Tooth and Claw

and Other Stories

Author T.C. Boyle
A “fierce [and] funny” (Entertainment Weekly) collection of fourteen stories exploring humanity’s wild side, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tortilla Curtain

“Whether Boyle is breaking your heart or making you laugh, you just don’t care because he is so darned good at it.”—San Francisco Chronicle
 
The fourteen stories gathered here display Boyle’s imaginative muscle, emotional sensitivity, and astonishing range. There are whimsical tales, including “Swept Away,” which tells of a female ornithologist who falls in love on the blustery island of Unst, and “The Kind Assassin,” about a bored and loveless radio shock jock who sets the world record for most continuous hours without sleep—and who may never sleep again. In the title story, a young man must contend with a vicious feral cat from Africa that he won in a bar bet. And in “Dogology,” a young woman in suburban New England becomes so obsessed with man’s best friend that she begins to lose her own identity to a pack of strays.
 
Muscular, provocative, and blurring the boundaries between humans and nature, the funny and the shocking, Tooth and Claw is Boyle at his best.
Tooth and ClawWhen I Woke Up This Morning, Everything I Had Was Gone
Swept Away
Dogology
The Kind Assassin
The Swift Passage of the Animals
Jubilation
Rastrow's Island
Chicxulub
Here Comes
All the Wrecks I've Crawled Out Of
Blinded by the Light
Tooth and Claw
The Doubtfulness of Water: Knight's Journey to New York, 1702
Up Against the Wall
T. C. Boyle is a novelist and regular contributor to The New Yorker. His novels include World’s End and The Tortilla Curtain, and he has also published numerous collections of short stories. A Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern California, he lives in Santa Barbara. View titles by T.C. Boyle

About

A “fierce [and] funny” (Entertainment Weekly) collection of fourteen stories exploring humanity’s wild side, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tortilla Curtain

“Whether Boyle is breaking your heart or making you laugh, you just don’t care because he is so darned good at it.”—San Francisco Chronicle
 
The fourteen stories gathered here display Boyle’s imaginative muscle, emotional sensitivity, and astonishing range. There are whimsical tales, including “Swept Away,” which tells of a female ornithologist who falls in love on the blustery island of Unst, and “The Kind Assassin,” about a bored and loveless radio shock jock who sets the world record for most continuous hours without sleep—and who may never sleep again. In the title story, a young man must contend with a vicious feral cat from Africa that he won in a bar bet. And in “Dogology,” a young woman in suburban New England becomes so obsessed with man’s best friend that she begins to lose her own identity to a pack of strays.
 
Muscular, provocative, and blurring the boundaries between humans and nature, the funny and the shocking, Tooth and Claw is Boyle at his best.

Table of Contents

Tooth and ClawWhen I Woke Up This Morning, Everything I Had Was Gone
Swept Away
Dogology
The Kind Assassin
The Swift Passage of the Animals
Jubilation
Rastrow's Island
Chicxulub
Here Comes
All the Wrecks I've Crawled Out Of
Blinded by the Light
Tooth and Claw
The Doubtfulness of Water: Knight's Journey to New York, 1702
Up Against the Wall

Author

T. C. Boyle is a novelist and regular contributor to The New Yorker. His novels include World’s End and The Tortilla Curtain, and he has also published numerous collections of short stories. A Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern California, he lives in Santa Barbara. View titles by T.C. Boyle

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