Ford, RichardRichard Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi. He has published eight novels and four collections of stories, including The Sportswriter, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land and the New York Times bestseller, Canada. Independence Day was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the first time the same book had won both prizes. Let Me Be Frank with You was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in 2015. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages, and most recently was awarded the Prix Femina Étranger in France and the Princess of Asturias Prize for Literature in Spain. Richard Ford lives in Maine with his wife.

Richard Ford returns to the territory that sealed his reputation as a master: the world of Frank Bascombe

Richard Ford returns to the territory that sealed his reputation as a master: the world of Frank Bascombe

In his trio of bestselling novels - The Sportswriter, Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner-winning Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land - Richard Ford set out the zeitgeist of an entire generation, through the divining and wit of his now-famous literary chronicler, Frank Bascombe, one of the most indelible, provocative and anticipated characters in modern American literature.

In Let Me Be Frank With You, Ford returns with four deftly linked Christmas stories narrated by the iconic Bascombe. Now sixty-eight, Frank resides again in the New Jersey suburb of Haddam, and has thrived - seemingly but not utterly - amidst the devastations of Hurricane Sandy. The desolations of Sandy, which left houses, shorelines and countless lives unmoored and flattened, are the perfect backdrop and touchstone for Ford - and Bascombe. With a flawless comedic sensibility and unblinking intelligence, these stories range over the full complement of universal subjects: ageing, race, loss, faith, marriage, the real estate debacle - the tumult of the world we live in.

Through Bascombe - funny, profane, touching, wise, often inappropriate - we share the aspirations and sorrows, longings, achievements and failings of American life in the morning of the new century. With his trademark candour and brimming wit, Richard Ford brings Bascombe back in all his imperfect glory to say (often hilariously) what all of us are thinking but few will voice aloud.