Jim Grimsley Knihy

Ford McKinney leads a charmed life: he's a young doctor possessing good looks, good breeding, and money. He comes from an old Savannah family where his parents, attentive to his future, focus their energies on finding their son--their golden boy--a girl to marry. But how charmed is this life when Ford's own heart suspects that he is not meant to spend his life with a woman? His suspicions are confirmed when he meets Dan Crell. Dan is a quiet man with a great voice. Behind the tempered facade of the shy hospital administrator is a singer who can transform a room with his soaring voice, leaving his listeners in awe and reverence. Ford catches one such Christmas concert and his life is never quite the same; he is touched in a place he keeps hidden, forbidden. When Ford and Dan begin to explore the limits of their relationship, Dan's own secrets are exposed--and his mysterious and painful childhood returns to haunt him. In Comfort and Joy Jim Grimsley finds a marriage between the stark and stunning pain of his prize-winning Winter Birds and the passion of critically acclaimed Dream Boy. In this, his fourth novel, he considers pressing questions. How does a man reconcile the child he was raised to be with the man that he truly is? What happens when an adult has to choose between his parents and a lover?

In Jim Grimsley's remarkable first novel, Winter Birds, Danny Crell tells himself his own story, and in doing so illuminates the heartbreaking story of his father's violent tyranny over his mother, his sister, and his three younger brothers.The novel begins on Thanksgiving in rural North Carolina in a broken-down cottage the Crell children have nicknamed "The Circle House." Ellen Crell's attempts at a family meal are thwarted and finally disastrously ruined when Bobjay draws her into a violent quarrel. It leads to a chase wherein Bobjay is the hunter, Ellen the prey, and their five children are caught in between.Winter Birds is a haunting, unforgettable portrait of an American family shattered by violence, and of the lengths a woman will go to keep her family whole.

In a novel as stunning and heartbreaking as his acclaimed debut work, Grimsley recounts the story of a painful first love--between two adolescent boys who bravely sustain each other in a world of domestic disintegration.

Jim Grimsley's novels and short stories have been favorably compared to the works of Samuel R. Delany, Jack Vance, and Ursula K. Le Guin. Now he unleashes an ambitious and audacious collision between science and magic.The Twil Gate links two very different realms. On one side of the portal is Senal, an advanced technological civilization of some thirty billion inhabitants, all cybernetically linked and at war with machine intelligences many light-years away. On the other side is Irion, a land of myth and legend, where the world is flat and mighty wizards once ruled.Jedda Martele is a linguist and trader from Senal. Although fascinated by the languages and cultures of Irion, she shares her people's assumption that Irion is backward and superstitious and no match for her homeland's superior numbers and technology. But as the two realms march inevitably toward war, Jedda finds herself at the center of historic, unimaginable events that will challenge everything she has ever believed about the world--and herself.The Ordinary is a powerful and entrancing tale of magic, science, and the mysterious truth that binds them together.

Eine Kindheit und Jugend in den Südstaaten der USA zu Beginn der sechziger Jahre. Danny Crell ist das älteste von fünf Kindern. Eingeengt von poveren Lebensverhältnissen und drangsaliert von einem nichtsnutzigen und gewalttätigen Familienvater, lernt er die Kraft des Durchhaltens von seiner Mutter. Vom Autor des vielgelesenen Buches Das Leben zwischen den Sternen.

Dan und Ford sind schon seit drei Jahren zusammen, die Unterschiede zwischen ihnen scheinen oft unüberbrückbar. Dan arbeitet als Verwaltungsangestellter eines Krankenhauses und ist ein introvertierter aber selbstbestimmter Mann. Für den wohlhabenden Kinderarzt Ford, der sich seiner Anziehungskraft auf andere stets bewusst war, ist es oft schwierig, die Bedürfnisse seines Partners richtig einzuschätzen. Ein Weihnachtsfest wird schließlich zur Bewährungsprobe für die Liebe der beiden Männer: Während die Familie des Einen das Paar empfängt, provozieren die Eltern des Anderen durch ihre vehemente Ablehnung seiner Sexualität eine Eskalation der Ereignisse. Jim Grimsley zählte zu den ersten amerikanischen Autoren, die jenseits der großen Aufbruchstimmung der 1980er Jahre die Ängste und Probleme schwuler Männer zum Thema ihrer Bücher machten. In Das Leben zwischen den Sternen beschreibt er nicht nur eindringlich und detailreich die Geschichte einer komplizierten Liebe, sondern liefert auch eine genaue Betrachtung der verschiedenen Welten, aus denen Dan und Ford kommen.

Bis ins Alter wird Ellen Tote von dem Traum verfolgt, wie ihre Mutter in eisiger Winterkälte in einen Fluß watet und untertaucht. Dieses Rätsel ihres Lebens versucht Ellen zu lösen, indem sie Bilder der Erinnerung aus ihrer Kindheit heraufbeschwört. Bilder eines Familenlebens in bitterster Not, beherrscht von Gewalt und Angst. Es ist die erschütternde Geschichte eines kleinen Mädchens, das, ganz auf sich gestellt, darum kämpft, einem grausamen Schicksal zu entgehen.