Run On Red

A rural country road. No cell signal for miles. A terrifying game of cat-and-mouse. By the time Laura and Olivia notice the headlights tailing them through the hills, it's too late. What seems, at first, like a case of road rage quickly unfolds into a heart-pounding chase-and a battle for survival. Who are the men in the truck? What do they want? And can Laura and Olivia outrun-and outsmart-them long enough to call for help, even if it means taking their chances in the hills on foot? As their situation grows more perilous, the girls realize that the real terror has only just begun. But flight won't save them from their pursuers. If they're going to make it home alive, they'll have to fight.

When two cars collide at an intersection in a leafy Chicago suburb, Hartley Nolan is not the person police expect to find behind the wheel. After all, he barely drinks; everyone knows it’s his wife who’s the alcoholic. But the bigger question on people’s minds is what brought Sonia Senn, dead at the scene, back to her hometown in such a hurry that night? In eleven tightly linked stories, Red Light Run pulls us into the inner lives of Hartley, Sonia, and a host of other characters to untangle the mounting forces that carry them to their fates. Among the ensemble in this prismatic collection are a real estate agent who seeks gossip on the market rather than houses, a trailer park developer whose entire livelihood is laid to waste by a single cigarette, a divorced mother battling her daughter-in-law for hegemony over her kitchen, a widower hell-bent on destroying the invasive species of beetle that’s wiping out his oak trees, and a down-and-out handyman with a desperate plan for revenge. And then there’s Sonia Senn, with a dark secret of her own, and Hartley Nolan, who has risen above his roots to become a commodities trader in Chicago only to end up sentenced to eight years at Grassland State Prison. With infectiously grim humor and wry insight, these characters contemplate their realities in relation to one tragic moment, propelling us toward a startling revelation about the long and sometimes crooked arc of justice. A brilliant feat of storytelling, Red Light Run is the radiant and stunning debut from Best New American Voices writer Baird Harper.

On April 12, 1864, on the Tennessee banks of the Mississippi River, a force of more than 3,000 Confederate cavalrymen under General Nathan Bedford Forrest stormed Fort Pillow, overwhelming a garrison of some 350 Southern white Unionists and over 300 former slaves turned artillerymen. By the next day, hundreds of Federals were dead, over 60 black soldiers had been captured and re-enslaved, and over 100 white soldiers had been marched off to their doom at Andersonville. Confederates called this bloody battle and its aftermath a hard-won victory. Northerners deemed it premeditated slaughter. To this day, Fort Pillow remains one of the most controversial battles in American history. River Run Red vividly depicts the incompetence and corruption of Union occupation in Tennessee, the horrors of guerrilla warfare, the legacy of slavery, and the pent-up bigotry and rage that found its release at Fort Pillow. Andrew Ward brings to life the garrison’s black soldiers and their ambivalent white comrades, and the former slave trader Nathan Bedford Forrest and his ferocious cavalry, in a fast-paced narrative that hurtles toward that fateful April day and beyond. Destined to become as controversial as the battle itself, River Run Red establishes Fort Pillow’s true significance in the annals of American history.

Brad Smith, a “funny, poignant, evocative” (Dennis Lehane) crime novelist, debuts a new series set in upstate New York featuring jack-of-all trades, Virgil Cain, who must clear his name of two murders while on the run from the law in this spirited country noir. Mickey Dupree is one of the most successful criminal attorneys in upstate New York, having never lost a capital murder case. That is the upside of being Mickey. The downside: Mickey has a lot of enemies and one of them drives the shaft of a golf club through his heart, leaving him dead in a sand trap at his exclusive country club. The cops, led by a dim-witted detective named Joe Brady, focus their attentions on Virgil Cain. Just two weeks earlier Virgil told a crowded bar that “somebody ought to blow Mickey’s head off,” after the slippery lawyer earned an acquittal for Alan Comstock, the man accused of murdering Virgil’s wife. Comstock, a legendary record producer, gun nut, and certifiable lunatic, has returned to his estate, where he lives with his wife, the long suffering Jane. It appears to Virgil that the fix is in when Brady immediately throws him into jail with no questions asked. In order to set things right, Virgil escapes from jail, determined to find Mickey’s killer himself. Aside from a smart and sexy detective named Claire Marchand, everybody is convinced that Virgil is the culprit. When Alan Comstock is discovered with six slugs in his body the day after Virgil’s escape, his guilt is almost assured. Now it is up to Virgil to convince everyone of his innocence—by finding the killer before he winds up as the next victim.

This work closely examines the strengths and weaknesses of the Chinese economic system to discover where the nation may be headed and what the Chinese experience reveals about emerging market economies.

Things quickly go from bad to worse as Emily, Captain Fly Austen, and young Magpie each find themselves in treacherous waters. In late September 1813, Fly Austen is ordered back to the American coast, as England’s Royal Navy has suffered a series of humiliating defeats. Forced to return to sea with a skeleton crew, Fly persuades a reluctant Leander Braden to accompany him one last time. Emily, fearing she will be left behind in Portsmouth, disguises herself as a man and steals aboard Fly’s frigate. Meanwhile, young Magpie is captured by a press gang and hustled aboard a hostile ship, only to find himself in the dangerous company of the English traitor Thomas Trevelyan. A shipwreck, a mutiny, and a bloody encounter with American ships on the Atlantic inflict devastating consequences on all.

A model walks into a life drawing class, drops her robe, and changes the life of a young sculptor forever. For the first time she understands love, obsession and the redemption of creation, but it comes at a high price.

Some things, according to Cody McCall, are worth risking a whipping. Such as, sneaking out with your friends after dark for a peek at the traveling show setting up just outside of town. Oddities, the signs promise. Marvels. Grotesqueries. Exotic attractions and mysterious magics.Not as if they'd be allowed to attend otherwise, not with parents and preacher and schoolmarm all disapproving. But how often does a chance like this come along? There isn't much else by way of excitement in quiet, peaceful Silver River, a once-prosperous boom town slowly gone bust. Worth risking a whipping, sure. Worth risking life and limb, and maybe more? Worth risking being ripped to pieces by ravenous, inhuman brutes? Worth crossing paths with those strange, silent cult-folk from the high valley? Worth all the fire and bloodshed and horror and death?Because something far worse than any ordinary traveling show has come to town, and one thing is for certain: those who survive, if any, will never forget the night Silver River run red.