
River of Angels
Stories
Stephen Cooper(Author)
What Books Press
Published on 7. October 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
132 pages
979-8-9989055-1-3 (ISBN)
Description
From John Fante's biographer, ten stories of blood relations, family skeletons, random forces,
and the often-violent folly of love. Set against the double-edged splendors of greater Los
Angeles, from downtown streets to studio soundstages to gated mansions, from
desert to mountains to sea, these are stories of people striving to reckon with the American
hands they've been dealt in the marked-card gamble of their lives.
A stoner son heading off to fight in a war drives his mother to see the eye doctor.
A fourth-grade Catholic-school teacher, unattached, meets her match made in hell.
Desperado artist-lovers flee the scenes of their crimes.
A stranger knocks at the front door...
Mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, husbands, wives, and roving agents of chaos collide here with sometimes comic, often tragic but always lasting effects. In story after story something happens that matters-not least to the reader.
More details
Language
English
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 8 mm
Weight
203 gr
ISBN-13
979-8-9989055-1-3 (9798998905513)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Stephen Cooper is the author of Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. He has worked as a longshoreman on the docks of Los Angeles Harbor, a mule packer in the Eastern Sierra, a guard in Stockholm's subway system, and at sundry other jobs. Long a Professor of English at California State University, Long Beach, he has written and published on both literature and film. He also cowrote and produced the Netflix Original Documentary Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski. River of Angels is his first story collection.