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Somewhere in backwoods Vermont, a young woman refuses to back down in the face of threats from a violent local villain. Her boyfriend has fled the state in fear, and local law enforcement can do nothing to protect her. And so she resolves not only to stand her ground, but also to fight back. A pair of unlikely allies Lester, a crafty old-timer, and Nate, built like a tractor and not much smarter - join her cause, willing to do whatever it takes. An eccentric Greek chorus of locals - wry, witty, sceptical, and not always entirely sober - keep a running commentary in the background as the threesome's quest reaches its terrifying conclusion.
In his quiet Vermont home, a man named Taft sits and wonders what's missing from his life. He's at a loss until a strange voice startles him from the rocking chair, where a stranger has seemingly appeared out of nowhere: well-dressed and smooth-talking, this man offers Taft the chance to have anything he's ever wanted-for a price. So begins The Devil in the Valley, the latest novel from critically acclaimed author Castle Freeman, Jr. Combining his deft hand for the supernatural with his classic setting of rural Vermont, Freeman gives us a story that touches on temptation and greed, and explores what we're willing to trade to obtain the things we most desire. A modern fable that explores the supernatural while staying rooted deeply in our world, The Devil in the Valley is a powerful novel from a master at his craft.
A remarkable & complex portrait of a land & its people in transition.
A fast-paced, sharply observed novel of rural suspense. Sheriff Lucian Wing goes to the aid of a pair of young runaways, Duncan and Pamela, who have fled to his backwoods county jurisdiction in Vermont. The girl’s powerful stepfather New York has set a smoothly menacing lawyer and well-armed thugs on their trail. At the same time Wing must deal with his wayward wife’s chronic infidelity; the snobbery of Pamela’s cosmopolitan mother; the dubious assistance of a demented World War Two enthusiast – and even the climactic, chaotic onset of a prodigious specimen of the local wildlife. Amidst it all, can Wing bring Duncan and Pamela to safety? Praise for Castle Freeman's novels: ‘A small...
Fleeing the wreckage of a murky diplomatic job in a Chaotic Latin country, Mark Noon finds himself down-and-out and holed up in a hotel in Mexico. As a last resort, he claims an odd bequest from a long-deceased family friend named Hugo Usher, and comes north to move into a dilapidated hill farmhouse in rural Vermont. There, Noon begins to rebuild the house and the fragments of his life. He comes to know the complex histories of the memorable residents of Bible Hill, including Orlando Applegate, the lawyer and town father who becomes Mark's mentor in his new life -- and Orlando's troubled daughter, Amanda, who captures his heart and begins to share her life with him. Mark also discovers the j...
A small gem of a novel with big ideas – ‘A small miracle’, Nick Cave Lucian Wing is an experienced, practical man who enforces the law in his corner of Vermont with a steady hand and a generous tolerance. But when local tearaway Sean ‘Superboy’ Duke starts to get tangled up with a group of major league Russian criminals, things start to go awry in the sheriff's small, protected domain. With an ambitious and aggressive deputy snapping at his heels and a domestic crisis of his own to confront, Wing must call on all the personal resources he has cultivated during his working life: patience, tact, and - especially - humour. Can Wing’s low-key approach to law enforcement prevail? Prai...
A cloth bag containing ten copies of the title.
'The best crime novel ever written' - Elmore Leonard 'If you haven't read George V. Higgins you can't call yourself a fan of crime fiction' Val McDermid 'Higgins deserves to stand in the company of Chandler and Hammett as one of the true innovators in crime fiction' Scott Turow When small-time gunrunner Eddie Coyle is convicted on a felony, he's looking at three years in the pen - that is, unless he sells out one of his big-fish clients to the DA. But which of the many hoods, gunmen and executioners he calls his friends should he send up river? Set on the mean streets of Boston and told almost entirely in crackling dialogue by a vivid cast of cops and lowlifes, The Friends of Eddie Coyle set a standard for authentically gritty crime fiction that has never been bettered.
"If you live here by choice", Willem Lange writes of the northern New England he's called home for half a century, "you pay your dues, take what you can get, and endure what you have to. It's well worth it". These eighteen reminiscences, character sketches, and sometimes heart-rending accounts of life among the ubiquitous pines and unyielding granite show a deep reverence and an abiding respect for this unique corner of the world. We meet, for example, Baddy, the crusty timber camp cook whose love of hunting ends the day he witnesses the needless death of a fawn. We experience rites of passage: an old man determined to spend one last night alone in the deep woods; a young man discovering for the first time the indelible beauty of a northern September morning; and Lange's own realization that, "for the first time, I'll be the oldest man in camp, and my son will be carrying most of my pack." This intimate collection of stories is a quiet quest for meaning in a rugged physical and psychic terrain.