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The Mighty Red

A FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTION

In this stunning novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich tells a story of love, natural forces, spiritual yearnings, and the tragic impact of uncontrollable circumstances on ordinary people's lives.

History is a flood. The mighty red . . .

In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding.

Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can't read her future but seems to resolve his.

Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He's determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker.

Kismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and on her nightly runs, tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future, her daughter's and her own.

Human time, deep time, Red River time, the half-life of herbicides and pesticides, and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths, is set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009. How much does a dress cost? A used car? A package of cinnamon rolls? Can you see the shape of your soul in the everchanging clouds? Your personal salvation in the giant expanse of sky? These are the questions the people of the Red River Valley of the North wrestle with every day.

The Mighty Red is a novel of tender humor, disturbance, and hallucinatory mourning. It is about on-the-job pains and immeasurable satisfactions, a turbulent landscape, and eating the native weeds growing in your backyard. It is about ordinary people who dream, grow up, fall in love, struggle, endure tragedy, carry bitter secrets; men and women both complicated and contradictory, flawed and decent, lonely and hopeful. It is about a starkly beautiful prairie community whose members must cope with devastating consequences as powerful forces upend them. As with every book this great modern master writes, The Mighty Red is about our tattered bond with the earth, and about love in all of its absurdity and splendor.

A new novel by Louise Erdrich is a major literary event; gorgeous and heartrending, The Mighty Red is a triumph.

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Beans, Bourbon, and Blood



JOHNSTONE COUNTRY. HOMESTYLE JUSTICE WITH A SIDE OF SLAUGHTER.

In this explosive new series, Western legend Luke Jensen teams up with chuckwagon cook Dewey “Mac” McKenzie to dish out a steaming plate of hot-blooded justice. But in a corrupt town like Hangman’s Hill, revenge is a dish best served cold . . .

BEANS, BOURBON, AND BLOOD: A RECIPE FOR DISASTER

The sight of a rotting corpse hanging from a noose is enough to stop any man in his tracks—and Luke Jensen is no exception. Sure, he could just keep riding through. He’s got a prisoner to deliver, after all. But when a group of men show up with another prisoner for another hanging, Luke can’t turn his back—especially when the condemned man keeps swearing he’s innocent. Right up to the moment he’s hung by the neck till he’s dead . . .

Welcome to Hannigan’s Hill, Wyoming. Better known as Hangman’s Hill.
Luke’s pretty shaken up by what he’s seen and decides to stay the night, get some rest and grab some grub. The town marshal agrees to lock up Luke’s prisoner while Luke heads to a local saloon and restaurant called Mac’s Place. The pub’s owner—a former chuckwagon cook named Dewey “Mac” McKensie—serves up a bellyfull of chow and an earful of gossip. According to Mac, the whole stinking town is run by corrupt cattle baron Ezra Hannigan. Ezra owns practically everything. Including the town marshal. And anyone who gets in his way ends up swinging from a rope . . .

Mac might be just an excellent cook. But he’s got a ferocious appetite for justice—and a fearsome new friend in Luke Jensen. Together, they could end Hannigan’s reign of terror. But when Hannigan calls in his hired guns, it’ll be their necks on the line . . . or dancing from the end of a rope.

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Bad Liar

Masterful #1 New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag is back with a riveting, emotionally powerful new thriller!

Small-town labels are hard to shake. Hometown hero. Fallen angel. Can anyone ever escape their past?
 
A murder victim dumped at the dead end of a lonely country road, face and hands obliterated by a shotgun blast, is not the way sheriff’s detective Nick Fourcade wants to start his week. His only lead takes him to the family of a hometown hero suddenly gone missing. Marc Mercier left his home for a weekend hunting trip and hasn’t been seen since.

Meanwhile, sheriff’s detective Annie Broussard begins her first day back on the job after suffering a brutal attack by taking on the case of B’Lynn Fontenot, a mother desperate to find her grown son, a recovering drug addict. Robbie Fontenot has been missing for eight days, but the local police have no interest in the case, telling B’Lynn that an adult has the right to disappear, and a missing addict is no big surprise. But B’Lynn swears her son was turning his life around. Sympathetic to a mother’s anguish, Annie agrees to help B’Lynn, knowing she’s about to start a turf war with the city police.

As Annie searches for Robbie Fontenot and Nick investigates the disappearance of Marc Mercier, it quickly becomes apparent that nothing is as it seems in the lives of either man. And it’s still not clear whether either—or neither—of them might be the unidentified murder victim. Old jealousies and fresh deceits, family loyalties gone wrong and love turned sour all lay a twisting trail that leads deep into the Louisiana swamp, endangering all who cross the path of a bad liar.

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Counting Miracles

From the acclaimed author of The Longest Ride and The Notebook comes an emotional, powerful novel about wondering if we can change—or even make our peace with—the path we’ve taken.

“Sparks is superb at what he does. The setting is postcard perfect. The characters are immensely likable. . . . This is a tidy miracle you can count on.”—The Washington Post

Tanner Hughes was raised by his grandparents, following in his grandfather’s military footsteps to become an Army Ranger. His whole life has been spent abroad, and he is the proverbial rolling stone: happiest when off on his next adventure, zero desire to settle down.  But when his grandmother passes away, her last words to him are find where you belong. She also drops a bombshell, telling him the name of the father he never knew—and where to find him.

Tanner is due at his next posting soon, but his curiosity is piqued, and he sets out for Asheboro, North Carolina, to ask around. He’s been in town less than twenty-four hours when he meets Kaitlyn Cooper, a doctor and single mom. They both feel an immediate connection; Tanner knows Kaitlyn has a story to tell, and he wants to hear it. To Kaitlyn, Tanner is mysterious, exciting—and possibly leaving in just a few weeks.

