Summer Baseball Car Baseball Sock Ball Wall Ball The Time Tower: can you get older faster? The speed of light: can it be measured? A carp, washed up in the riberbank: what's inside? Larry, Witt, and Rafferty have a whole summer to play all the different kinds of baseball, to build structures in the backyard, to find out what makes the world tick. "We've got to keep busy," says Witt. I want to know everything. Not just part." Larry doesn't want to know what keeps him heading for Witt's backyard, rich with weeds and rotting appliances, whenever he's not at baseball practice. All he knows is that there's no one he'd rather be with than these two friends, that the chaos of Witt's universe offers refuge from his own orderly home and an entrance into a world of change, growth, and unpredictability. THE HOTEL EDEN author Ron Carlson's first novel for young readers is a heady immersion in the first moments of adolescence, when nothing is as it ever was before.

The Speed of Light

Children's Books

Carlson, Ron.

Sports & Outdoors

HarperTempest

Presents a collection of short stories peopled by honest individuals striving to measure up to large doses of life's danger and its magic

The News of the World (Contemporary American Fiction)

Literature & Fiction

Penguin??Books

In his new collection of quirky, bittersweet stories, Carlson observes the men and women of the middle class, people who find themselves settling uneasily into lives they never envisioned for themselves. Carlson uncannily captures the complexity of his characters' inner lives.

Plan B for the Middle Class: Stories

Literary

The Hotel Eden: Stories

A dozen stories feature a young man who discovers that Eden is not a permanent residence, a baseball player who accidentally becomes a killer, and a teenager from Phoenix who experiences an unsettling sexual awakening

Short Stories & Anthologies

Penguin Group USA

Beloved story writer Ron Carlson's first novel in thirty years, Five Skies is the story of three men gathered high in the Rocky Mountains for a construction project that is to last the summer. Having participated in a spectacular betrayal in Los Angeles, the giant, silent Arthur Key drifts into work as a carpenter in southern Idaho. Here he is hired, along with the shiftless and charming Ronnie Panelli, to build a stunt ramp beside a cavernous void. The two will be led by Darwin Gallegos, the foreman of the local ranch who is filled with a primeval rage at God, at man, at life.
As they endeavor upon this simple, grand project, the three reveal themselves in cautiously resonant, profound ways. And in a voice of striking intimacy and grace, Carlson's novel reveals itself as a story of biblical, almost spiritual force. A bellwether return from one of our greatest craftsmen, Five Skies is sure to be one of the most praised and cherished novels of the year.

Five Skies

United States

Penguin Publishing Group

The Signal: A Novel

"The Signal accelerates like an avalanche...If men can't be brought back to fiction by books as fine as this one, it's their own damn fault." -The Washington Post Ron Carlson, author of the critically acclaimed Five Skies, is an award-winning writer beloved by booksellers, reviewers, and readers alike. His most thrilling book to date, The Signal follows the story of Mack and Vonnie, a married couple who, after ten years together, are taking their last hike in the mountains of Wyoming to say goodbye to their relationship and to each other. As the troubled and tragic elements of their past gradually come to light over the course of their journey, Mack keeps a secret: he is tracking a signal, sent via a beacon that has fallen from the sky, that will lead them both into a wood far darker than they have ever imagined.

“ [A] moving novel about friendship, forgiveness, and mortality.” —Nancy Pearl, NPR’s Morning Edition Ron Carlson has always been a critics’ favorite, but Return to Oakpine shows the acclaimed writer at his finest. In this tender and nostalgic portrait of western American life, Carlson tells the story of four middle-aged friends who once played in a band while growing up together in small-town Wyoming. One of them, Jimmy Brand, left for New York City and became an admired novelist. Thirty years later in 1999, he’s returned to die. Craig Ralston and Frank Gunderson never left Oakpine; Mason Kirby, a Denver lawyer, is back on family business. Jimmy’s arrival sends the other men’s dreams and expectations, realized and deferred, whirling to the surface. And now that they are reunited, getting the band back together might be the most essential thing they ever do.

Return to Oakpine: A Novel

Working together on a summer construction project high in the Rocky Mountains, drifter Arthur Key, shiftless Ronnie Panelli, and foreman Darwin Gallegos reveal details about their pasts and beliefs in cautious and profound ways.

Penguin Audio

At the Jim Bridger: Stories

“We lean closer and closer, eager to catch every last word.” said The New York Times Book Review. “Bigger, richer, funnier, and more complex than any description of them can convey,” said the San Francisco Chronicle. “Some of the funniest and saddest stories ever to cozy up together,” said the Los Angeles Times. Welcome to the short stories of Ron Carlson, where strange beach towels turn up in your living room; where the ordinary son of a family of geniuses spins a rollicking tale of happiness and disappointment; where a teenaged magician seduces the prettiest girl in his high school and the world, with devastating consequences. Long regarded as one of our finest living short story writers, Ron Carlson triumphantly returns with At the Jim Bridger, nine stories that are epic in scope and confessional in tone; stories that enfold the reader in a world of love and mystery, and make us feel better than just about anything written on the page.

Picador

Welcome to the short stories of Ron Carlson, where strange beach towels turn up in your suburban living room; where the ordinary son of a family of geniuses spins a rollicking tale of happiness and disappointment; and where a desperate ex-con with a broken heart must hide out in a desert hotel, only to make a startling discovery. Epic in scope and confessional in tone, At the Jim Bridger enfolds the reader in a world of love and mystery, and makes us feel better than just about anything written on the page.

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

Books by Carlson, Ron.

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

The Speed of Light

The News of the World (Contemporary American Fiction)

Plan B for the Middle Class: Stories

The Hotel Eden: Stories

Five Skies

The Signal: A Novel

Return to Oakpine: A Novel

Five Skies

At the Jim Bridger: Stories

At the Jim Bridger: Stories