Showing results by author "Michael J. Vaughn" in All Categories

Having finally struck rock bottom in Portland, Oregon, Marina Quantrill hits the road in her janky station wagon, headed for San Francisco. Her drive down the coast offers a sudden streak of good luck: a winning lottery ticket, free muffins, a possible job opening and a chance meeting with the director of the San Francisco Opera! It's all so great that Marina's beaten-down brain grows wary. Is this all really just coincidence, or perhaps some guardian stalker? A wild, enchanting ride from the acclaimed author of Mermaids' Tears and East of the Cookie Tree. "Like so many of Mr. Vaughn's ...

When River Freeman gets an opportunity to live in a bargain beach home in Carmel, Caifornia, she takes it. Unfortunately, this puts her son Rusty in the position of new kid just as he's hitting sixth grade. With his advanced vocabulary and love of books, he's a primary target for twelve-year-old boys and their difference detectors. With a comic and slightly violent solution, Rusty manages to wriggle out, but just then their tenant, college student Autumn, suffers a terrible family tragedy that sends the household into a grief-ridden funk. It's a long road back to the good life, but it might...

Karen is a free-range comet in a compact car, roaming the Pacific Northwest in an attempt to escape her life. She winds up in Jackpot, Nevada, a “veritable Brigadoon of a town” on the Idaho border. Gerry is Jackpot’s resident photographer, condemned to a lonely existence by a ten-year-old tragedy. Should the comet and the dark star meet, they will weave an extraordinary and odd friendship, chipping away at each other’s guilt and working their way to the path of totality. Michael J. Vaughn is the author of twenty-one novels, including the acclaimed psychological thriller, The Popcorn...

Fifty-year-old Bill Harness is on a strange but seemingly benign journey, rambling across the country in an old Pontiac and leaving large anonymous checks with promising young opera singers. His fuel, however, is sorrow, and it isn't until he arrives in Seattle and befriends Gabriella Compton, a phenomenally talented soprano, that he is able to address the three great tragedies of his vocally gifted family. An intensely musical tale from the award-winning author of The Popcorn Girl and Operaville. "The true gem of Gabriella's Voice is the fluid, eloquent, and incredibly knowledgeable ...

Karz Bar in Gig Harbor, Washington, is home to the best karaoke singers in the county - and the best hostess, Channy Lebeque, a young transplant from Alaska. But Channy's gracious exterior hides a dark past - a past that might explain her late-night cigar-smoking sessions on the Jerisich Dock. It takes the arrival of Ruby Cohen - a talented singer who pours insults on anyone who gets close - to bring out the truth. On a wild Halloween night, Ruby gets her final comeuppance - a firing squad equipped with raw eggs - and forces Channy to talk about the husband who went to Iraq and never returned.

Award Winner, 2014 San Francisco Book Festival. The more Michael Moss refuses to watch his conductor, Amy Fine, the more she becomes determined to make him watch. The ensuing battle of wills - and his curious flare for public soakings - threatens to pull Michael out of the deep freeze, and force him to exorcise Stacy Wilkes, the tempestuous alcoholic who turned his heart to stone. From the author of The Popcorn Girl and Operaville.

"Spinal Tap for cover bands!" When Arie leaves her band, Slow Children, for bigger stages, her boyfriend Kev is left to deal with Casey, the dreaded Guitarist's Girlfriend, whose mediocre vocals threaten to chase away their hard-won following. He finds solace with the neglected married lady next door, but then Arie returns from her tour, so traumatized by some backstage event that she wanders the house for hours, maniacally singing. A comic and unexpectedly profound novel from a musical insider.

Shawn Turk flees his bible-thumping hometown girlfriend only to fall for another Christian, this one named after his new city. But Tacoma is different - she writes her own rules, and her beliefs don't preclude adventurous sex and agnostic boyfriends. Until the night she tries to pull a foxhole conversion, and sends Shawn walking across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge at midnight, holding a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. A provocative religious romance from the author of the best-selling atheist novel The Popcorn Girl. “Vaughn takes normal human beings and emotions and makes them ...

