Books with author Howard Norman

National Book Award Finalist Howard Norman delivers another “provocative . . . haunting”* novel, this time set in a Vermont village and featuring a missing child, a newly married private detective, and a highly relatable ghost (*Janet Maslin, New York Times)Simon Inescort is no longer bodily present in his marriage. It’s been several months since he keeled over the rail of a Nova Scotia–bound ferry, a massive heart attack to blame. Simon's widow, Lorca Pell, has sold their farmhouse to newlyweds Zachary and Muriel—after revealing that the deed contains a “ghost clause,” an actual legal clause, not unheard of in Vermont, allowing for reimbursement if a recently purchased home turns out to be haunted. In fact, Simon finds himself still at home: “Every waking moment, I'm astonished I have any consciousness . . . What am I to call myself now, a revenant?” He spends time replaying his marriage in his own mind, as if in poignant reel-to-reel, while also engaging in occasionally intimate observation of the new homeowners. But soon the crisis of a missing child, a local eleven-year-old, threatens the tenuous domestic equilibrium, as the weight of the case falls to Zachary, a rookie private detective with the Green Mountain Agency. The Ghost Clause is a heartrending, affirming portrait of two marriages—one in its afterlife, one new and erotically charged—and of the Vermont village life that sustains and remakes them.

In the frozen wilderness of northern Manitoba, fourteen-year-old Noah Krainik lives with his mother and cousin. With his quirky, cheerful best friend, Pelly Bay, he explores this exotic, lonely land—the domain of Cree Indians, trappers, missionaries, and fugitives from the modern world. When tragedy strikes, Noah must go on alone, discovering a new life in the south and the bustling of Toronto. It is there in the Northern Lights movie theatre—with a Cree family taking up residence in the projection booth, and the reappearance of his elusive father—that Noah becomes an adult.

With tales from the tribal peoples of Greenland, Canada, Siberia, Alaska, Japan, and the polar region, told and retold during months-long winter nights, Northern Tales gathers together a rich diversity of traditions and cultures, spanning the Way-Back Time through the coming of the first white explorers. By turns tragic and comic, fantastic and earthy, frivolous and profound, this collection transports the reader to the haunting, little-known world of the far North, with all its fragile majesty and power.

National Book Award finalist Howard Norman delivers another “provocative . . . haunting”* novel, this time set in a Vermont village and featuring a missing child, a newly married private detective, and a highly relatable ghost. *Janet Maslin, New York Times Simon Inescort is no longer bodily present in his marriage. It’s been several months since he keeled over the rail of a Nova Scotia–bound ferry, a massive heart attack to blame. Simon's widow, Lorca Pell, has sold their farmhouse to newlyweds Zachary and Muriel—after revealing that the deed contains a “ghost clause,” an actual legal clause, not unheard of in Vermont, allowing for reimbursement if a recently purchased home turns out to be haunted. In fact, Simon finds himself still at home: “Every waking moment, I'm astonished I have any consciousness . . . What am I to call myself now, a revenant?” He spends time replaying his marriage in his own mind, as if in poignant reel-to-reel, while also engaging in occasionally intimate observation of the new homeowners. But soon the crisis of a missing child, a local eleven-year-old, threatens the tenuous domestic equilibrium, as the weight of the case falls to Zachary, a rookie private detective with the Green Mountain Agency. The Ghost Clause is a heartrending, affirming portrait of two marriages—one in its afterlife, one new and erotically charged—and of the Vermont village life that sustains and remakes them.