A veteran on leave investigates a murder in his Kentucky backwoods hometown in this Appalachian noir by the acclaimed author of Country Dark.Mick Hardin, a combat veteran and Army CID agent, is home on a leave to be with his pregnant wife—but they aren't getting along. His sister, newly risen to sheriff, has just landed her first murder investigation—but local politicians are pushing for someone else to take the case. Maybe they think she can't handle it. O...

"A smart, rich country noir" from the acclaimed author Kentucky Straight and The Good Brother (Stewart O'Nan, bestselling author of Henry, Himself).Chris Offutt is an outstanding literary talent, whose work has been called "lean and brilliant" ( The New York Times Book Review) and compared by reviewers to Tobias Wolff, Ernest Hemingway, and Raymond Carver. He's been awarded the Whiting Writers Award for Fiction/N...

Army cop-turned-small-town-investigator Mick Hardin returns to Appalachia in this propulsive thriller from the award-winning author of The Killing Hills.Mick Hardin is an Army CID officer home on leave, recovering from an IED attack and flirting with prescription painkillers, when a body is found in the center of town. It's Barney Kissick, the local heroin dealer, and the city police see it as an occupational hazard. But when Barney's mother, Shifty, asks M...

**PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF THE YEARAfter inheriting 400 novels of pornography written by his father in the 1970s and ‘80s, critically acclaimed author Chris Offutt sets out to make sense of a complicated father-son relationship in this carefully observed, beautifully written memoir.**“Chris Offutt owns one of the finest, surest prose styles around, ready and able to convey the hardest truth without flinching. Now Offutt enters the darkest and most mysterious ...

From the critically acclaimed author of the collection Kentucky Straight and memoir My Father the Pornographer, The Good Brother is the finely crafted debut novel from a talent the New York Times calls “a fierce writer”.Virgil Caudill has never gone looking for trouble, but this time he's got no choice—his hell-raising brother Boyd has been murdered. Everyone knows who did it, and in the hills of Kentucky, tradition won’t let a m...

From the critically acclaimed author of the novel The Good Brother and memoir My Father the Pornographer, Same River Twice is the second volume from an American literary star. “If you haven't read Chris Offutt, you've missed an accomplished and compelling writer” (Chicago Tribune).At the age of nineteen, Chris Offutt had already been rejected by the army, the Peace Corps, the park rangers, and the police. So he left his home in t...

Kentucky straight is bourbon with no mixer. Kentucky Straight is Kentucky seen without nostalgic gloss. These riveting, often heartbreaking stories, take us through country that is unmapped. They are set in a nameless Appalachian community too small to be called a town, a place where wanting an education is a mark of ungodly arrogance and dowsing for water a legitimate occupation; where hunting is not a sport but a means of survival. These are stories of coal miners and backwoods ...

In this blistering return to Chris Offutt’s acclaimed crime series, Mick Hardin is tested like never before as familial allegiances and old wounds collide, threatening to destroy everything he lovesWith his signature crackling prose, literary master Chris Offutt has staked out his own territory in crime fiction, a place of familial allegiances, old wounds, and revenge—the code of the hills. His new book, a sharp, twisty southern noir with echoes of James Sallis and...

Master storyteller Chris Offutt’s acclaimed crime series has been praised by Ian Rankin as “righteous Kentucky noir with top notes of Daniel Woodrell and S. A. Cosby,” and in this breakneck new novel, sheriff Mick Hardin navigates the treacherous terrain of a town’s festering secrets and the violent forces who want to keep them hiddenLauded as a “masterclass in the craft of crime fiction” (CrimeReads), Chris Offutt’s beloved and critically acclaimed Mick H...

From the critically acclaimed author of the novel The Good Brother and memoir My Father the Pornographer, Out of the Woods is Chris Offutt’s fiercely original short story collection the New York Times calls “a magical book”.Arriving seven years after Offutt’s debut collection Kentucky Straight, Out of the Woods returns a masterly writer to the form which garnered him not only critical praise but many prestigious awards. ...

From the critically acclaimed author of the novel The Good Brother and memoir My Father the Pornographer comes the unforgettable memoir No Heroes. “If you haven’t read Chris Offutt, you’ve missed an accomplished and compelling writer” (Chicago Tribune).In his fortieth year, Chris Offutt returns to his alma mater, Morehead State University, the only four-year school in the Kentucky hills. He envisions leading the modest life of a ...

Master storyteller Chris Offutt’s acclaimed crime series has been praised by Ian Rankin as “righteous Kentucky noir with top notes of Daniel Woodrell and S. A. Cosby,” and in this breakneck new novel, sheriff Mick Hardin navigates the treacherous terrain of a town’s festering secrets and the violent forces who want to keep them hidden.Lauded as a “masterclass in the craft of crime fiction” (CrimeReads), Chris Offutt’s beloved and critically acclaimed Mick ...