Meanwhile, nearby, eighty-three-year-old Jasper lives alone in a cabin bordering a national forest. With only his old dog, Arlo, for company, he lives quietly, haunted by a tragic accident that took place decades before. When he hears rumors that a white deer has been spotted in the forest—a creature of legend that inspired his father and grandfather—he becomes obsessed with protecting the deer from poachers.

As these characters’ fates orbit closer together, none of them is expecting a miracle . . . but that may be exactly what is about to alter their futures forever.

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America First : Roosevelt, Lindbergh and America's path to World War II

Bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands narrates the fierce debate over America's role in the world in the runup to World War II through its two most important figures: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who advocated intervention, and his isolationist nemesis, aviator and popular hero Charles Lindbergh.

Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939 launched a momentous period of decision-making for the United States. With fascism rampant abroad, should America take responsibility for its defeat?

For popular hero Charles Lindbergh, saying no to another world war only twenty years after the first was the obvious answer. Lindbergh had become famous and adored around the world after his historic first flight over the Atlantic in 1927. In the years since, he had emerged as a vocal critic of American involvement overseas, rallying Americans against foreign war as the leading spokesman the America First Committee.

While Hitler advanced across Europe and threatened the British Isles, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt struggled to turn the tide of public opinion. With great effort, political shrewdness and outright deception--aided by secret British disinformation efforts in America--FDR readied the country for war. He pushed the US onto the world stage where it has stayed ever since.

In this gripping narrative, H.W. Brands sheds light on a crucial tipping point in American history and depicts the making of a legendary president.

Popular Books

Pink cover

It Ends with Us

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING BLAKE LIVELY AND JUSTIN BALDONI! 

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of It Starts with Us and All Your Perfects, a “brave and heartbreaking novel that digs its claws into you and doesn’t let go, long after you’ve finished it” (Anna Todd, New York Times bestselling author) about a workaholic with a too-good-to-be-true romance who can’t stop thinking about her first love.

Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town where she grew up—she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. And when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life seems too good to be true.

Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt. Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating” rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place.

As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan—her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.

An honest, evocative, and tender novel, It Ends with Us is “a glorious and touching read, a forever keeper. The kind of book that gets handed down” (USA TODAY).

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Appalachian Reckoning

Part I. Considering Hillbilly Elegy. Interrogating. Hillbilly elitism / T.R.C. Hutton -- Social capital / Jeff Mann -- Once upon a time in "Trumpalachia": Hillbilly Elegy, personal choice, and the blame game / Dwight B. Billings -- Stereotypes on the syllabus: exploring Hillbilly Elegy's use as an instructional text at colleges and universities / Elizabeth Catte -- Benham, Kentucky, coal miner / Wise County, Virginia, landscape / Theresa Burriss -- Panning for gold: A reflection of life from Appalachia / Ricardo Nazario y Colón -- Will the real hillbilly please stand up? Urban Appalachian migration and culture seen through the lens of Hillbilly Elegy / Roger Guy -- What Hillbilly Elegy reveals about race in twenty-first-century America / Lisa R. Pruitt -- Prisons are not innovation / Lou Murrey -- Down and out in Middletown and Jackson: drugs, dependency, and decline in J.D. Vance's Capitalist Realism / Travis Linnemann and Corina Medley. Responding. Keep your "elegy": the Appalachia I know is very much alive / Ivy Brashear -- HE said/SHE said / Crystal Good -- The hillbilly miracle and the fall / Michael E. Maloney -- Elegies / Dana Wildsmith -- In defense of J.D. Vance / Kelli Hansel Haywood -- It's crazy around here, I don't know what to do about It, and I'm just a kid / Allen Johnson -- "Falling in love," Balsam Bald, the Blue Ridge Parkway, 1982 / Danielle Dulken -- Black hillbillies have no time for elegies / William H. TurnerPart II. Beyond Hillbilly Elegy. Nothing familiar / Jesse Graves -- History / Jesse Graves -- Tether and plow / Jesse Graves -- On and on: Appalachian accent and academic power / Meredith McCarroll -- Olivia's ninth birthday party / Rebecca Kiger -- Kentucky, coming and going / Kirstin L. Squint -- Resistance, or our most worthy habits / Richard Hague -- Notes on a mountain man / Jeremy B. Jones -- These stories sustain me: the wyrd-ness of my Appalachia / Edward Karshner -- Watch children / Luke Travis -- The mower-1933 / Robert Morgan -- Consolidate and salvage / Chelsea Jack -- How Appalachian I am / Robert Gipe -- Aunt Rita along the King Coal Highway, Mingo County, West Virginia / Roger May -- Holler / Keith S. Wilson -- Loving to fool with things / Rachel Wise -- Antebellum cookbook / Kelly Norman Ellis -- How to make cornbread, or thoughts on being an Appalachian from Pennsylvania who calls Virginia home but now lives in Georgia / Jim Minick -- Tonglen for my Mother / Linda Parsons -- Olivia at the intersection / Meg Wilson -- Appalachian apophenia, or the psychogeography of home / Jodie Childers -- Canary dirge / Dale Marie Prenatt -- Poet, priest, and "poor white trash" / Elizabeth Hadaway

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Hillbilly Elegy

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER, NAMED BY THE TIMES AS ONE OF "6 BOOKS TO HELP UNDERSTAND TRUMP'S WIN" AND SOON TO BE A MAJOR-MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY RON HOWARD

"You will not read a more important book about America this year."—The Economist

"A riveting book."—The Wall Street Journal

"Essential reading."—David Brooks, New York Times

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility.

But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history.

A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.