"...Told through three distinct narrators?Dawn Chapman, the mission?s pretty, young ecologist; Linda Ryu, her bitter, scheming best friend passed over for E2; and Ramsay Roothorp, E2?s sexually irrepressible Wildman?The Terranauts brings to life an electrifying, pressured world in which connected lives are uncontrollably pushed to the breaking point. With characteristic humor and acerbic wit, T.C. Boyle indelibly inhabits the perspectives of the various...

When animal behaviorist Guy Schermerhorn demonstrates on a TV game show that he has taught Sam, his juvenile chimp, to speak in sign language, Aimee Villard, an undergraduate at Guy's university, is so taken with the performance that she applies to become his assistant. A romantic and intellectual attachment soon morphs into an interspecies love triangle that pushes hard at the boundaries of consciousness and the question of what we know and how we...

"From the title story, which features a so-called relive box that allows users to experience anew almost any moment from their past, to 'The Five-Pound Burrito,' the tale of a man aiming to build the biggest burrito in town, the twelve stories in this collection represent a whole new way of looking at the world"--From publisher description.

From the "New York Times"-bestselling author of "The Women," a historical novel about three women's lives on a California island. Their extraordinary stories, full of struggle and hope, are the subject of Boyle's haunting new novel.

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in Best Life. Smithstown is a divided community, and Cal is right in the middle. He believes, like his best friend Dave, that evolution is scientific fact. But he's drawn to Lynnese, a devout Christian who believes in intelligent design and whose daughter, Mary-Louise, has only widened the chasm forming in the town. As Smithstown is split between science and religion and their...

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the Paris Review and selected for The Best American Short Stories, 2007 by Stephen King. Angelle's father is a drunk, and Angelle and her little sister, Lisette, know it. Their mother has told them as much. But their mother has abandoned them and gone back to France, leaving only the empty promise to return behind. Now Angelle is the key witness in a case that may decide...

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the New Yorker. When Gerald Loomis loses his wife, friends and neighbors try to rally him with food and suggestions for pets to keep him company. But Gerald has already picked a pet, a Burmese Python he's named Siddhartha. During a cold snap, Gerald ventures out to the pet store to pick up a rat to feed Siddhartha but finds he can't follow through with letting the rat die....

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the New Yorker. Gordon is a delivery driver with a predilection toward road rage, and he's on the most important delivery of his life. In Santa Barbara there's a mother of three on life support waiting for Gordon, waiting for the liver he's transporting from Los Angeles. But there's a mudslide, and cars are being swept away, people being buried in the sludge. And Gordon,...

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in Playboy. It's the middle of a snow storm, and Johnny Bandon, a washed up crooner in the style of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, is getting ready to record a Christmas single. The session musicians are there, and so is his backup singer. Darlene Delmar is a down and out soul singer ravaged by cheating boyfriends and STDs. But for this one moment in time, maybe music can reach...

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the New Yorker. Thirteen-year-old Dill has a tendency to get in trouble, to act out, and perhaps it is due to his mother's latest boyfriend, Grady, leaving them behind. Meanwhile Sanjuro Ichyguro and his wife have moved from Japan to the United States and are having trouble adjusting. Between the cultural divide, the swelling emotions of their respective losses, and budding...