Before Blackwood S

This collection of essays is the result of a major conference focusing specifically on the role of Scotland’s print culture in shaping the literature and politics of the long eighteenth century. In contrast to previous studies, this work treats Blackwood’s Magazine as the culmination of a long tradition rather than a starting point.

Retiree Ivy Beasley, a college student? Interested in penning her memoirs, Ivy decides to take a creative writing course. But it’s hard to find time to put pen to paper when this current chapter is so full of lies, jealousy and murder… Rumors are flying around the village of Barrington about Mrs. Winchen Blatch, a reclusive widow living alone in her old farmhouse. In the past few weeks, the widow claims she has been tormented by ghostly visitations, so she hires Ivy and her fellow investigators at Enquire Within to get to the bottom of the mystery. Ivy’s new classes are very close to the widow’s farmhouse, perfect for combining studying and snooping… With each new clue—a dark chamber, a smoking cigar and an amorous lodger—it becomes harder to separate fact from fiction. And when the ghost is revealed to be flesh and blood, the lonely widow may be in more trouble than Ivy and her team can handle…

Merricat Blackwood protects her sister, Constance, from the curiosity and hostility of the villagers after murders occur on the family estate.

This book is a short saga of two generations of fathers and sons called the Blackwoods. As they go through life and experience, heartache, failure, adventure and love, each character fascinates the reader with his passion, thoughts and dreams.

A blistering novel of violence and deliverance set against the mythic backdrop of the Mississippi Delta. The acres and acres of fertile soil, the two-hundred-year-old antebellum house, all gone. And so is the woman who gave it to Jack, the foster mother only days away from dying, her mind eroded by dementia, the family legacy she entrusted to Jack now owned by banks and strangers. And Jack's mind has begun to fail, too. The decades of bare-knuckle fighting are now taking their toll, as concussion after concussion forces him to carry around a stash of illegal painkillers and a notebook of names that separates friend from foe. But in a single twisted night, Jack loses his chance to win it all back. Hijacked by a sleazy gambler out to settle a score, Jack is robbed of the money that will clear his debt with Big Momma Sweet -- the queen of Delta vice, whose deep backwoods playground offers sin to all those willing to pay -- and open a path that could lead him back home. Yet this sudden reversal of fortunes introduces an unlikely savior in the form of a sultry, tattooed carnival worker. Guided by what she calls her "church of coincidence," Annette pushes Jack toward redemption, only to discover that the world of Big Momma Sweet is filled with savage danger. Damaged by regret, crippled by twenty-five years of fists and elbows, heartbroken by his own betrayals, Jack is forced to step into the fighting pit one last time, the stakes nothing less than life or death. With the raw power and poetry of a young Larry Brown and the mysticism of Cormac McCarthy, Michael Farris Smith cements his place as one of the finest writers in the American literary landscape.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.