Byliner Publishes NATE IN VENICE: A New Byliner Original by Richard Russo, the Pulitzer Prize winner and Author of Empire Falls
“Russo is one of the best novelists around.” —The New York Times
January 29, 2013—San Francisco— In this warm, bighearted novella, Nate in Venice ($2.99), just released by digital publisher Byliner, Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Russo (Nobody’s Fool, Straight Man, Empire Falls) transports his characters from the working-class East Coast of his novels to one of Europe’s most romantic cities. In classic Russo fashion, however, he packs along their foibles and frailties. His latest foray into the messy beauty of the human heart, Nate in Venice is written with the same wry humor and ready generosity for which he’s been so richly praised.
After a tragic incident with a student, Nate, a professor at a small New England college, retires from teaching and from life. He ends his self-imposed exile with a tour-group trip to Venice in the company of his overbearing, mostly estranged brother. Nate is unsure he’s equipped for the challenges of human contact, especially the fraternal kind. He tries to play along, keep up, mixing his antidepressants with expensive Chianti, but while navigating the labyrinthine streets of the ancient, sinking city, the past greets him around every corner, even in his dreams: There’s the stricken face of the young woman whose life he may have ruined, and there’s Julian, the older brother who has always derided and discounted him. Is Nate sunk? Is the trip, the chance to fall in love—in fact, his whole existence—merely water under the ponte?
Maybe or maybe not. In Russo’s world, the distance between disaster and salvation is razor thin, and a mensch can be a fool (and vice versa). Nate’s Venetian high-wire act proves as harrowing as a potboiler and as full of reversals as a romantic comedy. It’s an emphatic tribute to all the pleasures and possibilities of the novella.
About the Author: Award-winning novelist and screenwriter Richard Russo is the author of seven novels and two short-story collections. Empire Falls won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2002. His most recent book is the memoir Elsewhere. He lives with his wife in Portland, Maine.
About Byliner: Byliner commissions and publishes original stories written to be read in two hours or less. These “e-short” stories are available on phone, tablet, or computer as part of the Byliner subscription service, and can also be purchased individually through digital bookstores such as Amazon, Apple’s iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Google Play. Bestselling Byliner titles include Amy Tan’s Rules for Virgins, Margaret Atwood’s Positron, Jon Krakauer’s Three Cups of Deceit, Ann Patchett’s The Getaway Car, Nick Hornby’s Everyone’s Reading Bastard, and Buzz Bissinger’s After Friday Night Lights. On Byliner.com, readers get personalized access to an unmatched library of more than 20,000 fiction and nonfiction stories by the world’s best writers, allowing them to easily find, read, save, and share new and classic stories by their favorite authors.
Nate in Venice is available for $2.99 as a Kindle Single at Amazon, a Quick Read at Apple’s iBookstore, a Nook Snap at BarnesAndNoble.com, a Short Read at Kobo, and at Google Play. For an Advance Reading Copy or to schedule an interview with Richard Russo, please contact Clare Hertel at clare@byliner.com; 505-474-6783.
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Contact:
Clare Hertel
Byliner
(505) 474-6783
clare@byliner.com
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