ladies of his acquaintance -- affairs mental as much as carnal. We watch as Barber descends from his self-protective superiority into a species of madness, careening toward an ending of stark moral ambiguity. Woven throughout with Barber's own hilariously acid reviews, Reservations Recommended is Eric Kraft's most fearless venture into the dark night of the soul.

Reservations Recommended: A Novel

In At Home with the Glynns, Peter Leroy again sets off down memory lane through his boyhood Babbington, Long Island. This time Peter tells of his relationship with the remarkable Glynn family: Andy the artist, Rosetta, his wife, and poet, and the enchanting "twins", Margot and Martha, who entice young Peter into their bed one moonlit evening.... and many evenings following. As it usual with Peter's recollections, we are never certains where memory ends and imagination begins--but we are certain that we are reading the world of a brilliant storyteller who combines wry humor, nostalgia, satire, and dazzling invention.

At Home with the Glynns: The Personal History, Experiences and Observations of Peter Leroy (Continued)

In a warmhearted story of love and commitment, Peter and Albertine find their future in jeopardy as the hotel they own attracts no guests, and Peter must turn to the unfamiliar world of storytelling and electronic contraptions to save his marriage. Tour.

Leaving Small's Hotel

Picador USA

With this, his seventh novel, Eric Kraft once again gives readers and critics everywhere a reason to celebrate: Kirkus declared it "one of the most delightful novels of the decade," while Publishers Weekly asked, "Is there a more beguiling writer today than Eric Kraft?" Small's Hotel is where Peter and Albertine Leroy have spent their lives, hosting visitors while Peter works on his memoirs. But as guests grow harder to come by the future of the hotel--and of every gift Peter ever dreamed of giving his wife--is in jeopardy. What he does to save his marriage is a story involving friendship, childhood, gadgets, and great, abiding love.

Passionate Spectator: A Novel

In Passionate Spectator, memoirist Peter Leroy and his wife Albertine are living in Manhattan-by the skin of their teeth. Casting about for a source of income, Peter purchases a book from a homeless street corner peddler, Creative Self-Promotion for Taxidermists, hoping he can adapt its techniques to promote his fledgling business: Memoirs While You Wait, a writing service designed to satisfy the contemporary compulsion for confession and self-revelation. That book opens into a beguiling journey from fiction to truth and back again, involving Peter, his childhood friend Matthew Barber (a pseudonymous restaurant reviewer who is undergoing emergency heart surgery), and Matthew's witty, urbane alter-ego, Bertram W. Beath-an erotic opportunist and "passionate spectator" of beauty and human folly. As Peter solicits potential clients for his service, he finds that autobiography requires a measure of deception-well, lying-and that his own life depends on fictions he has created and sustained. Eric Kraft is a novelist like no other, and his books featuring Peter Leroy create an irresistible world where poignancy and nostalgia blend with humor and unbridled invention-a world like our own, but somehow brighter, less predictable, and more fun. Kirkus Reviews says: Kraft woolgathers with an energy that would shame a sheep-shearer, and overhearing Peter's evening conversations over martinis with the ineffable Albertine is almost as good as listening to Fibber McGee and Molly on the radio again. More of the same, and may it go on forever. Mark Twain and Will Rogers would have felt right at home with the Leroys.

St.Martin's Press

One day, middle-aged Manhattanite Peter Leroy receives an unsettling postcard from a childhood classmate. With his wife, Albertine, he returns to his hometown of Babbington, Long Island, and finds it both transformed and strangely the same. For Babbington has been "redefined" as a theme park, in a scheme to draw tourists to the struggling community, complete with trained actors, cultural interpreters, and carefully designed simulations of small-town 1950s life. On the wall of Legends restaurant, Peter sees his own commemoration: a picture of the triumphant day when, as a fifteen-year-old boy, he landed on Babbington's Main Street in the aerocycle he had built in his parents' garage, having flown four thousand miles to New Mexico and back. Hailed in newspapers as the "Birdboy of Babbington," the youthful inventor reveled in his fame---but never disclosed the truth behind his flight. Now Peter wants to set the record straight---and with Albertine as his muse and conscience, he begins. Taking Off is the first in a trilogy of novels about Peter Leroy's magical flight and its digressions along the way. Funny, warm, wise, and artful, this book---like all of its companion novels about Peter and his world---explores matters little and large with a light touch. Readers familiar with and new to these novels will delight in the wide-ranging invention and imagination of Peter's creator, Eric Kraft.

Taking Off: A Novel (Flying: A Trilogy)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by KRAFT, Eric. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by KRAFT, Eric

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by KRAFT, Eric. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Little Follies

Where Do You Stop?: The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences, and Observations of Peter Leroy (Continued)

What A Piece of Work I Am: A Novel (A Confabulation)

Herb 'N' Lorna: A Novel

Reservations Recommended: A Novel

At Home with the Glynns: The Personal History, Experiences and Observations of Peter Leroy (Continued)

Leaving Small's Hotel

Leaving Small's Hotel

Passionate Spectator: A Novel

Taking Off: A Novel (Flying: A Trilogy)