Bøker av Barry Knister

Someone Better Than You is a comic novel of manners that demonstrates it's never too late to "know thyself." The novel also dramatizes how, in a time of relentless change, remembered private experience is what redeems daily life.It's early June. Change-averse and critical of the young, retired newspaperman Brady Ritz is seeing off his artist stepdaughter Jane and her family at Florida's Fort Myers Airport. The visit has obviously not gone well, but it's clear that Brady sees Ashley, Jane's four-year-old as a rebellious kindred spirit.On the drive back to Naples, Ritz's estranged wife calls him from their Michigan home. He tunes her out as she begins a familiar lecture: the publication of a collection taken from his secret satire column in a little magazine has hurt and angered friends and family. Ritz dismisses such talk as the whining of humorless people "mired in a steamy compost mound of feelings."Back in Donegal Golf and Country Club, his gated golf community, we see that Ritz has offended almost everyone. But not Ace Foley, a right-wing exercise fanatic with dementia. Ace represents the social and political bubble occupied by many enjoying an upscale retirement.Ace leaves. Bitter over the failed visit with Jane and at being left by his wife, Ritz calls Sunshine Urbanski, a clever young "sex worker" he recently met in a Naples restaurant. She comes to his club, and when she presses him to talk about his wife, Ritz tells her "She suffers." With odd certainty, Ritz knows this is true: "Sitting in a bar with a hooker, he has thought his way to something worth remembering."Their date is interrupted by the arrival of Ritz's older, latter-day-hippy stepdaughter Anne, and her two children. Ritz has never forgiven Anne for her counter-culture revolt in adolescence. She tells him she will leave the next day to visit friends.The following morning, Ritz's likeable, blind neighbor Murray Grunwald makes Ritz read aloud the snarky column on karaoke that caused so much anger at the club. Hearing his own words, Ritz decides to apologize on karaoke night. During "rehearsal" in his walk-in closet, he discovers that Anne has left her dog in his house. Alone all day, it has urinated on the rug."I'm sorry." The dog won't look at him. It's been in here since ten this morning. Seven hours, and not a sound. "Your name's Truman." Nothing. Ritz goes in the bathroom and grabs a hand towel. He runs it under the faucet, comes back and drops to his knees. "I know all about it," he says, rubbing hard. "I have an enlarged prostate. I couldn't last three hours."This sincere apology to a dog contrasts with the following night's disastrous fake apology at karaoke: the song Ritz sings turns out to be the signature song of a man who has lost his larynx to cancer. It also initiates the process by which the dog will help Ritz recover what he has long suppressed in his relations with people: a capacity for feeling and kindness.Anne returns, and soon leaves in anger with her children. Ritz's neighbor Murray sends him to another neighbor's house. Crazy Ace Foley has wandered into Daisy Pruitt's. Daisy has had lots of "work done," and cosmetic surgery is something else Ritz wrote about. Daisy denounces him, and he leaves with Ace.At the novel's midpoint, Ritz discovers Anne has again left her sad dog. A thunder storm rages, and he does his best to comfort the terrified animal. He calls her previous owner, and learns that, like himself, Truman is suffering over the loss of a companion.A growing sense of guilt leads Ritz to visit Aspen Afternoons, the nursing home where Ace Foley has been taken. Ritz now sees a reality he has always ignored.The novel ends with Natalie Ritz returning to Naples. In the first person, she explains the suffering that has kept her gone so long.

Journalist Brenda Contay Doesn't Look for Trouble-But It Keeps Finding Her...When she said "yes" too often in college, she became "the anything goes girl." Pretty soon her sex life figured in locker-room graffiti.But when Brenda Contay makes it big on local TV as WDIG's Lightning Rod reporter, everything seems to be turning around for her. Except succeeding in tabloid TV because your butt looks good in Levis isn't much different from Anything Goes.That's why Brenda quits television to learn the truth behind an old lover's death. Vince Soublik drowned recently, off a tiny island in the Pacific. But All-state swimmers like Vince don't just drown.When she gets to the island, Brenda learns that Vince's death was collateral damage in a scandal of global proportions. And since it involves one of the ten richest men in America, Brenda's chance of living to break the story is next to zero.But you never can tell about The Anything Goes Girl: she just hates to lose.

HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO TO PROTECT YOUR CHANCE FOR HAPPINESS?Journalist Brenda Contay seems to have it all: a Pulitzer Prize, plenty of money and lots of friends. Just one thing is missing: a relationship that counts.That seems about to change when lawyer friend Marion Ross invites Brenda to go fishing in northern Minnesota. But they won't be roughing it: they'll be staying on a big, comfy houseboat. Charlie Schmidt has a cabin nearby, and before long, Brenda is thinking a lot about Charlie's gracefulness and good looks.But two other men have followed the women. Louis Rohmer knew Marion in college, and has an Internet scheme to steal everything she's worth. Jerry Lomak is much more dangerous: Marion's legal skills destroyed him in court. He's headed for prison, but Lomak has no intention of doing time, or of letting a woman lawyer get away with her "crimes."It's a beautiful place, northern Minnesota. Cold, clear, unblemished. But none of it will count when Brenda Contay must choose between losing her chance for happiness, or committing a terrible crime.