Craig Nova Books In Order

Incandesence

Stargell had it all: a prestigious job at a think tank; a beautiful Greek wife; and money enough to indulge his expensive tastes. But when he loses his job for using the think tank’s computer to play the horses, his life starts taking a very definite turn for the worse. Suddenly he s broke, his wife is going crazy, and a very determined Lower East Side loan shark has his number. In the midst of all this danger and chaos, however, the resilient and darkly comic Stargell pushes his limits while playing it by ear. Stargell is sustained by those rare moments of redeeming grace when every experience feels vital and valuable, when even in the darkest moments.

The Good Son

The Good Son is the work of an artist in full command, and those of you entering it for the first time can only be envied. From the foreword by Jonathan YardleyChip Mackinnon returns from World War II a changed man. After being shot down over the desert and imprisoned by the enemy, the world of privilege to which he belongs seems shallow. But in the shadow of his older brother’s death, the full weight of his father s expectations falls on Chip. Pop Mackinnon whose money is new but just as good as anyone else s has designs on the upper echelons of society. The polo ponies and expensive education he bought for his son weren t gifts; they were an investment in the family s future. Now it s time for Chip to pay him back by marrying a girl who can finally bring the Mackinnons into society s inner circle.A shrewd and cunning man, Pop is used to getting his way until the arrival of Jean Cooper, that is. This Midwestern beauty awakens Chip s passions, and the two embark on an affair that threatens to destroy Pop s social climbing plans. A battle of wills between father and son ensues, one that tests the boundaries of their relationship and strays into the place where love turns irrevocably to hate. Originally published in 1982 to wide acclaim, The Good Son remains Craig Nova s undisputed masterpiece. This classic of contemporary American literature artfully explores the complicated web of emotions that exists between fathers and sons ambition, jealousy, loyalty, love in a tale that compels with its simple, searing honesty. Also Available as an eBook.

Tornado Alley

Tornado Alley is a story of a man and a woman who are on a dangerous collision course. Marie Boule is a love starved young woman who grew up in a small, impoverished town in Pennsylvania, and her one desire is to find a comfortable, easy life. She thinks she is capable of hardening her heart and making any sacrifice necessary to get where she’s going. It is only a matter of time before she meets Ben Lunn, a bright and responsible man who thinks he has made his peace with the woman he has married and the demands of being a father and husband. When Ben and Marie meet it is with all the unstoppable quality of a force of nature: at first, they are just pleased with each other’s company, a kind of innocent companionship they both crave, but soon they enter into a secret bond. Benn Lunn’s life has been marked by gifts, not the least of which is a kind of magical sense about the world. He is the son of a small town doctor, and in the heat of the place where he grew up, in the scandals of those around him, there is always the constant presence of the effect of passion. His mother ran off to become an actress…
his father keeps his own love alive, waiting for her return. Marie has seen, in her own youth, the result of love come to nothing, and she is determined to avoid this at all costs…
Tornado Alley is a compelling novel about love and loss, honor and passion, and the mysteries of the human heart. It is told with drama and humor, and its characters are real people dealing with the recognizable problems of life.

Trombone

Craig Nova’s classic novel Trombone is a powerful and poignant portrait of the complexities between an arsonist father and his good son. Dean Gollancz is an easygoing man of modest means. He longs for the Big Time, and when his job at the Print Shop doesn’t pay the bills, he commits arson for a Chinese gangster in Los Angeles. His son Ray feels deep love and loyalty for his father, but when he wins an Ivy League scholarship, Ray must decide how much of his own life to sacrifice for Dean’s respect. The destructive nature of their relationship is brought to the fore when Iris, a classmate of Ray’s, becomes his father’s lover. Longing for Iris and knowing he can never be like Dean, Ray must decide whether he even wants to be, and whether it is right to be that way at all. ‘ Nova’s novels deserve to be ranked among the best American fiction of the past two decades.’ Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post ‘Trombone is a novel of crime, passion, adventure…
by one of our most acclaimed and prolific fiction writers.’ Howard Frank Mosher

The Universal Donor

‘In the hands of this accomplished novelist, a love story becomes a thriller as a Los Angeles doctor tries to save a woman by tracking down the criminal psychopath who shares her rare blood type.’ New York Times Book ReviewBitten by one of the snakes she is studying, Virginia Lee, an accomplished herpetologist, drives herself to the hospital, carrying a decaying antidote and using her pantyhose as a tourniquet to slow the poison’s path in her bloodstream. Through the hideous traffic of L.A., she must reach her lover Terry McKechnie, who works as an emergency room physician. Her hope and faith is in him, even as it has been withdrawn from her husband, Terry’s college friend. After her arrival, Virginia desperately needs transfusions of her rare blood type and only an explosive criminal at large with whom Terry has already clashed can save her life. In this ‘absolutely bewitching’ Jonathan Harr novel, Craig Nova brings us into the moral morass of contemporary America, gripping us with the beauty of his exacting prose and the suspense of his riveting emotional drama. ‘I wouldn’t delay reading a novel of Nova’s, not even to complete one of my own.’ John Irving ‘Craig Nova is a fine writer, one of our best, and if you haven’t read him, the loss is yours.’ Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World 1997 Critic’s Choice ‘As skilled a piece of storytelling as Mr. Nova has yet pulled off.’ Christopher Lehmann Haupt, New York Times

Wetware

In 2026 in an unnamed city that is darkly familiar and vividly possible, Hal Briggs is a biotech engineer. His specialty: encoding biology into digital form. In other words, manufacturing life.

