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Elizabeth McCracken

Biography

Elizabeth McCracken

Elizabeth McCracken is the author of eight books, including THE HERO OF THIS BOOK, THE SOUVENIR MUSEUM, BOWLAWAY, THUNDERSTRUCK & OTHER STORIES (winner of the 2014 Story Prize and long-listed for the National Book Award), and THE GIANT'S HOUSE (a National Book Award finalist). Her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, won three Pushcart Prizes, a National Magazine Award, and an O. Henry Prize. She has served on the faculty at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently holds the James Michener Chair for Fiction at the University of Texas at Austin.

Elizabeth McCracken

Books by Elizabeth McCracken

by Elizabeth McCracken - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Ten months after her mother’s death, the narrator of THE HERO OF THIS BOOK takes a trip to London. The city was a favorite of her mother’s, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she finds herself reflecting on her mother’s life and their relationship. Thoughts of the past meld with questions of the future: Back in New England, the family home is now up for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed. The woman, a writer, recalls all that made her complicated mother extraordinary and finds herself wondering how her mother had endured. Even though she wants to respect her mother’s nearly pathological sense of privacy, the woman must come to terms with whether making a chronicle of this remarkable life constitutes an act of love or betrayal.

by Elizabeth McCracken - Fiction, Short Stories

In these stories, the mysterious bonds of family are tested, transformed, fractured and fortified. A recent widower and his adult son ferry to a craggy Scottish island in search of puffins. An actress who plays a children’s game-show villainess ushers in the New Year with her deadbeat half-brother. A mother, pining for her children, feasts on loaves of challah to fill the void. A new couple navigates a tightrope walk toward love. And on a trip to a Texas water park with their son, two fathers each confront a personal fear. Elizabeth McCracken traces how our closely held desires --- for intimacy, atonement, comfort --- bloom and wither against the indifferent passing of time.

by Elizabeth McCracken - Fiction, Historical Fiction

From the day she is discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery at the turn of the 20th century, Bertha Truitt is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts. She has no past to speak of, or at least none she is willing to reveal, and her mysterious origin scandalizes and intrigues the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But Bertha is plucky, tenacious and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford’s most defining landmark. When Bertha dies in a freak accident, her past resurfaces in the form of a heretofore-unheard-of son, who arrives in Salford claiming he is the heir apparent to Truitt Alleys.

by Elizabeth McCracken - Fiction, Short Stories

At the center of Elizabeth McCracken's stories is often a jagged space left by loss: a neighborhood is haunted by a child's ghost, a library staff grapples with the mystery of a patron's death, a corner store manager obsesses over a missing woman, a son absconds forever with his parents' savings. But equally present in this new story collection --- McCracken's first in 20 years --- are passion, charm, humor and joy.

by Elizabeth McCracken - Romance

Named one of the 20 Best Young American Novelists by Granta magazine, Elizabeth McCracken is a writer of fabulous gifts. THE GIANT'S HOUSE, her first novel, is an unforgettably tender and quirky novel about the strength of choosing to love in a world that offers no promises, and no guarantees.