Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Queen of Bad Influences: Stories

The Queen of Bad Influences: Stories

Shepard, Jim

Hardcover

General FictionLiterary Fiction

Publisher Price: $30.00

PREORDER - Expected ship date September 15, 2026

ISBN10: 0593804414
ISBN13: 9780593804414
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: Sep 15 2026
Pages: 320
Weight: 1.05
Height: 1.40 Width: 5.70 Depth: 8.40
Language: English
Twelve compressed masterworks from this great American writer of catastrophe fiction, in which lives are upended as much by broken hearts as by collapsing dams, hideously mismanaged wars, gargantuan wildfires, and apocalyptic storms

Jim Shepard is a fantastic writer--compassionate, funny, and fearless--[whose work] does what great writing always does: inspires us to look more closely at life, and be more caring. --George Saunders

A deft, audacious artist. --Norman Rush, National Book Award-winning author of Mating

In Richard Ford's view, Jim Shepard's talent is so various and canny he can write about seemingly anything and make it thrilling to us, and in these stories spanning six centuries we find viscerally evoked worlds as wildly diverse as a mercenary's corner of 16th century Madrid, a young apprentice's pre-Revolutionary Boston, and Edward Hyde's London. With civil engineers and destitute veterans we encounter the devastating 1935 Labor Day hurricane in Florida, and we read the 1864 letters between Lucy in Boon, North Carolina (Three privates are currently sleeping soundly on our porch in their muddy blankets) and her great love, William, on the march in Tennessee (I can't write much for it seems we are looking for a fight every minute), while the title story introduces us to the stubborn Constance, who had no gift for flirtation with men, preferring Minna, her best friend and queen of bad influences, as their vexed devotion unfolds in part on the liner Lusitania.

With irony, compassion, and withering humor, these stories evoke the terrible ease with which cataclysm, human-engineered or otherwise, can sweep away all we find most precious, and expose those limitations we've refused to address. At the same time, Shepard celebrates what is best in us: the love and friendships we sustain, and the passions and grace we grant one another.

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