Books by Jerome Charyn and Complete Book Reviews
Jerome Charyn, Author Putnam Publishing Group $21.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-399-13423-4
As he did in Metropolis , Charyn once again revisits old haunts, concentrating here on the movies (and movie houses, like Loew's Paradise in the upper Bronx) that have obsessed him most of his life. Lovingly he recalls America's screen idols:...
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Jerome Charyn. Mysteriouspress.com (Open Road, dist.), $14.99 e-book (190p) ISBN 978-1-4532-6699-1
Set in 1988, Charyn's 11th Isaac Sidel novel (after 1999's Citizen Sidel) is an uneven mix of alternative history and political farce. New York City Mayor Sidel is the vice-president-elect, credited with enabling the Democratic ticket to prevail;...
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Jerome Charyn, Author St. Martin's Press $21.95 (192p) ISBN 978-0-312-20877-6
A phantasmagoric medium by definition, movies appeal to us because they are literal projections of our deepest fantasies and fears, according to film critic and novelist Charyn. In a sequel to his acclaimed memoir, The Dark Lady from Belorusse, the...
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Jerome Charyn, Author Mysterious Press $23 (224p) ISBN 978-0-89296-605-9
In contrast to the bleak and poignant atmosphere of his most recent Isaac Sidel book, 1997's El Bronx, Charyn offers knockabout farce in this latest adventure of the gun-toting New York mayor. It may take readers a few pages to get into the...
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Jerome Charyn, Author Thomas Dunne Books $18.95 (112p) ISBN 978-0-312-16808-7
Charyn's portrait of his adored mother and his early life in New York City's East Bronx is so romantically enhanced that its characters and events appear more mythic than real. His mother, whom he continually refers to as ""the dark lady,"" as if...
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Jerome Charyn, Author Mysterious Press $22 (288p) ISBN 978-0-89296-604-2
The ninth--and very possibly the best--in Charyn's amazing series about mythical New York Mayor Isaac Sidel features a strange, angry and wonderful Children's Crusade against corporate greed, drugs and violent crime. Sidel is a commanding figure, an
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Jerome Charyn, Author Mysterious Press $19.95 (274p) ISBN 978-0-89296-462-8
The joyous weirdness of Charyn's idiosyncratic New York City can't be described-it must be experienced. Nor can Isaac Sidel, Charyn's one-of-a-kind protagonist and former Commissioner of the NYPD, be understood on brief acquaintance. Here, in the...
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Jerome Charyn, Author Warner Books $4.99 (0p) ISBN 978-0-446-40012-1
Frustrated by inaction and societal indifference, New York police commissioner Isaac Sidel returns from a lecture tour to embark on a romantic search for his ``Anastasia'' and investigate social pathology. ``Charyn's high-energy, idiosyncratic prose
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Jerome Charyn, Author Mysterious Press $18.95 (249p) ISBN 978-0-89296-361-4
Sidney Holden, the well-known ``bumper'' (read: hit man) previously introduced in Paradise Man , makes his home in a world ``where there are no rules.'' So he's immune to surprise when he is brought out of retirement by Howard Phipps, 92 years old...
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Jerome Charyn, Author Mysterious Press $18.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-89296-360-7
Charyn's ( Secret Isaac ) high-energy, idiosyncratic prose is a perfect match for his hero, New York police commissioner Isaac Sidel, and his ricochet course through Manhattan's nine circles in his latest, complex adventure. The Justice Department...
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Jerome Charyn, Author Avon Books $8.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-380-70401-9
Novelist Charyn offers an irreverent look at people and institutions in New York City, as, for example, his description of Mayor Koch: ""A tall Woody Allen with a mean streak.'' PW recommended Charyn's ``delightfully wacky phenomenology.'' (September
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Jerome Charyn, Author Putnam Publishing Group $18.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-399-13133-2
In acid engravings and paintings, Hogarth captured the riotous excesses of middle-class England. His pictures transcend genre painting and make a universal commentary on human folly. But most of his successors recorded the tastes and manners of...
