Paul Cords, an American salesman in Mexico rescues a miniature horse from pornographers, falls in love with a prostitute, and discovers a strange code that gives him clues about the truth of his past

The Woman Who Escaped from Shame

Olson, Toby

Literature & Fiction

Collier Books

A reprinting of Olson's important novel originally published by Simon and Shuster/Linden Press.

Utah: A novel

Literary

Four old men—John, Gino, Larry, and Frank—have been warehoused at "the Manor," a long-eroded home for the forgotten. The men take turns telling stories, stalling death as they relive pivotal parts of their pasts. Outside, the cliff crumbles and a lighthouse slips toward the sea.
John, in particular, enthralls the others with his tale of Tampico, Mexico, where he met an Indian woman named Chepa who owned a house at the edge of a mountain wilderness. She was his first love—and his first lesson in the dangers of foreign intrigue. But his is not the only memory haunted by mysteries born in Mexico. Sick of waiting for death, stirred by the shifting ground beneath their feet, the Manor's residents finally resolve to quit that place and head out for Tampico.
With inexorable pull, and exquisite scenes that could only come from Toby Olson, Tampico celebrates a sublime band of calaveras, "those skeleton messengers of mortality," who seek self-discovery even as their lives are ending.

Tampico: A Novel (James A. Michener Fiction Series)

Contemporary

University of Texas Press

Paul Cords, an American salesman in Mexico rescues a miniature horse from pornographers, falls in love with a prostitute, and discovers a strange code that gives him clues about the truth of his past

The Woman Who Escaped from Shame: A Novel

Random House]

David, a masseur, recalls his past after the death of an old friend and discovers the mysterious bonds that link human lives

Utah

United States

Linden Pub

Edward Church, a painter who had deserted his wife to explore art and love in the Greek isle of Lesbos, leaves, upon his death, an enigmatic legacy and a nephew who must sort out the bewildering implications of Edward's fate

Dorit in Lesbos

When his wife leaves him, Provincetown police detective Peter Blue is left to deal on his own with a messy rape case, threats to his life, and his growing attraction to the rape victim

At Sea

Simon&Schuster

Allen hustles on golf courses to finance the journey from California to Cape Cod so that his wife can revisit her birthplace before she dies from cancer

Seaview

New Directions

W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.

Human Nature is the poet and novelist Toby Olson's first book of new poetry since We Are the Fire (New Directions, 1984). The intervening years saw five of his novels published to strong critical acclaim".But", says Olson",one day I woke from fiction to discover I'd not written a poem in close to ten years. How to return to poetry after being away from it so long?" Certainly not in repetition of things done before. In Human Nature, Olson joins the novelist's art to the poet's reflections of friends and events and times gone by. When memory fades, replaced by story, the reader of these remarkable narrative meditations begins to realize the ways in which poetry might disclose different truths, born of the reinvention of experience. "In Human Nature", says Olson, "even the most autobiographical poems let fiction in".

Human Nature: Poems

Poetry

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

Books by Olson, Toby

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

The Woman Who Escaped from Shame

Utah: A novel

Tampico: A Novel (James A. Michener Fiction Series)

The Woman Who Escaped from Shame: A Novel

Utah

Dorit in Lesbos

At Sea

Seaview

Seaview

Human Nature: Poems