DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Sweet Nothing

Stories

Richard Lange author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Hodder & Stoughton

Published:5th Nov '15

Should be back in stock very soon

Sweet Nothing cover

Winner of the CWA Short Story Dagger.

Every life is uncertain. Every choice is a danger.

Set on the dark side of Los Angeles, this is a masterful collection of edge-of-your-seat tales: a prison guard must protect an inmate being tried for heinous crimes. A father and son set out to rescue a young couple trapped during a wildfire after they cross the border. An ex-con trying to make good as a security guard stumbles onto a burglary plot. A young father must submit to blackmail to protect the fragile life he's built.

Sweet Nothing is an intense and gripping journey through real lives with big problems, from one of America's great short story writers.

Lange's stories are knockouts. Gritty, humane, and utterly urban. -- Alice Sebold
Lange's morality tales are not that far removed from the classic stories of O. Henry and Guy de Maupassant. With a distinctive style, Lange makes his downbeat tales of the underclass quirkily entertaining. * Kirkus *
Richard Lange's stories are a revelation. He writes of the disaffections and bewilderments of ordinary lives with as keen an anger and searing lyricism as anybody out there today. He is Raymond Carver reborn in a hard cityscape. Read him and be amazed. -- T.C. Boyle
The kind of book you'll want to savour * Pittsburgh Post Gazette *
A natural-born storyteller -- Ron Rash
What makes this collection a wonderful read is it's only marginally akin to anything else. Swift, gut wrenching, and sometimes cleverly disarming fiction by a master -- Joe R. Lansdale
The man just keeps getting better. The stories in Sweet Nothing traffic in the vagaries of the human heart, those wants and needs that push us down dark paths. His vision is steely-eyed, yet you sense that Lange loves his characters - even the worst of them - and that compassion sharpens your own emotional investment. -- Craig Davidson

  • Winner of CWA Short Story Dagger 2015 (UK)

ISBN: 9781444790023

Dimensions: 196mm x 145mm x 18mm

Weight: 188g

272 pages