The Tattooed Soldier: A Novel

Héctor Tobar

Picador

Barbarian Nurseries

Literature & Fiction

United States

Harper Collins Canada

The morning after the fight, Maureen Torres-Thompson picked up the baby and left. She ran her beautiful home in a gated community just outside LA like the disciplined mid-level corporate executive she had once been. She often thought that the only thing she could say with certainty she wanted, was to bring goodness and beauty to the life of her family. And now Scott was telling her they were broke. If they could no longer afford a gardener, it had seemed sensible to replace the high-maintenance la petite rainforest with an architecturally interesting cactus garden. Inevitably that had required some initial outlay. They had a fight. Scott left too. When Scott and Maureen finally return home, the children have gone. Shocked at their own behaviour and terrified by what people will think of them they do what any right-minded middle-class parents would do. They lie. And accuse the maid. As a national media circus explodes over the 'abduction', carefully constructed lives begin to fall apart. In a city divided between a wealthy privileged class and a rising immigrant population, every organization from the broken criminal justice system to the social services has a reason for wanting the story to end a certain way. A compelling portrait of our time, THE BARBARIAN NURSERIES questions how far we'll go to protect our ambitions, our liberty and our family.

Sceptre

The morning after the fight, Maureen Torres-Thompson picked up the baby and left.She ran her beautiful home in a gated community just outside LA like the disciplined mid-level corporate executive she had once been. She often thought that the only thing she could say with certainty she wanted, was to bring goodness and beauty to the life of her family. And now Scott was telling her they were broke. If they could no longer afford a gardener, it had seemed sensible to replace the high-maintenance la petit rainforest with an architecturally interesting cactus garden. Inevitably that had required some initial outlay. They had a fight. Scott left too.When Scott and Maureen finally return home, the children have gone. Shocked at their own behaviour and terrified by what people will think of them they do what any right-minded middle-class parents would do. They lie. And accuse the maid. As a national media circus explodes over the 'abduction', carefully constructed lives begin to fall apart. In a city divided between a wealthy privileged class and a rising immigrant population every organization from the broken criminal justice system to the social services has a reason for wanting the story to end a certain way. A compelling portrait of our time, THE BARBARIAN NURSERIES questions how far we'll go to protect our ambitions, our liberty and our family.

The Barbarian Nurseries

Hodder&Stoughton

Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle that Set them Free

Now a Major Motion Picture Starring Antonio BanderasIncludes New Material Exclusive to the PaperbackA Finalist for a National Book Critics Circle AwardA Finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book PrizeA New York Times Book Review Notable BookSelected for NPR's Morning Edition Book Club When the San José mine collapsed outside of Copiapó, Chile, in August 2010, it trapped thirty-three miners beneath thousands of feet of rock for a record-breaking sixty-nine days. After the disaster, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Héctor Tobar received exclusive access to the miners and their tales, and in The 33, he brings them to haunting, visceral life. We learn what it was like to be imprisoned inside a mountain, understand the horror of being slowly consumed by hunger, and experience the awe of working in such a place-underground passages filled with danger and that often felt alive. A masterwork of narrative journalism and a stirring testament to the power of the human spirit, The 33 captures the profound ways in which the lives of the Chilean miners and everyone involved in the catastrophe were forever changed.

Deep Down Dark EXPORT

TEXAS BOOK

The exclusive, official story of the survival, faith, and family of Chile's thirty-three trapped minersWhen the San José mine collapsed outside of Copiapó, Chile, in August 2010, it trapped thirty-three miners beneath thousands of feet of rock for a record-breaking sixty-nine days. Across the globe, we sat riveted to television and computer screens as journalists flocked to the Atacama desert. While we saw what transpired above ground during the grueling and protracted rescue, the story of the miners' experiences below the earth's surface―and the lives that led them there―hasn't been heard until now. In Deep Down Dark, a master work by a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, Héctor Tobar gains exclusive access to the miners and their stories. The result is a miraculous and emotionally textured account of the thirty-three men who came to think of the San José mine as a kind of coffin, as a "cave" inflicting constant and thundering aural torment, and as a church where they sought redemption through prayer while the world watched from above. It offers an understanding of the families and personal histories that brought "los 33" to the mine, and the mystical and spiritual elements that surrounded working in such a dangerous place.

