{"product_id":"cruisers-isbn-9781400030699","title":"Cruisers","description":"As a child Frank Kohler learned of his mother’s brutal murder. Now, years later, he yearns for some affirmation that remains elusive. As a state trooper on the night shift, Russell Boyd cruises the highways of Vermont constantly reminded of the true depths of human misery. The lives of these two men will intersect only tangentially, until fate catches up with them.“A riveting, finely rendered, insight-provoking novel. . . . Rich in symbols and glittering with images, \u003ci\u003e[\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eCruisers\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e]\u003c\/i\u003e is a tense and fast-paced . . . a poem, at once hard-boiled and lyrical--a poem of and for our time.”  --Tom Nolan, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e“Dynamite. . . . Like Graham Greene or Albert Camus...”  -- \u003ci\u003eThe Denver Post\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Compulsive and relentless.” -- \u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Craig Nova takes readers on a spine-chilling journey. . . . \u003cb\u003eCruisers\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003emoves with breakneck speed. Written with clarity and vivid detail, the book is troubling, but poignant--burrowing into that shadowy, universal fear of uncertainty and malice. This book haunts, lingering in the mind long after the last page.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe Baltimore Sun\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Profound and mysterious. . . . A fascinating picture of the skewed dimensions of American life. . . . He is one of the country's most gifted novelists.\" --\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Something out of the ordinary from the very beginning.”  --Peter Straub, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e“\u003cb\u003eCruisers\u003c\/b\u003e finds Nova at the top of his form.  It’s a novel as visceral and noirish and, yes, symphonic as any he’s written. . . .  Unnerving and profound.”  --\u003ci\u003eThe Seattle Times\u003c\/i\u003eCRAIG NOVA is the award-winning author of ten novels. His writing has appeared in Esquire, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine, and Men’s Journal, among others. He lives in Putney, Vermont.RUSSELL BOYD\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTHE CRUISER MOVED FROM THE DARK ONTO THE highway in a fluid rush, but  inside, Russell Boyd felt the acceleration as a hard and yet  pleasurable bump. The engine whined as he went through the gears, and  at a hundred and ten miles an hour the lines on the road began to blur.  In the turns, Boyd accelerated, and this pushed the rear end of the  cruiser down so that it hugged the highway. In the certainty of speed,  which was at once reassuring and still exciting, he had a thrill that  was like seeing the purple approach of a storm. And where pursuit was  concerned, Russell liked the flowing attraction toward those lights up  ahead, just as he was aware, in the moment, of how he and the driver of  the other car were bound together by speed. It pulled them together  with a constant attraction, like gravity. And as the speedometer swept  upward, Russell tried to relax, to take it easy, and to make sure he  didn't miss much.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe went after was Audi with just two seats, and when he came up behind  it, he keyed the mike and asked the dispatcher for a check of the  license plate. Who owned the car, priors, outstanding warrants, unpaid  fines. The dispatcher couldn't say who was in the car. Boyd turned on  the blue lights, and the Audi pulled over, the driver making a signal  when he did so.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBoyd angled the cruiser's nose turned toward the passing traffic, and  he turned the wheels, too, so that if the cruiser got rear-ended, it  wouldn't hit him as he stood next to the Audi. Then he opened the door  and swung into the shudder of air that was left by a passing car. The  anxious trembling of wind was enhanced by the throbbing of blue light,  and Boyd hesitated, taking a moment to look around. Some nights when it  was cold he saw the indifferent stars, which were the color of the blue  haze beneath the lights from a Sunoco gas station. When he was scared,  which was the next step up from being alert, the haze appeared to him  like ground mist spilling into an open grave. This didn't last long,  and he was glad when dread receded into the part of the mind where  shadows blended with only half-formed apprehensions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere were other times, though, when everything was going as it should,  when the speed had its effect on him, like music, and then the haze  beneath the lights of a gas station appeared to him like the steam when  Zofia was in the shower and the liquid sheen of water ran down her hips  and legs. Boyd couldn't quite recall her as well as he wanted, not  photographically, but he was reassured by something else, which was the  seep and itch of desire. But even so, he still wanted to be precise  about what happened the instant she came into a room in the evening  when he had been waiting for her. It was as though the room was  suddenly filled with . . . he wasn't sure what to call it. He knew she  changed the room, but he couldn't say more than that. And even though  he wasn't sure what the precise word was, he knew that when Zofia came  into the room, her hair moving into the light of a lamp, he instantly  existed in a state of pleasurable alertness. Then she'd drop her  papers, her teacher's roll book, kick off her shoes, drop her skirt,  and stand there looking at him. \"I'm going to take a shower,\" she would  say. \"Want to come with me?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow he looked for a detail about the Audi that would tell him  something, a smell, a broken light, the way the car sat on its springs.  