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Valentine

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In a landscape that will exist only for as long as it is imagined, VALENTINE unfolds to reveal the intricacies of the human heart. In South Florida, a hurricane alert waylays a journalist in the coastal town of Piersall. This safe harbour hosts an unlikely reunion, as he miraculously finds himself stranded with a lost love. This chance encounter is merely the first in a chain of events that will again link these estranged lovers to one another. But eventually the suggestion emerges that their love may not be governed by chance alone, but by the ever-bending rules of the imagination. Investigating the nature of their love and the elusive, alienating force that separated them in the past, despite their seemingly boundless passion, this is an erotic valentine of insatiable longing and hope that will make a sensual and entrancing holiday gift.

187 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 9, 2002

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About the author

Lucius Shepard

288 books162 followers
Brief biographies are, like history texts, too organized to be other than orderly misrepresentations of the truth. So when it's written that Lucius Shepard was born in August of 1947 to Lucy and William Shepard in Lynchburg, Virginia, and raised thereafter in Daytona Beach, Florida, it provides a statistical hit and gives you nothing of the difficult childhood from which he frequently attempted to escape, eventually succeeding at the age of fifteen, when he traveled to Ireland aboard a freighter and thereafter spent several years in Europe, North Africa, and Asia, working in a cigarette factory in Germany, in the black market of Cairo's Khan al Khalili bazaar, as a night club bouncer in Spain, and in numerous other countries at numerous other occupations. On returning to the United States, Shepard entered the University of North Carolina, where for one semester he served as the co-editor of the Carolina Quarterly. Either he did not feel challenged by the curriculum, or else he found other pursuits more challenging. Whichever the case, he dropped out several times and traveled to Spain, Southeast Asia (at a time when tourism there was generally discouraged), and South and Central America. He ended his academic career as a tenth-semester sophomore with a heightened political sensibility, a fairly extensive knowledge of Latin American culture and some pleasant memories.

Toward the beginning of his stay at the university, Shepard met Joy Wolf, a fellow student, and they were married, a union that eventually produced one son, Gullivar, now an architect in New York City. While traveling cross-country to California, they had their car break down in Detroit and were forced to take jobs in order to pay for repairs. As fortune would have it, Shepard joined a band, and passed the better part of the 1970s playing rock and roll in the Midwest. When an opportunity presented itself, usually in the form of a band break-up, he would revisit Central America, developing a particular affection for the people of Honduras. He intermittently took odd jobs, working as a janitor, a laborer, a sealer of driveways, and, in a nearly soul-destroying few months, a correspondent for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, a position that compelled him to call the infirm and the terminally ill to inform them they had misfiled certain forms and so were being denied their benefits.

In 1980 Shepard attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop at Michigan State University and thereafter embarked upon a writing career. He sold his first story, "Black Coral," in 1981 to New Dimensions, an anthology edited by Marta Randall. During a prolonged trip to Central America, covering a period from 1981-1982, he worked as a freelance journalist focusing on the civil war in El Salvador. Since that time he has mainly devoted himself to the writing of fiction. His novels and stories have earned numerous awards in both the genre and the mainstream.

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5 stars
12 (19%)
4 stars
18 (29%)
3 stars
16 (26%)
2 stars
8 (13%)
1 star
7 (11%)
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Profile Image for Shota Dighmelashvili.
4 reviews10 followers
March 27, 2013
this book introduced me to the magic reality genre, which i really liked. weird old american town lovers will appreciate Shepard's work. in some crooked way, makes you think about jean genet, because of the grotesque poetic language when he's writing about simple, old-fashioned fucking. but this is the main thing i love about the author.
Profile Image for Andrey zz.
129 reviews3 followers
November 27, 2016
Я робко надеялся, что не зря читаю подробнейшие, высокодетализированные описания 45 коитусов главных героев. Что в конце прилетят инопланетяне или случится нашествие жуков-короедов. что Кинг-Конг или хотя бы Элвис окажется жив. Что всп на свете было не зря, хотя бы.

Нет. Абсолютно безпросветная порнуха. От начала и до конца.
20 reviews
August 22, 2020
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ So beautiful and like a vivid dream.
1 review
November 26, 2013
I thought that it was quite boring at the beginning and took you a while to get into it properly
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews