The sleepy town of Hammond, Alabama, explodes with pent-up fear and anger when two white northern civil rights activists arrive to begin an integration campaign, forcing two friends, one black, one white, to take sides

A Walk Through Fire: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

COBB, WILLIAM J.

United States

William Morrow & Co.

WHITE TATTOO: A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES (Ohio State Univ Prize in Short Fiction)

About the Author\nPublished in The New Yorker, The Mississippi Review, and many other national journals, William J. Cobb teaches writing at Penn State University. His first novel, The Fire Eaters, won the Associated Writing Program’s novel award.\nThe White Tattoo is a smart, always surprising collection of American stories. William J. Cobb knows and loves his character and places. His first collection of short stories, The White Tattoo, revels in the undeniable allure of the physical world even as it is juxtaposed with the twists and kinks of psychological and emotional pain. At one extreme is the tense, torturous psychology of “Motel Ice,” whose narrative voice emerges from the mind of a mentally disturbed Jehovah’s Witness gazing out on a world of temptation and redemption. Similarly hyperdramatic in its conclusion and its arc of betrayal and violent aftermath, “For All You Dorks, Blah Blah Blah” conjures up a sleepwalking, murderous father who is less culpable in the harm he causes but all the while most destructive. 
Stylistically, the stories crackle, snap, and zing. Several of them, including “The Wishes,” “The Atmosphere of Vienna,” and “Dark Matter,” use an idiosyncratic, Tilt-O-Whirl narrative marked by a swirling, shifting focus and point of view, trying to create a multifaceted, complex vision of the world by dipping in and out of the consciousness of various characters.

Ohio State University Press

When a dust storm engulfs her Colorado town and pink snow blankets the streets, a heartbreaking decision faces Ruby Cole, a girl who counts birds: She must abandon her baby or give in to her father, whom she nicknames Lord God, and marry a man more than twice her age who already has two wives. She chooses to run, which sets in motion an interlocking series of actions and reactions, upending the lives of an equestrian police officer, pawnshop riffraff, a disabled war vet, Nuisance Animal destroyers, and a grieving ornithologist--a field biologist studies the decline of bird populations. All the while, a growing criminal enterprise moves from cattle rustling to kidnapping to hijacking fuel tankers and murder as events spin out of control,. Set in a time of economic turmoil, virus fears, climate change, fundamentalist cults and illegal immigrant hardship, The Bird Saviors is a visionary story of defiance, anger, and compassion, in which a young woman ultimately struggles to free herself from her domineering father, to raise her daughter in the chaos of the New West, and to become something greater herself.

The Bird Saviors

Literary

Unbridled Books

When a dust storm engulfs her Colorado town and pink snow blankets the streets, a heartbreaking decision faces Ruby Cole, a girl who counts birds: She must abandon her baby or give in to her father, whom she nicknames Lord God, and marry a man more than twice her age who already has two wives. She chooses to run, which sets in motion an interlocking series of actions and reactions, upending the lives of an equestrian police officer, pawnshop riffraff, a disabled war vet, Nuisance Animal destroyers, and a grieving ornithologist — a field biologist studies the decline of bird populations. All the while, a growing criminal enterprise moves from cattle rustling to kidnapping to hijacking fuel tankers and murder as events spin out of control.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by COBB, WILLIAM J.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by COBB, WILLIAM J.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by COBB, WILLIAM J.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A Walk Through Fire: A Novel

WHITE TATTOO: A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES (Ohio State Univ Prize in Short Fiction)

WHITE TATTOO: A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES (Ohio State Univ Prize in Short Fiction)

The Bird Saviors

The Bird Saviors