Wooded Shore: And Other Stories, A by Thomas McGuane; 2025. Hardcover.

Wooded Shore features nine shattering, hilarious tales of men on the outskirts of America, habituating the motels, hot dog stands, and dive bars that time forgot. They are stories of grappling with a world that is swiftly changing, and dreaming of a return to the wooded shores of youth.

In these stories, a family boating trip veers into emotional disaster while very narrowly avoiding the physical; a would-be cheater hands over his car—his prized possession—for a shot with a pretty girl; a furniture magnate and his filmmaker daughter visit his impoverished hometown; a doctor’s long-ago affair returns with a bitter pill.These are stories of grifters and dreamers, of the lovelorn and the lawless, stories of the ongoing dissonance between the lives we want and the lives this world will allow.