books in order

John Cheever Books In Order

Wapshot Books In Order

  1. The Wapshot Chronicle (1957)
  2. The Wapshot Scandal (1964)

Novels

  1. Bullet Park (1969)
  2. The World of Apples (1973)
  3. Falconer (1977)
  4. Oh What a Paradise It Seems (1982)
  5. The Angel of the Bridge (1987)

Omnibus

  1. The Wapshot Chronicle / the Wapshot Scandal (1979)

Collections

  1. The Way Some People Live (1943)
  2. The Enormous Radio (1953)
  3. Stories (1956)
  4. The Housebreaker of Shady Hill (1958)
  5. Some People, Places, and Things That Will Not Appear in My Next Novel (1961)
  6. The Brigadier and the Golf Widow (1965)
  7. The Stories of John Cheever (1978)
  8. The Stories of the Supernatural (1987)
  9. Collected Stories (1990)
  10. The Uncollected Stories of John Cheever: 1930-1981 (1990)
  11. Fall River (1994)
  12. Thirteen Uncollected Stories by John Cheever (1994)
  13. Best of John Cheever (2001)
  14. Vintage Cheever (2005)
  15. Poolside (2007)
  16. Collected Stories and Other Writings (2009)
  17. Complete Novels (2009)
  18. A Vision of the World (2021)

Non fiction

  1. The Letters of John Cheever (1988)
  2. The Journals of John Cheever (1991)
  3. Glad Tidings (1993)
  4. Journals of John Cheever Volume 3 (1999)
  5. Journals of John Cheever Volume 4 (1999)

Wapshot Book Covers

Novels Book Covers

Omnibus Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

John Cheever Books Overview

The Wapshot Chronicle

When The Wapshot Chronicle was published in 1957, John Cheever was already recognized as a writer of superb short stories. But The Wapshot Chronicle, which won the 1958 National Book Award, established him as a major novelist. Based in part on Cheever’s adolescence in New England, the novel follows the destinies of the impecunious and wildly eccentric Wapshots of St. Botolphs, a quintessential Massachusetts fishing village. Here are the stories of Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea dog and would-be suicide; of his licentious older son, Moses; and of Moses’ adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly. Tragic and funny, ribald and splendidly picaresque, The Wapshot Chronicle is a family narrative in the tradition of Trollope, Dickens, and Henry James.

The Wapshot Scandal

In this simultaneously hilarious and poignant companion volume to The Wapshot Chronicle, the members of the Wapshot family of St. Botolphs drift far from their New England village into the demented caprices of the mighty, the bad graces of the IRS, and the humiliating abyss of adulterous passion. A novel of large and tender vision, The Wapshot Scandal is filled with pungent characters and outrageous twists of fate, and, above all, with Cheever’s luminous compassion for all his hapless fellow prisoners of human nature.

Bullet Park

Eliot Nailles loves his wife and son to distraction; Paul Hammer is a bast*ard named after a common household tool. Neighbours in Bullet Park, the two become fatefully linked by the mysterious binding power of their names in Cheever’s sharp and funny hymn to the dubious normality of the American suburbs.

The World of Apples

Innocent, old fashioned, self aware, Cheever’s people are summoned by strange and improbable events to ponder the values they have been taught to trust…
decency, common sense, nostalgia, even truth. Stunned by these encounters, they nevertheless survive. A worn out poet finds peace in his heart as he lays his Lermontov medal at the foot of the sacred angel; a prosperous suburbanite contemplates his predicament when his wife joins the cast of a nude show; a guileless and romantic well digger, anxious for a bride, visits Russia, falls in love and returns home ‘singing the unreality blues’; and a miserably married man fantasizes a beautiful lover who comes to him for strength, love and counsel while he tends the charcoal grill in the backyard.

Falconer

A story of human redemption, Falconer explores an ex professor’s experiences as an inmate in Falconer Prison. Ezekiel Farragut, convicted of killing his brother, has been imprisoned in the state prison where he is visited by his wife Marcia, with whom he has a love hate relationship. Falconer tells the story of Farragut, his crime and punishment and his struggle to remain a man as he comes to terms with how his life has changed forever.

Oh What a Paradise It Seems

An old man falls violently in love and does valiant battle against unscrupulous polluters in John Cheever’s ineffably joyful last novel.

The Stories of John Cheever

NATIONAL BESTSELLERWinner of the Pulitzer PrizeWhen The Stories of John Cheever was originally published, it became an immediate national bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize. In the years since, it has become a classic. Vintage Books is proud to reintroduce this magnificent collection. Here are sixty one stories that chronicle the lives of what has been called ‘the greatest generation.’ From the early wonder and disillusionment of city life in ‘The Enormous Radio’ to the surprising discoveries and common mysteries of suburbia in ‘The Housebreaker of Shady Hill’ and ‘The Swimmer,’ Cheever tells us everything we need to know about ‘the pain and sweetness of life.’

