Tom Robbins Books In Order

B Is for Beer

A Children’s Book About Beer? Yes, believe it or not but B Is for Beer is also a book for adults, and bear in mind that it’s the work of maverick bestselling novelist Tom Robbins, inter nationally known for his ability to both seriously illuminate and comically entertain. nce upon a time right about now there was a planet how about this one? whose inhabitants consumed thirty six billion gallons of beer each year it’s a fact, you can Google it. Among those affected, each in his or her own way, by all the bubbles, burps, and foam, was a smart, wide eyed, adventurous kindergartner named Gracie; her distracted mommy; her insensitive dad; her non conformist uncle; and a magical, butt kicking intruder from a world within our world. Populated by the aforementioned characters and as charming as it may be subversive B Is for Beer involves readers, young and old, in a surprising, far reaching investigation into the limits of reality, the transformative powers of children, and, of course, the ultimate meaning of a tall, cold brewski.

Another Roadside Attraction

What if the Second Coming didn t quite come off as advertised? What if the Corpse on display in that funky roadside zoo is really who they say it is what does that portend for the future f western civilization? And what if a young clairvoyant named Amanda reestablishes the flea circus as popular entertainment and fertility worship as the principal religious form of our high tech age? Another Roadside Attraction answers those questions and a lot more. It tell us, for example, what the sixties were truly all about, not by reporting on the psychedelic decade but by recreating it, from the inside out. In the process, this stunningly original seriocomic thriller is fully capable of simultaneously eating a literary hot dog and eroding the borders of the mind. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Review ‘This is one of those special novels a piece of working magic, warm, funny, and san that you just want to ride off into the sunset with.’ Thomas Pynchon ‘The best fiction, so far, to come out of the American counterculture.’ Chicago Tribune Book World Review Review ‘This is one of those special novels a piece of working magic, warm, funny, and san that you just want to ride off into the sunset with.’Thomas Pynchon ‘The best fiction, so far, to come out of the American counterculture.’Chicago Tribune Book World Even Cowgirls Get the Blues comes as a magical gift, a brilliant affirmation of private visions and private wishes and their power to transform life and death. The Nation

Still Life with Woodpeck*er

Still Life with Woodpeck*er is a sort of a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes. It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders. It also deals with the problem of redheads.

Jitterbug Perfume

Jitterbug Perfume is an epic. Which is to say, it begins in the forests of ancient Bohemia and doesn t conclude until nine o clock tonight Paris time. It is a saga, as well. A saga must have a hero, and the hero of this one is a janitor with a missing bottle. The bottle is blue, very, very old, and embossed with the image of a goat horned god. If the liquid in the bottle actually is the secret essence of the universe, as some folks seem to think, it had better be discovered soon because it is leaking and there is only a drop or two left. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Skinny Legs and All

Skinny Legs and All:An Arab and a Jew open a restaurant together across the street from the United Nations…
. It sounds like the beginning of an ethnic joke, but it’s the axis around which spins this gutsy, fun loving, and alarmingly provocative novel, in which a bean can philosophizes, a dessert spoon mystifies, a young waitress takes on the New York art world, and a rowdy redneck welder discovers the lost god of Palestine while the illusions that obscure humanity’s view of the true universe fall away, one by one, like Salome’s veils. Skinny Legs and All deals with today’s most sensitive issues: race, politics, marriage, art, religion, money, and lust. It weaves lyrically through what some call the ‘end days’ of our planet. Refusing to avert its gaze from the horrors of the apocalypse, it also refuses to let the alleged end of the world spoil its mood. And its mood is defiantly upbeat. In the gloriously inventive Tom Robbins style, here are characters, phrases, stories, and ideas that dance together on the page, wild and sexy, like Salome herself. Or was it Jezebel?

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

When the stock market crashes on the Thursday before Easter, you an ambitious, although ineffectual and not entirely ethical young broker are convinced that you re facing the Weekend from Hell. Before the market reopens on Monday, you re going to have to scramble and scheme to cover your butt, but there’s no way you can anticipate the baffling disappearance of a 300 pound psychic, the fall from grace of a born again monkey, or the intrusion in your life of a tattooed stranger intent on blowing your mind and most of your fuses. Over these fateful three days, you will be forced to confront everything from mysterious African rituals to legendary amphibians, from tarot card bombshells to street violence, from your own sexuality to outer space. This is, after all, a Tom Robbins novel and the author has never been in finer form. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

