And Why You Can’t Have One Without the Other

Love and Lies

Love and Lies. You can’t have one without the other. This book is about why.

This is a strange and hauntingly intelligent book. To read it is to see new and unsettling complexities in our most cherished relationships, as well as to understand a little better the subtle workings of our own deceitful minds

A philosophical memoir with juicy details and an aching sense of loss and yearning—in other words, something entirely strange and new from a wounded lover of the truth

Perhaps paradoxically, this is one of the most honest books I have read about love

Simon Critchley, author of The Book of Dead Philosophers

Read this book if you really want to know some of the scary truths about love--or even if, like me, you have attained the ideal of pure, truthful, transparent love... Martin writes philosophy the way I wish all philosophers would: with humor, wit, and style

Akhil Sharma, author of Family Life: A Novel

One cannot but admire Martin’s panoramic reading and his effortless summoning of philosophers past and present to bear witness

It is often claimed that philosophers 1) write badly 2) do not write about important problems that ordinary people face and 3) only raise questions and never provide answers. This book is beautifully written, deals with love and sincerity, and is genuinely useful

A former owner of a variety of jewellery operations in Texas, Clancy Martin is presently an Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. He has translated Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, has written several books for Oxford University Press, and has published many essays, reviews and short stories. He is the author of the acclaimed novel How to Sell. He is married and has three daughters.

For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer: love and lies have always been the most intimate of bedfellows. 
 
And Clancy Martin – divorced twice, married three times – is no stranger to either. 
 
With help from Plato, Machiavelli, Raymond Carver and Pinocchio, here he explores the entanglements of love, truthfulness and deceit. First, unrequited, lasting or misguided – love always goes hand in hand with secrets, and it’s time we started being honest about our lying.

How to Sell

A dazzling, dizzying debut - a high-speed American tragicomedy from an astonishing new talent.

Dirty, greatly original, and very hard to stop reading

How To Sell is a bleak, funny, unforgiving novel about how we buy and sell everything - merchandise, drugs, sex, trust, power, peace of mind, religion, friendship, and each other. It's written extremely finely, with wit and enviable self-control. A genuinely fresh, disconcerting voice

A relentless, clever, sordid novel about what lies at the heart of most transactions - sex and money

Need a reason to reconsider buying a dubious Faberge egg this week? Try this tale of sex, drugs and dirty diamonds by a former jeweller (now philosophy professor), in which a young man is sucked into the depraved dark side of the high-end gems trade.

With this fast, dark novel, Clancy Martin shows there's no reason why a former jeweler who translates Nietzsche can't write like an angel on meth

A funny, quirky takedown of the American dream. A bastard child of John Updike and Mordechai Richler, How To Sell grabs you by the tuchus and doesn't let go

Succeeds in the most important way a novel can: it makes a previously unimagined world as real as your own. A wonderful debut

A strange, dirty, inside look at the jewellery business which reads like a manic buying spree or a cocaine jag and ends so wrenchingly I still feel scarred by it

A former owner of a variety of jewellery operations in Texas, Clancy Martin is presently an Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. He has translated Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, has written several books for Oxford University Press, and has published many essays, reviews, and short stories.

Sixteen-year-old high-school drop-out Bobby moves to Dallas to join his big brother Jim in the jewellery trade. Jim's glamorous girlfriend Lisa is the best saleswoman in the business and from the moment Bobby meets her he falls under her spell. 
 
Bobby discovers a new world - glitzy, trashy and hedonistic - where sex and money rule. As the brothers' fortunes explode will their rivalry for Lisa ruin everything?

Clancy Martin

an electrifying illustration of a bad romance, supercharged with breakneck dissolution

What really sets this novel apart is [Martin’s] wit.

What really sets this novel apart is wit: the snappy one-liners which rescue Brett from being a regular tragic victim of addiction to a sassy chick who sizzles her way through most of the book.

A flushed and riveting account of some desperately, deliciously bad choices

Daniel Handler, bestselling author of We Are Pirates

Un-put-downable. Brett is a lovable heroine - a lusty, wrongheaded writer, flawed and rueful, yet charging ahead. She wants everything she knows is bad for her - alcohol, drugs, and to have violent, lurid sex with her husband's rapscallion banker - and we root for her all the way

Like a diamond, cut clean, dangerously sharp, brutally hard and yet paradoxically beautiful, ruthlessly honing in on the plight of a woman caught in the throes of alcoholism, desire, marriage and adultery

David Means, author of Assorted Fire Events and The Spot

Brett is in Central America, away from her husband, Paul, when she meets his friend Eduard. Though unimpressed with him at first, the two soon launch into a passionate affair. 
 
Unlike stable Paul, Eduard encourages Brett’s dark side. Her sobriety soon slips out of her grasp, and she finds herself on a downward spiral of sneaking off for weeks with her lover and blacking out in hotels. Brett still has the clarity to see that she is destroying her life, but is unable to stop. 
 
Though coming undone is something we all try to avoid, Love in Central America is a fiery, powerful novel, marrying tragedy and comedy, that reminds us that going off the rails is sometimes part of the ride. 
 
‘Cheating on your husband is like doing cocaine,’ says Brett at one point. ‘It’s rarely pleasurable, but try quitting.’

Clancy Martin

Praise for Love in Central America

an electrifying illustration of a bad romance, supercharged with breakneck dissolution

What really sets this novel apart is [Martin’s] wit.

What really sets this novel apart is wit: the snappy one-liners which rescue Brett from being a regular tragic victim of addiction to a sassy chick who sizzles her way through most of the book.

an electrifying illustration of a bad romance, supercharged with breakneck dissolution

What really sets this novel apart is [Martin’s] wit.

What really sets this novel apart is wit: the snappy one-liners which rescue Brett from being a regular tragic victim of addiction to a sassy chick who sizzles her way through most of the book.

an electrifying illustration of a bad romance, supercharged with breakneck dissolution

What really sets this novel apart is [Martin’s] wit.

What really sets this novel apart is wit: the snappy one-liners which rescue Brett from being a regular tragic victim of addiction to a sassy chick who sizzles her way through most of the book.

Books by Clancy Martin

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