A mishap while tree-poaching leaves beer-swilling Virginia lumberjack Donnie Huff well and truly dead -- until some furious pounding on his body snatches him back from the other side with no ill effects to speak of.  His devout mother-in-law, Opal Criner, is convinced his recovery is nothing less than a miracle -- and a potentially profitable one at that.  With a few of Opal's valuable lessons in preacherly manners, Donnie is soon ready to spread Jesus' divine word . . . though he's not quite sure he was listening when the Savior said it.

GOSPEL HOUR.

Literature & Fiction

PEARSON, T.R.

Literary

NY: MORROW. 1991

A rollicking novel filled with unusal wisdom and rare humor follows Clayton, a notorious ne'er'do'well who is known for his devotion to pornographic movies on the satin channel, as he suffers a dramatic personality change that bestows upon him prophetic gifts that win him fame and adulation and force Deputy Ray Tatum to solve the mystery surrounding Clayton's condition. 30,000 first printing.

Blue Ridge

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

Penguin??Books

In their search for a missing toddler, Deputy Ray Tatum and his sometime girlfriend, Kit Carson, deal with an array of small-town foibles, follies, and characters in a story that stretches from Virginia to Antarctica. By the author of Blue Ridge. Reprint.

Polar

Marvelously funny, bittersweet, and beautifully evocative, the original publication of A Short History of a Small Place announced the arrival of one of our great Southern voices. Although T. R. Pearson's Neely, North Carolina, doesn't appear on any map of the state, it has already earned a secure place on the literary landscape of the South. In this introduction to Neely, the young narrator, Louis Benfield, recounts the tragic last days of Miss Myra Angelique Pettigrew, a local spinster and former town belle who, after years of total seclusion, returns flamboyantly to public view-with her pet monkey, Mr. Britches. Here is a teeming human comedy inhabited by some of the most eccentric and endearing characters ever encountered in literature.

A Short History of a Small Place

Humor & Satire

Removed from the outside world, small-town accountant Paul Tatum forges a largely non-verbal friendship with fellow recluse and fix-it man Stoney, with whom he shares a fixation on a local damsel in distress before Paul goads Stoney into an inexorable course of action, with tragic consequences. Reprint.

True Cross

Welcome to the daring, thrilling, and downright strange adventures of William Willis, one of the world’s original extreme sportsmen. Driven by an unfettered appetite for personal challenge and a yen for the path of most resistance, Willis mounted a single-handed and wholly unlikely rescue in the jungles of French Guiana and then twice crossed the broad Pacific on rafts of his own design, with only housecats and a parrot for companionship. His first voyage, atop a ten-ton balsa monstrosity, was undertaken in 1954 when Willis was sixty. His second raft, having crossed eleven thousand miles from Peru, found the north shore of Australia shortly after Willis’s seventieth birthday. A marvel of vigor and fitness, William Willis was a connoisseur of ordeal, all but orchestrating short rations, ship-wreck conditions, and crushing solitude on his trans-Pacific voyages. He’d been inspired by Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl’s bid to prove that a primitive raft could negotiate the open ocean. Willis’s trips confirmed that a primitive man could as well. Willis survived on rye flour and seawater, sang to keep his spirits up, communicated with his wife via telepathy, suffered from bouts of temporary blindness, and eased the intermittent pain of a double hernia by looping a halyard around his ankles and dangling upside-down from his mast. Rich with vivid detail and wry humor, Seaworthy is the story of a sailor you’ve probably never heard of but need to know. In an age when countless rafts were adrift on the waters of the world, their crews out to shore up one theory of ethno-migration or tear down another, Willis’s challenges remained refreshingly personal. His methods were eccentric, his accomplishments little short of remarkable. Don’t miss the chance to meet this singular monk of the sea.

Seaworthy: Adrift with William Willis in the Golden Age of Rafting

History

Americas

Crown

Welcome to the daring, thrilling, and downright strange adventures of William Willis, one of the world’s original extreme sportsmen. Driven by an unfettered appetite for personal challenge and a yen for the path of most resistance, Willis mounted a single-handed and wholly unlikely rescue in the jungles of French Guiana and then twice crossed the broad Pacific on rafts of his own design, with only housecats and a parrot for companionship. His first voyage, atop a ten-ton balsa monstrosity, was undertaken in 1954 when Willis was sixty. His second raft, having crossed eleven thousand miles from Peru, found the north shore of Australia shortly after Willis’s seventieth birthday. A marvel of vigor and fitness, William Willis was a connoisseur of ordeal, all but orchestrating short rations, ship-wreck conditions, and crushing solitude on his trans-Pacific voyages. He’d been inspired by Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl’s bid to prove that a primitive raft could negotiate the open ocean. Willis’s trips confirmed that a primitive man could as well. Willis survived on rye flour and seawater, sang to keep his spirits up, communicated with his wife via telepathy, suffered from bouts of temporary blindness, and eased the intermittent pain of a double hernia by looping a halyard around his ankles and dangling upside-down from his mast. Rich with vivid detail and wry humor, Seaworthy is the story of a sailor you’ve probably never heard of but need to know. In an age when countless rafts were adrift on the waters of the world, their crews out to shore up one theory of ethno-migration or tear down another, Willis’s challenges remained refreshingly personal. His methods were eccentric, his accomplishments little short of remarkable. Don’t miss the chance to meet this singular monk of the sea. From the Hardcover edition.

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Broadway Books

Top of the Rock is an absorbing insiders’ account of an incredible time and place in television history: the years when Must See TV—led by Cheers, Seinfeld, Friends, ER, and Law &amp; Order—made NBC an unstoppable success. Here the story is vividly told through the words of the actors, writers, producers, creators, and network executives who helped the Peacock rise to its greatest heights—and then saw it all fall apart. Under the supervision of President of Entertainment Warren Littlefield, NBC went from being an also-ran, losing millions of dollars in failed shows, to the number one station, generating billions of dollars in profit. At its height, the Thursday night lineup alone brought in more revenue than the other six nights of programming combined. Top of the Rock dishes out behind-the-scenes stories from all the biggest shows, revealing the highly risky business decisions, creative passion, and blind leaps of faith that made Must See TV possible. Jerry Seinfeld | Jason Alexander | Kelsey Grammer | Sean Hayes | Helen Hunt | Lisa Kudrow | Eriq La Salle | Matt LeBlanc | John Lithgow | Julianna Margulies | Eric McCormack | Debra Messing | Megan Mullally | David Hyde Pierce | Paul Reiser | Noah Wyle | and more

Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV

Business & Money

Littlefield, Warren

Industries

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

"Pearson's is a different and distinctive voice and a most welcome one. In this novel his talent shows sparks of genius." THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Young Louis Benfield tells the story of his tiny little North Carolina town. There is the looniness of his family, the town of characters, the charm and naviete that gives us a world unknown, and stories that deserve to be told about how it is to grow up a certain kind of way, and to suddenly discover there's a world beyond your own that calls to you....

Short History of a Small Place

Ballantine Books

Off For The Sweet Hereafter

The author returns to the mythic environs of Neely, North Carolina, to tell the modern Bonnie and Clyde story of Raeford Benton Lynch and Jane Elizabeth Firesheets

Off for the Sweet Hereafter

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

Books by PEARSON, T.R.

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

GOSPEL HOUR.

Blue Ridge

Polar

A Short History of a Small Place

True Cross

Seaworthy: Adrift with William Willis in the Golden Age of Rafting

Seaworthy: Adrift with William Willis in the Golden Age of Rafting

Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV

Short History of a Small Place

Off for the Sweet Hereafter