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**An enthralling and wise new collection from the author of *Century's Son* and one of America's most respected writers** *I was twenty-nine years old and wanted to change before I hit thirty. Clete and I developed a plan for me . . . a plan that would work all that summer and beyond. Even after I left the mountain, it stuck.* Robert Boswell's extraordinary range is on full display in this crackling new collection. Set mainly in small, gritty American cities no farther east than Chicago and as far west as El Paso, each of these stories is a world unto itself. Two marriages end, one by death, the other by divorce, and the two wives, lifelong friends, become strangers to each other. A young man's obsession with visiting a fortune-teller leaves him nearly homeless. And in the unforgettable title story, a man dubbed Keen recounts the summer he spent on a mountain with his best friend, Clete, and a loose band of slackers, living in a borrowed house, abstaining from all drugs (other than mushrooms and beer)―and ultimately asking just what kind of harm we can do to one another. ** ### From Publishers Weekly In this imaginative story collection, author Boswell (*Century's Son*) examines the limits and losses of ordinary souls with technical mastery and profound sympathy. In No River Wide, a widowed woman visiting a longtime friend in Florida discovers that their friendship is over; her story unfolds in overlapping narratives that form a startling, resonant meditation on the nature of time. Another story finds a 30-something returning to his North Dakota home to identify the body of his missing mother; what he finds instead frees him from the long shadow of his embittered father. In the title story, a gang spends the summer squatting in the home of a vacationing family, with dire consequences; in Supreme Beings, a priest's attempts to intervene in the lives of three troubled youths lead him to confront personal and professional failure. Boswell conveys the sordid but hopeful inner lives of average people with insight and care; his shorter stories (Miss Famous, Skin Deep) showcase his pleasure in language and invention, and his longer tales pack the emotional weight of a novel. *(May)* Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ### Review “Boswell is an exuberant and enormously talented writer . . . With dazzling technical skill, intelligence, and moral seriousness, he mesmerizes us.” ―*The New York Times Book Review* “Boswell has a marvelous ability to create [people] who are rich in both psychological detail and idiosyncrasy. . . *Mystery Ride* reads so effortlessly that it often feels as though it had been written in a single sitting, just the amount of time it should take the reader to finish this absorbing story.” ―*Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times on Mystery Ride*