In the heat of late summer, two New Orleans families—one black and one white—confront a storm that will change the course of their lives.SJ Williams, a carpenter and widower, lives and works in the Lower Ninth Ward, the community where he was born and raised. His sister, Lucy, is a soulful mess, and SJ has been trying to keep her son, Wesley, out of trouble. Across town, Craig Donaldson, a Midwestern transplant and the editor of the city's alternative paper, faces deepening cracks ...

Exploring the diverse landscape of American life, the stories in Blues and Trouble: Twelve Stories capture the lives of people caught between circumstance and their own natures or on the run from fate, from a Jewish couple encountering a dealer in Nazi memorabilia to the troubled family of a Gulf Coast fisherman awaiting a hurricane.Tom Piazza’s debut short story collection, originally published in 1996, heralded the arrival of a startlingly original and vital presence in ...

The author of City of Refuge returns with a startling and powerful novel of race, violence, and identity set on the eve of the Civil War.The year is 1855. Blackface minstrelsy is the most popular form of entertainment in a nation about to be torn apart by the battle over slavery. Henry Sims, a fugitive slave and a brilliant musician, has escaped to Philadelphia, where he earns money living by his wits and performing on the street. He is befriended by James Douglass, leader...

Every place has its history. But what is it about New Orleans that makes it more than just the sum of the events that have happened there? What is it about the spirit of the people who live there that could produce a music, a cuisine, an architecture, a total environment, the mere mention of which can bring a smile to the face of someone who has never even set foot there?What is the meaning of a place like that, and what is lost if it is lost?The winds of Hurricane Katrina,...

“WhateverTom Piazza writes is touched with magic." —Douglas BrinkleyAcclaimed author Tom Piazza follows hisprize-winning novel City of Refuge and the post-Katrinaclassic Why New Orleans Matters with a dynamic collection ofessays and journalism about American music and American character, in DevilSent the Rain.“TomPiazza’s writing is filled with energy, and with tender, insightful words forthe brilliant and irascible, from Jimmy Martin to Norman Mailer. Time and timeagain, P...

Exploring the diverse landscape of American life, the stories in Blues and Trouble: Twelve Stories capture the lives of people caught between circumstance and their own natures or on the run from fate—from a Jewish couple encountering a dealer in Nazi memorabilia to the troubled family of a Gulf Coast fisherman awaiting a hurricane.Tom Piazza’s debut short story collection, originally published in 1996, heralded the arrival of a startlingly original and vital presence in American f...

It is 1883, and America is at a crossroads. At a tiny college in upstate New York, an idealistic young professor has managed to convince Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Confederate memoirist Forrest Taylor, and romance novelist Lucy Comstock to participate in the first (and last) Auburn Writers’ Conference for a public discussion about the future of the nation. By turns brilliantly comic and startlingly prescient, The Auburn Confere...

At the edge of the world, an ocean away, a sailor named Martel has retired to land. He clings to his most valued possession-a series of letters written to his granddaughter, whom he lost contact with long ago. Telling of their ancestral past, his life at sea, and the choices upon which their lives have been built, Martels letters illuminate the power of stories passed down through generations-stories that changed over time, and that ruptured their family narrative, tearing them all apart....

February 1913: seventeen-year-old Leda, clutching a suitcase and her father’s cherished violin, leaves her small Italian village for a new home (and husband) halfway across the world in Argentina. Upon her arrival in Buenos Aires, Leda is shocked to find that her bridegroom has been killed. Unable to fathom the idea of returning home, she remains in this unfamiliar city, living in a commune, without friends or family, on the brink of destitution. She finally acts on a passion she has kept ...

Ireland, home of legendary poets and storytellers, has been wracked by bloody sectarian violence over the last quarter century. Bombs and guns were, and once again are, the primary negotiation tools used by Catholic and Protestant extremists in the conflict surrounding the sovereignty of Northern Ireland—the six counties known as Ulster.Patrick Taylor's Only Wounded centers on the hopes and despairs of everyday life during The Troubles. New York Times bestselling ...

From the author of the acclaimed debut novel The Curiosity comes an emotionally resonant tale about a woman who must take care of two wounded men – one, her soldier-husband, just home from the war in Iraq; the other, a dying World War II scholar-historian who harbors a long-buried secret.Deborah Birch is a seasoned hospice nurse whose daily work requires courage and compassion. But her skills and experience are tested in new and dramatic ways when her easy...