Purchase

Amazon

Kindle

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Apple Books

Google Play

Books-A-Million

Indie BookShop

Ripped Bodice

Add to Wish List

Also by Mark Mayer:

Aerialists, February 2019
Hardcover / e-Book

AERIALISTS
By: Mark Mayer

Bloomsbury Publishing
February 2019
On Sale: February 19, 2019
304 pages
ISBN: 1635572177
EAN: 9781635572179
Kindle: B07HHHBQZS
Hardcover / e-Book
Add to Wish List

Fiction Family Life

Welcome to the surreal and sublime human circus of Mark Mayer’s Michener-Copernicus–winning debut, Aerialists, a fiercely inventive collection of nine stories in which classic carnival characters become ordinary misfits seeking grandeur in a lonely world.

Under the luminous tent of Mayer’s prose, we meet an unforgettable caravan: a heartsick boy finds a new mentor in a tough-talking female bodybuilder. A navy recruit grapples with the impending loss of his childhood by building an exact replica of his neighborhood in code. With the help of a flatulent dog, a boy tries to reunite his parents. A wilderness expert tries to seduce his love interest with the promise of showing her an elusive mountain lion.

The circus has always been a collection of American exaggerations—the bold, the beautiful, the freakish, the big. Aerialists finds these myths in everyday contemporary life. Mayer’s deftly drawn characters illuminate small-scale spectaculars, and their attempted acts of daring and feats of strength are rendered with humor, generosity, and uncommon grace.