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Assorted Fire Events: Stories

Literature & Fiction

Means, David

Contemporary

Fourth Estate

It is a less and less well-kept secret that David Means is one of our best fiction writers. In the past few years he has won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and received critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Readers familiar with Means's electrifying work will recognize the vision at play in The Secret Goldfish -- a trio of erotically charged kids go on a crime spree in Michigan; a goldfish bears witness to the demise of a Connecticut marriage; an extremely unlucky man is stalked by lightning -- but this new work is funnier, more generous, and bigger in its reach.
Each story stands on its own, and yet linked together they produce a quintessentially American experience -- not the stars-and-stripes-on-the-bumper-sticker kind, but the stoned-and-bored-and-looking-for-trouble kind. Means's writing is shot through with emotion and beauty. A subversive humor -- and an almost religious fervor -- drives these stories, and Means's miraculously precise observations bring them to life.
Eileen Battersby of the Irish Times wrote, "The roll-call of honor, from Eudora Welty to John Cheever, John Updike, William Maxwell, to Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, and Annie Proulx is long and rich. Just when it seems that things could get no better, along comes David Means." This is a brilliant lineage, and yet David Means writes like no one but himself.

The Secret Goldfish: Stories

United States

Harper

Readers familiar with David Means, electrifying work in the Los Angeles Times Book Prize - winning Assorted Fire Events will recognize his extraordinary vision in The Secret Goldfish. A trio of erotically charged kids goes on a crime spree in Michigan; a goldfish bears witness to the demise of a Connecticut marriage; and an extremely unlucky man is stalked by lightning. This dazzling new collection reveals Means' rare talent for the short story and establishes his place among the American masters.

Harper-perennial

In his award-winning second collection, David Means explores the fragility of those things that we cherish most. His incomparable, distinct voice—often wildly humorous, always engaging—has led the New York Times to call Means "one of our most talented younger writers."

Assorted Fire Events

HarpPeren

A new collection of stories by the 1999 Pushcart Prize winner introduces readers to a colorful cast of characters as they struggle with personal epiphanies and moments of fate. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

Harvest Books

"Poetic, insightful, and deeply moving. David Means is one of my very favorite writers." ―Tara Westover, author of Educated Following the publication of his widely acclaimed, Man Booker-nominated novel Hystopia, David Means here returns to his signature form: the short story. Thanks to his four previous story collections, Means has won himself an international reputation as one of the most innovative short fiction writers working today: an “established master of the form.” (Laura Miller, The Guardian). Instructions for a Funeral―featuring work from The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Paris Review, and VICE―finds Means branching out beyond the explorations of violence and trauma with which he is often identified, prominently displaying his sly humor and his inimitable way of telling tales that deliciously wind up to punch the reader in the heart. With each story Means pushes into new territory, writing with tenderness and compassion about fatherhood, marriage, a homeless brother, the nature of addiction, and the death of a friend at the hands of a serial-killer nurse. Means transmutes a fistfight in Sacramento into a tender, life-long love story; two FBI agents on a stakeout in the 1920s into a tale of predator and prey, paternal urges and loss; a man’s funeral instructions into a chronicle of organized crime, real estate ventures, and the destructive force of paranoia.
Means’s work has earned him comparisons to Flannery O’Connor, Alice Munro, Sherwood Anderson, Denis Johnson, Edgar Allan Poe, Anton Chekhov, and Raymond Carver but his place in the American literary landscape is fully and originally his own.
"David Means is a master of tense, distilled, quintessentially American prose. Like any artist who has finely honed his talent to its strongest expression he is a brilliant craftsman whose achievement is to appear unstudied, even casual . . . Each story by Means which I have read is unlike the others, unexpected and an unnerving delight." ―Joyce Carol Oates

Instructions for a Funeral: Stories

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

About the Author\nDavid Means was born and raised in Michigan. He is the author of five short-story collections, including Instructions for a Funeral, The Spot (a New York Times notable book of the year), Assorted Fire Events (winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction), and The Secret Goldfish, and of the novel Hystopia (long-listed for the Man Booker Prize). His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and other publications. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013, Means lives in Nyack, New York, and teaches at Vassar College.\nLonglisted for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize\nA new collection of stories by David Means, a visionary "master of the form" (The Observer).\nTwo nurses meet in the hospital parking lot to share a cigarette. They flirt and imagine a future together. They tell stories of patients lost and patients saved, of the darkest corners of human suffering and the luminous moments that break through, even here, in the shadow of death.\nIn David Means’s virtuosic new collection, time unfolds in unexpected ways: a single, quiet moment swells with the echoes of a widower’s complicated marriage; a dachshund, given a new name and a new life by a new owner, catches the scent of the troubled man who previously abandoned her; young lovers become old; estranged couples return to their vows; and those who have died live on in perpetuity in the memories of those whom they touched. The stories in this collection―which have won the O. Henry Prize and the Pushcart Prize, and have been featured in The Best American Short Stories―confirm the promise of a writer who “believes in the power of stories to rescue and redeem people” (Max Liu, Financial Times).\nA revelatory meditation on trauma and catharsis, isolation and communion, Two Nurses, Smoking reflects the dislocations and anguish of our age, as well as the humanity and humor that buoy us.

Two Nurses, Smoking: Stories

The Spot

Short Stories & Anthologies

Faber&Faber

Hystopia

Literary

HYSTOPIA

FABER ET FABER

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

Books by Means, David

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

Assorted Fire Events: Stories

The Secret Goldfish: Stories

The Secret Goldfish: Stories

Assorted Fire Events

Assorted Fire Events: Stories

Instructions for a Funeral: Stories

Two Nurses, Smoking: Stories

The Spot

Hystopia

HYSTOPIA