The great panoramic social novel that Los Angeles deserves--a twenty-first-century, West Coast 'Bonfire of the Vanities' by the only writer qualified to capture the city in all its glory and complexity. With The Barbarian Nurseries, Hector Tobar gives our most misunderstood metropolis its great contemporary novel, taking us beyond the glimmer of Hollywood and deeper than camera-ready crime stories to reveal Southern California life as it really is, across its vast, sunshiny sprawl of classes, languages, dreams, and ambitions.  Araceli is the live-in maid in the Torres-Thompson household--one of three Mexican employees in a Spanish-style house with lovely views of the Pacific. She has been responsible strictly for the cooking and cleaning, but the recession has hit, and suddenly Araceli is the last Mexican standing--unless you count Scott Torres, though you'd never suspect he was half Mexican but for his last name and an old family photo with central LA in the background. The financial pressure is causing the kind of fights that even Araceli knows the children shouldn't hear, and then one morning, after a particularly dramatic fight, Araceli wakes to an empty house--except for the two Torres-Thompson boys, little aliens she's never had to interact with before. Their parents are unreachable, and the only family member she knows of is Senor Torres, the subject of that old family photo. So she does the only thing she can think of and heads to the bus stop to seek out their grandfather. It will be an adventure, she tells the boys. If she only knew. With a precise eye for the telling detail and an unerring way with character, soaring brilliantly and seamlessly among a panorama of viewpoints, Tobar calls on all of his experience--as a novelist, a father, a journalist, a son of Guatemalan immigrants, and a native Angeleno--to deliver a novel as broad, as essential, as alive as the city itself.

Blackstone Audio,Inc.

[This is the MP3CD audiobook format.]  The great panoramic social novel that Los Angeles deserves--a twenty-first-century, West Coast 'Bonfire of the Vanities' by the only writer qualified to capture the city in all its glory and complexity. With The Barbarian Nurseries, Hector Tobar gives our most misunderstood metropolis its great contemporary novel, taking us beyond the glimmer of Hollywood and deeper than camera-ready crime stories to reveal Southern California life as it really is, across its vast, sunshiny sprawl of classes, languages, dreams, and ambitions.  Araceli is the live-in maid in the Torres-Thompson household--one of three Mexican employees in a Spanish-style house with lovely views of the Pacific. She has been responsible strictly for the cooking and cleaning, but the recession has hit, and suddenly Araceli is the last Mexican standing--unless you count Scott Torres, though you'd never suspect he was half Mexican but for his last name and an old family photo with central LA in the background. The financial pressure is causing the kind of fights that even Araceli knows the children shouldn't hear, and then one morning, after a particularly dramatic fight, Araceli wakes to an empty house--except for the two Torres-Thompson boys, little aliens she's never had to interact with before. Their parents are unreachable, and the only family member she knows of is Senor Torres, the subject of that old family photo. So she does the only thing she can think of and heads to the bus stop to seek out their grandfather. It will be an adventure, she tells the boys. If she only knew. With a precise eye for the telling detail and an unerring way with character, soaring brilliantly and seamlessly among a panorama of viewpoints, Tobar calls on all of his experience--as a novelist, a father, a journalist, a son of Guatemalan immigrants, and a native Angeleno--to deliver a novel as broad, as essential, as alive as the city itself.

Blackstone Pub

In downtown Los Angeles, Antonio Bernal waits to be evicted. Nightmarish memories haunt him: the floor of his old home red with blood, his flight from his wife and son's killer, and the glimpse of a tattoo of a jaguar on the killer's arm.

The Tattooed Soldier

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Serpent's Tail

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

Books by Héctor Tobar

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

The Tattooed Soldier: A Novel

Barbarian Nurseries

Barbarian Nurseries

The Barbarian Nurseries

Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle that Set them Free

Deep Down Dark EXPORT

Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle that Set them Free

The Barbarian Nurseries

The Barbarian Nurseries

The Tattooed Soldier