Was it carrying something heavy? Was the license plate clean while the  rest of the car was dirty? Were the people in the car passing anything  between them? Were they red-eyed and slurring on alcohol or something  else? Were their pupils like pinholes? He stood there in the blue light  and put his hand on his pistol, which was made out of stainless steel  to protect it from the corrosiveness of road salt. Then he took his  hand away, not wanting the cheap reassurance of the thing. Reassurance  came, as it always did, from the way he spoke, and in trying to make  sure he gave people a way out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Hi, how are you tonight?\" he said to the driver. His voice was one cut  above neutral, more friendly than not. \"Do you know why I stopped you?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe woman in the passenger seat put one hand to her head, as though the  man she was with had made her so angry it had given her a headache.  Boyd saw her dark hair and black coat and felt again that sense of  entering someone's private place. People built up history in a car, one  word or act at a time, just as they consumed liquor in it or flirted  and had sex or where, from time to time, a long-hidden betrayal was  discovered, just as the implications of it were made clear, too. (\"Do  you really want to know? Do you? Are you sure? Well, I didn't do it  with him, but I wanted to . . .\") The driver passed over his license  and the registration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBoyd went back to the cruiser and wrote out the ticket, which was for  eighty-five in a sixty-five. It could have been eighty-nine or even  ninety, but Boyd gave him a break. Then he got out and started back  toward the Audi, and though his business was done, he still thought  that the most dangerous time was when you thought everything you saw  was one thing, but really it was another, and that the people in the  car weren't quiet because of an old disagreement but because there was  a bag of something in the back they shouldn't have, or maybe some other  ugly thing Boyd couldn't think of but would recognize when he saw it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBoyd passed the ticket over, and as the driver took it the woman said,  \"Take me home.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Home?\" the driver said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Yeah,\" she said, \"My house. You know, where my husband lives.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I thought we had been through all that,\" he said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Be careful when you pull back on here,\" Boyd said. \"People get going fast in this section.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"You hear me?\" she said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Yeah,\" the driver said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I want to get back before he finds the note,\" she said. \"Before my  husband finds it.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"He's probably read it,\" said the driver.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Look,\" she said. \"There's nothing more to say.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"All right,\" the driver said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I just want to go home. I've been thinking.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It isn't because I got a speeding ticket, is it?\" he said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"O, shut up,\" she said. \"He's listening.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBoyd wasn't really listening so much as looking at the other cars as  they went by, all of them trailing something, which he apprehended as  the small essence that every fast-moving thing leaves behind. Then he  turned and walked back to the cruiser, where he waited for the Audi to  move into the slow lane, its tail light blinking with a sad urgency. He  saw the woman in the front seat put her hand to her head one more time.  Then Boyd got back onto the highway and smoked it up to a hundred, a  hundred and ten. At the next turnaround he crossed over to the  southbound lane and went back to the place where he had waited before,  which was screened by a grove of poplar, even though at night, at this hour, he didn't need cover. The engine ticked with heat, and in the  hush of the radio, the dim lights from the dash, he thought about  Zofia. The darkness around him wasn't so grim, or when it was, he was  helped by the memory of sheets of moisture as they ran down her legs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne evening she stood in the bedroom, toweling her hair. She said, \"You  know, a friend of mine was pregnant, and when she was big, she couldn't  shave her legs. Her husband had to do it for her. She said it was the  most exciting thing. You know, lying there, feeling the tug of the  razor as it went down her calf, seeing his head bent over her as he  went about it. Careful about cutting her.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRussell had met her a month before in the parking lot of the post  office in the mill town along the Connecticut River in southern Vermont  where he lived. The town was built against a hillside, and while it  still had businesses like Crystal Oil and Ice, there was also a Thai  restaurant and a Korean one, not to mention two vegetarian outfits, a  French bakery, and dress stores that sold skirts for more than a lot of  people in town made in a week. It had a food co-op, too, which sold  organic spinach and granola. The town had the usual problems, drugs and  suicide, an ugly murder every two years, shoplifting, drunken fights,  the odd stabbing, an occasional bank robbery by someone under the age  of twenty-five.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eZofia had been changing a tire on her car, and when he had come up to  her, she had been straining to loosen a lug nut. Her arms trembled with the effort, and when he said, \"Would you like a hand?