The Cold Millions

'A beautiful, lyric hymn to the power of social unrest in American history...funny and harrowing, sweet and violent, innocent and experienced; it walks a dozen tightropes' Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See 
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1909. Spokane, Washington. 
 
The Dolan brothers are living by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his dashing older brother Gig dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. 
 
But then Rye finds himself drawn to suffragette Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and her passion sweeps him into the world of protest and dirty business. As a storm starts brewing, questions of love, sacrifice, brotherhood and betrayal emerge, threatening to overwhelm them all. . . 
 
The Cold Millions is at once an intimate story and a stunning, kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, dreams and reality. Set against the panoramic backdrop of an early 20th century America, Jess Walter offers a sensational tale that resonates powerfully with our own time. 
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'A brilliantly multifaceted panorama of early 20th-century America...Walter is a writer whose work deserves a wide readership' Sunday Times 
 
'A work of irresistible characters, harrowing adventures and rip-roaring fun . . . One of the most captivating novels of the year' Washington Post

A riotous, propulsive adventure story, packed with captivating characters

A brilliantly multifaceted panorama of early 20th-century America . . . Walter is a writer whose work deserves a wide readership

A beautiful, lyric hymn to the power of social unrest in American history. It's funny and harrowing, sweet and violent, innocent and experienced

Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See

A work of irresistible characters, harrowing adventures and rip-roaring fun ... bursting with a dazzling range of outrageous characters. One of the most captivating novels of the year

Reminiscent of the stylistic tricks of F Scott Fitzgerald...With its rebellion against inequality and debates about capitalism, there are clear echoes from 1909 to the US today. Incitement to riot, dreadfully topical since the assault on the Capitol last month, also gets a look in. But The Cold Millions offers more: a study of individuals living, willingly or unwillingly, through tumult.

Walter is a class act...the fierce struggle for free speech and workers' rights is genuinely stirring.

A timely and poetic read that vividly depicts the American melting pot at its most unequal and volatile . . . a compelling portrait of America at the dawn of the 20th Century

Expansive, beguiling . . . A thrilling yarn that simultaneously underscores the cost of progress and celebrates the American spirit

It's a tremendous work, a vivid, propulsive, historical novel with a politically explosive backdrop that reverberates through our own

Jess Walter is a superb storyteller. As polished and hard as a diamond, The Cold Millions reminds us of America's tempestuous past and suggests that all this is anything but past

Walter marshals a motley, fascinating cast of characters so finely drawn that they lift from the page. I haven't encountered a more satisfying and moving novel about the struggle for workers' rights in America

A layered, multi-character panorama

It's often said that a novel contains the world; Walter brings new meaning to this phrase, peopling The Cold Millions with vaudeville stars, hobos, suffragists, tycoons, union agitators, policemen, and dozens of other vibrant characters. Warm and deeply humane, this transporting novel is a staggering achievement from a landmark writer

The fact that the same author has written books as wildly different and all as transporting as The Zero, The Financial Lives of the Poets, Beautiful Ruins, and now this latest tour de force is testimony to Walter's protean storytelling power and astounding ability to set a scene, any scene . . . We have heard that Jess Walter writes nonstop: Seven days a week, 365 days a year. Please, never stop.

Superb.... a splendid postmodern rendition of the social realist novels of the 1930s by Henry Roth, John Steinbeck, and John Dos Passos, updated with strong female characters and executed with pristine prose. This could well be Walter's best work yet.

A great tapestry of busy-ness . . . Walter's descriptive passage are marvellous

Jess Walter is the author of six novels, including The Financial Lives of the Poets and The Cold Millions. Beautiful Ruins was a New York Times bestseller, and We Live in Water was one of Barack Obama's books of 2019. Jess Walter lives in Spokane, Washington with his family.

Spokane, 1909. The Dolan brothers are living by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his dashing older brother Gig dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. When Rye finds himself drawn to suffragette Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, her passion sweeps him into the world of protest and dirty business. But a storm is coming, threatening to overwhelm them all . . .The Cold Millions is an intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early 20th century America.

