The Queen of Bad Influences
Stories
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The Queen of Bad Influences
Narrated by:
MacLeod Andrews, Cassandra Campbell, Will Watt, Ell Potter
Pre-order Now for £14.05
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Narrated by:
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MacLeod Andrews
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Cassandra Campbell
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Will Watt
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Ell Potter
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By:
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Jim Shepard
“Jim Shepard is a fantastic writer—compassionate, funny, and fearless—[whose work] does what great writing always does: inspires us to look more closely at life, and be more caring.” —George Saunders
"A deft, audacious artist." —Norman Rush, National Book Award-winning author of Mating
In Richard Ford’s view, Jim Shepard’s “talent is so various and canny he can write about seemingly anything and make it thrilling to us,” and in these stories spanning six centuries we find viscerally evoked worlds as wildly diverse as a mercenary’s corner of 16th century Madrid, a young apprentice’s pre-Revolutionary Boston, and Edward Hyde’s London. With civil engineers and destitute veterans we encounter the devastating 1935 Labor Day hurricane in Florida, and we read the 1864 letters between Lucy in Boon, North Carolina (“Three privates are currently sleeping soundly on our porch in their muddy blankets”) and her great love, William, on the march in Tennessee (“I can’t write much for it seems we are looking for a fight every minute”), while the title story introduces us to the stubborn Constance, who had “no gift for flirtation” with men, preferring Minna, her best friend and “queen of bad influences,” as their vexed devotion unfolds in part on the liner Lusitania.
With irony, compassion, and withering humor, these stories evoke the terrible ease with which cataclysm, human-engineered or otherwise, can sweep away all we find most precious, and expose those limitations we’ve refused to address. At the same time, Shepard celebrates what is best in us: the love and friendships we sustain, and the passions and grace we grant one another.
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Critic reviews
“In a dozen bravura historical short stories, Shepard again summons his rare and prodigious gift for imagining the thoughts and feelings of people caught in catastrophes. . . . In each, Shepard deftly sketches characters of sharp wit, emotional complexity, distinct intelligence, candor, and courage. . . . These magnificent, all-consuming stories of unflinching precision, breathtaking artistry, deep compassion, and lifeline humor pit the merciless might of nature against the transcendence of love.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
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