\"she said, \"No.  It's all right. Thanks.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhile she was still straining, he put his hand next to hers on the lug  wrench. When he pulled up, the nut gave with a squeak and with  something that both of them felt in their hands, which was a soft  release. Most of the work had been done, and all it took was a little  more pressure. She looked up, still feeling that soft, giving release.  Then she went on to the next one, which she strained against, too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Well?\" she said. \"Aren't you going to help with this one?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe helped her get the tire over the bolts and to tighten the nuts down,  and then she stood there, looking at him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"What do you do, you know, when you're not helping people change tires?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I'm a cop,\" he said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"O,\" she said. \"Like with a gun?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Yeah,\" he said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Have you shot anyone?\" she said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe didn't want to talk about this, since it was a matter, as far as he  was concerned, of infinite bad luck.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"No,\" he said. \"What about you?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"No,\" she said, laughing. \"I haven't shot anyone. At least not yet. I'm  a teacher.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow at two in the morning, in the turnout between the northbound and  southbound traffic, he listened to the subdued crackling of the radio,  the dispatcher's voice at once dispassionate and concerned, and he saw  the green and orange of the gas gauge, the promise of the tach, its  needle lying there like some sleeping thing, the red digital readout of  the radar. The cars approached from the south, their lights appearing  yellow, although here and there he saw the new silver-blue varieties.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe luminescence from the headlights moved through the car in sheets,  and with them, welded by an invisible seam, were the shadows. They  swept through the front seat, the light and darkness combined like the  surface of the moon. These moments in the car often led him to brood  about other things, too, such as the sudden, unexpected sound of  gunfire, the flashes all mixed up with the surprise of them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBoyd knew that in going up to cars in the dark, and in other things he  had to do, such as approaching houses where there was trouble, or  answering calls when things went wrong, he would come across someone  who was a perfect expression of malice, and every now and then it  occurred to him that his entire life was dedicated to finding the  person he was most afraid of. That was the trouble with those hours  when he was alone: the night was filled with so many possibilities, not  only those on the highway, but his own brooding conclusions about how  things really were.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo he sat there waiting for the noise of the radar, the little squeak,  squeak, which went off from time to time. Ninety-one, maybe  eighty-nine, somewhere in there. Then he started the engine and felt  the hard bump of acceleration. Mostly, though, he had time to think of  Zofia as she came into a room, her hips moving in that languid sway.  She lived in a small house at the end of a drive that wound through  some scrubby poplar mixed with a couple of birch trees.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the midst of the shift, the blue throb from the top of the cruiser,  the spotlight, the gauges on the dashboard, the needles as orange as  the tip of a soldering iron, the toaster-filament color of the radar,  all seemed unnaturally bright. Every object was covered with a haunting  glitter, which was a matter of fear melding with light. But as the  night ended, as he turned off the highway and went toward Zofia's  house, the bright light, the reds, blues, and yellows as garish as  neon, began to fade. By dawn, everything was washed out. The trees, the  road, the houses, even the most brightly painted cars, looked as though  seen through fog. As the fatigue came on like a drug, he wondered what  he would do if he had to live without those intense lights, so  perfectly enhanced by his own excitement. He suspected that during the  day he was only a ghost of himself and that the time he really lived  for was when the sun went down, as though he was a creature of the  dark, kept alive on adrenaline and speed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe used his key to open the door. The shadows of the house were silent  and reassuring, not black so much as like dark gray silk. When he went  through them, they left him with the sense of being caressed by the  place where she lived. Upstairs, he heard the creak of the floor as she  got out of bed and went into the bathroom. He came up the stairs and  saw her as she put her full lips under the faucet to get a drink. When  she was done, she touched her lips with the back of her hand, and came  out to see him, looking him over and then pulling the Velcro straps of  his body armor, which made a lingering ripping sound.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I always like that sound. It means you're home,\" she said.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304288899301,"sku":"NP9781400030699","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400030699.jpg?v=1767724305","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/cruisers-isbn-9781400030699","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}