Showing results by author "Paul Theroux" in All Categories

An eclectic compendium of the finest short fiction of the last 150 years, featuring works by Paul Theroux, Joseph Conrad, James Ellroy, Ambrose Bierce, Charlotte Perkins Gillman, Aldous Huxley, Philip Roth, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Jilly Farina is 14. Her father is drunk on the day of the Barnstable County Fair, so she goes by herself, and that night her life is transformed. When she walks into a tent to see Millroy the Magician, his eyes lighten from brown to green and fasten upon her. He performs miracles before her spellbound eyes. He tells her that he will train her to be his assistant, and he will give her a sequined costume. But this is only the beginning. Millroy is a magician not just of mere conjuring but of true, baffling magic.

In Camp Echo, his novella for Scribd Originals, Theroux delivers a compelling coming-of-age story about racism, masculinity, morality, and leadership. Inspired by his own experiences as a Boy Scout in the early 1950s, Theroux writes with precision and vivid detail, drawing from his days as a teen in the wilderness battling his own definition of what it meant to be a man. His is a tale both classic and decidedly of this moment, when prejudice and intolerance are again on the rise.

For the past 50 years, Paul Theroux has travelled to the far corners of the Earth - to China, Africa, the Pacific Islands, Russia, and elsewhere. In Deep South, he turns his gaze to a region much closer to his home. Travelling through North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, he writes of the stunning landscapes he discovers - the deserts, the mountains, the Mississippi - and, above all, the lives of the people he meets.

A family watches in horror as their patriarch transforms into the singing, wise-cracking lead of an old-timey minstrel show. A renowned art collector relishes publicly destroying his most valuable pieces. Two boys stand by helplessly as their father stages an all-consuming war on the raccoons living in the woods around their house. A young artist devotes himself to a wealthy, malicious gossip, knowing that it's just a matter of time before she turns on him.

Newly married and having recently taken over the management of a hotel in Honolulu, a former writer is drawn into the lives of his guests and the distinctive customs and rhythms of the distant island. As witness to the many contrasting chronicles of the hotel's characters, he ultimately returns to writing once again. The result is this novel in 80 distinct episodes, a Chaucerian sequence of strange pilgrims and islanders confronting each other and their fates in the rooms of the seedy hotel.

A family watches, horrified, as their patriarch transforms into the wise-cracking lead of an old-timey minstrel show. An art collector gleefully destroys his most valuable pieces. A young artist devotes himself to a wealthy, malicious gossip, knowing that it's just a matter of time before she turns on him. In this new collection of short stories, Paul Theroux explores the tenuous leadership of the elite and the surprising revenge of the overlooked.

Joe Sharkey knows he is passed his prime. Now in his 60s, the younger surfers around the breaks on the north shore of Oahu still revere him as the once-legendary 'Shark', but his sponsors have moved on and Joe wonders what new future awaits him on the horizon. Uninterrupted quality time with the ocean, he hopes. Life has other plans. When he accidentally hits and kills a man near Waimea while drunk-driving, he fears he will never rebound. Under the direction of his stubbornly loyal girlfriend Olive, he throws himself into uncovering his victim's story.

When Jerry Delfont, a travel writer with writer’s block, receives a letter from an American philanthropist, Mrs Merrill Unger, with news of a scandal involving an Indian friend of her son's, he is sufficiently intrigued to pursue the story. Jerry is swiftly captivated by the beautiful, mysterious Mrs Unger, but the circumstances surrounding the scandal cause him to doubt the exact nature of her philanthropy.

This fabulous, far-reaching book breathtakingly captures the tumult, ambition, hardship and serenity that mark modern India. Theroux's characters risk venturing far beyond its well-worn paths to discover woe or truth or peace. A holidaying middle-aged couple veer heedlessly from idyll to chaos. A buttoned-up Boston lawyer finds relief in Mumbai's reeking slums. A young woman befriends an elephant in Bangalore.

There's sibling rivalry and then there's the relationship of brothers Cal and Frank Belanger, which takes fraternal antipathy to a whole new level. Enemies seemingly since childhood, the small town of Littleford, where they are nicknamed 'The Bad Angle Brothers', just isn't big enough to hold them both. So Cal strikes out for the world's wild places—a gifted geologist in search of gold and other precious minerals, leaving Frank to develop a successful career as the town's lawyer, fixer and local hero.

It's 1960s America, and Herbie Gneiss is forced to leave college to get a job. Mr. Gibbon, a patriotic veteran of three wars, works with Herbie at Kant-Brake toy factory. When Herbie is drafted, Mr. Gibbon feels that he, too, should do something for his country; and so he decides to rob the Mount Holly Trust Company....