Sweater Girl and Other Tales of Mondauk County - Paperback

by Michael-Patrick Harrington (Author)

Sweater Girl and Other Tales of Mondauk County is a collection of novellas and stories that explores the condition of morbid nostalgia: being so bound to the past that it poisons the present and chokes the future. In the novella "Sweater Girl," a man combs through the ashes of a teenage party that took place forty years ago, looking for clues to what had transpired, including arson, an amputation, and the death of his father, while obsessing on the party's catalyst, an enthralling young sweater girl. Plus...a retired romance novelist faces her fears of intimacy in a most radical fashion...a cult member becomes consumed with an underage girl...a loner signs up for a spelling bee to impress a popular girl on the eve of an assault on the school...as a weary detective hunts the Red Ribbon Killer, a grandmother confronts the secret in her shed...an ex-boxer squares off against a mob capo when his wife disappears...a man finds a radio broadcasting from his past in the abandoned Divine Lorraine Hotel...and after his hand gets stuck to a girl's hair with paste, a giant of a boy is hunted by a vengeful mob.

Author Biography

Michael-Patrick Harrington was born in Philadelphia but calls Ambler, PA his home. Sweater Girl and Other Tales of Mondauk County is the author's fourth book, following Saving Magdalene, I See No Angels, and Deep Autumn. He has also written music criticism for magazines. His literary heroes include John Irving, Joyce Carol Oates, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton, J.R.R. Tolkien, Virginia Woolf, and more. Michael-Patrick writes every morning from 5:30 to 8:30 while playing (relatively) loud music. Please do not call him during those hours; he will not hear the phone. The author believes that one of the keys to writing is rewriting-again and again and again. A good dictionary and plenty of tea also help. Michael-Patrick graduated Magna Cum Laude from Arcadia University with an English degree. He also attended La Salle University and went to high school at Holy Ghost Preparatory School.