Author: Michael H. Rubin
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807156205
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 358
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Book Description
The bodies of an elderly colonel and his comely young wife are discovered on the staircase of their stately plantation home, their blood still dripping down the wooden balustrades. Within the sheltered walls of Cottoncrest, Augustine and Rebecca Chastaine have met their deaths under the same shroud of mystery that befell the former owner, who had committed suicide at the end of the Civil War. Locals whisper about the curse of Cottoncrest Plantation, an otherworldly force that has now taken three lives. But Sheriff Raifer Jackson knows that even a specter needs a mortal accomplice, and after investigating the crime scene, he concludes that the apparent murder/suicide is a double homicide, with local peddler Jake Gold as the prime suspect. Assisted by his overzealous deputy, a grizzled Civil War physician, and the racist Knights of the White Camellia, the Sheriff directs a manhunt for Jake through a village of former slaves, the swamps of Cajun country, and the bordellos of New Orleans. But Jake's chameleon-like abilities enable him to elude his pursuers. As a peddler who has built relationships by trading fabric, needles, dry goods, and especially razor-sharp knives in exchange for fur, Jake knows the back roads of the small towns that dot the Mississippi River Delta. Additionally, his uncanny talent for languages allows him to pose as just another local, hiding his true identity as an immigrant Jew who fled Czarist-Russia. Michael H. Rubin's The Cottoncrest Curse takes readers on the bold journey of Jake's flight within an epic sweep of treachery and family rivalry ranging from the Civil War to the civil rights era, as the impact of the 1893 murders ripples through the twentieth century and violence besets the owners of Cottoncrest into the 1960s.
Author: Michael H. Rubin
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807156191
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 318
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Book Description
The bodies of an elderly colonel and his comely young wife are discovered on the staircase of their stately plantation home, their blood still dripping down the wooden balustrades. Within the sheltered walls of Cottoncrest, Augustine and Rebecca Chastaine have met their deaths under the same shroud of mystery that befell the former owner, who had committed suicide at the end of the Civil War. Locals whisper about the curse of Cottoncrest Plantation, an otherworldly force that has now taken three lives. But Sheriff Raifer Jackson knows that even a specter needs a mortal accomplice, and after investigating the crime scene, he concludes that the apparent murder/suicide is a double homicide, with local peddler Jake Gold as the prime suspect. Assisted by his overzealous deputy, a grizzled Civil War physician, and the racist Knights of the White Camellia, the Sheriff directs a manhunt for Jake through a village of former slaves, the swamps of Cajun country, and the bordellos of New Orleans. But Jake's chameleon-like abilities enable him to elude his pursuers. As a peddler who has built relationships by trading fabric, needles, dry goods, and especially razor-sharp knives in exchange for fur, Jake knows the back roads of the small towns that dot the Mississippi River Delta. Additionally, his uncanny talent for languages allows him to pose as just another local, hiding his true identity as an immigrant Jew who fled Czarist-Russia. Michael H. Rubin's The Cottoncrest Curse takes readers on the bold journey of Jake's flight within an epic sweep of treachery and family rivalry ranging from the Civil War to the civil rights era, as the impact of the 1893 murders ripples through the twentieth century and violence besets the owners of Cottoncrest into the 1960s.
Author: Michael Rubin
Publisher: Fiery Seas Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 9781946143198
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
One lawyer's attempt to find the truth could get him killed.
Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674503953
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 162
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Book Description
In Six Walks in the Fictional Woods Umberto Eco shares with us his Secret Life as a reader—his love for MAD magazine, for Scarlett O'Hara, for the nineteenth-century French novelist Nerval's Sylvie, for Little Red Riding Hood, Agatha Christie, Agent 007 and all his ladies. We see, hear, and feel Umberto Eco, the passionate reader who has gotten lost over and over again in the woods, loved it, and come back to tell the tale, The Tale of Tales. Eco tells us how fiction works, and he also tells us why we love fiction so much. This is no deconstructionist ripping the veil off the Wizard of Oz to reveal his paltry tricks, but the Wizard of Art himself inviting us to join him up at his level, the Sorcerer inviting us to become his apprentice.
