COMING SOON

Novelist Christopher Shaw has written a new novel. It's called The Manager.

The Manager is an Adirondacks novel, but not the usual kind. Think of it more as alt-Adirondack.

It is Lake Placid, 1982, not long after the Soviet Union's 1980 Olympic hockey loss to the U.S. The manager is a Soviet spy. His lover is a spectacular Olympic figure skater fond of quoting the poet Anna Akhmatova. So it isn't that kind of spy novel, but there are high stakes. Lines are crossed at great risk. It's more a matter of international relations invading the mundane concerns of an outdoor sports-based tourist town and disturbing the complacency, forcing our hero, Walt, the backwoods editor of Peak Experience magazine, to perform duties beyond his skill set.

You start off thinking you're reading one kind of story, but it turns out to be another kind of story.

The Manager is a novel of relationships, and an investigation into the qualities and varieties of love: romantic and erotic, certainly; also platonic and spiritual. Of oneself, of the world. Of humanity and of wildness. Of Place. Of one's work. Of history.

The Manager is an environmental novel. Aging sixties radicals and Indigenous monkey-wrenchers fighting an oil pipeline and hydro development! With scenes in Siberia, in New York City, Montreal, northern Quebec.

The Manager is funny, irreverent, satirical, earthy. It brooks no sacred cows, honors no shibboleths. It goes there. It is rated R for weed, swearing, sex with your ex-girlfriend's mother, too much drinking, persistent bad decision making, unethical journalism, the common sadnesses of illness and death. Of failure and loss. Of Change.

The Manager is Shaw's third Adirondacks book since 2018. Bill McKibben calls it, "Fun! A little bit Vonnegut, a little bit Ed Abbey." Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family, and The Undertow, calls Shaw "the William Kennedy of the North Country." Anthony Hall, editor of the Lake George Mirror called Shaw's previous novel The Power Line "the best Adirondacks book."

Look for The Manager in Spring 2025 at youcshaw.net r local indie bookstore, on Amazon, or at cshaw.net