検索キーワード： ナレーター "Elle Taylor" 文学・フィクション

When an A-list movie star shows up with a chip on her shoulder, Winston knows just what to do to make her happy. She learns that the little people of the Aphrodite Resort can do all sorts of things, like bring levels of pleasures she’s never known before....

It's 2016. Lance Alcocke, sole heir to an iron ore fortune, 40-ish bachelor, has just lost control of his life's work. His newly opened mine, Madeleine's Monster, named after his pioneering, iron-fisted grandmother, was supposed to be a workers' paradise in the Pilbara. But the Monster can't cover its costs, and Lance's Korean financiers are trying to steal his company out from under him. They've appointed administrators to APC Minerals, and Lance's 1,200 workers have lost their jobs.

Coming of age, the impact of class, and familial and romantic love are the prevalent motifs, along with the instinct toward escape and subsequent nostalgia for home. Some of the stories are linked, and some carry O'Brien's distinct sense of the comical. In "A Rose in the Heart of New York", the single-mindedness of love dramatically derails the relationship between a girl and her mother while in "Sister Imelda" and "The Creature", the strong ties between teacher and student and mother and son are ultimately broken.

Welcome to Midnight, Texas, a town with many boarded-up windows and few full-time inhabitants, located at the crossing of Witch Light Road and the Davy highway. It’s a pretty standard dried-up western town. There’s a pawnshop with three residents. One is seen only at night. There’s a diner, but people stopping there tend not to linger. There’s a newcomer, Manfred Bernardo, who just wants to work hard and blend in. But Manfred has secrets of his own...

Everything is all fun and games until living on the "wild" side becomes the rule instead of the exception. It's good to be bad... within reason, of course. And in this case? It's very, very good.