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Knockemstiff
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When Darl Moody went hunting after a monster buck he's chased for years, he never expected he'd accidentally shoot a man digging ginseng. Worse yet, he's killed a Brewer, a family notorious for vengeance and violence. With nowhere to turn, Darl calls on the help of the only man he knows will answer: his best friend, Calvin Hooper.
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Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, The Devil All the Time follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrificial blood he pours on his “prayer log.”
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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5 out of 5 stars
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Brrrr... amazing tale, masterfully told
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 115
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When Darl Moody went hunting after a monster buck he's chased for years, he never expected he'd accidentally shoot a man digging ginseng. Worse yet, he's killed a Brewer, a family notorious for vengeance and violence. With nowhere to turn, Darl calls on the help of the only man he knows will answer: his best friend, Calvin Hooper.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn't share his brother's appetite for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else. But their prey isn't an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm's gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living - and whom he does it for. With The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt pays homage to the classic Western....
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4 out of 5 stars
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 59
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4 out of 5 stars
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A viewpoint more than an explanation
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Twilight
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When Kenneth and Corrie Tyler become suspicious of the town undertaker, they attempt to discover the truth. But what they find is far worse than they had feared.
In his third novel, award-winning author William Gay is sure to astound listeners with his dark themes and memorable characters.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Power of the Dog
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This explosive novel of the drug trade takes you deep inside a world riddled with corruption, betrayal, and bloody revenge. From the streets of New York City to Mexico City and Tijuana to the jungles of Central America, this is the war on drugs like you've never seen it.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Gripping Drama
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Cherry
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It's 2003, and as a college freshman in Cleveland, our narrator is adrift until he meets Emily. The two of them experience an instant, life-changing connection. But when he almost loses her, he chooses to make an indelible statement: He joins the army. The outcome will not be good for either of them.
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The area surrounding Cashiers, North Carolina, is home to people of all kinds, but the world that Jacob McNeely lives in is crueler than most. His father runs a methodically organized meth ring, with local authorities on the dime to turn a blind eye to his dealings. Having dropped out of high school and cut himself off from his peers, Jacob has been working for this father for years, all on the promise that his payday will come eventually.
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Perfection
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The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
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The Largesse of the Sea Maiden is the long-awaited new story collection from Denis Johnson. Written in the luminous prose that made him one of the most beloved and important writers of his generation, this collection finds Johnson in new territory, contemplating the ghosts of the past and the elusive and unexpected ways the mysteries of the universe assert themselves.
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5 out of 5 stars
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RIP Denis Johnson
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The Lost Country
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 9
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Story5 out of 5 stars 7
Billy Edgewater is a harbinger of doom. Estranged from his family, discharged from the navy and touched by a rising desperation, he sets out hitchhiking home to East Tennessee, where his father is slowly dying. On the road, separately, are Sudy and Bradshaw, brother and sister, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish. All, in one way or another, have their pasts and futures embroiled with D. L. Harkness, a predator in all the ways there are.
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Ohio
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Since the turn of the century, a generation has come of age knowing only war, recession, political gridlock, racial hostility, and a simmering fear of environmental calamity. In the country’s forgotten pockets, where industry long ago fled, where foreclosures, Walmarts, and opiates riddle the land, death rates for rural whites have skyrocketed, fueled by suicide, addiction, and a rampant sense of marginalization and disillusionment. This is the world the characters in Stephen Markley’s brilliant debut novel, Ohio, inherit. This is New Canaan.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Absolutely Moving and Deeply Haunting
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Tree of Smoke
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This is the story of William "Skip" Sands, CIA, engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong, and the disasters that befall him. This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert and into a war in which the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In its vision of human folly, this is a story like nothing in our literature.
