Published Books
Rob’s books are available for sale lots of places. For online sales, Rob recommends Bookshop.org or Indiebound.org.
Other sites include Small Press Distribution, the University of Missouri Press, and Amazon. Better yet, order his books from your local, independent bookstore. Click here to find a bookstore near you!
WHAT SOME WOULD CALL LIES: NOVELLAS
Five Oaks/Formal Feeling, 2018
ISBN 978-1944355470
Honorable mention in the 2018-2019 Reader Views Literary Awards, short story/novella category.
“Davidson’s prose is meticulous… A pair of tales that will entertain, transport, and move readers.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A fascinating collection… extraordinary works that are a pure treat to read.” —Reader Views
“The two novellas that comprise What Some Would Call Lies showcase in different ways Rob Davidson’s keen understanding of a wide range of human beings and his tenderness toward even the worst of them. One piece is grounded in realism; in the other, just as convincingly, a ghost makes an appearance or two. Wryly funny at times, at other times heartbreaking, on the constant verge of illumination, this book is a deep pleasure to read. A paean to the love that persists in families alongside grievous damage.”
—Sharon Solwitz, author of Once, in Lourdes
“In the two wondrous novellas that make up What Some Would Call Lies, Rob Davidson plumbs the recesses of domestic life as played out in the colorful but uncelebrated towns and cities of the American interior. With candor and compassion, these stories honor the enduring bonds of family relationship even as they unmask the fundamental solitude that is each person’s burden in life. An elegant, magical book that manages to explore human isolation while making the rapt reader feel considerably less alone.”
—Naomi J. Williams, author of Landfalls: A Novel
SPECTATORS: FLASH FICTIONS
Five Oaks Press, 2017
ISBN 978-1944355319
Winner of the 2018 Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Short Story Collection.
“A small but mighty collection of textual snapshots… Flash fiction at its best that’s definitely worth a look.” —Kirkus Reviews
“What can we know of what’s most profound? In these brief and lyrical fictions, Rob Davidson offers us glimpses of what remains out of reach. He writes, ‘There is inside of us dark music, the melody of expectation.’ Brilliant, his dark music—whether his words fulfill or expand or thwart our desires. His wise language assures us: ‘Disappointment has its benefits, nudging us toward joy.’ Tiny marvels, these flashes. Beautiful mystery, this book.”
—Peggy Shumaker, author of Just Breathe Normally
“Sometimes you command more attention by lowering your voice. Sometimes you say more by choosing to say less. Sometimes the essence of a situation, a character, even of an entire life presents itself, suspended like a specimen, in a single gesture, a spoken phrase, an image, a glance. Rob Davidson’s stories in Spectators go straight for the metaphysical jugular, offering vividly sketched characters in whom you will surely recognize yourself, creating stealthily constructed miniature worlds in which you will surely recognize the big old world you and I walk through on a daily basis, dumbfounded and amazed and taking in the sights.”
—Troy Jollimore, author of Syllabus of Errors
“As the beautifully crafted stories of Spectators build, become brief steps and steles in a longer journey, the voices and visions, the flashes and glimpses lead us to new thresholds: that region of memory and desire, story and imagination, where we ‘eternally arrive.’ Even in all its brevity, fragmentation, and rendering of globalization’s affects, Spectators is a big, bold, expansive, and heartfelt work that shines with Rob Davidson’s masterly writing.”
—Fred Arroyo, author of Western Avenue and Other Fictions
THE FARTHER SHORE: STORIES
Bear Star Press, 2012
ISBN: 9780979374593
“Davidson is a wonderful writer, a real find. There are a lot of writers out there who can put a story together and make the surfaces of their work gleam. What is special about Davidson’s stories is something else altogether. He has the ability to make you care deeply about his characters. They become, for all their occasional quirkiness, as real as the folks next door.”
—Steve Yarbrough, author of The Unmade World
“A good short story collection ought to teach us about those sometimes tangly moments that comprise the fabric of the everyday, and it ought to make us curious about the lives of the characters beyond the stories. Like a back-fence gossip, I find myself imagining what went before, and what comes after, for the deftly-drawn characters in The Farther Shore. And Davidson transports us utterly to the places where the stories are set. The last story—”Criminals” — wondrously displays his knowledge of the island of Carriacou, even as it disturbs. In this collection, the surface glitters and seduces, while the author takes you by the hand to a thorny, subterranean psychological realm where simple answers you’ve held dear may have to be relinquished. I could not put it down.”
—Patricia Henley, author of Other Heartbreaks and Hummingbird House
“Rob Davidson writes with humor and compassion about the things that matter most: the inevitable missteps of the heart, and our endless quest to set things right again.”
—Clint McCown, author of War Memorials
“The superlative story ‘Criminals’ is layered and old-fashioned, if there is such a thing. It immediately distinguishes itself by being patient and operating by way of the reluctant voice. [Davidson] is tolerant of the real ambiguities we muddle through to be human. ‘Criminals’ is a good big story and I recommend its nuanced pleasures to your healthy attention spans.”
—Ron Carlson, author of The Signal
FIELD OBSERVATIONS: STORIES
University of Missouri Press, 2001
ISBN 9780826213341
Winner of the 2002 Maria Thomas Fiction Award.
“Field Observations is a collection of short stories that excel in their lucidity of storytelling. Davidson writes in a sparse and often virtually transparent style that allows us to get deeply involved with these stories before we even recognize that just as we get to know these finely-drawn characters, they are changing before our eyes and recognizing that the wolrd is far different that they once imagined.”
—Sycamore Review
THE MASTER AND THE DEAN: THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF HENRY JAMES AND WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
University of Missouri Press, 2005
ISBN: 9780826215796
“Consistently intelligent, thoroughly researched, gracefully written…. This is an excellent study, probably the definitive study of the criticism of James and Howells.”
—John W. Crowley, author of The Dean of American Letters: The Late Career of William Dean Howells