Willy Beard

Collected Novels

In this continuing series, Volume Three brings together a further quartet of Paul Auster_s hugely influential novels.In Timbuktu, troubled Brooklyn poet-saint Willy G. Christmas embarks on one last great adventure in the company of his canine sidekick Mr Bones. In The Book of Illusions a grieving professor finds his obsession with the true-life story of a great silent comedian leading him into a mysterious shadow-world. In Oracle Night a novelist lately recovered from near-fatal illness falls under the spell of a blank notebook that is seemingly the source of eerie premonitions and bewildering events. And in The Brooklyn Follies an uncle and his nephew, both wounded by past misfortunes, wind up in the same Brooklyn neighbourhood and find their lives profoundly affected by a little girl who refuses to speak.Highly varied, yet instantly recognisable as the work of the same storyteller, these four novels comprise the most recent chapter in the ongoing career of one of America_s most enduring and fascinating writers.

Sierra Santa Cruz

A magnificent tale of the men who carved out a nation from the forests of the Pacific frontier. After seven years at sea, William Beard jumps ship to live in the violent, fertile interior of the great Northern California territory. Among the mighty redwoods that reach toward the heavens, Beard carves an empire out of the untouched wilderness.

The New Yorker