I'm posting notes about books I particularly like on an ongoing basis. Feel free to comment. If you'd like to see the list from before this new format, send me an email.

Valeria's Last Stand

August 12, 2009

Fitten, Marc. Valeria’s Last Stand. I love Marc Fitten’s voice. It’s quirky, authentic, goes down like mountain water. This story is nutty, unique, sexy, and fun. Takes place in a small town in Hungary and involves the lives of a chimney sweep, a potter, the potter’s assistant, a barkeep, and Valeria – the powerful, ornery, late middle-aged town crank. Valeria’s Last Stand reminds me of the stories in a book of Eastern European folk tales I adored as a child. These were full of magic, and yet so grounded in real people’s lives, they didn’t feel like fantasy.

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Lonely Hunter

Selected Works

Fiction
Biting the Apple, a novel
A moment of simultaneous grace and injustice leads to the unraveling of three lives.
This Wild Silence, a novel
Two sisters unveil the truth about their brother's disappearance.
Working Parts, a novel
Lori, an adult bicycle mechanic, learns to read -- and much more.
Sweat: Stories and a Novella
Sports and adventure stories.
Nonfiction
The Ice Cave: A Woman's Adventures from the Mojave to the Antarctic
True stories of adventure in the wild.
For Kids
How to Survive in Antarctica
Armchair travel to Antarctica.
The Antarctic Scoop
Victoria saves an endangered continent.
Hoop Girlz
River wants to make the WNBA!
Cougar Canyon
A mountain lion prowls into an urban neighborhood.
Tracks in the Snow
Two girls survive in a mountain storm.

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