‘Tom Robbins has a grasp on things that dazzles the brain and he’s also a world class storyteller.’ Thomas PynchonIn Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, his seventh and biggest novel, the wise, witty, always gutsy Tom Robbins brings onstage the most complex and compelling character he has ever created. Switters is a contradiction for all seasons: an anarchist who works for the government, a pacifist who carries a gun, a vegetarian who sops up ham gravy, a cyberwhiz who hates computers, a robust bon vivant who can be as squeamish as any fop, a man who, though obsessed with the preservation of innocence, is aching to deflower his high school age stepsister only to become equally enamored of a nun ten years his senior. Yet there is nothing remotely wishy washy about Switters. He doesn’t merely pack a pistol. He is a pistol. And as we dog Switters’s strangely elevated heels across four continents, in and out of love and danger, Robbins explores, challenges, mocks, and celebrates virtually every major aspect of our mercurial era. As many readers well know, to describe a Tom Robbins plot does not begin to describe a Tom Robbins novel. Moreover, the internationally acclaimed, best selling author, with his love of language, nuance, and surprise, is as opposed to story summations as J.D. Salinger. It is revealing, however, to learn what things Robbins lists as having influenced the writing of Fierce Invalids:’This book was inspired by an entry from Bruce Chatwin’s journal, by a CIA agent I met in Southeast Asia, by the mystery surrounding the lost prophecy of the Virgin of Fatima, by the increasing evidence that the interplay of opposites is the engine that runs the universe, and by embroidered memories of old Terry and the Pirates comic books.’Robbins also has said that throughout the writing of Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates he was guided by the advice of Julia Child: ‘Learn to handle hot things. Keep your knives sharp. Above all, have a good time.’Perhaps that is why he has managed to write a provocative, rascally novel that takes no prisoners and yet is upbeat, romantic, meaningful, adventurous, edifying, and fun.

Villa Incognito

Imagine that there are American MIAs who chose to remain missing after the Vietnam War. Imagine that there is a family in which four generations of strong, alluring women have shared a mysterious connection to an outlandish figure from Japanese folklore. Imagine just those things don t even try to imagine the love story and you ll have a foretaste of Tom Robbins’s eighth and perhaps most beautifully crafted novel a work as timeless as myth yet as topical as the latest international threat. On one level, this is a book about identity, masquerade and disguise about the false mustache of the world but neither the mists of Laos nor the smog of Bangkok, neither the overcast of Seattle nor the fog of San Francisco, neither the murk of the intelligence community nor the mummery of the circus can obscure the linguistic phosphor that illuminates the pages of Villa Incognito. A female fan once wrote to Tom Robbins: Your books make me think, they make me laugh, they make me horn*y and they make me aware of the wonder of everything in life. Villa Incognito will surely arouse a similar response in many readers, for in its lusty, amusing way it both celebrates existence and challenges our ideas about it. To say much more about a novel as fresh and surprising as Villa Incognito would run the risk of diluting the sheer fun of reading it. As his dedicated readers worldwide know full well, it s best to climb aboard the Tom Robbins tilt a whirl, kiss preconceptions and sacred cows goodbye and simply enjoy the ride. From the Hardcover edition.

Wild Ducks Flying Backward

Known for his meaty seriocomic novels expansive works that are simultaneously lowbrow and highbrow Tom Robbins has also published over the years a number of short pieces, predominantly nonfiction. His travel articles, essays, and tributes to actors, musicians, sex kittens, and thinkers have appeared in publications ranging from Esquire to Harper s, from Playboy to the New York Times, High Times, and Life. A generous sampling, collected here for the first time and including works as diverse as scholarly art criticism and some decidedly untypical country
music lyrics, Wild Ducks Flying Backward offers a rare sweeping overview of the eclectic
sensibility of an American original.

Whether he is rocking with the Doors, depoliticizing Picasso’s Guernica, lamenting the angst ridden state of contemporary literature, or drooling over tomato sandwiches and a species of womanhood he calls the genius waitress, Robbins s briefer writings often exhibit the same five traits that perhaps best characterize his novels: an imaginative wit, a cheerfully brash disregard for convention, a sweetly nasty eroticism, a
mystical but keenly observant eye, and an irrepressible love of language.

Embedded in this primarily journalistic compilation are a couple of short stories, a sheaf of largely unpublished poems, and an off beat as*sessment of our divided nation. And wherever we open Wild Ducks Flying Backward, we re apt to encounter examples of the intently serious playfulness that percolates from the mind of a self described romantic Zen hedonist and stray dog in the banquet halls of culture.

From the Hardcover edition.