Beautiful Ruins

'A monument to crazy love. Magic' New York Times 
 
'The actress arrived in his village the only way one could come directly . . .' 
 
In spring 1962 American actress Dee Moray's boat motors into an Italian bay and the life of hotelier Pasquale Tursi. Dee - fleeing a film set, claiming to be dying and desperately awaiting her lover - throws herself on Pasquale's generous mercy. Fifty years later Pasquale lands in Hollywood, sporting a fedora and seeking a long-forgotten actress. Why he's come, what happened to Dee in Italy and, later, LA, are questions that Beautiful Ruins answers in the most surprising and wonderfully entertaining manner. 
 
'Exhilarating. Very, very funny' The Times

Just about the perfect summer read. It is intelligent and thought-provoking, but also a lot of fun. Reading hours fly by and reaching the final page feels like a genuine wrench

Ambitious, large-hearted, exhilarating novel that leaves you wanting more . . . Very, very funny

Beautiful Ruins is a novel unlike any other you're likely to read this year

Romantic, very funny...Turbo-charged satire meets a Garcia Marquezesque love story. What's not to like?

Walter creates an epic here - one that took him 15 years to write. The end result, however, is well worth the wait

Thoroughly enjoyable, a tender, funny, ridiculous tale which has love at its core and a keen satirical edge to cut through the lovely, lush romanticism

Magic. Walter is a believer in capricious destiny with a fine, freewheeling sense of humour . . . A monument to crazy love with a deeply romantic heart

Larger-than-life characters, billowy romance and crafty satire ... Any book that includes Richard Burton as a character is fine by us

Cinematic and utterly romantic . . . the big beach read for summer

Walter's account of the filming of the Burton/Taylor classic Cleopatra is a playful imagining of emotional history and hidden lives just out of view. Be warned, this is a novel that may make any festive guests somewhat anti-social as I read it in two days flat

The story begins on the Italian coast in 1962. A young innkeeper watches in disbelief as a beautiful American girl gets out of a boat and climbs towards his hotel. She turns out to be an actress, on the run from the shenanigans going on down the coast in Rome at the filming of Cleopatra. A few days later international star Richard Burton, much the worse for wear, appears in the village too. 
 
Half a century later, and half a world away in Hollywood, an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot - searching for the woman he last saw in his hotel fifty years before. 
 
What unfolds is a dazzling novel teeming with unforgettable characters: the Italian and his long-lost love; the heroically cynical film producer who first brought them together, now a successful legend on the Hollywood scene, and his idealistic young assistant; and the husbands, wives and lovers, superstars and victims, who have populated their world since that summer day in 1962. 
 
Gloriously inventive, filled with surprises, Beautiful Ruins is a magnificent novel about love and fame, dreams and reality.

The Financial Lives of the Poets

From the author of the bestselling Beautiful Ruins comes The Financial Lives of Poets - a brilliantly funny novel about a man who, in an attempt to save himself, may destroy everything he loves. 
 
Meet Matt Prior. He's about to lose his job, his house, his wife, and maybe his sanity too. 
 
Financial journalist Matt quit his job to set up a website which couldn't fail. Only now he's woken up to the biggest crisis since the Great Crash, and it has. He's got six days to save his house. It's hard to focus when your wife's having an online affair with her childhood sweetheart, but there are children to think about . . . So when he gets hold of some high-grade dope and finds he can sell a piece on at a profit, he begins to think this might be his salvation. 
 
A fabulously funny, heartfelt novel about how we can skate close to the edge of ruin - and pull back. 
 
'A beautifully laid-back exultation of the human connections that make life worth living' Metro 
 
'Ecstatically funny and unusually big-hearted' Financial Times 
 
'It made me laugh more than any other book I've read this year' Nick Hornby

Matthew Prior quit his job to set up a website which couldn't fail. Only now he's woken up to the biggest financial crisis since the Great Crash, and it has. He's got six days to save his house. It's hard to focus when your wife's having an online affair, but there are children to think about. So when he gets hold of some high-grade dope and begins selling it at a profit, he thinks this might just be his salvation. 
 
