One Christmas Eve, Whale Harbor is visited by a man who thinks he’s Jesus and claims to be looking for a game of poker. But, as usual, things are not quite what they seem. Having some version of the Lord in town for his birthday creates a strange effect on the locals: unlikely couples are breaking up and making up and making out; a luxury mobile home that belonged to an elderly couple from New Jersey (until they disappeared after a run-in with “the Lord”) is won by a down-on-his-luck gambler in an unbelievable hand of poker; the area’s most well-known and long-forgotten tourist attraction is rising up from a hole in the ground; and a gun no one has used in years is suddenly in hot demand. In the steamy climes of southern Florida, you take your miracles where you can get them—and if that means being led to salvation by a schizophrenic with a rap sheet, so be it. In the rollicking tradition of Carl Hiaasen’s Tourist Season, with the heart of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, and peopled by the kind of colorful characters who would be quite at home in any Tom Robbins novel, N. M. Kelby’s Whale Season is a sharp and funny novel made up of equal parts comic adventure and serial-killer inspired mayhem.

Whale Season: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

KELBY, N.M.

Humor & Satire

Shaye Areheart Books

One Christmas Eve, Whale Harbor is visited by a man who thinks he’s Jesus and claims to be looking for a game of poker. But, as usual, things are not quite what they seem. Having some version of the Lord in town for his birthday creates a strange effect on the locals: unlikely couples are breaking up and making up and making out; a luxury mobile home that belonged to an elderly couple from New Jersey (until they disappeared after a run-in with “the Lord”) is won by a down-on-his-luck gambler in an unbelievable hand of poker; the area’s most well-known and long-forgotten tourist attraction is rising up from a hole in the ground; and a gun no one has used in years is suddenly in hot demand. In the steamy climes of southern Florida, you take your miracles where you can get them—and if that means being led to salvation by a schizophrenic with a rap sheet, so be it. In the rollicking tradition of Carl Hiaasen’s Tourist Season, with the heart of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, and peopled by the kind of colorful characters who would be quite at home in any Tom Robbins novel, N. M. Kelby’s Whale Season is a sharp and funny novel made up of equal parts comic adventure and serial-killer inspired mayhem. From the Hardcover edition.

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Broadway Books

Take a slasher-movie actress, a Scottish circus clown, an FBI school dropout, a blind heiress, a junk-food-loving millionaire developer, and a Buddha-quoting bluesman, add a couple of murders in a normally sedate retirement community in south Florida, and you get an irresistible tale that’s part Carl Hiaasen and part Gabriel García Márquez. It all goes down as easy as a Key lime pie martini, the signature drink of the Bad Girl’s Bar &amp; Grill. N. M. Kelby’s last three novels have received glowing reviews in the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, People, and the Atlantic Monthly. Carl Hiaasen has called her “a natural-born writer,” and Kirkus praised her “black humor that sizzles.” Sit back, put up your feet, and get ready to lose yourself in a rollicking good story.

Murder at the Bad Girl's Bar and Grill: A Novel

Crown

A breathtaking novel, rare and moving, about the world's greatest chef and his unruly heart.White Truffles in Winter imagines the world of the remarkable French chef Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935), who changed how we eat through his legendary restaurants at the Savoy and the Ritz. A man of contradictions―kind yet imperious, food-obsessed yet rarely hungry―Escoffier was also torn between two women: the famous, beautiful, and reckless actress Sarah Bernhardt and his wife, the independent and sublime poet Delphine Daffis, who refused ever to leave Monte Carlo. In the last year of Escoffier's life, in the middle of writing his memoirs, he has returned to Delphine, who requests a dish in her name as he has honored Bernhardt, Queen Victoria, and many others. How does one define the complexity of love on a single plate? N. M. Kelby brings us the sensuality of food and love amid a world on the verge of war in this work that shimmers with beauty and longing.

