Books by Bob Thurber

NICKEL FICTIONS:

50 Exceedingly Brief Stories

PAPERBOY: A DYSFUNCTIONAL NOVEL

Trade Paperback (262 pages) available from Casperian Books. Barnes & Noble, Amazon or any major outlet.

Or order the KINDLE EDITION

You can read the Ebook/Kindle edition of "Paperboy" on your Kindle, iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, PC or Mac.

Comments / Reviews

Not since Holden Caulfield have I felt such a kinship with a boy in a book. —Vincent Louis

Short burning chapters from which you can’t tear away. — Three Guys One Book

Paperboy continues to haunt my consciousness. The narrator's skill and veracity in this spared-down and guileless rendering I consider a rare literary achievement. — Dennis Must, author of Oh, Don’t Ask Why, and Banjo Grease

A brave book, a necessary book, a novel made out of short chapters, each one a blazing vignette ... often self-contained enough to be read as stand alone fictions that build upon, echo, reflect, and shatter each other. It's amazing that Bob Thurber was able to turn this kind of form and this kind of desperate "material" into a page turner.

— Andrew L. Wilson, Professional Editor, Writer, Manuscript Consultant.

* * *

Paperboy is not a book, it's a state of mind. Gritty, visceral, desperately urgent and begging to be read.

— Vincent Carrella, Author of The Serpent Box

Thurber is a masterful wordsmith, driving you into the undiscovered corners of the heart with insight and courage.

— Susan Henderson, Author of Up From The Blue

Devastating! So painful, but also so necessary. Finding the right words to capture the truth of a terrible childhood is the greatest challenge a writer faces, and many back down or flinch before they get to the end. Not Bob Thurber. His ability to stay the course, and to keep us with him to the bitter end, makes him a hero. — Lisa Lieberman, Author of Leaving You: The Cultural Meaning of Suicide

Bob Thurber is probably the most talented flash fiction writer alive. In a few lines, he reaches depths most writers would need a whole novel to grasp at. And now Bob has a novel out. You need to read this book. — Word Riot

* * *

In Paperboy the reader travels the desolate and serpentine route of Jack Fisher, 14 who falls victim to a negligent mother, an absent father, the influences of an emotionally disturbed sister, Kelly, and a world of poverty, starvation, physical and psychological abuse. As the world turns its screws into poor Jack, we squirm with him, we feel his suffering, our empathy is wrung from us as Thurber renders prose, so tight, so precise, so truthful, that the reader can barely breath for want of oxygen, of light, of release. To read Paperboy is to participate in a relationship that is inextricable from the reader’s own reality. We come to realize that we can only be the latest editions of ourselves, built upon what the world has delivered up to that day. The writer, Bob Thurber (a different kind of paperboy, perhaps) has managed to establish that relationship by exacting emotions from his audience with piercing observations that puncture the thin skin of human subjectivity and reach beyond into realms of objective truth. — JMG, teacher & poet

NICKEL FICTIONS: 50 Exceedingly Brief Stories

KINDLE EDITION

Pre-release. You can read the Ebook/Kindle edition of “Nickel Fictions” on your Kindle, iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, PC or Mac.

Trade PB edition forthcoming.

General Comments:

"I admire the restraint." — Amy Hempel

"If You'd Like to Make a Call" [ winner of the Barry Hannah Fiction Prize ] is economically written, and absorbing.
— C. Michael Curtis, The Atlantic Monthly

"All the stories and micro-fictions are authentic and have enormous verisimilitude. No false notes."
— Bill Contardi, formerly an editor at New American Library, Avon and Berkley Publishing

"A world-class minimalist with spooky noir glimmerings; his stories shine like a switchblade opened in a dark alley."
— Web Del Sol

"Bob Thurber is one of the best and most prolific writers on the eZine circuit (and soon-to-be in the print circuit, one hopes)"
— So New Media

"I do see why Thurber's fiction has drawn comparisons to Hitchock: His stories are indeed chilling."
— Susan Kamil, Dial Press

“One of the undiscovered great fiction writers of our time.”
— Eric Bosse, writer

“Bob Thurber is probably the most talented flash fiction writer alive. In a few lines, he reaches depths most writers would need a whole novel to grasp at. And now Bob has a novel out. You need to read this book.” — Word Riot

“...one of the very best writers of flash fiction around.”

—Vanessa Gebbie, writer

Books by BOB THURBER

PAPERBOY: A DYSFUNCTIONAL NOVEL

Order directly from Casperian Books.