"Scantic Books is proud to present a new collection of powerful, gritty short stories by award-winning author Bob Thurber.”

If You'd Like to Make a Call, Please Hang Up: Stories 

Note from the Author

A few of the selections in this collection were drafted 30 years ago, and they taught me how to write while I was writing them. Some of the stories later won a prize or garnered praise from people who really know their stuff and that instilled great confidence. Here are stories that broke my heart or fixed my heart, whichever was necessary at the time.

From the Back Cover

“Bob Thurber is lightning in a bottle. His writing reaches in and grabs your heart and squeezes it tight. Bob’s work is visual and emotional and beautiful in its poignancy. He’s a master of sparse, surgical prose. Wise well beyond his years, one wonders at his human insight. I would read his grocery lists.” - Vincent Carrella, author of The Serpent Box

"Less is more, and Bob's the best. Drink these stories like a fine wine, with their deep notes of sturdy oak and bitter overtones of sage, and a whimper of honeysuckle to finish. You'll crave more, I promise." -- Susan Pieters 

"Thurber's world is a terrifying world, an unclean world, populated by unclean characters, thinking unclean thoughts, committing unclean acts, narrated by an unclean voice. Only a poet could make you want to read that. I couldn't put this down." -- Jon Gluckman

 link to the paperback on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1679392522?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

It generally takes a few days for them to connect the paperback with the ebook, 

which is available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083CWH749

*

And just for fun:  Here’s an old recording of a phone operator (clearly promoting my book.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOsrdddHOV0

Happy 2020

Bob
http://www.bobthurber.net/

New Release: IN FIFTY WORDS! (micro fictions)

Just Released:
IN FIFTY WORDS! 
(micro fictions)

An eclectic collection of micro fictions, each exactly 50 words. 

It requires no hyperbole or special boldness for me to assert that Bob Thurber is the best author of 50-word stories on Earth. 

—Tim Sevenhuysen, FiftyWordStories.com

Kindle & Paperback (94 pages)

"Bob has a unique gift for using subtle phrasing and well chosen vocabulary to draw readers into larger worlds, deeper characters, and more refined conflicts, plot points, and thematic explorations than a fixed length of merely 50 words seems like it should ever allow.  — Tim Sevenhuysen FiftyWordStories.com

 In Fifty Words. Bob’s latest gift to the flash fiction world and its eighty stories will put a magnet on your compass and whirlpool you through a master’s course of what exactly this briefest of literary forms can do with a subtle boldness that very few writers can muster. — NUNUM Literary Magazine

   

Read the Full Review:  https://www.nunum.ca/blog/in-fifty-words-by-bob-thurber

Release Date for New Edition of Paperboy

Next Tuesday, May 31st, I'll celebrate my 61st birthday, along with the release of a new edition of Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel (2016) published by Shanti Arts (Orignially published by Casperian Books in 2011)

Here's the press release:

HTML / PDF

PreOrder Link: Purchase from the publisher. 

audio version of "A Note to Hansel" at BoundOff.com

A selection from "Nothing But Trouble" is available at www.Boundoff.com

Bound Off Short Story Podcast: Issue 104
Released September 15, 2014

A Note to Hansel, Thirty Years Too Late
Written by Bob Thurber and read by Kelly Shriver.
8 minutes and 30 seconds. Starts at 9:25.



http://boundoff.com/

"The Trouble with Thurber"

  Christine Cote writes:

His stories are rough and tough, sometimes disturbing. Still, they’re hard to put aside. Something about his straightforward, succinct, and, dare I say, sincere writing style keeps you tethered to his work. I think it’s because his writing is true—not in the sense of being autobiographical—but in the sense that they germinate and grow from that place in him that remembers his difficult beginnings. His background is the breeding ground for his stories. So they are true, coming forth from his experiences, his difficulties, and, as he says, his ability to endure.

Read "The Trouble With Thurber" at Shanti Arts

eBook Now Available

eBook now available from Google Play

 (other versions available soon)

Updated links:

Amazon,  B&N,  Direct from Shanti Arts

Reviews / Articles

Shanti Arts Blog: The Trouble With Thurber (May 4, 2014)

RUCKERPEDIA: Nothing But Trouble (April 30, 2014)

North Attleboro Author Has More Stories to Tell (April 9, 2014)

Book Release Announcement (March 31, 2014)

About The Title

 

The title of the book comes from a remark my mother often made: “Unless you’re rich, life is nothing but trouble, so you damn well better get used to it.”

There are 34 stories and 43 photographic images.

The  stories are grouped under 7 sections:

  Fathers and Fools

  Women and Children

  Marriage and Divorce

  Love and Death

  The Wicked and The Virtuous

  Art and Artifice

  So Forth and So On

For the most part, these are small, fierce stories full of small cruelties,  sharp-tongued offhand remarks, and those careless, thoughtless actions that too often spin lives into new and sometimes odd directions; those moments when the joys and wonder in our lives,  all our blessings become overshadowed by a sense of sorrow, grief, confusion and a prickly feeling of regret; those moments when we ask ourselves: how did I end up in this mess, this situation, this condition, this moment, this peculiar state of being. But at that point, it’s too late. Trouble has found us.

Available at local bookstores and online booksellers. 

* * *

Nothing But Trouble

Stories by Bob Thurber • Images by Vincent Louis Carrella
Shanti Arts Publishing  • ISBN: 978-0-9885897-6-6 • Price $22.95 

 For more information visit the publisher's website