<div>&ldquo;An amazing novel&rdquo; that plunges into the all-too-gray area between the public and private in contemporary American life (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Michael Tolkin&rsquo;s acclaimed second novel, Among the Dead, is an arresting examination of public and private grief in the wake of unspeakable disaster, a slow-burning tour de force of psychological fiction. When Frank Gale writes a passionate letter to his wife confessing an affair, he hopes all can be forgiven on the warm beaches of Mexico. But the farewell kiss of his girlfriend causes him to miss the flight carrying his wife and daughter, and when he learns that their plane has crashed in a crowded city, his life changes in the course of seconds. Suddenly one man&rsquo;s struggle to comprehend his loss becomes consumed in a media circus of legal drama, family quarrels, and public scandal. Tolkin is a masterful chronicler of contemporary America, and Among the Dead is &ldquo;fascinating . . . ingenious . . . brilliantly sustained . . . full of nasty surprises . . . like Ian McEwan and Martin Amis, Tolkin portrays the squalid downside of life very well&rdquo; (San Francisco Chronicle). &ldquo;Startlingly original . . . morbidly amusing . . . truly terrifying.&rdquo; &mdash;Allen Barra, Los Angeles Times Book Review</div>

Among the Dead

<div>The &ldquo;shrewd, entertainingly dark Hollywood novel&rdquo; that inspired the award-winning Robert Altman film (The New York Times Book Review). Hollywood insider Michael Tolkin perfectly skewers the movie-making business through the mind of Griffin Mill, senior vice president of production at a major Hollywood studio. Ruthlessly ambitious, Mill is driven to control the levers of America&rsquo;s dream-making machinery. He listens to writers pitch him stories all day, sitting in judgment of their fantasies, their lives. But now one writer whose pitch he responded to so glibly is sending him mortally threatening postcards. Squeezed between the threat to his life and the threat to his job, Mill&rsquo;s deliberate and horrifying response spins him into a nightmare. Then he meets the sad and beautiful June Mercator and his obsession for her threatens to destroy them both. &ldquo;One of the most wounding and satirical of all Hollywood exposes.&rdquo; &mdash;Los Angeles Times &ldquo;In its wry, acerbic description of life behind the studio gates Tolkin&rsquo;s book recalls F. Scott Fitzgerald . . . and the vengeful comedy of Nathaniel West&rsquo;s The Day of the Locust.&rdquo; &mdash;The Philadelphia Inquirer</div>

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The Player

<div>A &ldquo;provocative&rdquo; psychological suspense novel about &ldquo;a character who is bound inevitably to a disastrous past&rdquo; (The Oregonian). Years ago, Tom Levy worked an insurance scam that left him rich, but he is about to learn that wealth can&rsquo;t always protect you from bad decisions. While vacationing in Jamaica, Tom witnesses a man goading his four-year-old daughter into a vulgar display on the dance floor. The man also happens to be married to the woman who has been capturing Tom&rsquo;s own attention. Enraged, Tom vows he must pay with his life. The next day, atop the Dunn&rsquo;s River Falls, Tom kills the man in cold blood, in full view of witnesses&mdash;condemning himself to life in prison among the most brutal and hardened men of Jamaica. Does an elusive story hold the key to their salvation, and Tom&rsquo;s own? And once Tom has told it, can he find a way to reenter the hearts of those he has left behind? From the author of The Player, Under Radar was a Village Voice Favorite Book of the Year and blends elements of crime fiction and fable with an edge of black comedy. &ldquo;Applies an Old Testament vision with an up-to-the-second feel for the details of contemporary affluence . . . Compelling.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times Book Review</div>

Under Radar

<div>A Hollywood novel of a very different kind by the author of The Player: A timely and &ldquo;darkly satirical&rdquo; dystopian thriller (The San Francisco Chronicle). Michael Tolkin is known as a master chronicler of show business culture. Now, in his new novel, the H LYW OD sign presides over a city devastated by a weaponized microbe that&rsquo;s been accidentally spread around the globe, deleting human identity. In post-NK3 Los Angeles, a sixty-foot fence surrounds the hills where the rich used to live, but the mansions have been taken over by those with the only power that matters: the power of memory. Life for those inside the Fence, ruled over by the new aristocracy known as the Verified, is a perpetual party. Outside the Fence, downtown, the Verified use an invented mythology to keep control over the mindless and nameless. In deliciously dark prose, Tolkin winds a noose-like plot around a melee of despots, prophets, and rebels as they struggle for command and survival in a town that still manages to exert a magnetic force, even as a ruined husk. &ldquo;Intricate and cleverly constructed.&rdquo;&mdash;The New Yorker &ldquo;Tolkin creates memorable images and searing moments and peppers the text with sly, dark humor, all while raising provocative social and political issues&hellip;NK3 is nightmare and satire, thriller and warning. Crafted by a master storyteller, it is a haunting parable about civilization marching forward, while forgetting what it leaves behind.&rdquo;&mdash;Los Angeles Review of Books &ldquo;Remind[s] one of how easily people are turned into commodities, how slippery the grip on identity can be, how there&rsquo;s always someone ready to set themself up as the savior of civilization.&rdquo;&mdash;The San Francisco Chronicle</div>

<div>This follow-up to the classic black comedy about the film industry is “a wicked fever dream of a novel” (San Francisco Chronicle). In The Player, the Hollywood novel that was adapted into the celebrated movie by Robert Altman, film executive Griffin Mill got away with murder. Now Mill is back, down to his last six million dollars, i.e., broke. His second wife wants to leave him. His first wife still loves him. His children hate him. And, believing that the end of the world is happening, he wants to save them all with one last desperate plan: quit the studio and convince an almost-billionaire that he has the road map and the mettle to make them both achieve savage wealth. In The Return of the Player, Tolkin again delivers a brilliant, incisive portrait of power, money, and family in a society out of control with greed and excess. “A powerful dark comedy that transcends the shopworn genre of Hollywood satire.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Both truly outrageous and actually endearing.”—New York Daily News</div>

The Return of the Player

<div>Three film scripts, including an Academy Award nominee, from the man described as an &ldquo;Antonioni with a sense of humor&rdquo; (The New Yorker). From his earliest works to the Emmy-nominated Showtime limited series Escape at Dannemora, Michael Tolkin is known as one of the industry&rsquo;s biggest talents&mdash;and sharpest satirists. This volume contains three of his acclaimed screenplays. The Player, about the twisted world of Hollywood, was directed by Robert Altman and starred Tim Robbins and Greta Scacchi. It won an Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay and has been hailed as &ldquo;one of the smartest, funniest, most penetrating movies about moviemaking ever made&rdquo; (Vanity Fair). The Rapture explores the emotionally intense, surreal world of Christian fundamentalism. The Los Angeles Times called it &ldquo;a nervy, unsettling, edgy piece of work, that most audacious of cinematic ventures, a film of theological ideas, intent on looking into what we believe and why we believe it, determined, even eager, to explore the issues of heaven, hell, and the hereafter.&rdquo; And The New Age tells the story of a young couple&rsquo;s fall from financial grace and their quest for spirituality in a world defined by materialism.</div>

Michael Tolkin
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Books By Michael Tolkin (6 Books)

Among the Dead

The Player

Under Radar

NK3

The Return of the Player

The Player, The Rapture, The New Age

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© 2024 OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Michael TolkinFollow this author

Books By Michael Tolkin (6 Books)

Among the Dead

The Player

Under Radar

NK3

The Return of the Player

The Player, The Rapture, The New Age

RELATED POSTS ABOUT MICHAEL TOLKIN

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More from

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© 2024 OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Michael Tolkin
Follow this author