Fragments is a story about how war can make everything explosive-even love-and how two friends try to put the pieces of their lives together again.

" Fragments] makes the usual semi-autobiographical account of the Vietnam War] . . . seem flimsy and discursive in comparison. . . . The shapeliness and sense of larger design is] so elegantly executed in Fragments."-Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"The plot is believable, the characters sharply drawn, the prose clean and distinctive. . . . Stand s] with Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato, James...

Robert Olen Butler, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, teaches graduate fiction at Florida State University -- his version of literary boot camp. In From Where You Dream, Butler reimagines the process of writing as emotional rather than intellectual, and tells writers how to achieve the dreamspace necessary for composing honest, inspired fiction. Proposing that fiction is the exploration of the human condition with yearning as its compass, Butler reinterprets the traditional tools of the craft using the dynamics of desire. Offering a direct view into the mind and craft of a...

Ambitious, winsome, and ceaselessly charismatic, Amy Dickerson is the star employee of an auction house catering to the shopping pheromones of the rich and powerful. She turns the pitch into her creative art, using her abundant talents; wit, charm, knowledge, and above all an outstanding ability to read people and intuit their deepest desires.

These 11 stories, including Annie Weatherwax's prize-winning story, "The Possibility of Things," selected by Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler, demonstrate the power and variety possible in this vibrant literary form.

The Hot Country is an epic tale of war, love, and espionage. Christopher Marlowe Cobb is an American newspaper war correspondent who travels to Mexico in 1914 to report on the country's civil war, the invasion of Vera Cruz, and the controversial presidency of Victoriano Huerta, El Chacal (The Jackal). Covering the war in enemy territory and sweltering heat, Cobb falls in love with Luisa, a beautiful Mexican laundress, who is not as innocent as she seems.
Upon investigating a German ammunition ship docked in the marina, Cobb finds himself fired upon by unknown assailants, then...