Author: George Singleton
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1565128680
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 302
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Book Description
George Singleton, who's had many stories published in the best literary journals, has recently burst into the big time with appearances in Playboy, Zoetrope, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine and Book. The stories in his new collection are wild and wooly - or maybe we should say wild and half-wooly. In any case, they're definitely not for the creationist crowd or for the laughter impaired. For example: - A self-described "primitive artist," getting rich off religious canvases, is mistaken for a faith healer. - A lovelorn dad woos his third grader's teacher with very special show-and-tells, including long lost love letters to Shakespeare from Anne Hathaway, to Fred Astaire from Ginger Rogers, and to Henry VIII from all of his wives. - A boy's reputation is ruined forever when he accepts the starring role in a documentary on diagnosing head lice. Off-the-wall. But also utterly believable and written with tremendous affection for the people and their place-a place called Forty-Five, part of the contemporary South that's far removed from big city Atlanta or proper Charleston and, in fact, much like Singleton's own hometown of Dacusville, South Carolina. As he says of his characters, "They're regular people just trying to get by. Most of them aren't jaded by everyday life, though perhaps they should have been long ago. There are some with physical and mental limitations, but I hope all of them have heart." They do indeed, just like their stories.
Author: George Singleton
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1565123549
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 303
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Book Description
Presents a collection of short stories that captures the lives of such characters as a boy whose reputation is ruined forever after he stars in a documentary on diagnosing head lice and a lovelorn father who woos his child's third-grade teacher.
Author: George Singleton
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1565129113
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
These fourteen funny stories tell the tale of a beleaguered boyhood down home where the dogs still run loose. As a boy growing up in the tiny backwater town of Forty-Five, South Carolina (where everybody is pretty much one beer short of a six-pack), all Mendal Dawes wants is out. It's not just his hometown that's hopeless. Mendal's father is just as bad. Embarrassing his son to death nearly every day, Mr. Dawes is a parenting guide's bad example. He buries stuff in the backyard—fake toxic barrels, imitation Burma Shave signs (BIRD ON A WIRE, BIRD ON A PERCH, FLY TOWARD HEAVEN, FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH), yardstick collections. He calls Mendal "Fuzznuts" and makes him recite Marx and Durkheim daily and befriend a classmate rumored to have head lice. Mendal Dawes is a boy itching to get out of town, to take the high road and leave the South and his dingbat dad far behind—just like those car-chasing dogs. But bottom line, this funky, sometimes outrageous, and always very human tale is really about how Mendal discovers that neither he nor the dogs actually want to catch a ride, that the hand that has fed them has a lot more to offer. On the way to watching that light dawn, we also get to watch the Dawes's precarious relationship with a place whose "gene pool [is] so shallow that it wouldn't take a Dr. Scholl's insert to keep one's soles dry." To be consistently funny is a great gift. To be funny and cynical and empathetic all at the same time is George Singleton's special gift, put brilliantly into play in this new collection.
Author: Megan Mayhew Bergman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451643357
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
From a prizewinning young writer whose stories have been anthologized in "The Best American Short Stories" and "New Stories from the South" comes a heartwarming and hugely appealing debut collection that explores the way our choices and relationships are shaped by the menace and beauty of the natural world.
Author: George Singleton
Publisher: Writer's Digest Books
ISBN: 9781582975658
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Toddlers—and drunks—bang around hitting walls, tables, chairs, the floor, and other people, trying to find their legs. Writing fiction is a similar process. Sometimes it might take a while before the story gets some balance and moves forward. Sometimes the story takes off as if motor-driven, then crashes into something not foreseen or expected. Learning to be a writer is all about finding your legs, and doing your best to convince onlookers that you know what you're doing and where you're going. In Pep Talks, Warnings & Screeds, acclaimed Southern story writer and novelist George Singleton serves up everything you ever need to know to become a real writer (meaning one who actually writes), in bite-sized aphorisms. It's Nietzsche's Beyond Good & Evil meets Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. It's cough syrup that tastes like chocolate cake. In other words, don't expect to get better unless you get a good dose of it, maybe two. Accompanied by more than fifty original full-color illustrations by novelist Daniel Wallace, these laugh-out-loud funny, candid, and surprisingly useful lessons will help you find your own writerly balance so you can continue to move forward.
