Brimming with his rich humor, Jerry Clower's book manifests the unsurpassed southern art of yarn spinning. It also shows the nature of the man for whom good storytelling is more than just show business.Nashville's funniest man had a serious side. Deep in the merry heart of this comic entertainer were the codes and values that made him an esteemed humanitarian.He was named America's best country comic for nine years in a row and was called “the funniest American storyteller ...

Brimming with his rich humor, Jerry Clower's book manifests the unsurpassed southern art of yarn spinning. It shows as well the nature of the man for whom good storytelling is more than just show business.Nashville's funniest man had a serious side. Deep in the merry heart of this comic entertainer were the codes and values that made him an esteemed humanitarian.He was named America's best country comic for nine years in a row and was called "the funniest American storytell...

Out of the gallows, into the gunfire . . . A****fast, furious Western from the USA Today bestselling author.They're hanging Billy Ray Cabot in Cloverdale, Nevada on Friday. Or so they think. Thursday brings Smoke Jensen to town. In another life, Billy Ray was almost kin to Smoke, and guilty or not, Smoke will blast Cloverdale sky high if that's what it takes to set his old friend free.By midnight, Smoke and Billy Ray are riding hell-for-leather out...

In her delightful and moving memoir, Sissy Spacek writes about her idyllic, barefoot childhood in a small East Texas town, with the clarity and wisdom that comes from never losing sight of her roots. Descended from industrious Czech immigrants and threadbare southern gentility, she grew up a tomboy, tagging along with two older brothers and absorbing grace and grit from her remarkable parents, who taught her that she could do anything. She also learned fearlessness in the wake of a family ...

“A memoir that shines with a bright spirit, a generous heart and an entertaining knack for celebrating absurdity.”—The New York Times Book Review“This is Smith at her finest.”—Library Journal, starred reviewSet deep in the mountains of Virginia, the Grundy of Lee Smith’s youth was a place of coal miners, tent revivals, mountain music, drive-in theaters, and her daddy’s dimestore. When she was sent off to c...

“Lake Wobegon Days is about the way our beliefs, desires and fears tail off into abstractions--and get renewed from time to time. . . this book, unfolding Mr. Keillor's full design, is a genuine work of American history.” -The New York Times“A comic anatomy of what is small and ordinary and therefore potentially profound and universal in American life…Keillor’s strength as a writer is to make the ordinary extraordinary.” -Chicago Tribune

1948. Sam Russo, self-named and self-styled, would follow in the hard-boiled footsteps of Sam Spade, if he was hard-boiled. Up to his hocks in the murders of three young jockeys with both local cops and the track turning a blind eye, Sam is a closer. He's coming home if it kills him. Race horses, a gorgeous sassy dame, the Season at Saratoga, what more could a PI want? To survive it.

The profound coming-of-age story of a young boy growing up in rural Virginia, and the historic summer that would change his life foreverDuring the summer of 1959, Virginia's Prince Edward County is entirely consumed by passionate resistance against, and in other corners, support for, the desegregation of schools as mandated by Brown v. Board of Education. Benjamin Rome, the ten-year-old son of a chicken farmer in one of the county's small townships, struggl...

Here is one of those rare and remarkable debuts that herald the appearance of a major new talent on the literary scene. Inspired by real events, Lay That Trumpet In Our Hands is a wise and luminous story about a northern family, a southern town, and the senseless murder that sparks an extraordinary act of courage.To this day, my family is in disagreement as to precisely when the nightmare began. For me, it was the morning Daddy and Luther discovered Marvin...

The best of the best - a superb collection of crime novels from 'one of the finest American writers' GUARDIAN, including his Gold Dagger Award-winning SUNSET LIMITED.James Lee Burke's Robicheaux novels are regularly praised: 'If James Lee Burke appears regularly in annual round-ups of recommendations, this is largely thanks to the fact that he nearly always writes one of the best books of the year ... Superb' The TimesThis collection comprises: THE...

One Man. One Gun. One Law.It's an American icon: the Western shootist, living by skill, courage and a willingness to spit in death's eye. Now, the greatest names in Western literature turn this mythical character upside down, inside out and every way but loose. . .In The Trouble with Dude, award-winning author Johnny Boggs saddles a once-famous lawman with some high-paying New York dudes in search of Western thrills who get more than they bargained...

This time Lewis Grizzard has gone and done it--written a book about sex, as seen through his bespectacled, ironic squint. He tells us why Junior Leaguers don't do it in groups, why Baptists won't do it standing up, and why Richard Nixon never did it, among other things.