Download or read book The Half Mammals of Dixie written by George Singleton and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2003 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second collection of short stories by a bright star in Southern fiction showcases a town so tiny it missed the map, the gleefully off-the-wall Southerners who refuse to be pigeonholed, and a South far removed from big-city Atlanta and proper Charleston. As the author says of his characters, "They're regular people just trying to get by." Among them: a boy whose reputation is ruined when he appears in a head-lice documentary; a lovelorn father who woos his third-grader's teacher with creative show-and-tells; and a former pharmaceuticals salesman who waits for the word of God to tell him what to paint on next the "primitive" canvases he sells for big bucks to an art dealer.
Download or read book The Half mammals of Dixie written by George Singleton and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a collection of short stories that captures the lives of such characters as a boy whose reputation is ruined forever after he stars in a documentary on diagnosing head lice and a lovelorn father who woos his child's third-grade teacher.
Download or read book Why Dogs Chase Cars written by George Singleton and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2004-09-17 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These fourteen funny stories tell the tale of a beleaguered boyhood down home where the dogs still run loose. As a boy growing up in the tiny backwater town of Forty-Five, South Carolina (where everybody is pretty much one beer short of a six-pack), all Mendal Dawes wants is out. It's not just his hometown that's hopeless. Mendal's father is just as bad. Embarrassing his son to death nearly every day, Mr. Dawes is a parenting guide's bad example. He buries stuff in the backyard—fake toxic barrels, imitation Burma Shave signs (BIRD ON A WIRE, BIRD ON A PERCH, FLY TOWARD HEAVEN, FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH), yardstick collections. He calls Mendal "Fuzznuts" and makes him recite Marx and Durkheim daily and befriend a classmate rumored to have head lice. Mendal Dawes is a boy itching to get out of town, to take the high road and leave the South and his dingbat dad far behind—just like those car-chasing dogs. But bottom line, this funky, sometimes outrageous, and always very human tale is really about how Mendal discovers that neither he nor the dogs actually want to catch a ride, that the hand that has fed them has a lot more to offer. On the way to watching that light dawn, we also get to watch the Dawes's precarious relationship with a place whose "gene pool [is] so shallow that it wouldn't take a Dr. Scholl's insert to keep one's soles dry." To be consistently funny is a great gift. To be funny and cynical and empathetic all at the same time is George Singleton's special gift, put brilliantly into play in this new collection.
Download or read book Birds of a Lesser Paradise written by Megan Mayhew Bergman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a collection of stories focusing on the moments when bonds with nature become evident, including the story of a mother and son attempting to reclaim an African gray parrot and of a population control activist who longs to have a baby.
Download or read book Pep Talks Warnings And Screeds written by George Singleton and published by Writer's Digest Books. This book was released on 2008-10-22 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Toddlers—and drunks—bang around hitting walls, tables, chairs, the floor, and other people, trying to find their legs. Writing fiction is a similar process. Sometimes it might take a while before the story gets some balance and moves forward. Sometimes the story takes off as if motor-driven, then crashes into something not foreseen or expected. Learning to be a writer is all about finding your legs, and doing your best to convince onlookers that you know what you're doing and where you're going. In Pep Talks, Warnings & Screeds, acclaimed Southern story writer and novelist George Singleton serves up everything you ever need to know to become a real writer (meaning one who actually writes), in bite-sized aphorisms. It's Nietzsche's Beyond Good & Evil meets Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. It's cough syrup that tastes like chocolate cake. In other words, don't expect to get better unless you get a good dose of it, maybe two. Accompanied by more than fifty original full-color illustrations by novelist Daniel Wallace, these laugh-out-loud funny, candid, and surprisingly useful lessons will help you find your own writerly balance so you can continue to move forward.
