List of Books

'Hailed upon its publication as "a classic for readers not yet born" (Philadelphia Inquirer), Birdy is an inventive, hypnotic novel about friendship and family, dreaming and surviving, love and war, madness and beauty, and, above all, "birdness." It tells the story of Al, a bold, hot-tempered boy whose goals in life are to life weights and pick up girls, and his strange friend Birdy, the skinny, tongue-tied perhaps genius who only wants to raise canaries and to fly. While fighting in World War II, they find their dreams become all too real—and their lives are changed forever.

In Birdy, William Wharton crafts an unforgettable tale that suggests another notion of sanity in a world that is manifestly insane.' (Goodreads, http://goo.gl/8An1A8)

'John Tremont, a middle-aged man with a family, is summoned to his mother's bedside after she has suffered a heart attack. When he arrives, he finds her shaken but surviving; it is his father, left alone, who is unable to cope, who begins to fail, to slip away from life. Joined by his nineteen-year-old son, John suddenly becomes enmeshed in the frightening, consuming, endless minutiae of caring for a beloved, dying parent. He also finds himself inescapably confronting his own middle age, jammed between his son's feckless impatience to get on with his life and his father's heartbreaking willingness to let go. A story of the love that binds generations, Dad celebrates the universe of possibilities within every individual life.' (Goodreads, http://goo.gl/1JOLxm)

'Set in the Ardennes Forest on Christmas Eve 1944, Sergeant Will Knott and five other GIs are ordered close to the German lines to establish an observation post in an abandoned chateau. Here they play at being soldiers in what seems to be complete isolation. That is, until the Germans begin revealing their whereabouts and leaving signs of their presence: a scarecrow, equipment the squad had dropped on a retreat from a reconnaissance mission and, strangest of all, a small fir tree hung with fruit, candles, and cardboard stars. Suddenly, Knott and the others must unravel these mysteries, learning as they do about themselves, about one another, and about the "enemy," until A Midnight Clear reaches its unexpected climax, one of the most shattering in the literature of war.' (Goodreads, http://goo.gl/YBdMnN)

'Know Scumbler in his poignant, hilarious life. Get mad at him and even cry with him. Here's Don Quixote, Santa Claus, and Faust rolled into one "thick shadow" of a man. A joyous sixty-year-old American street painter lives on the Left Bank in Paris, making a living by creating rentable apartments out of the most unlikely spaces. Mostly, however, he paints with utter delight in the creative act and discovers remarkable characters along his path: crafts-men, students, prostitutes, motorcyclists. He scumbles and fails. He digs twisting tunnels under Paris streets and builds nests: nature nests, rats' nests, birds' nests. He collects clocks and designs his own life from the "inside." Wanting to be true beyond honesty, visible past seeing to being, Scumbler scrambles, tumbles, rumbles, rambles through the ecstatic pleasure of creation and the pangs of ordinary existence.' (Goodreads, http://goo.gl/PKU8hx)

'During the Depression, a 10-year-old boy befriends a carnival stuntman and his lion cub and learns about the meaning of family, loyalty, love, and survival.' (Amazon, https://goo.gl/wxnSm5)

'An American philosopher in Paris tries to ignore the problems in his 30-year marriage and to conjure up the magic of the past. He is rewarded with miracles, griefs and new promises of love, but it is not until their children depart that husband and wife discover each has tidings for the other.' (Amazon, https://goo.gl/bXqL4c).

'Set in a remote Italian village, this novel focuses on William Wiley and his family as they separate his fantasy about a magical fox, whom he claims to know, from reality. The author also wrote "Birdy", "Dad", "Midnight Clear", "Pride", "Scumbler" and "Tidings".' (Amazon, https://goo.gl/Vy7CEj).

'This love story, by the author of Birdy and Dad, is set in Paris in 1975. Jack, 49, and American, has walked out on his fast-lane corporate career and troubled marriage to return to his first love, painting. He lives a hand-to-mouth existence in Paris, struggling to express his long-suppressed feelings through his art. While painting in the park (and blocking the sidewalk), an elderly blind woman walks into him, knocking him off his feet and getting herself smeared with paint. Mirabelle, 71, is small, elegant, and radiant. They fall slowly, carefully, and improbably in love, and into a tender physically passionate affair. While Mirabelle's tremendous sense of life inspires Jack to paint with new vision and freedom, he shares with her the mysteries of passion, and frees her from the traumatic event that blinded her in childhood.' (Amazon, https://goo.gl/f0cB2L).

'In August 1988 the family of William Wharton's daughter were burnt in their car. This is their story, told like a novel in four parts. Part One is told by the daughter, Part Two by her husband, Part Three by William Wharton. The fourth part tells of Wharton's struggle to see justice done.' (Amazon, https://goo.gl/gvMDys).

'The title brings to mind a luxury vessel on the most glamorous river in the world, but readers expecting to learn about the high life in France will be in for a surprise. In this charming memoir, painter and novelist Wharton (Birdy) instead gives us literally the nuts and bolts of building a houseboat, along with generous dollops of humor and local color. As a struggling artist in Paris with his schoolteacher wife and four children, Wharton decided to build his own boat after visiting that of an acquaintance in the mid-1970s. He recounts the family's adventures in making their dream come true. They gave up their Paris flat and moved onto the boat, which docked 12 miles downriver from Paris at Le Port Marly. There they spent the next 25 years adding the finishing touches. The most poignant moment comes at the wedding of oldest child, Kate, aboard ship. The author reminds us that she, her husband and their two children were to perish in 1988 in an Oregon fire, a tragedy he recounted in Ever After. Some readers might have preferred learning more about life aboard the boat than about the details of building it, but this work will satisfy Wharton devotees and Francophiles alike.' (Amazon, https://goo.gl/qoQexf).

'A previously unpublished wartime memoir from the acclaimed author of Birdy and A Midnight Clear. One of the most acclaimed American writers of his generation, and author of classic novels such as Birdy, A Midnight Clear and Dad, William Wharton was a very private man. Writing under a pseudonym, he rarely gave interviews, so fans and critics could only guess how much of his work was autobiographical and how much was fiction. Now, for the first time, we are able to read the author's own account of his experiences during the Second World War, events that went on to influence some of his greatest novels. These are the tales that Wharton never wanted to tell his children. It is an unforgettable true story from one of America's greatest writers.' (Amazon, https://goo.gl/PxJmw7).