White Truffles in Winter: A Novel

United States

W.W.Norton&Company

"You’ll eat up every word of this spicy historical novel." ―Real Simple
Auguste Escoffier (1846–1935) was the renowned French chef and restaurateur who gave birth to the way we eat today. The heart of Escoffier’s story, however, lies in his love for two very different women: the beautiful, reckless actress Sarah Bernhardt and his wife, the poet Delphine Daffis. This lushly imagined novel transports us into Escoffier’s private world, weaving a sensual tale of food and longing, war and romance.

The story of a Jewish girl, Marie Claire, rescued by nuns in WWII in Belgium. Anne, one of her rescuers, is the daughter of a woman who had visions of angels, who prophesied that their lives would be touched by a miraculous child. Is it Marie Claire? A novel of dark miracles and angelic visitations.

In the Company of Angels

Theia/Hyperion

ucienne Kundera, an astrophysicist, has uncovered a black hole as mysterious as the secrets in her life. Lucienne's mother, Hlne, is a scientist as well, who was captured during World War II. She eventually escaped and disappeared, reappearing years later in New Mexico with Lucienne. Hlne claims to have no recollection of these past events, but when she and Lucienne visit Paris, the city of Hlne's youth, Hlne is overcome by memories and secrets, and attempts suicide. Lucienne becomes dangerously obsessed with uncovering her mother's past, while at the same time attempting to solve a celestial mystery so dark and dense that its nature cannot be revealed. Theater of the Stars is a finely crafted novel sure to establish Kelby as a storyteller of unique sensitivity and wisdom.

Theater of the Stars: A Novel of Physics and Memory

Hyperion

Now available in paperback--"To read Kelby's novel is, in its own words, to 'fall into a dream, a flying dream.' To paraphrase and summarize such fine spun fiction must inevitably be as inadequate as any attempt to retell your most amazing dream the morning after." --New York Times Book Review Scented by chocolate and haunted by war, this compelling novel of dark miracles and angelic visitations offers up a distinctly imaginative new voice in fiction. Marie Claire is a young French Jew in a Nazi-occupied Belgian town, cared for by her grandmother, who cultivates flowers. A shattering of glass, and Marie Claire's village is in rubble. Her grandmother is dead, everyone is dead. She flees to the root cellar of her grandmother's house and waits. . . .

In the Company of Angels: A Novel

Contemporary

Hachette Books

Landlocked mermaids and a twisted Camp Fire Girl troop who will do anything to sell the most P-Nuttles in history. A beautiful mother who will not give up her coyote fur or cat's-eye sunglasses, even in the worst of times. A rock idol who had always wanted to be buried in his 1953 Cadillac Eldorado convertible. These and many other characters grace the ten stories in this collection. N.M.Kelby is the author of The Constant Art of Being a Writer, and several novels, including the best seller In the Company of Angels. She is working on the movie Whale Season with Dwight Yoakam. Praise for A Travel Guide for Reckless Hearts "N. M. Kelby has long been one of my favorite writers, and her new story collection, A Travel Guide for Reckless Hearts, is the sweet, pure, hilarious, sneakily profound essence of her. We ache and we laugh: this is the experience of reading N. M. Kelby just as it is the experience of living in the 21st century." —Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, and the novel, Hell "This is a collection of love stories, each and every one of them true to what goes on between us when our hearts collide. Beautiful, sweet, and a little sad: love, exactly. N. M. Kelby knows a thing or two." —Daniel Wallace, author of four novels including Big Fish, which was also a film of the same name "Kelby peeks into the hidden places of the heart, the sweet spot where love dwells." —Patti Callahan Henry, author of six novels, including Between the Tides

A Travel Guide for Reckless Hearts: Stories

Borealis Books

Murder at the Bad Girl's Bar & Grill (Thorndike Press Large Print Mystery Series)

Thorndike Pr

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

Books by KELBY, N.M.

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

Whale Season: A Novel

Whale Season: A Novel

Murder at the Bad Girl's Bar and Grill: A Novel

White Truffles in Winter: A Novel

White Truffles in Winter: A Novel

In the Company of Angels

Theater of the Stars: A Novel of Physics and Memory

In the Company of Angels: A Novel

A Travel Guide for Reckless Hearts: Stories

Murder at the Bad Girl's Bar & Grill (Thorndike Press Large Print Mystery Series)