When Chris Weathers finds an oddly alluring artwork in a beachtown coffeehouse, he thinks he's found the answer to the visions invading his button-down life. But when he becomes the patron of its creator, a semi-homeless painter named Marcello, he unsettles the balance of his family. Being the "walking wallet" for a genius daughter and her ultra-nervous mother has its rewards, but aren't parents allowed to have lives of their own? A touching family drama from the author of the award-winning novel The Popcorn Girl.

A wide-ranging journey through atheism and its surprising digressions by Michael J. Vaughn, author of the best-selling atheist novel, The Popcorn Girl. The book goes from the author's lightweight California Methodist past into the rethinking that inspired his call for the human species to drop religion like a bad habit. Steps along the way include a visit to the radical Deists who founded America and the radical fundamentalists who intend to tear it down, as well as humorous takes on the Catholic church's new cannibalism and the Ten Commandments on a pizza box.

After escaping an abusive marriage to an Idaho white-power militiaman, Susan Blaine takes a job selling vintage autos in Santa Cruz, California. There she runs into Benjamin Hancock, the man who, three years previous, shared a wild weekend with her in Salt Lake City. The two seem a natural pair, but their respective traumas keep getting in the way. Benjamin is obviously musical but weirdly reluctant to admit it, while Susan's PTSD drives her to disappear for a month after a seemingly mild argument. Once these things finally settle down, Benjamin finds out that Susan's ex-husband is actually...

Desperate to save his children from the trauma of divorce, Hopkins Grinder arranges for a hobbyist seducer to placate his wife. A few weeks later, he discovers pictures of her on a hidden-camera porn site. Double Blind takes on the strange Puritan/pervert dichotomy of America's sexual politics with darkly hilarious - and, at times, unexpectedly poignant - results. From the award-winning author of The Popcorn Girl.

Wedding officiant Daniel Maryland is on his way to a gig in Malibu when a woman pops up in the back seat and informs him that she needs a bathroom break. Once his heart rate returns to normal, he learns that his stowaway is Gina Candiotti, a 19-year-old Oregonian who's off on what she calls a "stupid adventure." Pressed for time, Danny takes Gina to the wedding as his "second cousin" and finds that she is a fun and charming guest. And Gina finds herself at a wedding that she could never have imagined.

A dollar bill inside a chicken egg. An Orca who drags her across the Puget Sound for a chat with her dead husband. A lover who conjures a 4th of July fireworks show in October and then disappears. Channy Adams is having a strange month, and she's determined to find out why - beginning with an anonymous novel that seems to be describing bits of her life. A mind-bending lark from the author of The Popcorn Girl

A painful break-up/break-down chases high-tech marketing wiz Sandy Lowiltry from her Silicon Valley home. She comes to rest on the Oregon Coast, where she seeks solace in the opera-themed sanctuary of the Hotel Bel Canto and the arms of a handsome eccentric who spends his days combing the beach for sea glass. Sandy soon learns what the tourist ladies already know - it's easy to fall for Frosted Glass Man. Besides great sex and alarmingly intricate campsite cuisine, Frosty offers do-it-yourself mythologies that would melt even the coldest heart. But will she really leave behind Silicon ...

An amateur opera critic finds himself in an affair with the world's greatest diva in this rollicking, erotic comedy from the author of Gabriella's Voice.

Tommy Folgett's life is littered with disappointments: a broken marriage, alcoholism, and squandered artistic talent. But he did create one hell of a softball team. Under Tommy's tutelage, this hodge-podge of characters has lived out ten years of victories and defeats, joys and squabbles, on Friday nights at the Double River softball complex. They have, in fact, become a family. When a broken relationship sends Tommy back to the bottle, the self-abuse spills over to his housemate and shortstop, Honus. Tommy's envy of Honus's writing career, and the campaign of subtle sabotage that follows, ...

Escaping a family vacation in a little town east of Yosemite, Skye Pelter sings "Nature Boy" in a karaoke bar and triggers the adventure of a lifetime. Given an open calendar, a stealth '86 Toyota pickup truck and cold, hard cash, the only limits are his imagination and the Interstate Highway System. A wild, free-wheeling novel from the author of The Popcorn Girl and Operaville. "A stylistic cross between Tom Robbins, Kerouac, and Wes Anderson at their finest. Vaughn writes with a wit, tenderness, cerebral intensity and outright raunchy humor which fast becomes addictive." --CSLowe