A Hanging at Cinder Bottom

By: Glenn Taylor

Narrated by: Bill Roberts

Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

From the author of The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart and set in the boom years of the West Virginia coalmining industry, this is an epic story of personal ambition, exile and return, and a grand heist.

Keystone, West Virginia, 1910. In the hot August rain, the townspeople gather to witness the first public hanging in over a decade. At the gallows are none other than poker player Abe Baach and his lover, the madam of the town’s brothel, one Goldie Toothman.

Abe split town seven years prior and has been playing cards up and down the coast ever since. But when he returns to Keystone to reunite with Goldie and to set the past right, he finds a brother dead and his father's saloon in shambles - and suspects the same men might be responsible for both. Only then, in facing his family's past, does the real swindle begin.

©2015 Glenn Taylor (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"It's not enough to say Glenn Taylor is a brilliant writer. He's that rarity nowadays, a great storyteller...irresistible. You'll never have a better time at a hanging." (Stewart O'Nan, author of A Prayer for the Dying)

"[A] galloping, defiant epic...a virtuoso performance...vigorous and sincere, located squarely in the tradition of Twain, Faulkner and McCullers." (Guardian)

"Taylor has created a marvellous, jump-off-the-page character...a defiantly incredible creation.... The writing is limber, and the real life it bundles up into its freakish, charismatic character make this a genuine success that admirers of John Irving - and others too - will surely enjoy." (The Independent)

"An energetic romp." (Dazed and Confused)