Chris Crutcher Books In Order

Stotan Books In Order

  1. Stotan! (1986)
  2. Ironman (1995)

Novels

  1. Running Loose (1983)
  2. The Crazy Horse Electric Game (1987)
  3. Chinese Handcuffs (1989)
  4. The Deep End (1992)
  5. Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes (1993)
  6. The Secrets of Sarah Byrnes (1996)
  7. Whale Talk (2001)
  8. The Sledding Hill (2005)
  9. Deadline (2007)
  10. Angry Management (2009)
  11. Period 8 (2013)
  12. Losers Bracket (2018)

Collections

  1. Athletic Shorts (1991)

Novellas

  1. The Meat Grinder (2012)

Non fiction

  1. King of the Mild Frontier (2003)

Stotan Book Covers

Novels Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Novellas Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Chris Crutcher Books Overview

Stotan!

In the final swimming season at Frost High School Coach Max II Song offers his small but talented team the gift of self discipline in the form of Stotan Week a grueling four hour a day, nonstop test of physical and emotional stamina designed to bring them to the outer edge of their capabilities. The four young men accept the challenge and something none of them could have predicted is set in motion. Stotan! is a humorous, sometimes heartbreaking story about making sense of chaos, about falling in love when it’s not in the cards, about friendship and commitment, about life and death.

Ironman

Bo Brewster has been at war with his father for as long as he can remember. Following angry outbursts at his football coach and English teacher that have cost him his spot on the football team and moved him dangerously close to expulsion from school, he turns to the only adult he believes will listen: Larry King.

In his letters to Larry, Bo describes his quest for excellence on his own terms. No more coaches for me, he tells the talk show icon, no more dads. I’m going to be a triathlete, an Ironman.

Relegated to Mr. Nak’s before school Anger Management group which he initially believes to be populated with future serial killers and freeway snipers, Bo meets a hard edged, down on their luck pack of survivors with stainless steel shields against the world that Bo comes to see are not so different from his own. It is here he meets and falls in love with Shelly, a future American Gladiator, whose passion for physical challenge more than matches his.

Ironman is a funny, sometimes heartbreaking story about growing up in the heart of struggle. It is about standing up, getting knocked down, and standing up again. It is about being heard and learning to listen.

Running Loose

Louie Banks has the world by the tail. It’s his last year in high school; he has wheels, a starting spot on the football team, good friends, and the girl of everyone’s dreams. If he can stay away from Boomer Cowans long enough to graduate, he’s got it made. But the world suddenly turns and snatches Louie by the tail, and it just won’t let go. His visions of sportsmanship and fair play go up in smoke by the second game of the season; his expectations of life are shattered by spring. Many of Louie’s wounds are selfinflicted; others, the result of a cold random throw of the cosmic dice. Either way, his road to manhood has become cluttered with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Running Loose is a story about that time in a boy’s life when he is suddenly expected to act like a man to be accountable for the things he does and to react reasonably to the craziness around him. Sometimes Louie does; sometimes he doesn’t.

The Crazy Horse Electric Game

Willie Weaver used to be a hero.
Now he’s nothing.

Willie is a top athlete, the star of the legendary game against Crazy Horse Electric. Then a freak accident robs him of his once amazing physical talents.

Betrayed by his family, his girlfriend, and his own body, Willie’s on the run, penniless and terrified on the streets, where he must fight to rebuild both his body and his life.

Chinese Handcuffs

Dillon is living with the painful memory of his brother’s suicide and the role he played in it. To keep his mind and body occupied, he trains intensely for the Ironman triathlon. But outside of practice, his life seems to be falling apart. Then Dillon finds a confidante in Jennifer, a star high school basketball player who’s hiding her own set of destructive secrets. Together, they must find the courage to confront their demons before it’s too late.

Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

When Sarah Byrnes was three years old, her condition became synonymous with her surname. Her face and hands were badly burned in a mysterious accident, and her father refused to allow reconstructive surgery. She developed a suit of cold, stainless steel armor to defend herself against the taunts of a world insensitive to her pain. You enter into Sarah Byrnes’s world on her terms, or you don’t enter. Enter Eric Calhoune Moby to his friends. Eric passed through his early years on a steady diet of Oreos and Twinkies and root beer floats, and he sports the girth to prove it. Because of their ‘terminal uglies,’ he and Sarah Byrnes have become true masters in the art of underhanded revenge directed at anyone who dares to offend their sensibilities. When Eric turns out for the high school swimming team, he begins to shed layers of extra poundage. Fearing the loss of the one friendship he treasures, he gorges to ‘stay fat for Sarah Byrnes,’ who discovers his motive and threatens to beat him more senseless than she thinks he already is. Then the truth of Sarah Byrnes’s horrific past finally catches up with her. Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes is a darkly funny, suspenseful novel about friendship, fear, and making the best of a bad situation. Once again Chris Crutcher slaps us in the face with compelling questions that demand dignified answers.

