-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
Stories
by Bret Anthony Johnston
An imaginative, moving collection of stories infused with the magic and enigma of the human condition and drenched in Texas heat, from the best-selling author of We Burn Daylight.
Encounters with Unexpected Animals takes readers deep into the heart of bestselling author Bret Anthony Johnston's home state of Texas, where teenagers search for love, parents grasp at connections with their children, and animals—real or imagined, familiar or unexpected—are reminders of the mystery, danger, and beauty of being alive.
In "Caiman," a father buys a baby alligator in hopes of keeping his family safe. In "Soldier of Fortune," a teenage boy dog-sits for his neighbors after tragedy strikes, and his innocent snooping uncovers the family's most guarded secret. And in the luminous "Half of What Atlee Rouse Knows About Horses," an elderly man's heart is laid bare with the raw and breathtaking power of wild horses.
Johnston's humor, empathy, and mastery of prose ring out through each story, bringing every finely-drawn character to radiant life. Individually, the stories are by turns suspenseful, poignant and exhilarating. Taken together, they reveal the abiding connections that lead us from sorrow and impermanence back to ourselves and, ultimately, to each other.
"[Johnston's] empathy for his troubled characters illuminates their predicaments and mistakes with a solemn, steady light." —Kirkus Reviews
"Each entry portrays the complex lives of its characters with compassion, understanding, and incisive detail. These distinctive character-driven tales will linger in readers' minds." —Publishers Weekly
"Deeply engrossing and hard-to-forget stories ... Johnston pulls off the great adventure of short fiction: episodic tours of the heart." —Booklist
This information about Encounters with Unexpected Animals was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Bret Anthony Johnston is the author of the bestselling novels We Burn Daylight and Remember Me Like This, the award-winning Corpus Christi: Stories, and the editor of Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, The Paris Review, Thrasher Magazine, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and the Sunday Times Short Story Award, he was born and raised in Texas and is the director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.
If you liked Encounters with Unexpected Animals, try these:
by Peter Heller
Published 2020
From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars, the story of two college students on a wilderness canoe trip - a gripping tale of a friendship tested by fire, white water, and violence.
by Thomas Lynch
Published 2011
Heart-rending stories of life and death: a debut fiction collection by the award-winning author of The Undertaking.
by Robert Hellenga
Published 2007
A novel about a man's search for meaning that illuminates our deepest concerns: love and death, marriage and family, and the mysterious tug of beauty on the human heart.
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
