From Red Dirt

A vivid account of Palestinian life, death, and reproduction during and since the British colonial period in Palestine.

A classic in contemporary Oklahoma literature, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s Red Dirt unearths the joys and ordeals of growing up poor during the 1940s and 1950s. In this exquisite rendering of her childhood in rural Oklahoma, from the Dust Bowl days to the end of the Eisenhower era, the author bears witness to a family and community that still cling to the dream of America as a republic of landowners.

A group of young Irish migrants leave a man called Hopper for dead on an outback road in Australia. They barely know him; no-one will miss him in their world of hostels, wild nights on cheap wine and grinding work on isolated farms. In this powerful novel about the discovery of responsibility, three young people – Fiona, Murph and Hopper – flee the collapse of their country's economy. In the heat and endless spaces of Australia they try to escape their past, but impulsive cruelty, shame and guilt drag them down, and it is easy to make terrible choices.

“An ace of a novel, an ace of a writer.” —Tom Franklin, author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter Red Dirt is the story of Jaxie Skinner, an unlikely professional tennis player from a blue-collar family in the sticks of rural Georgia who takes up the game at the age of three when his father scrapes a court out of the red clay behind their farmhouse. He is a natural, rising to the top of junior tennis, and at eighteen has great success at the French Open. He falls as quickly as he rose, however, when troubles back home and injuries arise. He quits the game for years, but then mounts a comeback, struggling for almost a decade in the unglamorous, low-paying minor leagues of tennis, often living out of his van, before getting one last big shot. A fascinating study of tennis, its demands and tactics, as well as a look at the insular and often selfish character required to reach the pinnacle of the sport, Red Dirt is the Rocky of tennis novels. PRAISE FOR RED DIRT “Starnes spins a tale with the pace and power of a Rafael Nadal forehand.” —Jay Jennings, editor of Tennis and the Meaning of Life: A Literary Anthology of the Game “Alright, literate tennis fans, it’s time to put down the remote and set aside those stat sheets and take an alternately amusing and inspiring trip from the top of the pro tennis barrel to the bottom—and back again. Joe Samuel Starnes’s book radiates an aficionado’s understanding of not just how the game is played (on and off the court) but what it takes to triumph in the hyper-competitive pro game.” —Peter Bodo, Tennis magazine senior writer, ESPN columnist, and co-author of Pete Sampras’s autobiography, A Champion’s Mind “Red Dirt is solid pleasure. Starnes knows what it is to compete, to hope to be made whole by competition, to overcome not just your opponent but your own unquiet. This is a tennis novel, but any athlete—no, any reader—will learn a lot and enjoy the learning.” —John Casey, author of Spartina, winner of the National Book Award “Red Dirt isn’t just a terrific sports novel; it’s a terrific novel, period. Jaxie Skinner is a complex and compelling character, and Starnes gives him a clear, fresh, lively voice.” —Michael Griffith, author of Spikes

Before New Journalism, before the waggish cinema of Woody Allen, before the Gonzo World of Hunter S. Thompson, Saturday Night Live, and National Lampoon, there was the legendary Terry Southern—author of Candy and The Magic Christian and the screenwriter of Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider. Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes, widely recognized as an underground classic, is a collection of Southern's short pieces, two dozen hilarious, well-observed, and devastating sketches that expose the hypocrisy of American social mores. This edition features an introduction by George Plimpton, one of Southern's longtime literary allies and former editor of The Paris Review. “Terry Southern is the illegitimate son of Mack Sennett and Edna St. Vincent Millay.” —Kurt Vonnegut “Terry Southern writes a clean, mean, coolly deliberate, and murderous prose.” —Norman Mailer “If there was a Mt. Rushmore of modern American humor, Terry Southern would be the mountain they carve it on.” —Michale O'Donoghue “Impressive . . . He is both acutely aware of, and the absolute master of the nuances, the ludicrous snobbishness, the deliberate exclusivity of clique vocabulary. . . . With demoniacal cunning he masquerades as the guardian of taste, of responsibility, and of common decency (Mr. Southern's italics, of course).” —New York Times

Award-winning Australian author Katrina Nannestad's much-loved Red Dirt Diaries series, now with amazing new covers! Blue Weston's life is spiralling out of control. Her parents are sending her to boarding school next year. Her mad twin brothers are building pig chariots in the back shed. Her best friend has been abducted by zombies and replaced with a boy-crazy tween. And then there's the drought that's showing no signs of ending soon ... It's New Year's Day, and Blue has resolved to keep a diary of the year's events. It will be another hard year of dust storms and drought on her family's farm - with the odd leech attack and bagpipe-loving pig thrown in for good measure!