Whale Talk

There’s bad news and good news about the Cutter High School swim team. The bad news is that they don’t have a pool. The good news is that only one of them can swim anyway.A group of misfits brought together by T. J. Jones the J is redundant to find their places in a school that has no place for them, the Cutter All Night Mermen struggle to carve out their own turf. T. J. is convinced that a varsity letter jacket unattainable for most, exclusive, revered, the symbol as far as T. J. is concerned of all that is screwed up at Cutter High will be an effective carving tool. He’s right. He’s also wrong. Still, it’s always the quest that counts. And the bus on which the Mermen travel to swim meets piloted by Icko, the permanent resident of All, Night Fitness soon becomes the cocoon inside which they gradually allow themselves to talk, to fit, to bloom. Chris Crutcher is in top form with a cast of characters adults, children, and teenagers fighting for dignity in a world where tragedy and comedy dance side by side, where a moment’s inattention can bring lifelong heartache, and where true acceptance is the only prescription for what ails us.

The Sledding Hill

Billy Bartholomew has an audacious soul, and he knows it. Why? Because it’s all he has left. He’s dead.

Eddie Proffit has an equally audacious soul, but he doesn’t know it. He’s still alive.

These days, Billy and Eddie meet on The Sledding Hill, where they used to spend countless hours until Billy kicked a stack of Sheetrock over on himself, breaking his neck and effectively hitting tilt on his Earthgame. The two were inseparable friends. They still are. And Billy is not about to let a little thing like death stop him from hanging in there with Eddie in his epic struggle to get his life back on track.

Deadline

Ben Wolf has big things planned for his senior year. Had big things planned. Now what he has is some very bad news and only one year left to make his mark on the world. How can a pint sized, smart ass seventeen year old do anything significant in the nowheresville of Trout, Idaho? First, Ben makes sure that no one else knows what is going on not his superstar quarterback brother, Cody, not his parents, not his coach, no one. Next, he decides to become the best 127 pound football player Trout High has ever seen; to give his close minded civics teacher a daily migraine; and to help the local drunk clean up his act. And then there’s Dallas Suzuki. Amazingly perfect, fascinating Dallas Suzuki, who may or may not give Ben the time of day. Really, she’s first on the list. Living with a secret isn’t easy, though, and Ben’s resolve begins to crumble…
especially when he realizes that he isn’t the only person in Trout with secrets.

Angry Management

Every kid in this group wants to fly. Every kid in this group has too much ballast. Mr. Nak’s Angry Management group is a place for misfits. A place for stories. And, man, does this crew have stories. There’s Angus Bethune and Sarah Byrnes, who can hide from everyone but each other. Together, they will embark on a road trip full of haunting endings and glimmering beginnings. And Montana West, who doesn’t step down from a challenge. Not even when the challenge comes from her adoptive dad, who’s leading the school board to censor the article she wrote for the school paper. And straightlaced Matt Miller, who had never been friends with outspoken genius Marcus James. Until one tragic week a week they’d do anything to change brings them closer than Matt could have ever imagined. Chris Crutcher fills these three stories with raw emotion. They are about insecurity, anger, and prejudice. But they are also about love, freedom, and power. About surviving. And hope.

Athletic Shorts

These six powerful short stories chronicle bits of the lives of characters, major and minor, who have walked the rugged terrain of Chris Crutcher’s earlier works. They also introduce some new and unforgettable personalities who may well be heard from again in future books. As with all Crutcher’s work, these are stories about athletes, and yet they are not sport stories. They are tales of love and death, bigotry and heroism, of real people doing their best even when that best isn’t very good. Crutcher’s straightforward style and total honesty have earned him an admiring audience and made readers of many nonreaders.

King of the Mild Frontier

Do You Know: A good reason to be phobic about oysters and olives? That you can step inside a roaring coal furnace and feet cool? That Jesus had an older brother? How shutting your mouth can help you avoid brain surgery? How to avoid cow pies during your baptism? How to survive in the winter wilderness with only a fishing pole and a sausage? Chris Crutcher knows the answers to these things and more. And once you have read about Chris Crutcher’s life as a dateless, broken toothed, scabbed over, God fearing dweeb, and once you have contemplated his ascension to the buckskin upholstered throne of the King of the Mild Frontier, you will close this book, close your eyes and hold it to your chest, and say, ‘I, too, can be an author.’ Hell, anyone can.

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