From one of America’s most acclaimed literary figures (“an important as well as brilliant novelist”—The New York Times Book Review) a major new novel that hilariously takes the pulse of our times. The unforgettable voyager of this dark comic journey is I. B. “Berl” Pickett, M.D., the die of whose uncharmed life was probably cast as soon as his mother got the bright idea to name him after Irving Berlin. The boyhood insults to any chance of normalcy piled on apace thereafter: the traumatizing, spasmodic spectacle of Pentecostalist Sunday worship; the socially inhibitory accompaniment of his parents on their itinerant rug-shampooing business; the undue technical advancement and emotional retardation that ensued from his erotic initiation at the hands of his aunt. What would have become of this soul had he not gone to medical school, thanks to the surrogate parenting of a local physician and solitary bird hunter? But there is meaning to life beyond professional accreditation, even in the noblest of callings. Berl’s been on a mission to find it these past few years, though with scant equipment or basis for hope. Hard to say (for the moment anyway) whether his mission has been aided or set back by his having fallen under suspicion of negligent homicide in the death of his former lover. All the same, being ostracized by virtually all his colleagues at the clinic gives him something to chew on: the reality of small-town living as total surveillance more than any semblance of fellowship, even among folks you’ve known your whole life. Fortunately, for Berl, it doesn’t take a village. And he will find his deliverance in continuing to practice medicine one way or another, as well as in the few human connections he has made, wittingly or not, over the years. The landscape, too, will furnish a hint in what might yet prove, if not a certifiable epiphany, a semi-spiritual awakening in I. B. Pickett, M.D., the inglorious but sole hero of Thomas McGuane’s uproarious and profound exploration of the threads by which we all are hanging

Thomas McGuane's high-spirited and fiercely lyrical new novel chronicles the fall and rise of Frank Copenhaver, a man so unhinged by his wife's departure that he finds himself ruining his business, falling in love with the wrong women, and wandering the lawns of his neighborhood, desperate for the merest glimpse of normalcy. The result is a ruefully funny novel of embattled manhood, set in the country that McGuane has made his own: a Montana where cowboys slug it out with speculators, a cattleman's best friend may be his insurance broker, and love and fishing are the only consolations that last

Declining celebrity Chet Pomeroy, attempts to win back Catherine, the girl whom he married (or perhaps did not marry) in Panama several years before. His quest for Catherine takes him to Key West, Florida, a centre of commercialism and corruption where nightmares stalk his waking hours

A heroic young man is in pursuit of a spoiled rich girl, a career, and a manageable portion of the American Dream

When James Quinn and Vernor Stanton reunite at the Centennial Club, the scene of many a carefree childhood summer, Stanton marks the occasion by shooting his friend in the heart. The good news is that the bullet is made of wax. The bad news is that the Mephistophelian Stanton wants Quinn to help him wreak havoc upon this genteel enclave of weekend sportsmen: "May I predict that this is not going to be the usual boring, phlegmatic summer?" In this hilarious novel, Thomas McGuane launches a renegade aristocrat and a mild-mannered fly-fisherman onto a collision course with each other and with the overbred scions of Michigan's robber barony. Escalating from practical jokes to guerrilla warfare, and from screwball comedy to mayhem worth of today's headlines, The Sporting Club is a foray into the sclerotic heart of American machismo