Already he’d created small animals that chirped cheerfully about a product, a beaver that sang a ditty about toothpaste. He’d designed extreme-sport survival games that transported players into fantasy dimensions.
And now, the job keeping him up at all hours of the night has become his obsession-developing a coding system to produce the human body. People. Gray-skinned and brutish, designed to do the dangerous and dull jobs no one else wants. At corporate giant Galapagos Wetware, business is booming. Buyers want creatures with more finesse. They want workers who are good with handguns and who have the ability to deceive. Workers who are cunning, who thrive on terror, who are indifferent to a plea for mercy. They want workers who look more human.

The prototypes are emerging slowly in the ice-cold lab. Briggs’s code is like poetry, like perfectly structured haiku. He begins to add forbidden details-a sense of humor, mathematical brilliance, an instinct for music, a profound longing. With each detail Briggs adds, the more infatuated he becomes, until he adds the most dangerous detail of all-the ability to reproduce.

In the bowels of Galapagos Wetware, in a room filled with blue-tinted snow, Hal Briggs watches as his latest creation-he has named her Kay-blows him a kiss, while Jack, the male next to her, mouths, ‘Don’t worry.’
What could possibly go wrong?

Craig Nova, a master of the modern American novel, creates a thrilling tale of the ethics of desire, the metaphysics of technology, and the dangerous mystery of manufactured beauty in a future becoming more real with every passing day.

Cruisers

Frank Kohler is ready to snap. He is capable of love, but he knows time is running out. His mother was brutally murdered, and he never knew his father. With each passing day he perceives his anger with an almost religious sense of beauty. In an attempt to save himself, he decides to marry a mail order bride from Russia. Russell Boyd is a state trooper who resists those acts that damage life forever. He has seen about as much of them as he can take. And yet, he has met the woman who makes him feel whole. She is the center of his life. Frank Kohler’s and Russell Boyd s paths will cross three times. And the third time will change everything. It is the moment when the line between good and evil is made dramatically clear. As with such modern classics as Dennis Lehane s Mystic River and Graham Greene s The Heart of the Matter, Craig Nova gives us an illuminating story of characters who struggle against the collisions of fate, and who are motivated by the touching need to be human.

The Informer

Berlin in 1930 is a city of dark paranoia and covert power struggles, where violence can erupt at any moment. The Brownshirts dominate the streets, but the Red Front is building its insurgence. Gaelle, a beautiful but desperate young prostitute with a scar across one side of her face, trades in something far more powerful and dangerous than sex: information. To possess her, men will do more than pay they will tell her secrets. What Gaelle wants is protection. Felix, a sixteen year old boy with a lame foot, negotiates Gaelle’s price, accompanies her in limousines when she feels threatened, and reminds her to take care of herself. But can he really keep her from harm?Armina Treffen is an investigator for the Berlin Police. Several women s bodies have been found in the park, murdered in the same manner, and Armina, too, seeks Gaelle s confidence to help her catch a serial killer. Even as Gaelle tries to protect herself by possessing information, she becomes more entangled in a complex web of politics and murder in a city in which men will go to any length to maintain the power of silence. In this taut literary thriller, acclaimed author Craig Nova masterfully captures the menace and malice of pre war Berlin through the eyes of characters dealing with forces far beyond their control. From the Hardcover edition.

Brook Trout and the Writing Life

In this memoir, novelist Craig Nova explores the interconnections between his work as a writer, his personal life, and his passion for fly fishing. Nova leads the reader into his courtship, marriage, the birth of his children, and his life as a father, husband, writer, friend, citizen, and angler. Just as the author observes the life of the elusive and beautiful brook trout in the tea colored streams, he finds interconnections to his daily life he teaches his daughter to build an igloo; he deals with the disappointment of a very public mean spirited review of his much anticipated novel; he gazes at his wife to be in her hammock by a stream; he finds himself the victim of a random blackmailer. Unpredictable and keenly observed, Nova leads us through the terrain of the life of an artist. The constants are the stream and the brook trout whic offer both respite from the demands of his life and a wellspring of inspiration and strength. It is a paean to nature and the beauty of the brook trout. This autobiography is a reprint and expansion of Nova’s highly regarded memoir originally published in 1999. This new edition includes substantial sections of new work and an introduction by Ann Beattie.