On a trip to Italy, a woman stuck in a crumbling relationship discovers the city she loves holds a secret that could change her life...
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Since the appearance of his first novel, The Land of Laughs, in 1980, Jonathan Carroll has been one of the most compelling, consistently versatile storytellers in modern imaginative literature. His extraordinary new novella, Teaching the Dog to Read, is quintessential Carroll: surprising, funny, and filled with unexpected moments and astonishing revelations.

The story opens when mid-level office drone Tony Areal receives an extravagant gift: the Lichtenberg wristwatch he has always coveted. Shortly afterward, he receives an even grander gift: the luxurious—and expensive—Porsche Cayman that has always been the car of his dreams. Accompanying the car is the mysterious Alice, who knows more about Tony’s dreams and desires than Tony himself. This encounter opens the door to a rich and unexpected universe: the world behind the world.

Teaching the Dog to Read is set at the intersection of the mundane and the miraculous, a place where reality itself shifts and shimmers with disconcerting suddenness. It begins in the realm of recognizable things and ends in a hospital room where a bizarre—and invisible—reunion takes place. Along the way, it offers both grand entertainment and a visionary meditation on the complex connections between our dreaming and waking selves. The result is a master class in the art of narrative and a permanent addition to Jonathan Carroll’s remarkable body of work. ]]> Wed, 19 Nov 2014 21:13:05 +0200 https://reverse-harem.library.land/jonathan-carroll/164882-voice_of_our_shadow.html https://reverse-harem.library.land/jonathan-carroll/164882-voice_of_our_shadow.html
"Voice of Our Shadow is the most frightening novel I've read since Bram Stoker's Dracula. I thought it was a love story, and it was. Then I thought it was a ghost story, and it was, sort of. Then I thought it was a story of madness, and it might be, maybe. It is a cunning, magical, wonderful novel – funny, sexy, sad, and tender." – PAT CONROY author of The Great Santini and The Water Is Wide Outwardly, Joseph Lennox is an ordinary young man, raised in a New York suburb and striving to make his way as a writer. Yet for him Vienna is not just one of the lures of Europe but a refuge in time and place, a refuge from a tragedy in his boyhood in which he played a far more complicit role than anyone realized. Joe's overbearing older brother, Ross, taunted him as they played near a railroad and touched the third rail, dying instantly. But he lives on in Joe's lonely guilt and dreams. Now, in Vienna, Joe finds friendship with the strangely mantic Paul and India Tate, and their destinies soon become erotically – and ominously – intertwined. Once again Joe is haunted by the specter of betrayal and death. In the end he must face the horrifying realization of how fragile is the barrier that separates the demons of our own conjuring from the inescapable reality of the unseen. Jonathan Carroll's first novel, The Land of Laughs, was dubbed by The Washington Post an "intricate, challenging, ultimately chilling tale." Voice of Our Shadow, in its imaginative power and delineation of terrifying pursuit, will be seen as an even greater achievement.]]> Tue, 13 Nov 1984 21:27:39 +0300 https://reverse-harem.library.land/jonathan-carroll/135129-kissing_the_beehive.html https://reverse-harem.library.land/jonathan-carroll/135129-kissing_the_beehive.html
FROM THE PUBLISHER Bestselling author Sam Bayer is stuck. Burned out from his third divorce, bored with the formulaic rut his writing has fallen into, and unable to deliver the manuscript for which he has been paid a stratospheric advance, he is desperate for inspiration. But a chance visit to his hometown of Crane's View, New York, sparks his imagination. Soon he immerses himself in an unsolved case of murder that took place when he was a teenager – Sam himself had discovered the body of the victim, a beautiful and wild teenage girl named Pauline. At the same time he is drawn into an explosive affair with a gorgeous but seriously loopy fan with the improbable name of Veronica Lake. As Sam learns the disturbing facts about his lover's past, Pauline's murderer reappears – not only endangering Sam but putting his beloved fifteen-year-old daughter in jeopardy as well. Not knowing whom to trust, Sam has to brace himself for the truly unexpected resolution to this decades-old mystery. FROM THE CRITICS. Library Journal: Popular fiction writer Sam Bayer is in a slump, without a single idea for his next book, and both his publisher and his agent are breathing down his neck. On a whim, he visits his boyhood hometown, a small place in New York, and encounters an idea for a nonfiction workhe will write about the murder of Pauline Ostrova, whose body he discovered floating in the Hudson when he was a high school boy. When he shares the idea with an intriguing woman, a fan of his, improbably named Veronica Lake, he unleashes a series of events that bring the old murder back into the open, setting off the killer again. Carroll's (Panic Hand, LJ 12/96) book is strung like a piano wire whose surprising final note only sounds on the last page. Stephen King has aptly compared Carroll to Alfred Hitchcock. This novel is sure to find a wide audience and will be in demand by Carroll's rabid fans. Recommended.David Dodd, Santa Cruz Cty. Lib. Sys., Cal.]]> Thu, 12 Nov 1998 12:13:41 +0200 https://reverse-harem.library.land/jonathan-carroll/161569-the_wooden_sea.html https://reverse-harem.library.land/jonathan-carroll/161569-the_wooden_sea.html
For connoisseurs of the strange and fantastic, a new book by Jonathan Carroll is something to be both anticipated and savored. Ever since the publication of his celebrated first novel, The Land of Laughs , he has been delighting readers with his uniquely quirky characters and overflowing imagination. Authors such as Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Ruth Rendell, and Pat Conroy have praised his work over the years. He creates worlds just around the courner from our own everyday lives, where the dead sometimes speak, where your best friend is transformed into something no longer human, or wher eyou canmeet earlier—and later—versions of yourself. From the moment a three-legged dog limps into the comfortable life of Police Chief Frannie McCabe and drops dead at his feet, McCabe finds himself thrust into a new world of unaccountable miracles and disturbing wonders. The small town of Cran'es View, New York, has long been a reassuringly familiar place for Frannie, a haven full of small comforts and domestic harmony, but now he finds himself afflicted by strange and inexplicable omens, such as a mysterious, multicolored feather that keeps insinuating itself into his past, present, and future, all of which now converge to throw Frannie's once ordinary life into doubt. Like it or not, Frannie has come face-to-face with the uncanny, and what he does over the next few days may have uncanny, and what he does over the next few days may have unforseen consequences for the entire world. A rich stew of intrigue, wonder, and redemption, The Wooden Sea is Jonathan Carroll's most ambitious and visionary work to date. FROM THE PUBLISHER]]> Wed, 13 Nov 2002 19:42:22 +0200