Michael Collins - Author & Runner
MICHAEL COLLINS - AUTHOR
Collins' back list has been reissued
The Keepers of Truth​
The Keepers of Truth
Booker Prize 2000 shortlist
Impac Prize 2002 shortlist
Irish Novel of the Year 2000
New York Times Notable Book of the Year
The last of a manufacturing dynasty in a dying industrial town, Bill lives alone in the family mansion and works for the Truth, the moribund local paper. He yearns to write long philosophical pieces about the American dream gone sour, not the flaccid write-ups of bake-off contests demanded by the Truth. Then, old man Lawton goes missing, and suspicion fixes on his son, Ronny. Paradoxically, the specter of violent death breathes new life into the town. For Bill, a deeper and more disturbing involvement with the Lawtons ensues. The Lawton murder and the obsessions it awakes in the town come to symbolize the mood of a nation on the edge. Compulsively readable, The Keepers of Truth startles both with its insights and with Collins's powerful, incisive writing.
The Resurrectionists
PNBA Novel of The Year
NY Times Notable Book of the Year
The solitude of the Upper Michigan Peninsula is Michael Collins's heart of darkness in this compelling story of the unquiet dead. Almost thirty years ago, when Frank Cassidy was five, his parents burned to death in a remote Michigan town. Now Frank's uncle is dead too, shot by a mysterious stranger who lies in a coma in the local hospital. Frank, working menial jobs to support his unfaithful wife and two children, takes his family north in a series of stolen cars to dispute his cousin's claim on the family farm.
Once there, however, Frank also wants answers to questions about his own past: Who really set the fire that burned the family home and killed his parents? Will the stranger, who hangs between life and death, be able to shed light on long-buried secrets? As the television blares the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, news of Jim Jones, and endless sitcom reruns, simple answers -- and the promise of the American dream -- seem to recede from Frank's grasp. Brilliant and unsettling,
The Resurrectionists is an ironic yet chilling indictment of American culture in the seventies and a compassionate novel about a man struggling to overcome the crimes and burdens of his past.
Death of a Writer​
Winner of The Breakout Novel of the Year in France 2008
Longlisted for IMPAC Award 2008
Seattle PI Top Pick 2006
People 4 Star Review
Death of a Writer begins as Professor E. Robert Pendleton, once a literary prodigy and now a virtual unknown, clings hopelessly to his tenured position at a Midwestern college.
When a campus visit from a rival author, now a superstar, tips his malaise into desperation, death seems the only remaining option. But Pendleton's suicide attempt is thwarted by a young graduate student, leaving Pendleton relegated to a wheelchair, surviving in a barely-conscious state. It is then that an unpublished novel is discovered in his basement: a brilliant, semi-autobiographical story with a gruesome child murder at its core.
The publication of Scream causes a storm of publicity, conferring on Pendleton the success he has always sought, when, ironically, he is no longer in a condition to appreciate it. Soon questions are asked about the novel's content: in particular about the uncanny resemblance between Pendleton's fictional crime and a real-life, unresolved local murder. How did Pendleton know the case so well? And why did he bury Scream in his basement? Enter Jon Ryder, a world-weary detective, and the hunt for the murderer is on.
A profound, darkly funny novel anchored by a gripping thriller, Death of a Writer explores the price of fame, the turmoil of academic life, and the precarious position of literature in American society.