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Jerome Charyn, Author . Mysterious $12.95 (208p) ISBN 978-0-446-67733-2
Somewhere in this fantastical tale is a plot. Jocko Robinson, the 97th richest man in the world and the developer of the hit television series Lamplighter, is knocked over the head in the parking lot of his favorite Los Angeles lunchtime hangout,...
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Jerome Charyn, Author Mysterious Press $26 (277p) ISBN 978-0-89296-461-1
With his usual, irresistible freight-train momentum, Charyn ( The Good Policeman ) charts a Dante-esque descent through increasingly corrupt circles of New York City as police commissioner Isaac Sidel and his chauffeur-cop Joe Barbarossa confront a...
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Jerome Charyn, Author Mysterious Press $25 (288p) ISBN 978-0-89296-460-4
Seasoned mystery writer Charyn ( The Good Policeman ) unleashes another Dantesque vision of the hell that is contemporary New York City. Police Commissioner Isaac Sidel plans to fight corruption in the city's public schools with the help of his new...
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Jerome Charyn, Author New York University Press $25 (256p) ISBN 978-0-8147-1575-8
The prolific Charyn's last novel, El Bronx, was one of the best in his series about crusading New York Mayor Isaac Seidel. His most recent work of nonfiction, The Dark Lady from Belorusse, was a richly touching memoir of his mother. How then to...
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Jerome Charyn, Author . Norton $24.95 (348p) ISBN 978-0-393-06856-6
The inner life of Emily Dickinson was creatively effulgent, psychologically pained and emotionally ambivalent, as reported by Charyn, who here inhabits the mind of one of America's most famous poets. Charyn parrots the cadent voice of razor-shar
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Jerome Charyn, Author . Norton $25.95 (479p) ISBN 978-0-393-06497-1
This remarkable novel unfolds in a Manhattan split asunder by the Revolutionary War, where “every street had been turned into a ditch.” Here we follow the picaresque adventures of John Stocking, a double agent who has a talent for...
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Jerome Charyn, Author . Thunder's Mouth $14.95 (195p) ISBN 978-1-56025-858-2
Charyn's been busy in recent months, publishing a biographical study of Isaac Babel (Savage Shorthand
) and editing an anthology of Jewish-American literature (Inside the Hornet's Head
). But that doesn't excuse the rushed quality of...
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Jerome Charyn, Author . Random $24.95 (213p) ISBN 978-0-679-64306-7
This portrait of Babel by the prolific Charyn (The Green Lantern,
etc.) is confounding for reasons he himself elaborates on: it's difficult to know much for certain about the life of the great Russian Jewish short-story writer (1894–1940),
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Jerome Charyn, Author . Thunder's Mouth $22 (357p) ISBN 978-1-56858-312-9
Political intrigue and personal jealousy thrive under Stalin's dread stare in this lively new novel by veteran author Charyn (The Isaac Quartet
; Death of a Tango King
; etc.). Ivan Azerbaijan is a poor boy from the mountains who comes to Moscow
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Jerome Charyn, Author . Four Walls Eight Windows $24 (256p) ISBN 978-1-56858-278-8
Charyn's paean to Jazz Age New York stars the multifarious characters who graced the stages, speakeasies and diners around Broadway in the 1920s and '30s. Never, he says, was New York "New Yorkier" than in this "lawless,...
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Jerome Charyn, Author . St. Martin's/Dunne $22.95 (192p) ISBN 978-0-312-27810-6
By age 14, Jerome "Baby" Charyn had been hired by Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky to mix ice cream sodas. He'd established an on-again, off-again relationship with a gang headed by a heroin addict and pimped for the gang leader's...
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Jerome Charyn, Author, Jerome Charyn, Editor Dutton Books $24 (400p) ISBN 978-0-525-93516-2
Inventive, idiosyncratic crime writer Charyn ( Elsinore ; Maria's Girls et al.) gathers here a comparably vibrant and expert collection of international writing that often probes the far reaches of the mystery genre in a variety of forms. In his...
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Jerome Charyn, Author, Charyn Jerome, Author Dalkey Archive Press $10.95 (243p) ISBN 978-1-56478-078-2
A spoof of literary quarterlies, complete with articles, interviews and poetry; Charyn parodies academic life in this ``issue'' commemorating a junior-college campus security guard killed by a bus. (July)
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Jerome Charyn, Author, Jerome Charyn, Other Dutton Books $17.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-917657-93-1
Charyn's 20th book ( War Cries over Avenue C, etc.) is sparer and easier to read than some of his works, but has all of their best elements: offbeat, interesting characters, seedy urban settings and distinctive prose. It is a crime story whose...
