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Bruce Holsinger

Biography

Bruce Holsinger

Bruce Holsinger is the author of five novels, including CULPABILITY, THE DISPLACEMENTS and THE GIFTED SCHOOL, as well as many works of nonfiction, most recently ON PARCHMENT: Animals, Archives, and the Making of Culture from Herodotus to the Digital Age.

His books have been recognized with the Colorado Book Award, the John Hurt Fisher Prize, the Philip Brett Award, the John Nicholas Brown Prize, the Modern Language Association's Prize for a First Book, and others. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair and many other publications, and he has been profiled on NPR's "Weekend Edition," "Here & Now" and "Marketplace."

A Guggenheim Fellow and Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, he teaches in the Department of English at the University of Virginia and serves as editor of the quarterly journal New Literary History. He also teaches craft classes and serves as board chairman for WriterHouse, a nonprofit in Charlottesville.

Bruce Holsinger

Books by Bruce Holsinger

by Bruce Holsinger - Fiction

When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, 17-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating each of them in the accident. During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. But Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident --- suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal.

by Bruce Holsinger - Fiction

To all appearances, the Larsen-Hall family has everything. Their deluxe new Miami life has just clicked into place when Luna --- the world’s first category 6 hurricane --- upends everything they have taken for granted. Their home destroyed, two of its members missing and finances abruptly cut off, the family finds everything they assumed about their lives now up for grabs. Swept into a mass rush of evacuees from across the American South, they are transported hundreds of miles to a FEMA megashelter where their new community includes an insurance-agent-turned-drug dealer, a group of vulnerable children, and a dedicated relief worker trying to keep the peace. Will “normal” ever return?

by Bruce Holsinger - Fiction

Set in the fictional town of Crystal, Colorado, THE GIFTED SCHOOL observes the drama within a community of friends and parents as good intentions and high ambitions collide in a pile-up with long-held secrets and lies. Seen through the lens of four families who've been a part of one another's lives since their kids were born over a decade ago, the story reveals not only the lengths that some adults are willing to go to get ahead, but the effect on the group's children, sibling relationships, marriages and careers, as simmering resentments come to a boil and long-buried, explosive secrets surface and detonate.

by Bruce Holsinger - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

When 16 bodies turn up in London riddled with small puncture holes, everyone is stumped and seems to be hiding something. That’s when John Gower, a poor poet but excellent trader of secrets, is at his best. Summoned to investigate these strange murders, Gower finds only treachery and the possibility of a very real threat to the city and its inhabitants: a terrifying new weapon very few know of --- the handgonne.

by Bruce Holsinger - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

London, 1385. A book of poems prophesying the death of English kings, including the newly crowned King Richard II, is all anyone can talk about. John Gower --- a poet himself, but more importantly, a man with connections --- must find the book to save his friend, the poet Geoffrey Chaucer. What he doesn’t know or understand are his personal connections to the book that could also get him killed.