Daniel Woodrell's modern classic is an unforgettable tale of desperation and courage that inspired the award-winning film starring Jennifer Lawrence.Ree Dolly's father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date. With two young brothers depending on her, 16-year-old Ree knows she has to bring her father back, dead or alive. Living in the harsh poverty of the Ozarks, R...

A sharp and funny addition to Daniel Woodrell's collection of "country noir" novels, featuring anti-hero Sammy Barlach and Jamalee Merridew, her hair tomato red with rage and ambition.In the Ozarks, what you are is where you are born. If you're born in Venus Holler, you're not much. For Jamalee Merridew, Venus Holler just won't cut it. Jamalee sees her brother Jason, blessed with drop-dead gorgeous looks and the local object of female obsession, as her ticket out o...

The author of Winter's Bone delivers "a terrifying journey into the heart of darkness" with this suspenseful coming of age tale set in the Ozarks ( The New York Times Book Review).Shug Akins is a lonely, overweight thirteen-year-old boy. His mother, Glenda, is the one person who loves him—she calls him Sweet Mister and attempts to boost his confidence and give him hope for his future. Shuggie's purported father, Red, is a brutal man with a short f...

From an American master and author of Winter's Bone, this dark tragedy tells of a deadly dance hall fire and its impact over several generations.Alma DeGeer Dunahew, the mother of three young boys, works as the maid for a prominent citizen and his family in West Table, Missouri. Her husband is mostly absent, and, in 1929, her scandalous, beloved younger sister is one of the 42 killed in an explosion at the local dance hall. Who is to blame? Mobsters from S...

In the parish of St. Bruno, sex is easy, corruption festers, and double-dealing is a way of life—and Rene Shade is an uncompromising detective swimming in a sea of filth in this hard-hitting, critically acclaimed trilogy of crime novels.As Shade takes on hit men, porn kings, a gang of ex-cons, and the ghosts of his own checkered past, Woodrell's three seminal novels pit long-entrenched criminals against the hard line of the law, brother against brother, and two vas...

A young man witnesses the unrestrained violence of the Civil War along the American frontier in this novel from the author of Winter's Bone ."A renegade Western that celebrates the genre while bushwhacking its most cherished traditions." — Chicago TribuneWhile armies in the East clash in the great battles of the American Civil War, bands of men seek their own fierce retri...

When Red Baker, a Larmel steel worker in Baltimore, Maryland, gets laid off from his job he goes crazy: boozing, attempted philandering, running away from his future. Filled with unforgettable characters from Red’s angry but loyal wife, Wanda; his basketball-star son, Ace; his lifelong friend Dog, a casualty of the layoff; and Crystal, the go-go dancer at Lily’s bar who embodies Red’s fantasies of escape. Red Baker is a classic American novel about a man with no i...

Nick Corey is a terrible sheriff on purpose. He doesn't solve problems, enforce rules or arrest criminals. He knows that nobody in tiny Potts County actually wants to follow the law and he is perfectly content lazing about, eating five meals a day, and sleeping with all the eligible women.Still, Nick has some very complex problems to deal with. Two local pimps have been sassing him, ruining his already tattered reputation. His girlfriend Rose is being terrorized by her husband. And ...

"Woodrell writes about violence and dark deeds . . . in compact, musical prose. . . . once you begin reading [these short stories ]you can't stop." — New York TimesDaniel Woodrell is able to lend uncanny logic to harsh, even criminal behavior in this wrenching collection of stories. Desperation--both material and psychological—motivates his characters. A husband cruelly avenges the killing of his wife's pet; an injured rapist is cared for ...

After the loss of his family farm, John Moon is a desperate man. A master hunter, his ability to poach game in-season or out is the only thing that stands between him and the soup kitchen line. Until Moon trespasses on the wrong land, hears a rustle in the brush, and fires a single fateful shot. Following the bloody trail, he comes upon a shocking scene: an illegal, deep woods campground filled with drugs, bundles of cash and the body of a dead young woman, killed by Moon's stray bullet. F...

"My imagination is always skulking about in a wrong place." And now Doyle Redmond, thirty-five-year-old nowhere writer, has crossed the line between imagination and real live trouble. On the lam in his soon-to-be ex-wife's Volvo, he's running a family errand back in his boyhood home of West Table, Missouri -- the heart of the red-dirt Ozarks. The law wants his big brother, Smoke, on a felony warrant, and Doyle's supposed to talk him into giving up. But Smoke is hunkered down in the hills w...

Daniel Woodrell's modern classic is an unforgettable tale of desperation and courage that inspired the award-winning film starring Jennifer Lawrence.Ree Dolly's father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date. With two young brothers depending on her, 16-year-old Ree knows she has to bring her father back, dead or alive. Living in the harsh poverty of the Ozarks, R...