Cover of Minister Without Portfolio
Read Time: ~5.5 hr

Minister Without Portfolio

by Michael Winter (2014)

About this book

Henry Hayward is a drowning man. In a quest to find meaning in an emotionally arid life, Henry travels to Afghanistan as an army-affiliated contractor, where he becomes embedded in the regiment with which his friends are serving. But everything changes during a tragic roadside incursion. And Henry, who survives, knows in his heart that he is responsible. After returning home, Henry feels more rootless than before. Matters are complicated by the grief of Martha, his deceased friend's long-term girlfriend, with whom he once had an affair. Henry tries to make posthumous amends by planning to repair his deceased friend's home, but he hasn't taken family history or Martha's secrets into account.

Setting / LocationGlobal
Story EraContemporary
Protagonist / CoreNotable Characters

Readers who enjoyed this also loved

Cover of The Son of a Certain Woman

The Son of a Certain Woman

Wayne Johnston

Percy Joyce is afflicted from birth with a congenital disfigurement but a regular boy on the cusp of teenage-hood, filled with yearning, wild with hormones, longing for what he can't have, for wanting to be let in ... and let out; and his disturbingly alluring mother, Penelope, whose sex appeal fairly leaps off the page. Every man in St. John's lusts after her, including her sister-in-law Medina, her paying border, Pops MacDougall, with whom she carries on an affair of convenience - and Percy.

Cover of Caught

Caught

Lisa Moore

Caught by Lisa Moore is an acclaimed literary masterpiece celebrating major critical honors and timeless storytelling.

Cover of Seek my face

Seek my face

John Updike

Seek my face is a celebrated work by John Updike (Double Pulitzer Prize Winner, National Book Award Winner), recognized for masterclass storytelling and lasting literary resonance.

Cover of Black Bag

Black Bag

Luke Kennard

An out-of-work actor accepts the role of a lifetime—sitting soundlessly in a lecture theater, zipped into a large leather bag—to aid a professor’s psychological experiment. What could possibly go wrong? In Luke Kennard’s audacious new novel, a penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr. Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. Dr. Blend wants to know: how will his students react to someone zipped into an oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of Fall lectures? The role, eagerly accepted, soon yields unexpected consequences, from a professor of post-humanism developing research questions of her own—in particular, can you love someone secreted away inside a black bag?—to the actor’s childhood friend forming a vision for monetizing this unique new situation. In the end, only Black Bag will be able to say what it all means . . . A warped campus novel, an investigation into the crisis of masculinity, and an off-kilter love story, *Black Bag* is a firework of a novel: blazingly funny and profoundly humane.

Minister Without Portfolio by Michael Winter | Literally Just Books