Madison Smartt Bell

Madison Smartt Bell's celebrated debut story collection about the daily struggles of life in America   The characters in this captivating collection of stories are linked by imprisonment in desperate circumstances and the currents of history that carry them along. Praised for its clarity of voice and vision, Zero db and Other Stories begins with a grim tour of the Deep South that includes a visit to a Tennessee slaughter yard, an unflinching look...

Two Southern soldiers, recently back from Vietnam, struggle to resume their lives amid dangerous and deep-rooted prejudice   Thomas Laidlaw returns home from Vietnam with nothing much in mind but to tend his acreage, live apart, and get lost in the roots music he grew up with. Laidlaw's childhood friend Rodney Redmon is doubly burdened: Not only is he scarred from the war, he is also a black man living in a prejudiced area of Tennessee. Redmon's...

Bell's stunning, multifaceted novel examines the ways in which a young woman's suicide inspires those around her to fight for survival in New York City Marian's drug overdose shocked her friends, who all thought of her life as nearly perfect. It wasn't until later that they realized how the pressures of addiction and her own troubled past ultimately proved to be too much. As those closest to her reflect on what went wrong, the story of her life becomes...

Ten tales of misfits in big cities and lonely backwaters, striving to free themselves from traps of their own making   In each of Bell's ten stories, characters struggle through trying times, captives of their own bad decisions or plain bad luck. In "Black and Tan," a farmer's fortitude after the tragic death of his family leads him to become a savior of delinquent boys. The title story charts a London student's crumbling psyche. And in "Petit Cachou"...

A film editor takes a job in Italy only to find that half of the gig is cutting film, while the other half is moving uncut dope   Freelance film editor Tracy Bateman has hit a string of bad luck. His country home is crumbling, his marriage is floundering, and his beloved dog just died. But things begin looking up for Tracy when a film producer and old friend, Kevin Carter, offers him a truckload of money to help with a job in Italy. Despite his suspicions...

Devil's Dream is a rich, evocative work of historical fiction profiling the infamous Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest.

"The definitive collection of nonfiction--from war reporting to literary criticism to the sharpest political writing--from the 'legend of American letters' (Vanity Fair)"--