Author: Chris Offutt
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 0802146163
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 198
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Book Description
“A smart, rich country noir” from the acclaimed author Kentucky Straight and The Good Brother (Stewart O’Nan, bestselling author of Henry, Himself). Chris Offutt is an outstanding literary talent, whose work has been called “lean and brilliant” (The New York Times Book Review) and compared by reviewers to Tobias Wolff, Ernest Hemingway, and Raymond Carver. He’s been awarded the Whiting Writers Award for Fiction/Nonfiction and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Fiction Award, among numerous other honors. His first work of fiction in nearly two decades, Country Dark is a taut, compelling novel set in rural Kentucky from the Korean War to 1970. Tucker, a young veteran, returns from war to work for a bootlegger. He falls in love and starts a family, and while the Tuckers don’t have much, they have the love of their home and each other. But when his family is threatened, Tucker is pushed into violence, which changes everything. The story of people living off the land and by their wits in a backwoods Kentucky world of shine-runners and laborers whose social codes are every bit as nuanced as the British aristocracy, Country Dark is a novel that blends the best of Larry Brown and James M. Cain, with a noose tightening evermore around a man who just wants to protect those he loves. It reintroduces the vital and absolutely distinct voice of Chris Offutt, a voice we’ve been missing for years. “[A] fine homage to a pocket of the country that’s as beautiful as it is prone to tragedy.”—The Wall Street Journal “A pleasure all around.”—Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter’s Bone
Author: Jake Hinkson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1643132989
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Richard Weatherford is a successful small-town preacher in the Arkansas Ozarks. He’s a proud husband and father of five, and has worked hard to grow his loyal flock with strong sermons and smart community outreach. But while Weatherford is a man of influence and power—including a big force in local politics—he’s also a man with secrets.In the lead up to the 2016 presidential election, Weatherford’s world is threatened when he’s blackmailed by a former lover. Collecting the money the blackmailer demands will be a nearly impossible feat, especially over Easter weekend, when all eyes are on him. So Weatherford will have to turn to the darkest corners of their small town in a desperate attempt to keep his world from falling apart.Exploring a divided country and a cracked façade through the alternating perspectives of Weatherford, his wife, his lover, and other town residents, Dry County is a powerful story about how far some will go to keep hold of all they know—and all that others think them to be.
Author: Katherine C. Mooney
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067428142X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
Katherine C. Mooney recaptures the sights, sensations, and illusions of America’s first mass spectator sport. Her central characters are not the elite white owners of slaves and thoroughbreds but the black jockeys, grooms, and horse trainers who called themselves race horse men and made the racetrack run—until Jim Crow drove them from their jobs.
Author: Kim Townsend
Publisher: Amherst College
ISBN: 0943184185
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
This first-ever biography of John William Ward, the fourteenth president of Amherst College, explores the roots of his idealism and covers his presidency, his later success in Massachusetts politics, and the events leading up to his eventual suicide. President from 1971 to 1979, Ward served during a tumultuous period in the history of the elite liberal arts college, and in the history of the nation. He presided over the once all-male college's transition to coeducation, worked to support African-American students in their fight for equality and justice, and was arrested for civil disobedience in protest against the Vietnam War. Ward was emblematic of his time. Idealist that he was, he tried to make Amherst College a model of a democratic society. Defeated in ugly battles with the faculty, Ward resigned as president but went on to great success in the rougher world of Massachusetts politics. He made headlines for his leadership of a state commission that spent more than two years investigating corruption in the awarding of building contracts, resulting in the passage of laws that guaranteed reforms. This long-overdue volume is the first complete study of Ward--a self-made man, proof that the American Dream could come true, but who ultimately saw his personal and professional life collapse. It sheds light on Amherst College, on higher education more broadly, on suicide, and on the United States in the 1960s and '70s.
Author: Anne Rice
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345334531
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 642
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Book Description
In the days before the Civil War, there lived a Louisiana people unique in Southern histroy. Though descended from African slaves, they were also descended from the French and Spanish who enslaved them. Called the Free People of Color, this dazzling historical novel chronicles the lives of four of them--men and women caught perilously between the worlds of master and slave, privilege and oppression, passion and pain.
Author: Inman Majors
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 080716951X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Penelope Lemon is a recent divorcée, closet Metallica fan, and accidental subversive to all the expectations of suburban motherhood. After ending her marriage with James, a woodsy intellectual who favors silky kimonos too short for his knobby knees, Penelope finds herself, at forty, living with her randy mother in her childhood home. Broke and desperate for work, she waitresses at Coonskins, a frontier-themed restaurant where the decor is heavy on stuffed mammals and discarded peanut shells. Despite the pitfalls of balancing parental duties, jobs, and the vagaries of middle-age life, Penelope pushes through one obstacle after another, trying to regain her independence. Whether fumbling through the world of online dating; coping with a bullying situation involving her son, Theo, something of a gastric wonder on the school bus; or wrestling with the discovery of nude photos from her carefree college days that are not quite as “artistic” as she remembers, Penelope gradually emerges as a modern-day heroine who navigates the assorted inanities of life with verve and humor. Audacious and laugh-out-loud funny, Inman Majors’s new novel holds up a fun-house mirror to the relatable challenges of being a single parent in the digital age. All those who live by the beat of their own drum gain a coconspirator, an accomplice, and a champion in the unstoppable Penelope Lemon.