Fall River

When this book was originally issued in 1994, it was the first new collection of Cheever stories in over 15 years. Now, with a comprehensive new biography recently published, and the writings of Cheever bought into the canon of the respected Library of America, here is a key collection of 13 early stories from the 1930s and 1940s, 11 of which cannot be found anywhere else. In this intriguing collection, Cheever plunges us into a stark world of strike breaking, down and outers, burlesque shows, desperate gamblers, and deferred hopes. Called ‘the best kept secret of American letters’ and ‘a virtual literary treasure trove’, these stories add a new dimension to the as*sessment of John Cheever’s considerable reputation. Cheever published these stories in the 1930s and 1940s in magazines which ran the gamut from obscure leftist literary periodicals, through ‘The New Republic’ and ‘The Atlantic Monthly’, to mass circulation glossies like ‘Colliers’ and ‘Cosmopolitan’, dealing with themes and using techniques which are not generally considered to be ‘Cheeveresque’. They will undoubtedly surprise those readers familiar with his 1950s work. Each of these early stories bears the unmistakable stamp of the master storyteller.

Thirteen Uncollected Stories by John Cheever

A gathering of thirteen never before collected stories, originally published in the 1930s and 1940s, shows Cheever’s use of unusual themes, techniques, and characters early in his career and gives a vivid picture of life during the Depression.

Vintage Cheever

In his finely wrought novels and short stories, John Cheever created men and women, young and old, suburbanites and city dwellers, all of whom, whether they reside in St. Botolphs or Bullet Park or mid century Manhattan or some other mythic place, are all recognizable as citizens of Cheever country. Vintage Cheever contains an essential selection of the master’s short stories and selections from the novels The Wapshot Chronicle, Bullet Park, Falconer and Oh What a Paradise It Seems. Vintage Readers are a perfect introduction to some of the great modern writers, presented in attractive, affordable paperback editions.

Poolside

Poolside is a waterproof collection of fourteen stories about the satisfactions and tribulations of swimming lessons, summer scenes at club pools, chance encounters at the rec center and just plain floating. The perfect companion for a day of dipping and people watching, Poolside is as necessary as sunscreen for achieving maximum Poolside bliss. Poolside features internationally acclaimed authors Alice Adams, John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, David Foster Wallace, Ernest Hemingway, John Cheever, and AM Homes, as well as emerging voices such as Julie Orringer and Andrea Lee.

Collected Stories and Other Writings

Published to coincide with editor Blake Bailey’s groundbreaking new biography, here is the definitive edition of the stories of John Cheever. Set in the tony suburbs of Westchester and Connecticut, Cheever s classic stories charted a country as recognizable and essential to American literature as Faulkner s or Hawthorne s. Many people have written about suburbia, John Updike observed, only Cheever was able to make an archetypal place out of it. Collected Stories and Other Writings combines the entire Pulitzer Prize winning collection, The Stories of John Cheever, with seven selections from his first book, The Way Some People Live 1943 here restored to print and seven additional stories first published in periodicals between 1930 and 1953. Included are masterpieces such as The Enormous Radio, Goodbye, My Brother, and The Swimmer, as well as lesser known gems. Rounding out the volume are essays about writers and writing, including an appreciation of F. Scott Fitzgerald and an account of a visit to Chekhov s house. A companion volume, Complete Novels, gathers Cheever s five novels in one volume for the first time.

Complete Novels

Published to coincide with editor Blake Bailey’s groundbreaking new biography, here are the five novels of John Cheever, together in one volume for the first time. In these dazzling works Cheever laid bare the failings and foibles of not just the ascendant postwar elite but also the fallen Yankee aristocrats who stubbornly and often grotesquely and hilariously cling to their shabby gentility as the last vestige of former glory. Complete Novels gathers: the riotous family saga The Wapshot Chronicle winner of the National Book Award and its sequel The Wapshot Scandal winner of the William Dean Howells Medal; the dark suburban drama Bullet Park a magnificent work of fiction, John Gardner remarked in The New York Times Book Review; the prison novel Falconer, a radical departure that met with both critical and popular acclaim; and the lyrical ecological fable Oh What a Paradise It Seems. A companion volume, Collected Stories and Other Writings, is the largest edition of Cheever s stories ever.

The Letters of John Cheever

A revealing self portrait: In addition to his novels and short stories, John Cheever wrote a prodigious number of letters sometimes thirty in a week. In The Letters of John Cheever , edited and annotated by his son Benjamin, Cheever reveals his most private thoughts to friends, famous writers, family, and lovers all of whom he encouraged to discard what he wrote. Saving letters is like trying to preserve a kiss, he said. As a result, these letters form a story that is even more candid than his journals, and as vivid and human as any he ever invented.. An intriguing literary icon: Cheever, a complex and contradictory man, was an adulterer who wrote eloquently in praise of monogamy a bisexual who detested any sign of sexual ambiguity. Cheever was a stranger to those closest to him and presented to the world what he thought it wanted to see. These letters display the stark contrast between his ambitions and weaknesses, while tracing his evolution as an artist. .

The Journals of John Cheever

In these journals, the experiences of one of the most renowned twentieth century American writers come to life with fascinating, wholly revealing detail. John Cheever’s journals provide peerless insights into the creation of his novels and stories. But they are equally the record of a complex, often dark, always closely observed inner world. No American writer of comparable stature has left such an unreservedly revealing and moving account of himself: his family life, his literary life, and his emotional life. The final word from one of modern America’s great writers, The Journals of John Cheever provides a powerful and beautiful capstone to a towering oeuvre.

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