Böcker av Stephen Spotte

Sometimes wiseguys are nice guys! Stephen Spotte's bittersweet novel Wiseguys in Paradise opens at the start of the 1960s. An unnamed drifter from southern Appalachia just out of the Army takes a job as dishwasher at an Italian restaurant in Coney Island famous as a gathering place for New York mobsters. The patrons and staff befriend him, and he falls in love with a divorced woman with a young daughter. Wary of commitment, he abandons them and hitchhikes to Key West. From there the story segues between locations as the narrator finds himself immersed in an unlikely community of love and friendship whose members include Mafia wiseguys, other drifters, a Jesuit priest/marine biologist, immigrants, gays, and lesbians. Spotte's regional dialects crackle with authenticity. Stephen Spotte's other novels include, In an Empty Room, A Conversation with a Cat, The Singing Bones, Animal Wrongs, and Witchy Illusions.

The Singing Bones recounts the life and times of eighteenth century polymath and explorer Georg Wilhelm Steller, the first European naturalist to visit Alaska.The first to propose that America was originally peopled by migrants from Siberia, Steller was aboard the packet boat St. Peter commanded by Vitus Bering on the Second Great Northern Expedition sponsored by the Russian Admiralty to determine if Asia and North America were connected by land or separated by a sea. When the St. Peter was wrecked on Bering Island in what was later named the Bering Sea, Steller cured the survivors, who were marooned and dying of scurvy, while making remarkable discoveries in natural history. He was first to describe the behavior and biology of the northern fur seal and Steller's sea lion, and his descriptions of the whale-sized Steller's sea cow and spectacled cormorant (both now extinct) are all we know about these exquisite creatures as living beings.The castaways eventually built a small vessel from the St. Peter's wreckage and sailed back to Kamchatka in autumn 1742, where Steller continued his explorations, in part while living with the indigenous Itelmen people.A blend of narrative adventure and biography, this historical first-person novel chronicles the professional visions and conflicted life of a deeply fascinating, flawed, and courageous man who devoted everything to advancing the frontiers of science and improving the lives of the native Siberians.

In a medieval French courtroom, animals are put on trial for "e;crimes"e; against mankind and must rely on preposterous legal diatribes by a court-appointed lawyer to defend them. Historical fiction has never been more uproarious as "e;master storyteller"e; Stephen Spotte unleashes this wild tale of opposing attorneys battling to defend or prosecute accused animals-including a rat and a pig-facing penalties of being hanged or burned alive at the stake. Based on actual court records, Spotte captures the wit and bluster of the era, where courtrooms were packed with cheering and heckling spectators in ever-more opaque, convoluted, and dilatory trials. By the end of this novel, Spotte uses his critically-acclaimed storytelling skills to explore still-relevant theories on legal precedent, the church vs. the state, mankind's place in nature, and animal rights. Fans of Umberto Eco, Edward Carey, and Amor Towles will devour ANIMAL WRONGS and its hilarious insights into pride, greed, and some of the most bizarre court trials in history.

In MY WATERY SELF: AN AQUATIC MEMOIR, author/scientist Stephen Spotte traces a fascinating trail through a life that began in West Virgina coal camps, drifted through reckless bohemian times of countercultural indulgence in Beach Haven, New Jersey, and led to a career as a highly-respected marine biologist. Together, these stories form a view not just of one man's life, but that of a generation that often refused to take a direct path to the workplace, insisting instead on a winding unveiling of true self-realization, to achieve previously-unimagined outcomes. For Spotte, the key was water: His years of beach living led to a self-initiated study of literature and the sea. He eventually returned to college and received his training as a marine biologist, and discovered, through his singular voice, a wet and occasionally very weird perspective on the world. His writing is engrossing throughout, the stories he shares--such as his stint as curator of the New York Aquarium at Coney Island at the tail end of the hippie era--are compelling and thoroughly enjoyable as he elevates the people and situations he encounters to mythical levels, blending empirical observation with literary prose.

Describes water chemistry, technology and the biological and physical processes of the aquarium ecosystem. Additionally, it presents fish physiology, nutrition, diseases and health maintenance. Provides usable methods and specific protocols for keeping marine fish with the emphasis on professional approaches for public aquariums.