Showing results by author "Robert Butler" in All Categories

Robert Olen Butler, author of Perfume River, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, and A Small Hotel, teaches graduate fiction at Florida State University—his version of literary boot camp. In From Where You Dream, Butler reimagines the process of writing as emotional rather than intellectual and tells writers how to achieve the dream space necessary for composing honest, inspired fiction.

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. This edition includes two subsequently published stories - "Salem" and "Missing" - that brilliantly complete the collection's narrative journey with a return to the jungles of Vietnam.

★★★★★ "An interesting take on humanities future!" - Reader Review ___ A fresh take on science fiction and a glimpse at humanity through the eyes of an alien who doesn't know what 'family' is, until he finds one! "Humans are the only known intelligent species to actively create 'Found Families' in the form of parents, children, siblings, and more. If a human starts spending more time with you and initiating physical contact, they have probably adopted you." These were the words that caught my ears when attending the most prestigious university in my quadrant as a minor in alien ...

You can't get too comfortable in this Universe, not anywhere, really. Every time you do, it has a way of shaking things up. In this volume, I, Bailey Walker, student of humanity, alien entrepreneur, and... who am I kidding? Sometimes thoroughly confused idiot, do my best to relay the events of an extraordinary time in the lives of I and my humans. Fauve Walker got the worst kind of attention, along with the rest of her family. She and they got the attention of the Earth First Movement, radicalized humans who sought to purge the world of all nonhumans, aspiring warmongers, aspiring gods, ...

Time marches on, life continues, the world spins, the uncaring Universe never noticed when one little dot stopped moving, nor one young girl got older, one family was wounded, or one confused and struggling alien tried to make sense of everything going on around him. I wish I could say all of my time on Earth was easy, a joyful time filled with light and games and happiness. But the reason all of those times where life was marvelous shone so brightly is precisely because there was shadow too. Some darker than others, I admit. It's been a year since our time in Chi'cagoa Rea, and we were ...

Hatcher McCord is an evening news presenter who has found himself in Hell and is struggling to explain his bad fortune. He's not the only one to suffer this fate - in fact, hes surrounded by an outrageous cast of characters, including Humphrey Bogart, William Shakespeare, and almost all of the popes and most of the U.S. presidents. The question may be not who is in Hell but who isn't.

Throw a rock into the water and you know there will be ripples. But in deep water you have no idea where the rock will land, and you don't know how many ripples your ill considered throw will make, nor what effect they will have. My actions in starting an interspecies fighting tournament has had unforeseen outcomes, and the export of human culture, as well as human diplomatic efforts, has only made things more chaotic. Add to that some disappearances, lost colonies, missing ships, and some very nervous prey evolved civilizations, and you have a recipe for disaster. And so, once more into ...

Albaer has nothing good in his life, and a whole lot of bad. An outcast in his home town, regarded as 'the seed of evil' because of his father's selfishness and greed, nobody seems to care what is done to him. Indifferent teachers, bullies who think of him only as an easy target for his passive unwillingness to fight back in his desperate attempt to prove his fundamental goodness, the one thing that lets him endure is a video game. The only thing, that is, until an angel and a demon appear in his room, confused, lost, and afraid... their attempt to summon his video game character into their...

Carcosa is a fictional land that first appeared in Bierce’s 1886 story “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” (included in this collection), and later is appeared Robert W. Chambers’s The King in Yellow. It has since been used by many other fantasy and horror writers and poets. This collection explores Carcosa and other fictional cities found in nineteenth-century poetry and short stories. The works of these classic and innovative writers are given new life, and a new generation of listeners will have the chance to voyage to Carcosa … and beyond.

What happens to people's lives during times of battle and strife? From the American Revolution to the ongoing war in Iraq, the subject of this collection is how people cope with the dramatic shifts that come with war. Before Independence, a slave fights for freedom by taking up arms for the British; in World War I, a mother goes to the front lines to see her son; and in our time, a teenager in Oregon waits for e-mail from his father in the Middle East.

A must-listen collection of four bibliomysteries by bestselling and award-winning authors

Welcome to "The Convocation Unscripted," a free-wheeling conversation between Diana Butler Bass, Kristin Du Mez, Robert P. Jones, and Jemar Tisby. We are each scholars (three historians and one sociologist) who write about religion and its intersection with culture, history, and politics in America. We also each take our own Christian faith seriously and are deeply concerned about the future of both democracy and Christianity in the U.S. Most importantly, over the years, we’ve found ourselves to be not just fellow travelers but friends. This is the video/podcast component of our unique ...

Just when I thought I was safe from deportation, I wasn't. Earth wasn't looking to get rid of me. My homeworld wasn't trying to pull me back. But of course there is no force on Earth or Dlamias that is quite like the power of angry academics on the loneliest planet. The center of learning and the symbol of a peace and unity that was more fragile than anyone wanted to admit...and I... their student, had proved myself a disruptive element, shaking the table on which a delicate house of cards sat that might tumble at any moment. I had to prove my worth, the value of my work, and that adding a ...

Winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, O. Henry Award and Edgar Awards, the 19 writers in this 2005 edition are not just considered some of the best Southern writers, but among the best American writers period. With works by such writers as Dennis Lehane, Moira Crone, Robert Olen Butler, Cary Holladay, Tom Franklin, and Rebecca Soppe, this collection provides an electrifying current of deep, dark subjects set in the brutal, but charming south.

The story continues as I, we, all of us, strive to find a solution to the problems which plague Chi'cagoa Rea and the unfortunate demihumans who live here. Bonny Red, myself, my sister, Rebecca... all of us do our best, but sometimes good ideas can come from unexpected sources, and are all the more galling because they should have been expected. Fauve has an idea, an idea so crazy, so dangerous, so absurd, that it might just work. And because of what we learn, I a long buried truth of human nature comes to light, and it illuminates a buried truth of my own home world's distant past. In the ...

Varus the Elder Lich wanted nothing more than to spend eternity writing novels. He cared nothing for the fame or money, and never cared much about the total lack of company in his country cottage. He had his characters and that was plenty. Was, plenty. Until a chance interruption to his work brings some unexpected company into his unlife. It would take all his patience, all his wisdom, and more than a little of his sense of humor, to learn that sometimes being interrupted... Isn't so bad.

Having settled in to living together... and learning of the horrific truth, Raziel and Lialah are confronted with a new and unexpected challenge... but they are not without means. Their magic has grown, their disguises are flawless... nearly. And they are ready for the challenge of a human school, Albaer's living hell, and they're all in it together.

Autumn 1915. World War I is raging across Europe, but Woodrow Wilson has kept Americans out of the trenches - though that hasn't stopped young men and women to volunteer at the front. Christopher "Kit" Cobb, a Chicago reporter with a second job as undercover agent for the US government, is officially in Paris doing a story on American ambulance drivers, but his intelligence handler, James Polk Trask, soon broadens his mission. City-dwelling civilians are meeting death by dynamite in a new string of bombings, and the German-speaking Kit seems just the man to figure out who is behind them.

A wonderful selection of classic Christmas poetry from G. K. Chesterton, Henry Vaughan, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Burns, Lord Tennyson, and many more.

What can anyone say about meeting a sibling you've forgotten that you even have? What do you say when they come to you for help? I didn't have any idea, that's for sure. Bau's arrival so soon after my recent victory in securing a long term stay on Earth, was nothing if not disruptive. Or so I thought at the time, but I had no idea how right I really was, 'disruptive' did not begin to cover it. Chaotic? Mad? Dangerous? All seemed better words. Bau's plea for help was not for her, but for 'her humans'. The surviving remnants of the people who once lived in Chicago, a forgotten people who ...