R. J. Schweiger is eighty-one years old. He has traveled many paths during his lifetime, but he always seemed to end up on horseback. Among other things, Mr. Bob has been a freelance writer. He has written articles for The American Field, The Western Horseman, and Gun Dog. His involvement in field trials and horse shows meant extensive travel, and it wasnt unusual for him to log thirty thousand miles a year on the road. His equipment was well worn, and every trip was an adventure. Mr. Bobs...

This classic story of a boy, a dog, and small-town America is "a rich experience all around.... Skip turns out to be a dog worth writing about.... I'd take him home in a shot" (The New York Times Book Review).In 1943 in a sleepy town on the banks of the Yazoo River, a boy fell in love with a puppy with a lively gait and an intelligent way of listening. The two grew up together having the most wonderful adventures. My Dog Skip belongs on the same s...

A Pulitzer Prize winner interviews workers, from policemen to piano tuners: "Magnificent . . . To read it is to hear America talking." — The Boston GlobeA National Book Award Finalist and New York Times bestsellerStuds Terkel's classic oral history Working is a compelling look at jobs and the people who do them. Consisting of over one hundred interviews with everyone from a gravedigger to a studio head, this book provide...

Winner of the PEN/Malamud Award, Airships is a "strong, original, tragic and funny" story collection of "the creative Southern tradition" (Alfred Kazin).One of the most revered short story collections of the past fifty years, Airships remains a vital text in the history of the American short story. The award-winning contemporary classic features twenty wildly original, exuberant, often hilarious stories that celebrate the universal peculiarities of the new...

A definitive, career-spanning, best-of tribute to a master of the modern American short story, featuring work from his final unpublished collection.A fitting summation of one of America's greatest short story masters, this towering tribute features stories from Airships, Captain Maximus, Bats Out of Hell, High Lonesome, and Barry Hannah's final unfinished collection, Long, Last, Happy. The astonishingly varied stories in...

The story of the mill people of Jacksonville, Alabama. The mill was here before the automobile, before the flying machine, and they served it even as it filled their lungs with lint and shortened their lives. In return, it let them live in stiff-necked dignity in the hills of their fathers. So, when death did come, no one had to ship their bodies home on a train. This is a mill story; not of bricks, steel, and cotton, but of the people who suffered it to live.

New Orleans’s hugely overweight chief medical examiner, Andy Broussard, and his gorgeous assistant, criminal psychologist Kit Franklyn, set off to investigate a series of violent murders. Examination of the victims leads to the discovery that each had their throat ripped out, as though they’d been attacked by something that wasn’t human. ‘Blood on the Bayou’ is written in Donaldson’s unique style: A hard-hitting, punchy, action-packed prose that’s dripping with a folksy, decidedly southern...

A lawyer hires Gunner to help her prove that her gangland client is not a killerDarrel Lovejoy doesn't owe South Central anything. By all accounts, he is lucky to escape this desperate corner of Los Angeles, to go to college and graduate into a well-paid advertising job. But something compels him to return. He dives into social work, attempting to mediate between the gangs which have brought hell to the streets he grew up on, and he makes slow but steady progress up...

A science fiction adventure told from the point of view of aliens who crash-land on Earth and must assimilate in secret—until their human cover is blownBudrys's final novel opens with the report of a man found electrocuted on suburban train tracks in Shoreview, Illinois. Neville Sealman appeared to be just another commuter, but after his tragic death, no one comes forward to claim his body. And a routine autopsy reveals some disturbing physiological anomalies. Then...

One Monday We Killed Them All, one of many classic novels from crime writer John D. MacDonald, the beloved author of Cape Fear and the Travis McGee series, is now available as an eBook.Brick by bitter brick, Dwight McAran built a wall of vicious hate around himself. It was easy. After all, he’s a man who could beat a woman to death just because she loved him. For that brutal act, he did hard time. Dwight sat in a cell for five long years, simmerin...

In The Chili Cone Chronicles, Michael Winslow shares his remarkable story of growing up and coming-of-age in a small midwestern town during the tempestuous, whirlwind time of the 1960s. Funny and poignant by turns, Winslow offers a memorable journey through the mayhem as he relies on the comfort of his family, oddball friends, and small-town charm to make everything right in his own little corner of the world. Against a backdrop of calamitous world and national events, Winslow rec...

“Garrison Keillor made it possible, after twenty years of black humor…to be both funny and nice, hip and winsome, scathing and loving, all in the flick of a single many-barbed quip——The Washington Post Book World“Keillor’s literary style is as flexible and assured as his vocal delivery. It can slip from mood to mood so subtly and quickly you’re never quite sure where you are…. [His] writing has the silvery slip of running water, so gracef...