Download or read book Short Story Index written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 990 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Work Shirts for Madmen written by George Singleton and published by HMH. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A quirky tale of a hard-drinking artist by an author who “writes about the rural South without sentimentality . . . but with plenty of sharp-witted humor” (NPR Morning Edition). Renegade artist Harp Spillman is lower than a bow-legged fire ant. Because of an unhealthy relationship with the bottle, he’s ruined his reputation as one of the South’s preeminent commissioned metal sculptors. And his desperate turn to ice sculpting might’ve led to a posse of angry politicians on his trail. With the help of his sane and practical wife, Raylou, Harp understands that it’s time to get his act together and prove that he can complete a series of twelve-foot-high metal angels—welded completely out of hex nuts—for the city of Birmingham. Is it pure chance that the Elbow Boys, with arms voluntarily fused together so they can’t drink, show up in order to help Harp? And why did his neighbor smuggle anteaters into the desolate little South Carolina town of Ember Glow? Harp is drying out, but somehow being sober isn’t making the world seem any less confusing . . . “Engagingly comic . . . Singleton has a flair for capturing Southern eccentricity, and Raylou’s imperturbable patience is just as funny in its way as Harp’s self-loathing.” —Publishers Weekly “If there is a fiction genre blending the riotous, bleary-eyed excess and absurdity of gonzo journalism with the rather earnest sensitivity of a John Irving hero—who always does right by his wife in the end—Work Shirts belongs to it. . . . It’s a fun read . . . An adventure to be undertaken.” —Newsweek
Download or read book High Cotton written by Darryl Pinckney and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1992-02 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: High Cotton is an extraordinarily rich account of the dreams and inner turmoils of a new generation of the black upper middle class, capturing the essence of a part of American society that has mostly been ignored in literature. The novel's protagonist journeys from his childhood home in the midwest to college, a stint in New York publishing, and Europe, yet the issue of his "blackness" remains at the heart of his being.
Download or read book Jake s Bones written by Jake McGowan-Lowe and published by Ticktock Books, Limited. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jake McGowan-Lowe is a boy with a very unusual hobby. Since the age of 7, he has been photographing and blogging about his incredible finds and now has a worldwide following, including 100,000 visitors from the US and Canada. Follow Jake as he explores the animal world through this new 64-page book. He takes you on a world wide journey of his own collection, and introduces you to other amazing animals from the four corners of the globe. Find out what a cow's tooth, a rabbit's rib and a duck's quack look like and much, much more besides.
Download or read book You Want More written by George Singleton and published by . This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his signature darkly acerbic and sharp-witted humor, George Singleton has built a reputation as one of the most astute and wise observers of the South. Now Tom Franklin introduces this master of the form with a compilation of acclaimed and prize-winning short fiction spanning twenty years and eight collections, including stories originally published in outlets like the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Playboy, the Georgia Review, the Southern Review, and many more. These stories bear the influence of Flannery O'Connor and Raymond Carver, at other times Barry Hannah and Donald Barthelme, and touch on the mysteries of childhood, the complexities of human relationships, and the absurdity of everyday life, with its inexorable defeats and small triumphs. Assembled here for the very first time, You Want More represents a body of work that showcases the incisive talent that earned George Singleton's place among "the great pillars of Southern literature." (New York Times)
Download or read book Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe written by Jo Watson Hackl and published by Yearling. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 11 days. 13 clues. And one kid who won't give up. Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe is "part treasure hunt, part wilderness adventure, and all heart" (Alan Gratz, New York Times bestselling author of Refugee). How far would you go to find something that might not even exist? All her life, Cricket's mama has told her stories about a secret room painted by a mysterious artist. Now Mama's run off, and Cricket thinks the room might be the answer to getting her to come back. If it exists. And if she can find it. Cricket's first clue is a coin from a grown-over ghost town in the woods. So with her daddy's old guidebook and a coat full of snacks stolen from the Cash 'n' Carry, Cricket runs away to find the room. Surviving in the woods isn't easy. While Cricket camps out in an old tree house and looks for clues, she meets the last resident of the ghost town, encounters a poetry-loving dog (who just might hold a key to part of the puzzle), and discovers that sometimes you have to get a little lost . . . to really find your way. 2020 Mississippi Library Association Children's Author Award 2019 Southern Book Award Winner--Children's Category "A tale of adventure, full of mystery." --Robert Beatty, New York Times bestselling author of Serafina and the Black Cloak "An unforgettable story about a gutsy girl who will steal your heart." --Kathleen Glasgow, New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces "Lyrical and endearing, this debut is a genuine adventure tale." --Kirkus Reviews, Starred
Download or read book Catcher Caught written by Sarah Collins Honenberger and published by Lake Union Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A few months after doctors tell him he has only a year to live, a precocious fifteen-year-old from a small town in Virginia has an intense reaction to The catcher in the rye. Deriving inspiration from J.D. Salinger's narrative, Daniel Landon begins to question the intentions and authority of those around him in his own search for identity in the face of death. Tired of his cramped surroundings and parents' alternative approaches to his treatment, he follows the footsteps of Holden Caulfield to New York City in search of the same eternal truths, only to discover the importance of home.
