In 1897, an aspiring politician is mysteriously murdered in the rural area of Alabama known as Mitcham Beat. His outraged friends -- --mostly poor cotton farmers -- form a secret society, Hell-at-the-Breech, to punish the townspeople they believe responsible. The hooded members wage a bloody year-long campaign of terror that culminates in a massacre where the innocent suffer alongside the guilty. Caught in the maelstrom of the Mitcham war are four people: the aging sheriff sympathetic to both sides; the widowed midwife who delivered nearly every member of Hell-at-the-Breech; a ruthless...
In 1897, an aspiring politician is mysteriously murdered in the rural area of Alabama known as Mitcham Beat. His outraged friends -- --mostly poor ...
It's 1911 and the townsfolk of Old Texas, Alabama, have had enough. Every Saturday night for a year, E. O. Smonk has been destroying property, killing livestock, seducing women, cheating and beating men, all from behind the twin barrels of his Winchester 45-70 caliber over-and-under rifle. Syphilitic, consumptive, gouty, and goitered--an expert with explosives and knives--Smonk hates horses, goats, and the Irish, and it's high time he was stopped. But capturing old Smonk won't be easy--and putting him on trial could have shocking and disastrous consequences, considering the terrible secret...
It's 1911 and the townsfolk of Old Texas, Alabama, have had enough. Every Saturday night for a year, E. O. Smonk has been destroying property, kill...
In ten stunning and bleak tales set in the woodlands, swamps, and chemical plants along the Alabama River, Tom Franklin stakes his claim as a fresh, original Southern voice. His lyric, deceptively simple prose conjures a world where the default setting is violence, a world of hunting and fishing, gambling and losing, drinking and poaching--a world most of us have never seen. In the chilling title novella (selected for the anthologies New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 1999 and Best Mystery Stories of the Century), three wild boys confront a mythic game warden as...
In ten stunning and bleak tales set in the woodlands, swamps, and chemical plants along the Alabama River, Tom Franklin stakes his claim as a fresh...
"The classic trifecta of talent, heart, and a bone-deep sense of storytelling....A masterful performance, deftly rendered and deeply satisfying. For days on end, I woke with this story on my mind." -- David Wroblewski "A new Tom Franklin novel is always a reason to get excited, but Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is more--a cause for celebration. What a great novel by a great novelist." --Dennis Lehane A powerful and resonant novel from Tom Franklin--critically acclaimed author of Smonk and Hell at the Breech--Crooked Letter, Crooked...
"The classic trifecta of talent, heart, and a bone-deep sense of storytelling....A masterful performance, deftly rendered and deeply satisfying. For d...
In 1927, as rains swell the Mississippi, the river threatens to burst its banks and engulf everything in its path, including the tiny hamlet of Hobnob, where federal agents Ted Ingersoll and Ham Johnson arrive to investigate the disappearance of two fellow agents--and find a baby boy abandoned in the middle of a crime scene.
Ingersoll finds a home for the infant with local woman Dixie Clay Holliver, unaware that she's the best bootlegger in the county and has many tender and consequential secrets of her own.
The Tilted World is an extraordinary tale of murder and...
In 1927, as rains swell the Mississippi, the river threatens to burst its banks and engulf everything in its path, including the tiny hamlet of Hob...
"In these stories, from Biloxi to Hattiesburg, from Jackson to Oxford, the various crimes of the heart or doomed deeds of fractured households are carried out in real Mississippi locales . . . Are a devilishly wrought introduction to writers with a feel for Mississippi who are pursuing lonely, haunting paths of the imagination." --Associated Press Long-listed for The Morning News 2017 Tournament of Books "The big city has no lock on misery in these 16 portraits of dark doings in the Deep South." --Kirkus Reviews "Mississippi, as...
"In these stories, from Biloxi to Hattiesburg, from Jackson to Oxford, the various crimes of the heart or doomed deeds of fractured households are car...
