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Books with author Mark Dunn

  • Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters

    Mark Dunn

    Paperback (Anchor, Sept. 17, 2002)
    Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.
  • Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in L:etter

    Mark Dunn

    eBook (Anchor, Dec. 30, 2014)
    Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.
  • Ella Minnow Pea: A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable

    Mark Dunn

    Hardcover (MacAdam/Cage Publishing, Oct. 15, 2001)
    Ella Minnow Pea is an epistolary novel set in the fictional island of Nollop situated off the coast of South Carolina and home to the inventor the pangram The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog. Now deceased, the islanders have erected a monument to honor their hero, but one day a tile with the letter “z” falls from the statue. The leaders interpret the falling tile as a message from beyond the grave and the letter is banned from use. On an island where the residents pride themselves on their love of language, this is seen as a tragedy. They are still reeling from the shock, when another tile falls and then another.... Mark Dunn takes us on a journey against time through the eyes of Ella Minnow Pea and her family as they race to find another phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet to save them from being unable to communicate. Eventually, the only letters remaining are LMNOP, when Ella finally discovers the phrase that will save their language.
    Z
  • We Five: A Novel

    Mark Dunn

    Hardcover (Dzanc Books, Oct. 27, 2015)
    We Five tells the story of five young female friends and co-workers through the voices of five different authors, the story unfolding against five distinct historic backdrops. The driving conceit is that an anonymously authored manuscript from the mid-1860s (perhaps the work of Dickens contemporary Elizabeth Gaskell) was discovered and later published. Over the succeeding decades four other authors choose to retell this story in their own time and in their own way. The last author has now gone a step further: she has assembled all five versions into a literary pastiche which cycles chapter-by-chapter through the different versions as the central narrative progresses. The result is a novel about five young women pursued by five young men of predatory purpose, which takes place alternatively in a small mill town outside of Manchester, England in 1859; in San Francisco on the eve of the 1906 earthquake and fire; in Sinclair Lewis’s fictional Zenith, Winnemac in 1923; in London during the Blitz of autumn, 1940; and in a small town in northern Mississippi in 1997. In the first book “We Five” are seamstresses; in the next they are department store sales clerks; in the next, they sing in the choir of a popular female evangelist; in the next, they work in an ordinance factory outside of London; and in the final version, they are cocktail waitresses in a Mississippi River casino. The book’s climax is a dramatic collision of all five incarnations of the story: an incident of mass hysteria arising from a solar storm in 1859, the 1906 San Francisco quake, a fire in the evangelist’s newly built “temple” in 1923, the 1940 Balham Underground station bombing and flooding, and a tornado in rural 1997 Mississippi.
  • Fireflies

    Mary R. Dunn

    Paperback (Capstone Press, Aug. 1, 2011)
    Flying through the night, fireflies flicker their lights to find partners. These glowing fliers are adapted to life at night. Learn more about these blinky nocturnal animals in Fireflies.
    J
  • An Apple Tree's Life Cycle

    Mary R. Dunn

    Paperback (Capstone Press, Aug. 1, 2017)
    The process of a new life starting is fascinating! Watch an apple tree grow from a seed to a fruit-bearing tree. Young readers will learn about the stages in an apple tree's life, as well as it's appearance. The life cycle of an apple tree is a beautiful thing to see!
    L
  • Ibid: A Life

    Mark Dunn

    Hardcover (Macadam Cage Pub, March 1, 2004)
    Tells the story of Jonathan Blashette, a three-legged circus performer and the CEO of Dandy-de-odor-o Inc., in a novel composed entirely of footnotes.
  • Ibid - A Life

    Mark Dunn

    eBook (MP Publishing Limited, Oct. 30, 2009)
    “A life by inference is better than no life at all.”Dunn pushes his propensity for quirky to the limit, creating a full-length novel entirely upon the margins of a fictitious biography of Jonathan Blashette, a three-legged circus performer–cum entrepreneur and humanitarian. When his editor loses the manuscript of this biography, he offers to publish the only text left: his footnotes.Dunn holds up a funhouse mirror to the pedestaled residents of the twentieth century and has a laugh at the expense of the events and luminaries of an era that perhaps took itself just a little too seriously.
  • A Sunflower's Life Cycle

    Mary R. Dunn

    Paperback (Capstone Press, Aug. 1, 2017)
    The process of a new life starting is fascinating! Watch a sunflower grow from a seed to a tall plant. Young readers will learn about the stages in a sunflower's life as well as its appearance. The life cycle of a sunflower is a beautiful thing to see!
    L
  • Ella Minnow Pea

    Mark Dunn

    Paperback (Methuen Pub Ltd, June 30, 2003)
    Ella Minnow Pea is an epistolary novel set in the fictional island of Nollop situated off the coast of South Carolina and home to the inventor the pangram The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog. Now deceased, the islanders have erected a monument to honor their hero, but one day a tile with the letter “z” falls from the statue. The leaders interpret the falling tile as a message from beyond the grave and the letter is banned from use. On an island where the residents pride themselves on their love of language, this is seen as a tragedy. They are still reeling from the shock, when another tile falls and then another.... Mark Dunn takes us on a journey against time through the eyes of Ella Minnow Pea and her family as they race to find another phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet to save them from being unable to communicate. Eventually, the only letters remaining are LMNOP, when Ella finally discovers the phrase that will save their language.
    Z
  • A Butterfly's Life Cycle

    Mary R. Dunn

    Paperback (Capstone Press, Aug. 1, 2017)
    The process of a new life starting is fascinating! Watch a butterfly grow from an egg to an insect. Young readers will learn about the stages in a butterfly's life. From a tiny egg to a chrysalis and, finally, a brightly-colored butterfly! The life cycle of a butterfly is a beautiful thing to see.
    L
  • Under the Harrow

    Mark Dunn

    eBook (MP Publishing Limited, Aug. 13, 2010)
    A Dickensian novel, being "An account, most curious, of Dingley Dell and its deceived denizens before and after the dastardly deception, told by one of the duped who was most willing to indite the whole diabolical affair for the delectation of all delving Out-land readers. Presented with a preface and some notes.by Frederick Timmens Esquire."Welcome to Dingley Dell. The Encyclopedia Britannica (Ninth Edition from 1885), a King James Bible, a world atlas, and a complete set of the novels of Charles Dickens are the only books left to the orphans of Dingley Dell when the clandestine anthropological experiment begins. From these, they develop their own society, steeped in Victorian tradition and the values of a Dickensian world. For over a century Dinglians live out this semi-idyllic and anachronistic existence, aided only by minimal trade with the supposedly plague-ridden Outland.“Mark Dunn is a wry eyewitness along the lines of James Wilcox or Larry McMurty…Impish and forgiving, here is a writer who observes the commandment: Thou shalt love thy characters. And they pay him back in buckets.” Leif Enger, author of Peace Like a River.“Clever, comical…delightful.” Kirkus Reviews“Dunn brilliantly demonstrates his ability to delight and captivate” Publishers Weekly