The Good Brother

Literature & Fiction

Chris Offutt

Contemporary

Vintage

Aged 40, Chris Offutt returns to his Kentucky birthplace to teach at his old school in the hills. With the humblest of intentions, he want to give something back to his community, hoping to become, quietly, a hero of sorts. Yet the present-day reality of a "town of six thousand with no airport, no bookstore, no deli, no record store, one bar and 40 churches" collides painfully with his expectations, leaving him searching for a home that no longer exists. During that same year, Offutt hears for the first time the story of his parents-in-law, Arthur and Irene, Holocaust survivors who emigrated from Poland in 1946. Their frighteningly honest stories of war and exile counterpoint Offutt's search for a sense of safety and home - despite the fact that, as Arthur tells him, "home is illusory" and in real life there are "no heroes".

No Heroes

Biographies & Memoirs

METHUEN

<p>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 teacher and father. Yet present-day reality collides painfully with memory, leaving Offutt in the midst of an adventure he never imagined: the search for a home that no longer exists. Interwoven with this bittersweet homecoming tale are the wartime stories of Offutt's parents-in-law, Arthur and Irene. An unlikely friendship develops between the eighty-year-old Polish Jew and the forty-year-old Kentucky hillbilly as Arthur and Offutt share comfort in exile, reliving the past at a distance. With masterful prose, Offutt combines these disparate accounts to create No Heroes, a profound meditation on family, home, the Holocaust, and history.</p>

No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home

Arts & Literature

Simon&Schuster

<p>‘PITCH-PERFECT IN TONE, THIS IS WHAT JACK REACHER WANTS TO BE WHEN IT GROWS UP’ – TIMES & SUNDAY TIMES THRILLERS OF THE YEAR\nA literary master across genres, award-winning author Chris Offutt's latest novel The Killing Hills is a compelling, propulsive thriller in which a suspicious death exposes the loyalties and rivalries of a deep-rooted and fiercely private community in the Kentucky backwoods.\nMick Hardin, a combat veteran now working as an Army CID agent, is home on a leave that is almost done. His wife is about to give birth, but they aren't getting along. His sister, newly risen to sheriff, has just landed her first murder case, and local politicians are pushing for city police or the FBI to take the case. Are they convinced she can't handle it, or is there something else at work? She calls on Mick who, with his homicide investigation experience and familiarity with the terrain, is well-suited to staying under the radar. As he delves into the investigation, he dodges his commanding officer's increasingly urgent calls while attempting to head off further murders. And he needs to talk to his wife.\nThe Killing Hills is a novel of betrayal - sexual, personal, within and between the clans that populate the hollers - and the way it so often shades into violence. Chris Offutt has delivered a dark, witty, and absolutely compelling novel of murder and honour, with an investigator-hero unlike any in fiction.\nPRAISE FOR THE KILLING HILLS\n‘If Lee Child and Daniel Woodrell collaborated on a hillbilly noir, the result would probably read a lot like this: tough, laconic, emotionally engaging and blackly funny, The Killing Hills makes for a very satisfying read’ – IRISH TIMES\n‘Wonderfully atmospheric thriller’ – MAIL ON SUNDAY\n‘A riveting example of Rural Noir’ – TIMES & SUNDAY TIMES CRIME CLUB (Pick of the Week)\n‘One hopes Offutt will bring Hardin back; he is a hell of a character!’ – CRIME TIME (Book of the Month)\n‘Chris Offutt takes the bare bones of the traditional hard-boiled American crime story and fleshes them with a layered account of life, death and what passes for family “honour” in the backwoods Kentucky town of Rocksalt... This short, powerful novel evokes, above all else, a terrible sadness about life in the Kentucky hills and the awful inevitability of it all’ – SHOTS MAG\n'The Killing Hills is as poignant and powerful as they come' - CRIMEREADS (Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2021)</p>

The Killing Hills: 'This is what Jack Reacher wants to be when it grows up' (Times): A Times & Sunday Times Thriller of the Year

No Exit Press

Code of the Hills: Discover the award-winning crime thriller series

Genre Fiction

Chris Offutt is an outstanding literary talent whose work has been called "lean and brilliant" (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/Nonfiction and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Fiction Award, among numerous other honors. His first work of fiction in nearly two decades, Country Dark is a taut, compelling novel set in rural Kentucky from the Korean War to 1970. Tucker, a young veteran, returns from war to work for a bootlegger. He falls in love and starts a family, and while the Tuckers don't have much, they have the love of their home and each other. But when his family is threatened, Tucker is pushed into violence, which changes everything. The story of people living off the land and by their wits in a backwoods Kentucky world of shine-runners and laborers whose social codes are every bit as nuanced as the British aristocracy, Country Dark is a novel that blends the best of Larry Brown and James M. Cain, with a noose tightening evermore around a man who just wants to protect those he loves. It reintroduces the vital and absolutely distinct voice of Chris Offutt, a voice we've been missing for years.

Country Dark

Literary

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Books by Chris Offutt