THE LAST DAYS OF THE DOG MEN

Literature & Fiction

Watson, Brad

Contemporary

Weidenfeld&Nicolson

Did Jesus really beat death? That’s what Christians for hundreds of years have believed, that Jesus Christ returned to life after death and burial in a stone tomb. To the modern mind, “resurrection” is utterly implausible, but it was also doubtful to many first-century Greeks, Jews, and even some Christians. With such an incredible assertion at the heart of the Christian faith, it’s no wonder that some people struggle to believe.
Unlike any other book on the resurrection, Raised? encourages you to doubt in order to believe. Too often Christians look down on doubt, but in Christ, we see a person who welcomes doubt and encourages faith. Jonathan Dodson and Brad Watson don’t shy away from the hard questions or settle for easy answers. They help you to see how the resurrection offers hope for the future and answers for the life and death questions we all face.
“I encourage Christians and non-Christians alike to read this book. . . . provocative, illuminating, and succinct.”
―Eileen Flynn, former religion reporter for Austin American-Statesman and Journalism and religion lecturer at the University of Texas
“Wonderfully demonstrates the plausibility of the resurrection of Jesus and the possibilities for a life of hope.”
―Sean McDonough, professor of New Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and author of Christ as Creator: Origins of a New Testament Doctrine

Raised?: Finding Jesus by Doubting the Resurrection

Religion & Spirituality

Dodson, Jonathan K.

Christian Books & Bibles

Zondervan

In Last Days of the Dog-Men, Brad Watson brings us an anthology unlike any other: stories about dogs and people and their undeniable, unbreakable link to one another. Here Watson unerringly captures the canine component of the human personality--yearning for freedom, mourning the loss of something wild, drawn to human connection but also to thoughtless abandon and savagery without judgment--while portraying dogs as the loyal servants to their masters' complex emotional needs. In precise and beautiful prose Brad Watson tells stories that are funny, dark, and vividly expressive. Last Days of the Dog-Men is a stellar collection heralding the arrival of a true talent.

Last Days of the Dog-Men

Short Stories & Anthologies

Delta

A collection of stories about people and dogs--dogs as companions, as accomplices, and as victims of human ruthlessness--captures various aspects of the human personality in connection to the instinctual personalities of dogs.

Last Days of the Dog-Men: Stories

United States

W.W.Norton&Company

Having won and lost the woman he has loved since seeing her do a naked cartwheel in 1916, Finus Bates wonders if the colorful characters from their hometown hold the secrets to her elusive character. 22,500 first printing.

The Heaven of Mercury

W.W.Norton

Finalist for the 2011 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: "Watson's talent is singular, truly awesome; [his stories] are infused with an uncanny beauty."―A. M. Homes In this, his first collection of stories since his celebrated, award-winning Last Days of the Dog-Men, Brad Watson takes us even deeper into the riotous, appalling, and mournful oddity of human beings. In prose so perfectly pitched as to suggest some celestial harmony, he writes about every kind of domestic discord: unruly or distant children, alienated spouses, domestic abuse, loneliness, death, divorce. In his masterful title novella, a freshly married teenaged couple are visited by an unusual pair of inmates from a nearby insane asylum―and find out exactly how mismatched they really are. With exquisite tenderness, Watson relates the brutality of both nature and human nature. There’s no question about it. Brad Watson writes so well―with such an all-seeing, six-dimensional view of human hopes, inadequacies, and rare grace―that he must be an extraterrestrial.

Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives: Stories

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction: Astonishing prose brings to life a forgotten woman and a lost world in a strange and bittersweet Southern pastoral.
Since his award-winning debut collection of stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men, Brad Watson has been expanding the literary traditions of the South, in work as melancholy, witty, strange, and lovely as any in America.
Now, drawing on the story of his own great-aunt, Watson explores the life of Miss Jane Chisolm, born in rural, early-twentieth-century Mississippi with a genital birth defect that would stand in the way of the central "uses" for a woman in that time and place: sex and marriage. From the highly erotic world of nature around her to the hard tactile labor of farm life, from the country doctor who befriends her to the boy who loved but was forced to leave her, Miss Jane Chisolm and her world are anything but barren.
The potency and implacable cruelty of nature, as well as its beauty, is a trademark of Watson’s fiction. In Miss Jane, the author brings to life a hard, unromantic past that is tinged with the sadness of unattainable loves, yet shot through with a transcendent beauty. Jane Chisolm’s irrepressible vitality and generous spirit give her the strength to live her life as she pleases in spite of the limitations that others, and her own body, would place on her. Free to satisfy only herself, she mesmerizes those around her, exerting an unearthly fascination that lives beyond her still.

Miss Jane: A Novel

"His people and dogs―those wonderful dogs!―come alive with honest, thrumming energy." ―The New York Times Book Review Winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the Academy of Arts and Letters and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. In each of these "weird and wonderful stories" (Boston Globe), Brad Watson writes about people and dogs: dogs as companions, as accomplices, and as unwitting victims of human passions; and people responding to dogs as missing parts of themselves. "Elegant and elegiac, beautifully pitched to the human ear, yet resoundingly felt in our animal hearts" (New York Newsday), Watson's vibrant prose captures the animal crannies of the human personality―yearning for freedom, mourning the loss of something wild, drawn to human connection but also to thoughtless abandon and savagery without judgment. Pinckney Benedict praises Watson's writing as "crisp as a morning in deer season, rife with spirited good humor and high intelligence," and Fred Chappell calls his stories "strong and true to the place they come from." This powerful debut collection marks Brad Watson's introduction into "a distinguished [Southern] literary heritage, from Faulkner to Larry Brown to Barry Hannah to Richard Ford" (The State, Columbia, South Carolina).

A National Book Award Finalist
Brad Watson's first novel was eagerly awaited after his breathtaking, award-winning debut collection of short stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men. In The Heaven of Mercury, Watson fulfills that literary promise with a humorous and jaundiced eye. Finus Bates has loved Birdie Wells since the day he saw her do a naked cartwheel in the woods in 1916. Later he won her at poker, lost her, then nearly won her again after the mysterious poisoning of her womanizing husband. Does Vish, the old medicine woman down in the ravine, hold the key to Birdie's elusive character? Or does Parnell, the town undertaker, whose unspeakable desires bring lust for life and death together? Or does the secret lie with some other colorful old-timer in Mercury, Mississippi, not such a small town anymore? With "graceful, patient, insightful and hilarious" prose (USA Today), Brad Watson chronicles Finus's steadfast devotion and Mercury's evolution from a sleepy backwater to a small city.

The Heaven of Mercury: A Novel

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Books by Watson, Brad

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

THE LAST DAYS OF THE DOG MEN

Raised?: Finding Jesus by Doubting the Resurrection

Last Days of the Dog-Men

Last Days of the Dog-Men: Stories

The Heaven of Mercury

Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives: Stories

Miss Jane: A Novel

Last Days of the Dog-Men: Stories

The Heaven of Mercury: A Novel

Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives: Stories