Author: George Singleton
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547798024
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
A quirky tale of a hard-drinking artist by an author who “writes about the rural South without sentimentality . . . but with plenty of sharp-witted humor” (NPR Morning Edition). Renegade artist Harp Spillman is lower than a bow-legged fire ant. Because of an unhealthy relationship with the bottle, he’s ruined his reputation as one of the South’s preeminent commissioned metal sculptors. And his desperate turn to ice sculpting might’ve led to a posse of angry politicians on his trail. With the help of his sane and practical wife, Raylou, Harp understands that it’s time to get his act together and prove that he can complete a series of twelve-foot-high metal angels—welded completely out of hex nuts—for the city of Birmingham. Is it pure chance that the Elbow Boys, with arms voluntarily fused together so they can’t drink, show up in order to help Harp? And why did his neighbor smuggle anteaters into the desolate little South Carolina town of Ember Glow? Harp is drying out, but somehow being sober isn’t making the world seem any less confusing . . . “Engagingly comic . . . Singleton has a flair for capturing Southern eccentricity, and Raylou’s imperturbable patience is just as funny in its way as Harp’s self-loathing.” —Publishers Weekly “If there is a fiction genre blending the riotous, bleary-eyed excess and absurdity of gonzo journalism with the rather earnest sensitivity of a John Irving hero—who always does right by his wife in the end—Work Shirts belongs to it. . . . It’s a fun read . . . An adventure to be undertaken.” —Newsweek
Author: Darryl Pinckney
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374169985
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 323
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Book Description
High Cotton is an extraordinarily rich account of the dreams and inner turmoils of a new generation of the black upper middle class, capturing the essence of a part of American society that has mostly been ignored in literature. The novel's protagonist journeys from his childhood home in the midwest to college, a stint in New York publishing, and Europe, yet the issue of his "blackness" remains at the heart of his being.
Author: Man Martin
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429990244
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
Adam Newman once had it all. But then he lost it. Now Adam yearns to reunite with his estranged wife, Evelyn, and recapture the Edenic life they once had running Paradise Dogs, the roadside hot-dog restaurant now legendary throughout central Florida. He has a few obstacles along the way. For starters, there's his impending marriage to Lily. There's also the matter of a quarter million dollars' worth of diamonds that he mislaid, along with what appears to be a shadowy conspiracy that is buying up land around the Cross-Florida Canal (and which may or may not be a product of Adam's alcohol-infused imagination). Despite his own troubles---and a brief stay in Chattahoochee---Adam looks to mentor his son, Addison, in the ways of love. Awkward, unsure, and employed as the world's least accurate obituary writer, Addison pines for a beautiful and painfully earnest linguistic student but must compete for her attention with his older and more sophisticated half brother from Evelyn's first marriage. But if anybody can set these worlds in order, it is Adam, who has an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time and allowing others to believe he's someone he's not. Whether it's delivering a baby, rescuing a marriage, or exposing a Communist conspiracy, our protagonist is up for the job. Paradise Dogs, from Georgia Author of the Year Award winner Man Martin, is a farcical tale of paradise lost, the American Dream, and the true measures of love
Author: Sarah Collins Honenberger
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
ISBN: 9781935597100
Category : Caulfield, Holden (Fictitious character)
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A few months after doctors tell him he has only a year to live, a precocious fifteen-year-old from a small town in Virginia has an intense reaction to The catcher in the rye. Deriving inspiration from J.D. Salinger's narrative, Daniel Landon begins to question the intentions and authority of those around him in his own search for identity in the face of death. Tired of his cramped surroundings and parents' alternative approaches to his treatment, he follows the footsteps of Holden Caulfield to New York City in search of the same eternal truths, only to discover the importance of home.
Author: Jo Watson Hackl
Publisher: Yearling
ISBN: 0399557415
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
11 days. 13 clues. And one kid who won't give up. Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe is "part treasure hunt, part wilderness adventure, and all heart" (Alan Gratz, New York Times bestselling author of Refugee). How far would you go to find something that might not even exist? All her life, Cricket's mama has told her stories about a secret room painted by a mysterious artist. Now Mama's run off, and Cricket thinks the room might be the answer to getting her to come back. If it exists. And if she can find it. Cricket's first clue is a coin from a grown-over ghost town in the woods. So with her daddy's old guidebook and a coat full of snacks stolen from the Cash 'n' Carry, Cricket runs away to find the room. Surviving in the woods isn't easy. While Cricket camps out in an old tree house and looks for clues, she meets the last resident of the ghost town, encounters a poetry-loving dog (who just might hold a key to part of the puzzle), and discovers that sometimes you have to get a little lost . . . to really find your way. 2020 Mississippi Library Association Children's Author Award 2019 Southern Book Award Winner--Children's Category "A tale of adventure, full of mystery." --Robert Beatty, New York Times bestselling author of Serafina and the Black Cloak "An unforgettable story about a gutsy girl who will steal your heart." --Kathleen Glasgow, New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces "Lyrical and endearing, this debut is a genuine adventure tale." --Kirkus Reviews, Starred
