John Irving

In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable's girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County-to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto-pursued by the implacable constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them. A tale that...

An American classic first published in 1985 by William Morrow and adapted into an Academy Award-winning film, The Cider House Rules is among John Irving's most beloved novels. Set in rural Maine in the first half of the twentieth century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch-saint and obstetrician, founder and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Cloud's, ether addict and abortionist. It is also the story of Dr. Larch's favorite orphan,...

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While reporting a story from India, New York journalist Patrick Wallingford inadvertently becomes his own headline when his left hand is eaten by a lion. In Boston, a renowned surgeon eagerly awaits the opportunity to perform the nation’s first hand transplant. But what if the donor’s widow demands visitation rights with the hand? In answering this unexpected question,...

The story of the actor Jack Burns. His mother, Alice, is a Toronto tattoo artist. When Jack is four, he travels with Alice to several North Sea ports; they are trying to find Jack's missing father, William, a church organist who is addicted to being tattooed. But Alice is a mystery, and William can't be found. Even Jack's memories are subject to doubt. Jack Burns goes to schools in Canada and New England, but what shapes him are his relationships...

The story of T.S. Garp, the bastard son of a feminist leader who is ahead of her time. A comic and compassionate coming-of-age story.

Tells the story of Homer, who has lived nearly his entire life within the walls of an orphanage in rural Maine and has been trained by its proprietor, Dr. Wilbur Larch to be Larch's successor. Wally Worthington brings his pregnant girlfriend, Candy Kendall, to the orphanage because Dr. Larch provides medically safe, albeit illegal, abortions. Homer leaves with them to work on Wally's family apple farm. When Wally leaves to fight in World War II, Homer...

When terrorists kill his family in cold blood, a highly respected journalist is driven to the edge of murderous obsession in his quest for justice and revenge.