Thomas McGuane Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Plays

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Best American Sports Writing Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Thomas McGuane is an American author of outdoors & nature and literature and fiction books. His works include screenplays, novels, short fictions as well as three collections devoted to his outdoor life. Thomas is a member of the Flyfishing Hall of Fame, The National Cutting Horse Association of Fame and American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Thomas was born in Michigan, the son of staunch Catholic parents who relocated to the Midwest from Massachusetts. The author attended Cranbrook boarding school in Bloomfield Hills Michigan and also worked on a ranch in Wyoming. He had a tough relationship with his father who would later shadow most of his works of fiction. Thomas envisioned himself as a writer from a very young age, admiring the adventurous life of a writer and began serious writing at the age of 16 years.

McGuane rose to glory when Ninety-Two in the Shade (1973) was published. The novel was also nominated for National Book Award. The author’s writing is famously recognized for its mastery of language, multiple takes on the counterculture of the 1960’s & 70’s, comic appreciation of the many human endeavors, and the increasing devotion to family and natural world relationships in the ever-changing American West.

Ninety-Two in the Shade

Tired of the company burn-outs and Junkies, Thomas Skelton goes to his home in Key West to take upon a wholesome life. But things get sore in America’s South, and Skelton’s intentions on becoming a skiff guide in the blue subtropical water place in on cross roads with Nichol, who has stepped up the ladders of the career by dint of unerring instincts and some repute for homicide.

Out of a deadly rivalry, McGuane has woven a novel with the impetus of a thriller and humor that is his famous contribution to the American prose. Thomas Skelton isn’t your typical American hero; he is a bit of a screw-up and a product of the 20th-century counter-culture. He is a habitual drug take, a man engaged in his own race to the bottom. He is lost to cocaine, walking aimlessly in the empty highways waiting to be declared mad any minute like any other lucid human being. As Bukowski, a writer who navigates similar waters once said, “Some people never go crazy, and so is Thomas Skelton.”

However, Skelton is not a crazy man; he is just a romantic man in a hostile world gone bad. He is an exceptional character in one of the most literary Noir novels of the late 20th century. The book sets off from the Nowheresville United States to the Everglades, the setting of many dark and brooding tales relating to the underbelly of the American Dream.

Skelton intent of giving a break from the aimless wandering and drugs a break is chasing his own dreams of becoming a fishing guide. Once he is at home, he attempts to change himself from the jaded drifter to a young and accomplished punk. He then moves into the fulsage of an old plane and then reconnect to his dysfunctional family- his grandfather to cheated on his ladder to success, his father who was once a successful warehouse owner but now pretends to be bedridden, and his girlfriend Miranda with who Skelton share some of the best sex scenes you’ll ever encounter.

Unfortunately, Nichol is determined to kill the young punk, and Thomas Skelton has a fatalistic streak that soon has him back in his own struggles to blow his mind inside out. Like aforementioned, Skelton is a romantic man; he is a man no one and nothing can save him because his sense of destiny, as well as that of his beloved country, is unshakable. And just like Nichol’s dislikes, any new comes; the narrative can only proceed in one single direction-right down to the wire.

Thomas McGuane is a prolific counterculture writer. He is also the author of Missouri Break, a well woven western book featuring Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson. Before his stint in Hollywood, the author wrote a couple of other books in the same genre narrative as 92 in the Shade. He has also written other books on fishing and horses and owns a ranch, and this seems to lend quiet poetry to the dark proceedings.

Ninety tow in the Shade is a wonderful read. The pain of Thomas Skelton dreams and his fatalistic journey across the reefs of the Everglades are amplified to the great moments of incredible literary power and unassailable life force. In Thomas McGuane world, every single word sits in its rightful place and shines even when one looks at directly.

Driving on the Rim

From one of the United States acclaimed writers, comes another novel that surprisingly takes the pulse of our times. The main characters in this dark coming journey is Berl, the man whose uncharmed life was changed for the best after his mother named him after Irving Berlin. What would he have become had he not gone to medical school, thanks to the surrogate parenting by a local physician?

However, there is a profound meaning to life beyond the professional acclaim, even in the most noblest of callings. Berl has been on a missing to find the meaning of life beyond the professional accreditation in the past few years, though with a basis for hope or scant equipment. Hard to say whether his quest has been set back or aided by his having fallen under intuition of homicide of his ex-girlfriend.

All the same, being shunned by almost all his workmates at the hospital offers him a thing to hope for. The reality of a very small town living under total surveillance, even among the people you have come to know your whole life. Luckily for Berl, it doesn’t take a village, and he’ll surely find deliverance in his continuing to practice his profession as a doctor in one way or another, as well as in the few connections he has made over the years. Overall, Driving on the Rim is a self-reflective novel written in first person perspective. Characterization, plot development is wonderfully done from the first page to the last.