Download or read book Eden Rise written by Robert Jeff Norrell and published by NewSouth Books. This book was released on 2012-11-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Eden Rise Tom McKee, a white college freshman, returns to his home in the Alabama Black Belt in the summer of 1965 and becomes embroiled in a civil-rights conflict that divides his family, his town, and his own identity. His wealthy and powerful family is not prepared for the shocks that have followed the racial quake of the Selma March a few months earlier. Tom’s black college friend accompanies him home and gets caught in racial violence. Coming to his friend’s defense, Tom earns the enmity of segregationist neighbors. He feels both the hot anger of his father for his racial nonconformity and the determined defense of his mother and grandmother, as he witnesses the corrosive effects of the turmoil on his parents’ marriage. Attempting to rescue him are a cousin he never knew and a wily old lawyer who meet dangers and legal challenges that force Tom to confront the truth of his legacy.
Download or read book Paradise Dogs written by Man Martin and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adam Newman once had it all. But then he lost it. Now Adam yearns to reunite with his estranged wife, Evelyn, and recapture the Edenic life they once had running Paradise Dogs, the roadside hot-dog restaurant now legendary throughout central Florida. He has a few obstacles along the way. For starters, there's his impending marriage to Lily. There's also the matter of a quarter million dollars' worth of diamonds that he mislaid, along with what appears to be a shadowy conspiracy that is buying up land around the Cross-Florida Canal (and which may or may not be a product of Adam's alcohol-infused imagination). Despite his own troubles---and a brief stay in Chattahoochee---Adam looks to mentor his son, Addison, in the ways of love. Awkward, unsure, and employed as the world's least accurate obituary writer, Addison pines for a beautiful and painfully earnest linguistic student but must compete for her attention with his older and more sophisticated half brother from Evelyn's first marriage. But if anybody can set these worlds in order, it is Adam, who has an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time and allowing others to believe he's someone he's not. Whether it's delivering a baby, rescuing a marriage, or exposing a Communist conspiracy, our protagonist is up for the job. Paradise Dogs, from Georgia Author of the Year Award winner Man Martin, is a farcical tale of paradise lost, the American Dream, and the true measures of love
Download or read book Dino Tracks written by Rhonda Lucas Donald and published by Arbordale Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rhythmic rhyme describes the different types of tracks made by dinosaurs that depict their movement and behavior.
Download or read book Bastard Blue written by Murray Dunlap and published by Press 53. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Bastard Blue is a first book but there's more than promise on display within its pages. This collection introduces us to a fully realized talent. Murray Dunlap's voice is confident, his characters richly drawn, his sense of place as vivid as you will find in fiction. Sentence for sentence his prose is crisp and direct, edged somehow with both menace and hope. He has a knack for creeping up to sentiment in his stories without crossing the line, leaving only genuine, well-earned emotion on the page. This book is so fine somebody should offer a money back guarantee." - Michael Knight, author of The Typist
Download or read book Reaching the Animal Mind written by Karen Pryor and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-06-16 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the founder of “clicker” training, the widely praised humane approach to shaping animal behavior, comes a fascinating book—part memoir, part insight into how animals and people think and behave. A celebrated pioneer in the field of no-punishment animal training, Karen Pryor is responsible for developing clicker training—an all-positive, safe, effective way to modify and shape animal behavior—and she has changed the lives of millions of animals. Practical, engrossing, and full of fascinating stories about Pryor’s interactions with animals of all sorts, Reaching the Animal Mind presents the sum total of her life’s work. She explains the science behind clicker training, how and why it works, and offers step-by-step instructions on how you can clicker-train any animal in your life. For bonus video clips, slide shows, articles, downloadable exercises, and links expanding on the contents of the book, go to ReachingtheAnimalMind.com.