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5 out of 5 stars
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tree of smoke
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The Best of the Best Horror of the Year
- 10 Years of Essential Short Horror Fiction
- By: Ellen Datlow - editor
- Narrated by: Tim Campbell, Emily Sutton-Smith
- Length: 19 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4 out of 5 stars 59
A group of mountain climbers, caught in the dark, fight to survive their descent; in the British countryside, hundreds of magpies ascend into the sky, higher and higher, until they seem to vanish into the heavens; a professor and his student track a zombie horde in order to research zombie behavior; an all-girl riding school has sinister secrets; a town rails in vain against a curse inflicted upon it by its founders; and much more.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Definitely the best of the best
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The Girl Next Door
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 850
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Suburbia. Shady, tree-lined streets; well-tended lawns; and cozy homes. A nice, quiet place to grow up. Unless you are teenage Meg or her crippled sister, Susan. On a dead-end street, in the dark, damp basement of the Chandler house, Meg and Susan are left captive to the savage whims and rages of a distant aunt who is rapidly descending into madness. It is a madness that infects all three of her sons and finally the entire neighborhood. Only one troubled boy stands hesitantly between Meg and Susan and their cruel, torturous deaths.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Sick
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The Last Days of August
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- Original Recording
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 10,185
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 9,248
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Story4 out of 5 stars 9,232
In December 2017 the famous porn star August Ames committed suicide in a park in the Conejo Valley. It happened a day after she’d been the victim of a pile-on, via Twitter, by fellow porn professionals - punishment for her tweeting something deemed homophobic. A month later, August’s husband, Kevin, connected with Jon Ronson to tell the story of how Twitter bullying killed his wife. What neither Kevin nor Ronson realized was that Ronson would soon hear rumors and secrets hinting at a very different story - something mysterious and unexpected and terrible.
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5 out of 5 stars
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a healing masterpiece
- By A. M. on 01-04-19
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I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down
- Collected Stories
- By: William Gay
- Narrated by: Christine McMurdo-Wallis, Tom Stechschulte, Pete Bradbury, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
Author William Gay is the winner of the 1999 William Peden Award and the 1999 James A. Michener Memorial Prize. In his debut collection, Gay brings to life 13 stories about a diverse group of colorful characters living in the fertile Tennessee country land.
Publisher's Summary
In this unforgettable work of fiction, Donald Ray Pollock peers into the soul of a tough Midwestern American town to reveal the sad, stunted but resilient lives of its residents.
Spanning a period from the mid-'60s to the late '90s, the linked stories that comprise Knockemstiff feature a cast of recurring characters who are woebegone, baffled, and depraved - but irresistibly, undeniably real. Rendered in the American vernacular with vivid imagery and a wry, dark sense of humor, these thwarted and sometimes violent lives jump off the page at the listener with inexorable force.
A father pumps his son full of steroids, so he can vicariously relive his days as a perpetual runner-up body builder. A psychotic rural recluse comes upon two siblings committing incest and feels compelled to take action. Donald Ray Pollock presents his characters and the sordid goings-on with a stern intelligence, a bracing absence of value judgments, and a refreshingly dark sense of bottom-dog humor.
With an artistic instinct honed on the works of Flannery O’Connor and Harry Crews, Pollock offers a powerful work of fiction in the classic American vein. Knockemstiff is a genuine entry into the literature of place.
Audiobook Cast of Narrators:
"Real Life" read by Kirby Heyborne
"Dynamite Hole" read by Mark Bramhall
"Knockemstiff" read by Macleod Andrews
"Hair’s Fate" read by Andrew Eiden
"Pills" read by Kirby Heyborne
"Gianthomachy" read by David Garelick
"Schott’s Bridge" read by Matt Godfrey
"Lard" read by Macleod Andrews
"Fish Sticks" read by Dan Woren
"Bactine" read by Rob Shapiro
"Discipline" read by R.C. Bray
"Assailants" read by Dan Woren
"Rainy Sunday" read by Amy Landon
"Holler" read by Andrew Eiden
"I Start Over" read by Joe Ochman
Critic Reviews
“More engaging than any new fiction in years.... Knockemstiff gives us the impossible - fast, funny stories about the saddest people you’ll ever meet in fiction.” (Chuck Palahniuk)
“Pollock’s voice is fresh and full-throated.... His steely, serrated prose...calls to mind Harry Crews.” (The New York Times Book Review)
“Knockemstiff is a powerful, remarkable, exceptional book.... Pollock knows these people, what they want and think and feel, and he takes us there without flinching.” (Los Angeles Times)
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-04-19
Fiction?
Being from SE Ohio, this book borders on truth! This is exactly how life is here. The cold hard life of the people left behind by society in the foothills of the Appalachians.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 01-10-19
WOW!!!!
Before I read this book I read The Devil All The Time,and I absolutely loved it.My favorite kinds of books are ones that you can’t stop thinking about after you finish it.That was true with Devil it was maybe the grittiest book I’ve ever read.I decided to give Knockemstiff a shot and it is INTENSE!!!Donald Ray Pollock may be my new favorite author.The narration in this book is top notch too