Wilton Barnhardt – författare

Author of Emma Who Saved My Life and Lookaway, Lookaway Gospel concerns the search for a lost first-century gospel of the Bible, a document that could shake the foundations of Christianity. Wilton Barnhardt''s narrative races through three continents, nine countries, and dozens of colorful locales, as two characters—shy theological student Lucy Dantan and hard-drinking, disillusioned ex-Jesuit Patrick O''Hanrahan—pursue rumors and clues about the gospel''s whereabouts and contents. In the end, what they discover will challenge and forever change the nature of faith.An intellectual detective story with the erudition of Umberto Eco and the grand swirling entertainment of a nineteenth-century novel, Gospel is exciting, profound, revent, and terrifically funny.

From the New York Times-bestselling author of Lookaway, Lookaway, Wilton Barnhardt’s Western Alliances is a vivid portrait of a wealthy family set against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis. This laugh-out-loud, darkly funny novel follows the Costa family—whose members are every bit as richly absurd as the characters in HBO’s Succession.Salvador, the patriarch, runs one of Wall Street’s biggest banks the summer before everything collapses; Roberto and Rachel, his two children, have never worked a day in their lives; and Lena, his ex-wife, is a scheming hypochondriac. Part travelogue, part epic family drama, the novel follows Roberto and Rachel across Europe as the two dilettantes come to terms with their father’s choices and the repercussions of his actions.Oozing with his signature satire and biting wit, Barnhardt invites readers on a literary romp from an elegant Paris apartment to a hilariously-inept London hotel, ancient churches and crypts to gleaming Mediterranean coasts, hot dog stands in Providence, RI to the best places in Manhattan, and terrifying encounters in the Serbian countryside to dangerous liaisons in Moscow, as two grown-up rich kids are forced to come of age at last. In Western Alliances Barnhardt he delivers an un-put-down-able saga examining privilege, loyalty, ambition, and what family members owe to one another.

"Move over, Tom Wolfe! Writing with brilliance and brio, Barnhardt has penned a hilarious satire which often has surprising depth and hits way too close to the truth." —Lee SmithJerene Jarvis Johnston and her husband Duke are exemplars of Charlotte, North Carolina''s high society, a world where old Southern money and the secrets behind it meet the new wealth of bankers, real estate speculators, and carpetbagging social climbers. Steely and implacable, Jerene presides over her family''s legacy of paintings at the Mint Museum; Duke, the one-time college golden boy and descendant of a Confederate general, whose promising political career was mysteriously short-circuited, has settled into a comfortable semi-senescence as a Civil War re-enactor. Jerene''s brother Gaston is an infamously dissolute bestselling historical novelist who has never managed to begin his long-dreamed-of masterpiece, and their sister Dillard''s unfortunate life decisions and losses have rendered her a near-recluse.As the four Johnston children—smart but reckless Annie, good-boy minister Bo, might be gay but that''s okay Joshua, and damaged, dangerous Jerilyn—flounder in their adult lives, Jerene must take action to preserve the family''s legacy, Duke''s fragile honor, and what''s left of the dwindling family fortune. She will stop at nothing to keep what she has—is it too much to ask for one ounce of cooperation from her heedless family? In Lookaway, Lookaway, Wilton Barnhardt has written a full-bore, headlong, hilarious narrative of a family coming apart, a society changing beyond recognition, and an unforgettable woman striving to pull it all together.Includes a bonus interview between Wilton Barnhardt and George Witte, editor-in-chief of St. Martin''s Press. A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2013