Charlie Martens is desperate for stability in an otherwise peripatetic life. An explosion that killed his parents when he was young robbed him of normalcy and he was shuttled from relative to relative, left alone to decipher the world he encountered in order to cobble together an answer as to how he would live. Ever the outcast, Charlie recognizes in Olivia, an international student from London, the sense of otherness he feels and their relationship seems to promise salvation. But when Olivia abandons him, his desperate mind fixates on her favorite writer, Vernon Downs, who becomes an emblem for reunion with Olivia. Charlie's quest takes him from Phoenix to New York City and when chance brings him into proximity to Vernon Downs, he quickly ingratiates himself into Downs's world. Proximity invites certain temptations, though, and it isn't long before Charlie moves dangerously from fandom to apprentice to outright possession.

Vernon Downs

Clarke, Jaime

Literature & Fiction

Roundabout Press

WORLD GONE WATER enlarges the portrait of Charlie Martens, first introduced in VERNON DOWNS, a young man grappling with how to navigate the world. Set in Phoenix, seven years before the events of VERNON DOWNS, Charlie finds himself released from a voluntary stay at a behavioral clinic in the Sonoran desert, the result of an incident with a woman he met while tending bar in Florida where Charlie had fled to forget his high school sweetheart, whose sudden marriage to someone else devastates him. But Charlie's homecoming launches him into a chain of events with a cast of characters that assault his fragile state and further undermine his general impressions about life and how to live. WORLD GONE WATER roves the deep terrain of our want for emotional connection and is a devastating narrative about love, sex, and friendship. "Jaime Clarke's WORLD GONE WATER is so fresh and daring, a necessary book, a barbaric yawp that revels in its taboo: the sexual and emotional desires of today's hetero young man. Clarke is a sure and sensitive writer, his lines are clean and carry us right to the tender heart of his lovelorn hero, Charlie Martens. This is the book Hemingway and Kerouac would want to read. It's the sort of honesty in this climate that many of us aren't brave enough to write."--Tony D'Souza "This unsettling novel ponders human morality and sexuality, and the murky interplay between the two. Charlie Martens is a compelling antihero with a voice that can turn on a dime, from shrugging naiveté to chilling frankness. WORLD GONE WATER is a candid, often startling portrait of an unconventional life."--J. Robert Lennon "Funny and surprising, WORLD GONE WATER is terrific fun to read and, as a spectacle of bad behavior, pretty terrifying to contemplate."--Adrienne Miller "Charlie Martens is my favorite kind of narrator, an obsessive yearner whose commitment to his worldview is so overwhelming that the distance between his words and the reader's usual thinking gets clouded fast. WORLD GONE WATER will draw you in, make you complicit, and finally leave you both discomfited and thrilled."--Matt Bell "Charlie Martens will make you laugh. More, he'll offend and shock you while making you laugh. Even trickier: he'll somehow make you like him, root for him, despite yourself and despite him. This novel travels into the dark heart of male/female relations and yet there is tenderness, humanity, hope. Jaime Clarke rides what is a terribly fine line between hero and antihero. Read and be astounded."--Amy Grace Loyd

World Gone Water

Contemporary

Bloomsbury Reader

Garden Lakes, Jaime Clarke's third novel featuring Charlie Martens, finds Charlie employed as an Arizona newspaper columnist who has built his career on a deception he committed that inadvertently stirred up anti-immigrant sentiment, casting a pall over the state. But Charlie's story is really one of serial deception, a life of prevarications he traces back to a summer fellowship program he attended while a junior at an all-boys prep school. The chosen fellows were tasked with undertaking supervised construction of a house in a half-built development donated to the school by the bankrupt developer. The fellows lived and worked together and were tested when a transient girl wandered into the development after the disappearance of both of the fellowship's chaperones. What happened at Garden Lakes reverberates through everyone's lives, but especially Charlie's, which is forever altered by his actions that summer.

Garden Lakes

United States

Daisy, Paque and Stella want to be famous. Inspired by their idols, Bananarama, they form a pop group of their own. But Stella heads to LA to become an actress and lusting after bad-boy rocker Bryan Metro. Paque and Daisy, without Stella, are just about ready to call it quits when two friends are mysteriously murdered. They, the last people to see the victims alive, become the prime suspects and cashing in on this sudden notoriety, record their first hit. And the adventure is only just beginning.We're So Famous, Jaime Clarke's debut novel, was first published in 2001.This new edition features an introduction by New York Times bestselling author Charles Bock, as well as an afterword by the author entitled Typical of the Times: Growing Up in the Culture of Spectacle.

