Michael Farris Smith's Books

The Fighter

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Now a major motion picture and titled for the screen as RUMBLE THROUGH THE DARK; a blistering tale 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.

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Page Count

217

Publisher

Little, Brown

Published Date

ISBN 10

0316432334

ISBN 13

9780316432337

Desperation Road

A Novel

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Desperation Road

A Novel

By: Michael Farris Smith

Now a major motion picture starring Mel Gibson: a Mississippi-set southern noir where drugs, whiskey, guns, and the desire for revenge violently intersect. For eleven years the clock has been ticking for Russell Gaines as he sits in Parchman Penitentiary in the Mississippi Delta. His sentence is now up, and he believes his debt has been paid. But when he returns home, he soon discovers that revenge lives and breathes all around him. On the same day that Russell is released from prison, a woman named Maben and her young daughter trudge along the side of the interstate under the punishing summer sun. Desperate and exhausted, the pair spend their last dollar on a room for the night, a night that ends with Maben running through the darkness holding a pistol, and a dead deputy sprawled in the middle of the road in the glow of his own headlights. With the dawn, destinies collide, and Russell is forced to decide whose life he will save -- his own or those of the woman and child. Delivered in powerful and lyrical prose, Desperation Road is a story of troubled souls twisted with regret and bound by secrets that stretch over the years and across the land.

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Page Count

300

Publisher

Hachette+ORM

Published Date

ISBN 10

0316353019

ISBN 13

9780316353014

Salvage This World

A Novel

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Salvage This World

A Novel

By: Michael Farris Smith

In Michael Farris Smith's latest "riveting" epic, a young woman returns home with her child to her ghost-haunted father, while a religious extremist hunts the stormridden territory to find the girl who may be the region's savior. (Laird Hunt, National Book Award-nominated author of Zorrie and Neverhome) There was no rising from the dead and there was no hand to calm the storms and there was no peace in no valley. In the hurricane-ravaged bottomlands of South Mississippi, where stores are closing and jobs are few, a fierce zealot has gained a foothold, capitalizing on the vulnerability of a dwindling population and a burning need for hope. As she preaches and promises salvation from the light of the pulpit, in the shadows she sows the seeds of violence. Elsewhere, Jessie and her toddler, Jace, are on the run across the Mississippi/Louisiana line, in a resentful return to her childhood home and her desolate father. Holt, Jace's father, is missing and hunted by a brutish crowd, and an old man witnesses the wrong thing in the depths of night. In only a matter of days, all of their lives will collide, and be altered, in the maelstrom of the changing world. At once elegiac and profound, Salvage This World journeys into the heart of a region growing darker and less forgiving, and asks how we keep going—what do we hold onto—in a land where God has fled. Garden & Gun Top Reads of 2023 • Bibliolifestyle Best Literary Fiction of 2023 • Southern Living Southern Writers to Read Right Now

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Page Count

208

Publisher

Little, Brown

Published Date

ISBN 10

0316413836

ISBN 13

9780316413831

Blackwood

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Blackwood

By: Michael Farris Smith

In this timeless, mythical tale of unforgiving justice and elusive grace, rural Mississippi townsfolk shoulder the pain of generations as something dangerous lurks in the enigmatic kudzu of the woods. The town of Red Bluff, Mississippi, has seen better days, though those who've held on have little memory of when that was. Myer, the county's aged, sardonic lawman, still thinks it can prove itself -- when confronted by a strange family of drifters, the sheriff believes that the people of Red Bluff can be accepting, rational, even good. The opposite is true: this is a landscape of fear and ghosts -- of regret and violence -- transformed by the kudzu vines that have enveloped the hills around it, swallowing homes, cars, rivers, and hiding a terrible secret deeper still. Colburn, a junkyard sculptor who's returned to Red Bluff, knows this pain all too well, though he too is willing to hope for more when he meets and falls in love with Celia, the local bar owner. The Deep South gives these noble, broken, and driven folks the gift of human connection while bestowing upon them the crippling weight of generations. With broken histories and vagabond hearts, the townsfolk wrestle with the evil in the woods -- and the wickedness that lurks in each and every one of us.

