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Elizabeth McKenzie

Biography

Elizabeth McKenzie

Elizabeth McKenzie is the author of the novels THE DOG OF THE NORTH and THE PORTABLE VEBLEN, the latter of which was longlisted for the National Book Award and shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize; a collection, STOP THAT GIRL, shortlisted for The Story Prize; and the novel MacGREGOR TELLS THE WORLD, a Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and Library Journal Best Book of the Year. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and was recorded for NPR’s "Selected Shorts."

Elizabeth McKenzie

Books by Elizabeth McKenzie

by Elizabeth McKenzie - Fiction, Humor

Penny Rush has problems. Her marriage is over, and she has quit her job. Her mother and stepfather went missing in the Australian outback five years ago; her mentally unbalanced father provokes her; and her grandmother, Dr. Pincer, keeps experiments in the refrigerator and something worse in the woodshed. But Penny is a virtuoso at what’s possible when all else fails. There will be a road trip in the Dog of the North, an old van with gingham curtains, a piñata and stiff brakes. There will be injury and peril. There will be a dog named Kweecoats and two brothers who may share a toupee. There will be questions: Why is a detective investigating her grandmother, and what is “the scintillator”? And can Penny recognize a good thing when it finally comes her way?

by Elizabeth McKenzie - Fiction, Humor

THE PORTABLE VEBLEN is set in and around Palo Alto, amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and with the specter of our current wars looming across. A young couple on the brink of marriage --- the charming Veblen and her fiancé Paul, a brilliant neurologist --- find their engagement in danger of collapse. Along the way they weather everything from each other’s dysfunctional families, to the attentions of a seductive pharmaceutical heiress, to an intimate tête-à-tête with a very charismatic squirrel.