Fiction. Finch is a daydreamer whose job as a marketer of plastic plants consists mostly of updating the blogs of the imaginary people he creates. Once new management steps in and kicks him out, Finch slowly lets go of all ties to the outside world. With both his electricity and motivation shut off, he sinks into a state of oblivion, holed up in his apartment for weeks on end. But when his reply to what he thinks is innocuous spam sweeps him into the world of billionaire Mr. Crane, Finch agrees to live and work—for more money than he's ever imagined—as an ornamental hermit in a cave on Mr. Crane's estate. This darkly comic commentary on modern work and wealth probes deep-rooted questions about the nature of man, the workplace, and society (and what happens in their absence). Set in a postmodern pastoral landscape, it brings a playfulness more commonly found in urban fiction to an outdoor setting.

The Bee-Loud Glade

Literature & Fiction

Himmer, Steve

United States

Atticus Books

Fram

Fram is the story of Oscar, a minor bureaucrat in the US government's Bureau of Ice Prognostication, an agency created to compete with the Soviets during the heyday of the Cold War and still operating in the present without the public's knowledge. Oscar and his partner Alexi are tasked with inventing discoveries and settlements in the Arctic, then creating the paperwork and digital records to "prove" their existence, preventing the inconvenience and expense of actual exploration. The job is the closest Oscar has come to his boyhood dream of being a polar explorer, until he and Alexi are sent on a secret mission to the actual Arctic, which brings them into a mysterious tangle of rival agencies and espionage that grows more dangerous the farther north they travel. The trip also allows Oscar to reconnect with his wife, Julia, from whom he's grown alienated by years of lying about what he does for a living (a distance compounded by Julia's own secret government job), leading both of them to discover what can be lost if we let one part of ourselves—or one part of a story—distract us from everything else the world offers.

Ig Publishing

After an aimless life, Martin Blaskett is ready to settle down, unaware of the tension rising in his new town from unknowable forces. When he draws the attention of a shape-shifter from local legend, his world is shaken, and he is led across the hazy border of the feral wilderness with a tempestuous history.
Steve Himmer is author of the novels The Bee-Loud Glade and Fram. His stories have appeared in Hobart, Hawk &amp; Handsaw, the Collagist, the Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. He edits the web journal Necessary Fiction and teaches at Emerson College in Boston.

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Dark House Press

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Books by Himmer, Steve

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

The Bee-Loud Glade

Fram

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