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Page Count

304

Publisher

Little, Brown

Published Date

ISBN 10

031652980X

ISBN 13

9780316529808

Nick

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Nick

By: Michael Farris Smith

A critically acclaimed novelist pulls Nick Carraway out of the shadows and into the spotlight in this "masterful" look into his life before Gatsby (Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls and Chances Are). Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg and into Gatsby's periphery, he was at the center of a very different story-one taking place along the trenches and deep within the tunnels of World War I. Floundering in the wake of the destruction he witnessed firsthand, Nick delays his return home, hoping to escape the questions he cannot answer about the horrors of war. Instead, he embarks on a transcontinental redemptive journey that takes him from a whirlwind Paris romance-doomed from the very beginning-to the dizzying frenzy of New Orleans, rife with its own flavor of debauchery and violence. An epic portrait of a truly singular era and a sweeping, romantic story of self-discovery, this rich and imaginative novel breathes new life into a character that many know but few have pondered deeply. Charged with enough alcohol, heartbreak, and profound yearning to paralyze even the heartiest of golden age scribes, Nick reveals the man behind the narrator who has captivated readers for decades.

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Page Count

270

Publisher

Little, Brown

Published Date

ISBN 10

0316529753

ISBN 13

9780316529754

Rivers

A Novel

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Rivers

A Novel

By: Michael Farris Smith

In a hurricane-ravaged Mississippi of the near future, a man who elects to remain behind when most people have fled the area is brutally attacked by two hitchhikers who steal his supplies, a crime that prompts him to pursue justice.

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Page Count

368

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1451699433

ISBN 13

9781451699432

The Hands of Strangers

A Novella

By: Michael Farris Smith

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The Hands of Strangers

A Novella

By: Michael Farris Smith

In the tradition of The Stranger and The Old Man and the Sea, this taut novella by critically acclaimed novelist Michael Farris Smith (Rivers, 2013) explores the human spirit and its capacity for faith and forgiveness in an imperfect world. What happens to a marriage when a child vanishes? Jon and Estelle walk the picturesque Paris streets, but are living through the cruelest of realties—the disappearance of their nine-year-old daughter Jennifer, abducted from the Musée D’Orsay during a class field trip. Jon spends his day slugging through bus terminals and metro halls, posting flyers of his daughter, while Estelle has become a recluse, unwilling to leave the apartment in case the telephone rings. Their relationship suffers as the passing time chips away at the hope of Jennifer’s return. Then, a free-spirited artist enters their life as unexpectedly as Jennifer has left it, luring Jon down a reckless path as he searches desperately for courage in the smallest signs. If their daughter is ever returned to them, will Jon and Estelle both be there to welcome her home?

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Page Count

134

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1476788472

ISBN 13

9781476788470

In the Beginning

A short story prequel to the novel Rivers

By: Michael Farris Smith

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In the Beginning

A short story prequel to the novel Rivers

By: Michael Farris Smith

In this short story prequel to Michael Farris Smith’s widely acclaimed novel Rivers (a Best Book of 2013 in BookRiot, Daily Candy, and Hudson Booksellers), a series of catastrophic hurricanes along the Gulf Coast prompts the government to institute “The Line,” a boundary between the coastal region and the rest of the country, effectively creating a lawless no-man’s land without electricity, resources, or basic services. Those left behind include Aggie, a snake-handling preacher with a questionable past; Bub and Ava, who live in a FEMA trailer held down by cinderblocks; and Cohen, who refuses to evacuate and leave behind the graves of his late wife and child. As all four struggle to survive below The Line, their stories intersect with violent and unexpected consequences.