A fabulously funny, heartfelt novel about how we can skate close to the edge of ruin - and pull back.

We Live in Water

From Jess Walter, the bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins, comes We Live in Water - a darkly funny, utterly compelling collection of stories about the American family. 
 
We Live in Water brings to vivid life a world of lost fathers and redemptive con men, of personal struggles and diminished dreams, a world marked by the wry wit and generosity of spirit that has made Jess Walter one of America's most talked-about writers. 
 
In 'Thief', a blue-collar worker turns unlikely detective to find out which of his kids is stealing from the family vacation fund. In 'We Live in Water', a lawyer returns to a corrupt North Idaho town to find the father who disappeared thirty years earlier. In 'Anything Helps', a homeless man has to 'go to cardboard' to raise enough money to buy his son the new Harry Potter book. In 'Virgo', a local newspaper editor tries to get back at his superstitious ex-girlfriend by screwing with her horoscope. The final story transforms slyly from a portrait of Walter's hometown into a moving contemplation of our times. 
 
'A ridiculously talented writer' The New York Times 
 
'One of my favourite young American writers' Nick Hornby 
 
'Darkly funny, sneakily sad, these stories are very, very good' Publisher's Weekly 
 
'A witty and sobering snapshot of recession-era America' Kirkus

These stories are very, very good. If you like to read, you'll like this book

A witty and sobering snapshot of recession-era America

Wildly entertaining and thought-provoking

Jess Walter has impressive command of the short story...Since 13 stories should be plenty for a collection, maybe the best compliment we might pay the author is to object that this book is too short

A more expansive, wittier Raymond Carver

Clever, original and a little dark

There's no sudden resolution, but there's enough wit to help you get through the messy bits

A collection of punchy stories . . . Sold and sold

Darkly amusing . . . Suffused with caustic wit, quirky descriptions and sharp details. We Live In Water never falls short of being highly engaging

We Live In Water is a world of lost fathers and redemptive con artists, of personal struggles and broken men. 
 
In 'Thief', a blue-collar worker turns unlikely detective to find out which of his kids is stealing from the family holiday fund. 'Anything Helps' sees a homeless man try to raise money to buy his son the new Harry Potter book; and in 'Virgo', a newspaper editor attempts to get back at his superstitious ex-girlfriend by screwing with her horoscope. 
 
We Live in Water is a wildly original, brilliantly realized contemplation of our times.

Jess Walter

Walter is a writer whose work deserves a wide readership

One of our most gifted builders of fictional worlds

Walter is a believer in capricious destiny with a fine, freewheeling sense of humour

In this dazzling collection of stories, a son must repeatedly come out to his senile father while looking for a place that will care for the old man. An elderly couple confronts the note-taking fiction writer eavesdropping on their conversation. A famous actor in recovery has a one-night stand with the world's most surprising film critic. And in the beautifully romantic title story, a shy twenty-one-year-old studying Latin in Rome during "the year of my reinvention" finds himself face-to-face with the gorgeous Italian actress of his adolescent dreams. 
 
Funny, poignant, and redemptive, this collection takes the reader to Italy and Idaho, Washington and Mississippi. With his signature wit and bighearted approach to the darkest parts of humanity, Walter tackles the modern condition with a timeless touch.

Jess Walter

Praise for The Angel of Rome

Walter is a writer whose work deserves a wide readership

One of our most gifted builders of fictional worlds

Walter is a believer in capricious destiny with a fine, freewheeling sense of humour

Walter is a writer whose work deserves a wide readership

One of our most gifted builders of fictional worlds

Walter is a believer in capricious destiny with a fine, freewheeling sense of humour

Walter is a writer whose work deserves a wide readership

One of our most gifted builders of fictional worlds

Walter is a believer in capricious destiny with a fine, freewheeling sense of humour

Books by Jess Walter

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