We're So Famous

Humor & Satire

The real-life Harold Ober founded Harold Ober Associates, the oldest literary agency in the country, in 1929, and over the years the agency has built an impressive client list: Chinua Achebe, Sherwood Anderson, Judy Blume, Pearl S. Buck, James M. Cain, Agatha Christie, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Hawkes, Langston Hughes, Dean Koontz, Ira Levin, James Lord, Joseph Mitchell, J.D. Salinger, and Dylan Thomas, among many others.In J.D. West's clever new mystery, The Disappearance of Swenson's Secretary, we learn that Harold Ober is also an amateur detective, using the same skills he's honed reading and editing manuscripts to solve baffling crimes. Along with his assistant, Max, he delves into the question of what happened to the secretary who accompanied her boss, H.A. Swenson, a film agent from Hollywood on his annual visit to editors and agents in New York City. The answer takes Ober and Max through a maze of plausible narratives, all against the backdrop of Gilded Age Manhattan.

The Disappearance of Swenson's Secretary: A Harold Ober Mystery

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

West, J.D.

Mystery

Independently published

A hilarious, unpredictable satire about three talentless girls, and their quest to become famous. 
"If you haven't heard of us, your friends probably have. . . " So begins this pitch-perfect satire about Daisy, Paque, and Stella, three girls from Arizona who are hungry for fame. Styling themselves after their idols, Bananarama, they form a pop band called Masterful Johnson. It isn't long before Stella quits the band to head for LA and become an actress, where she ends up rooting through celebrity garbage, performing macabre dinner theater, and lusting after bad-boy rocker Brian Metro. Paque and Daisy, however, continue with the band. After a string of embarrassing misadventures-including a fashion show at the local mall where they share the stage with a ten-year-old exhibitionistic gymnast-they're about ready to call it quits. But when a senator's son and his friend are mysteriously murdered, Paque and Daisy, the last people to see the victims alive, become the prime suspects in the case. Cashing in on their sudden notoriety, they record an EP, entitled We're Masterful Johnson, and the adventure is only beginning. . . 
Funny and clever, suffused with droll 80's nostalgia, We're So Famous, like the best satire, is fresh and compelling on the surface, and wicked underneath.

Bloomsbury USA

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be the greatest American novel ever written, its exploration of decadence, idealism, social upheaval, and excess having been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream. In this entry in Ig's acclaimed Bookmarked series, author Jaime Clarke examines how this seminal novel influenced his writing and life.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: Bookmarked (Bookmarked, 4)

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Ig Publishing

Fiction. All novels are necessarily concerned with their protagonists, but what of the minor characters that fill out a novel's landscape? We can never know them as well as we should or like. The same is true for the trilogy of novels by Jaime Clarke: Vernon Downs, World Gone Water, and Garden Lakes. MINOR CHARACTERS brings together Clarke's previously published short stories featuring the supporting characters in his trilogy, as well as stories by some of today's most talented contemporary writers, who have chosen characters from the trilogy and contributed a story. With a Foreword by Jonathan Lethem, and an Introduction by Laura van den berg, this Warholian enterprise has produced a unique and stirring collection that both stands on its own and enriches the standalone novels in Clarke's trilogy. Featuring original stories by Mona Awad, Christopher Boucher, Kenneth Calhoun, Nina de Gramont, Ben Greenman, Annie Hartnett, Owen King, Neil LaBute, J. Robert Lennon, Lauren Mechling, Shelly Oria, Stacey Richter, Joseph Salvatore, Andrea Seigel, and Daniel Torday. "Clarke has done more, even, than Vonnegut in setting his characters free: he's flipped foreground and background, and at the same time invited others in to browse, and revise, and interfere with, and extend, his fictional who's who."--Jonathan Lethem, from his foreword

Minor Characters: Stories

Short Stories & Anthologies

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

Books by Clarke, Jaime

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

Vernon Downs

World Gone Water

Vernon Downs

World Gone Water

Garden Lakes

We're So Famous

The Disappearance of Swenson's Secretary: A Harold Ober Mystery

We're So Famous

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: Bookmarked (Bookmarked, 4)

Minor Characters: Stories