Stephen Dobyns: 21 books

“[Dobyns’ poetry] has a somber, eccentric beauty not quite like anything else around these days.”-The New York Times Book Review“[Dobyns] blends philosophical musings with daft, deft metaphors and a cheeky vernacular.”-PoetryPoet and best-selling novelist Stephen Dobyns employs...

Stephen Dobyns—whom Stephen King has described as "the best of the best"—is back with a comic suspense novel about a small-time con operation, a pair of combative detectives, and the pride, revenge, and deception that guide us all. Richard Russo meets Elmore Leonard. In the seaport town...

The latest installment in Stephen Dobyns's Charlie Bradshaw mysteries, Saratoga Payback follows the latest exploits of Saratoga Springs' most unusual and sardonic detective. Ever since the cops revoked his private investigator's license, Charlie Bradshaw has been adjusting to life as a regular...

This accessible writer's guide provides a helpful framework for creating poetry and navigates contemporary concerns and practices. Stephen Dobyns, author of the classic book on the beauty of poetry, Best Words, Best Order, moves into new terrain in this remarkable book. Bringing years of experience...

This new collection from best-selling poet and novelist Stephen Dobyns focuses on the hard, ephemeral truth of mortality, and includes the section "Sixteen Sonnets for Isabel" about the recent death of his wife. In true Dobyns fashion, these poems grip and guide readers into a state of empathy, raising the question of how one lives and endures in the world.

The sleepy community of Brewster, Rhode Island, is just like any other small American town. It’s a place where most of the population will likely die blocks from where they were born; where gossip spreads like wildfire, and the big entertainment on weekends is the inevitable fight at the local bar....

Set against the violently fragmented matrix of Detroit in 1973, Dobyns' novel is an unlikely fusion of love and violence. The plot centers around the lives of fifteen people—and three dogs—who live in a Cass Corridor rooming house. When an innocent Ontario farm boy comes to Detroit in search of his...

One by one, three young girls vanish in a small town in upstate New York. With the first disappearance, the townspeople begin to mistrust outsiders. When the second girl goes missing, neighbors and childhood friends start to eye each other warily. And with the third disappearance, the sleepy little...

It is a night racked with violence in an unnamed Latin American country. Three men brave the war-ravaged streets to meet at the opulent home of a friend, the famed surgeon Daniel Pacheco, for their semiannual gathering. As a lavish meal is served by the sullen housekeeper, interest centers on the...

Wrestling, kidnapping, subplots from the Brothers Grimm, and a young man's search for his missing fiancee are only some of the elements of Stephen Dobyns's dazzling new novel. Fun and puns mingle with daring make-believe. Larger-than-life characters play out the crucial human questions: How do we live? How do we handle our demons?

Tip your hat and meet everyman detective, Charlie Bradshaw, hero of Saratoga Springs. It's 1975, and shy, gentle small-town cop Charlie Bradshaw celebrates an unwelcome 41st birthday with a trip to New York to search Sam Cheney, the son of his high school sweetheart and a small-time drug dealer. What...

Morally flexible sidekick Victor Plotz takes on the ninth mystery for everyman detective Charlie Bradshaw. Now working at the Horse Pavillion at the Saratoga Springs racetrack, Victor finds himself being followed as a badly behaved horse named Fleshpot begins to make waves. Several murders...

Everyman detective Charlie Bradshaw returns for his second mystery. Having left behind his career as a cop for a job as a security guard at a Saratoga stable, middle-aged, divorced Charlie thinks his life has finally calmed down. Until, that is, his boss is shot while swimming. As Charlie...

Everyman detective Charlie Bradshaw finds an old case coming back to haunt him in his seventh mystery in Saratoga Springs. When a convict Charlie sent down some two decades earlier is paroled, death threats start arriving, while the skull of a woman who supposedly fled to South America shows...