Shann Ray - Macmillan Library

As previously mentioned, we're in that magical time of year when we get our year-end "best of" lists and our to-read/holiday wish lists expand exponentially!

Today we're taking a look at Kirkus Reviews' excellent list of the Best Books of 2011 in fiction. There are quite a few Macmillan gems on this list (if I do say so myself!). But you don't have to take my word for it...

AMERICAN MASCULINE by Shann Ray
BACK OF BEYOND by C.J. Box
THE HUM AND THE SHIVER by Alex Bledsoe
THE LEFTOVERS by Tom Perrotta
THE KING OF DIAMONDS by Simon Tolkien
THE MARRIAGE PLOT by Jeffrey Eugenides
ORIENTATION AND OTHER STORIES by Daniel Orozco
NOW YOU SEE ME by S.J. Bolton
PARTITIONS by Amit Majmudar
RIZZO'S FIRE by Lou Manfredo
THE QUANTUM THIEF by Hannu Rajaniemi
SCHOLAR by L.E. Modesitt Jr.
THE SISTERS by Nancy Jensen
THE SLY COMPANY OF PEOPLE WHO CARE by Rahul Bhattacharya
SPELLBOUND by Blake Charlton
STEALING MONA LISA by Carson Morton
THE TRINITY SIX by Charles Cumming
THE SUBMISSION by Amy Waldman
WHEN THE SAINTS by Dave Duncan
WITH FATE CONSPIRE by Marie Brennan

Minotaur was very enthusiastic about this list!

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The American West has long been a place where myth and legend have flourished. Where men stood tall and lived rough. But that West is no more. Shann Ray explores and redfines this changed landscape in AMERICAN MASCULINE, the 2010 Bakeless Prize for Fiction-winner.

"Think Hemingway or Jim Harrison, and know that Ray's collection is the deserving winner of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Prize." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Ray's collection has an unsettling power as his roughened characters incrementally come to terms with their humanity, fallibility, and their realized capacity for atonement. This is a highly accomplished and intensely lyrical debut." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Ray’s taut, fragmented prose evokes the fragility of the male ego in stories so layered with tenderness and violence, hope and despair, that together they form a true and pure depiction of sorrow and a primer for forgiveness." —Booklist (starred review)

"AMERICAN MASCULINE does what the best fiction should: it breaks open the human heart with honesty and clarity, showing us the bad that exists alongside, and is often indistinguishable from, the good." —Shelf Awareness (starred review)

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Tag: Shann Ray

Kirkus Reviews’ Best Fiction of 2011:

Shann Ray Reconfigures the American West