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Jerome Charyn, Author, Francois Boucq, Illustrator Catalan Communications $17.95 (128p) ISBN 978-0-87416-111-3
The creators of The Magician's Wife return with a bizarre and complex espionage story. A young Ukrainian orphan with a strange psychic power is enrolled in a KGB training school in the wake of WW II. Two decades later, given the code name Billy Budd,
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Jerome Charyn. Norton/Liveright, $26.95 (464p) ISBN 978-0-87140-427-5
Charyn certainly manages to bring the legendary 16th president down to earth; most readers will find it hard to view the Great Emancipator the same way after reading this fictional memoir’s description of him masturbating as a young man. But the...
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Jerome Charyn. Norton/Liveright, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-87140-489-3
Tough on the outside but tender at heart, the 13 stories in this volume serve as a nostalgic elegy to the Bronx of the past. In “Lorelei,” a con man returns to his childhood home and finds his high school sweetheart trapped in a grotesque state of...
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Jerome Charyn. Bellevue Literary (Consortium, dist.), $19.95 trade paper (256p) ISBN 978-1-934137-98-7
Novelist and nonfiction author Charyn (The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson) presents a postmodernism-flavored study of Emily Dickinson’s life and work. His lively reassessment draws on the work of other scholars, close readings of Dickinson’s poems...
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Jerome Charyn. Bellevue Literary (Consortium, dist.), $16.95 trade paper (240p) ISBN 978-1-942658-14-6
Charyn (The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson) peels back the layers of myth and artifice built up by chameleon-like Polish-American novelist Jerzy Kosinski, author of The Painted Bird and Being There. A World War II survivor and international icon,...
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Jerome Charyn. Pegasus Crime, $25.95 (304p) ISBN 978-1-68177-348-3
Isaac Sidel tilts futilely at windmills, with a pistol instead of a lance (hence his nickname, Don Quixote with a Glock), in Charyn’s enjoyable if sometimes baffling 12th novel featuring the former New York City police chief turned politician (after
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Jerome Charyn. Bellevue, $16.99 trade paper (272p) ISBN 978-1-942658-42-9
Charyn (A Loaded Gun) presents a deeply personal look at the city, authors, and experiences that have shaped him and his writing. Readers will delight in encountering Charyn’s New York City, where “everything is possible because its past is only the
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Jerome Charyn. Bellevue, $26.99 (368p) ISBN 978-1-942658-50-4
Charyn’s spectacular latest (after The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King) captures the madness of Nazi Germany in a fiercely inventive merging of fiction and fact. Erik Holdermann’s parents both die before his ninth birthday in 1928, after...
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Jerome Charyn. Liveright, $28 (256p) ISBN 978-1-324-09133-2
Charyn (The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King) plausibly recreates another chapter in American history in this affecting and searing portrait of Silver Screen superstars Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles. Rusty Redburn, “an actress who couldn’t...
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Jerome Charyn. Bellevue, $28.99 (288p) ISBN 978-1-942658-82-5
In this literary tour de force, Charyn (The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King) recreates J.D. Salinger’s experiences during WWII. The book begins with a bravura set-piece in which Sonny Salinger goes on a date with teen debutante Oona O’Neill...
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Jerome Charyn. Bellevue Literary, $17.99 trade paper (288p) ISBN 978-1-954276-19-2
The underwhelming latest from Charyn (Big Red) portrays real-life newspaper editor Abraham Cahan battling with a fictional real estate baron in pre-WWI New York City. Cahan, the muckraking editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, finds himself at odds...
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Jerome Charyn. Bellevue Literary, $17.99 trade paper (336p) ISBN 978-1-954276-48-2
Charyn, author of historical novels including Ravage & Son, offers an impressive portrait of opera singer Maria Callas (1923–1977), spanning from her awkward years as a teenage neophyte to the end of her career, when her legendary voice deserts her.
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