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Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501102540

ISBN 13

9781501102547

Rivers

A Novel

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Rivers

A Novel

By: Michael Farris Smith

In the near future, a climate shift has caused massive damage to the Southeastern United States, eroding the coastline and forcing people from their homes. But one man has stayed behind. Cohen's wife and unborn child were killed during a mandatory evacuation, and when he returned home to bury them, he never left, building and rebuilding his house as the rain, wind, and darkness worked against him. Returning from a supply run one day, Cohen picks up two teenage hitchhikers--a boy and an injured Creole girl--and his solitary existence is irrevocably shattered. He is attacked and left for dead, his house ransacked, all his carefully accumulated food and supplies gone--but worse, the last precious mementos he had of his wife and child are now in the hands of strangers. Summoning his last reserves of strength, Cohen sets off to gain justice for all he has lost. With enormous passion and reverence for the post-Katrina South, Rivers evokes the ravages of nature as never before. It is an enthralling, gorgeously written tale of survival and redemption that heralds a major new voice in literary fiction.

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Page Count

353

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1451699425

ISBN 13

9781451699425

The Fighter

By: Michael Farris Smith

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The Fighter

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Page Count

217

Publisher

Little, Brown

Published Date

ISBN 10

0316432334

ISBN 13

9780316432337

Nick

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Nick

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Page Count

270

Publisher

Little, Brown

Published Date

ISBN 10

0316529753

ISBN 13

9780316529754

In the Beginning

A short story prequel to the novel Rivers

By: Michael Farris Smith

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In the Beginning

A short story prequel to the novel Rivers

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501102540

ISBN 13

9781501102547

Blackwood

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Blackwood

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Page Count

304

Publisher

Little, Brown

Published Date

ISBN 10

031652980X

ISBN 13

9780316529808

Salvage This World

A Novel

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Salvage This World

A Novel

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Page Count

208

Publisher

Little, Brown

Published Date

ISBN 10

0316413836

ISBN 13

9780316413831

Desperation Road

A Novel

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Desperation Road

A Novel

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Age

Page Count

300

Publisher

Hachette+ORM

Published Date

ISBN 10

0316353019

ISBN 13

9780316353014

The Hands of Strangers

A Novella

By: Michael Farris Smith

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The Hands of Strangers

A Novella

By: Michael Farris Smith

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

134

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1476788472

ISBN 13

9781476788470

ESPN Sports Almanac 2000

Information Please

By: Gerry Brown,Michael Morrison

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ESPN Sports Almanac 2000

Information Please

By: Gerry Brown,Michael Morrison

North America's most popular sports almanac returns with new facts, new records, and more fun than ever before. Like its hugely successful predecessors, this new volume combines essays from great sportswriters and top ESPN personalities, easily accessed facts, in-depth statistics from ESPN's Inside the Numbers team, hundreds of photographs, and thousands of charts and tables. It reviews the year's top ten highlights of each sport, reflects every notable change in the sports world over the past year, and gives a full recap of the World Series and major competitions for professional and amateur alike. With more than 950 fact-filled pages, this extraordinary fusion between two trusted sports resources is as entertaining as it is informative. It's the perfect gift for the sports fan who always knows the latest scores and can never have enough information.

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Page Count

966

Publisher

Hyperion

Published Date

ISBN 10

078688472X

ISBN 13

9780786884728

A Sacred Foundation

By: Michael Farris,L. Reed Elam

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A Sacred Foundation

By: Michael Farris,L. Reed Elam

Hundreds of thousands of home school spouses have discovered something: maintaining an excellent marriage is tough! As if the normal pressures of life weren't enough, parents who choose the incredible benefits of home schooling soon discover that an entirely new level of intensity is added to their marriage. It's far too easy to focus only on the children while neglecting the very foundation of the home school -- a rock solid marriage based on the only Firm Foundation. Sadly, some have given in to these pressures and are now shipwrecked on the rocks of life. But it doesn't have to be this way. You can enjoy the awesome rewards of home schooling and have a first-rate, fulfilling marriage. But, like anything of lasting value, it won't happen by itself. Farris and Elam take you step-by-step through the issues you will face (or in which you now find yourself ensconced) as a home schooling spouse. For men and women, A Sacred Foundation gives you the "hands on" practical tools and guidelines that will lead you to a place of true love and fulfillment amidst the great challenge and reward of home schooling. - Publisher.

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