New Releases by Tom Robbins

An entertaining anthology of writings features both nonfiction essays and short stories that cover such topics as art critiques, poetry, country song lyrics, odes to redheads, kissing, Diane Keaton, tomato sandwiches, the Doors, and more. 100,000 first printing.

Roman jubilatoire et récit d''aventures, Féroces Infirmes conte les tribulations d''un type un peu particulier. Agent, très spécial, de la CIA, philosophe, admirateur de sa grand-mère, amoureux d''une demi-sœur qui aurait troublé Nabokov et Austin Powers, il promène ses névroses, son impertinence, sa libido débraillée et son fauteuil roulant d''Amazonie au Vatican en passant par un couvent syrien. Et tout cela pour faire plaisir à son aïeule Maestra, spécialiste du piratage informatique, désireuse de rendre son perroquet à sa forêt d''origine... Fermement convaincu que " l''humour et la joie de vivre sont les armes les plus subversives du monde ", Tom Robbins remet au goût du jour dans cette épopée picaresque et tumultueuse le sens du merveilleux et l''allégresse qui font les grands romans.

A stunningly original semicomic thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Still Life with Woodpecker “Written with a style and humor that haven’t been seen since Mark Twain.”—Los Angeles Times What if the Second Coming didn’t quite come off as advertised? What if “the Corpse” on display in that funky roadside zoo is really who they say it is—what does that portend for the future of western civilization? And what if a young clairvoyant named Amanda reestablishes the flea circus as popular entertainment and fertility worship as the principal religious form of our high-tech age? Another Roadside Attraction answers those questions and a lot more. It tells us, for example, what the sixties were truly all about, not by reporting on the psychedelic decade but by recreating it, from the inside out. In the process, it is fully capable of simultaneously eating a literary hot dog and eroding the borders of the mind. “Hard to put down because of the sheer brilliance and fun of the writing. The sentiments of Brautigan and the joyously compassionate omniscience of Fielding dance through the pages garbed colorfully in the language of Joyce.”—Rolling Stone

An Arab and a Jew open a restaurant together across the street from the United Nations.... It sounds like the beginning of an ethnic joke, but it''s the axis around which spins this gutsy, fun-loving, and alarmingly provocative novel, in which a bean can philosophizes, a dessert spoon mystifies, a young waitress takes on the New York art world, and a rowdy redneck welder discovers the lost god of Palestine--while the illusions that obscure humanity''s view of the true universe fall away, one by one, like Salome''s veils. Skinny Legs and All deals with today''s most sensitive issues: race, politics, marriage, art, religion, money, and lust. It weaves lyrically through what some call the "end days" of our planet. Refusing to avert its gaze from the horrors of the apocalypse, it also refuses to let the alleged end of the world spoil its mood. And its mood is defiantly upbeat. In the gloriously inventive Tom Robbins style, here are characters, phrases, stories, and ideas that dance together on the page, wild and sexy, like Salome herself. Or was it Jezebel?

“This is one of those special novels—a piece of working magic, warm, funny, and sane.”—Thomas Pynchon The whooping crane rustlers are girls. Young girls. Cowgirls, as a matter of fact, all “bursting with dimples and hormones”—and the FBI has never seen anything quite like them. Yet their rebellion at the Rubber Rose Ranch is almost overshadowed by the arrival of the legendary Sissy Hankshaw, a white-trash goddess literally born to hitchhike, and the freest female of them all. Freedom, its prizes and its prices, is a major theme of Tom Robbins’s classic tale of eccentric adventure. As his robust characters attempt to turn the tables on fate, the reader is drawn along on a tragicomic joyride across the badlands of sexuality, wild rivers of language, and the frontiers of the mind.

Get ready for “the ride of your life” (Entertainment Weekly) with this blazingly original novel from the New York Times bestselling author hailed by Financial Times as “one of the wildest and most entertaining novelists in the world.” “Tom Robbins has proved he is the emperor of description, the master of metaphor, the sultan of simile—the man is like Jackson Pollock with a word processor.”—San Antonio Current When the stock market crashes on the Thursday before Easter, you—an ambitious, although ineffectual and not entirely ethical young broker—are convinced that you’re facing the Weekend from Hell. Before the market reopens on Monday, you’re going to have to scramble and scheme to cover your butt, but there’s no way you can anticipate the baffling disappearance of a 300-pound psychic, the fall from grace of a born-again monkey, or the intrusion in your life of a tattooed stranger intent on blowing your mind and most of your fuses. Over these fateful three days, you will be forced to confront everything from mysterious African rituals to legendary amphibians, from tarot-card bombshells to street violence, from your own sexuality to outer space.

A “deranged and delightful concoction” (Fortune) about a CIA agent with uniquely peculiar proclivities, from the New York Times bestselling author of Still Life with Woodpecker “Clever, creative, and witty, Robbins tosses off impassioned observations like handfuls of flower petals.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune Switters is a contradiction for all seasons: an anarchist who works for the government; a pacifist who carries a gun; a vegetarian who sops up ham gravy; a cyberwhiz who hates computers; a man who, though obsessed with the preservation of innocence, is aching to deflower his high-school-age stepsister (only to become equally enamored of a nun ten years his senior). Yet there is nothing remotely wishy-washy about Switters. He doesn’t merely pack a pistol. He is a pistol. And as we dog Switters’s strangely elevated heels across four continents, in and out of love and danger, discovering in the process the “true” Third Secret of Fatima, we experience Tom Robbins—that fearless storyteller, spiritual renegade, and verbal break dancer—at the top of his game. On one level this is a fast-paced CIA adventure story with comic overtones; on another it’s a serious novel of ideas that brings the Big Picture into unexpected focus; but perhaps more than anything else, Fierce Invalids is a sexy celebration of language and life.

Roman jubilatoire et récit d''aventures, Féroces infirmes retour des pays chauds conte les tribulations de Switters, un agent de la CIA d''un type un peu particulier. Anarchiste convaincu, rebelle et joyeusement immature, il est en effet davantage intéressé par le sexe, la drogue et le rock''n roll que par la défense des intérêts américains. Nous le suivons dans un périple qui, depuis l''Amazonie, le mène au Moyen-Orient où, venu apporter des masques à gaz aux Kurdes, il découvre un couvent oublié de nonnes françaises excommuniées, dont la mère supérieure a servi de modèle nu à Matisse. Ce couvent renferme un terrible secret, celui de la troisième prophétie de Fatima, qui entraînera notre héros jusqu''au Vatican où il devra y affronter des forces obscures prêtes à tout pour dissimuler au monde que l''insolence suprême et la sagesse ultime résident dans l''énergie mystérieuse du rire. Faisant preuve d''un esprit d''irrévérence absolument moderne, Tom Robbins, fermement convaincu que " l''humour et la joie de vivre sont les armes les plus subversives du monde ", remet au goût du jour dans cette épopée picaresque et tumultueuse le sens du merveilleux et l''allégresse qui font les grands romans.

Adapted from Tom Robbins'' cult novel, ''Even Cowgirls Get the Blues'' is a rambunctious epic of cowgirls, FBI agents and ecstatic whooping cranes. ''My Own Private Idaho'' charts the pilgrimage of a narcoleptic hustler who is searching for his long-lost mother in a world absent of love.

A startlingly original novel from the New York Times bestselling author hailed by Financial Times as “one of the wildest and most entertaining novelists in the world” “[Tom] Robbins’s comic philosophical musings reveal a flamboyant genius.”—People Still Life with Woodpecker is a sort of a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes. It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders. It also deals with the problem of redheads. “Robbins is a fabulous storyteller.”—The Boston Globe

“[A] wild comic rip through eternity and beyond.”—The Detroit News A genre-blending romp of a novel that “celebrates the joy of individual expression and self-reliance” (Saturday Review), from the New York Times bestselling author of Still Life with Woodpecker Jitterbug Perfume is an epic. Which is to say, it begins in the forests of ancient Bohemia and doesn’t conclude until nine o’clock tonight (Paris time). It is a saga, as well. A saga must have a hero, and the hero of this one is a janitor with a missing bottle. The bottle is blue, very, very old, and embossed with the image of a goat-horned god. If the liquid in the bottle actually is the secret essence of the universe, as some folks seem to think, it had better be discovered soon because it is leaking and there is only a drop or two left.

Complètement délirant, cet apologue, en forme de roman, où une princesse de mélodrame rencontre un dynamiteur sympathique, véhicule toute une idéologie que l''humour et la fantaisie utopique font passer. Personnes trop sérieuses, s''abstenir{