Merelene Durham attempts to cope with her brain-damaged son and the sudden return of her husband after he deserted her years before

Blind Tongues

Literature & Fiction

Watson, Sterling

United States

Delta

Editorial Review - Kirkus ReviewsA Southern prison drama with a revenge plot and a sense of thickly textured events that recalls, somewhat crudely, early Robert Penn Warren novels. Rich Clare and her farmboy stud Charles, the high school football star, pass through the zenith of their affair on graduation eve. She senses that Charles' younger brother Farel has scholastic possibilities (he gets a doctorate in 18th-century Lit) that will take him outta the Carolina farm country, but that Charles will always be a lowbrow. So she starts bedding young Farel on the side and gives Charles back his ring. The two lads set out on a hitchhiking trip, and Charles is shot dead by vile, fat Lester Macabee, a psycho who has given them a ride. Lester escapes. Ten years pass with Farel writing to mournful Clare. He gets a job teaching English to prisoners at North Florida state prison. One day Lester is brought in as a new prisoner, and Farel gets himself involved with some blacks, including a mass murderer, who will kill Lester for him if Farel will help them escape during a performance of Genet's The Blacks, which they are mounting for the inmates. Farel agrees but finds that revenge is sweetest when you do the bloody part yourself, and the climax is a horror of killer's delight. Musky motives and survival choices in Florida's state prisons, with a mess of dialect rendered with the authenticity of a lynx-eared linguist. A first novel with plenty of grab.

Weep No More/

In the pursuit of his "calling" as an author, Blackford "Toad" Turlow is alsoforced to confront the mysteries of drugs, sex, violence, and betrayal.

The Calling

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Fantasy

Lawyer-turned-boat salesman Eddie Priest probes the death of Corey Darrow, whose body is found in a canal, her hand clutching a gun, after he turns down her request for help, and uncovers a deadly quagmire of intrigue, passion, greed, and murder

Deadly Sweet

Pocket_Books

Weep no more, my brother: A novel

Morrow

In the pursuit of his "calling" as an author, Blackford "Toad" Turlow is alsoforced to confront the mysteries of drugs, sex, violence, and betrayal.

The calling: A novel

Genre Fiction

Peachtree

For Merelene Durham it's been fifteen years of coping, of determination not to lose her purchase on this world: a world that has become almost unendurable since her rakish husband, Mayfield, fled after encephalitis turned their son Roland's mind into a strange, shell-holed country. Blind Tongues is the story of what happens when Mayfield unexpectedly returns, and his conviction that a newly made fortune can make Roland whole again, of a brilliant local attorney whose body bears the scars of aviation heroics in World War II, and finally of Merelene herself, who must choose between these two competitors in love while trying to accept the sweet simplicity of her ageless son. Sterling Watson, author of The Calling and Fighting in the Shade, has created a stunning evocation of a Florida coast town and of the people struggling for love and solace within its borders.

Literary

PFP Publishing

The Calling is the story of Blackford "Toad" Turlow, an ambitious, impressionable young man who aspires to be a writer. The voice in his head is that of Eldon Odom, a famous — sometimes infamous — novelist to whom Toad apprentices himself. In the beginning, Toad devours every morsel from Odom, both words and actions. But along the way he learns far more than the art of crafting fiction. He discovers that behind Odom's genius is a warped human being who abuses himself and those around him with alcohol, drugs and debauchery. Instead of teaching his eager disciples about writing, Odom uses them to fulfill his base desires. But Toad listens carefully to "The Old Man," the writer who years before was Odom's own mentor and who describes himself as "just the strange boy who cared to write things down." Toad is also influenced by the echoes o f his reckless, lovable dead sister, Trish; Odom's lean and lusty girlfriend, Lindy Briggs; Odom's loving and patient wife, Miss Sully; and by Toad's own girlfriend, the knowing Ardis Baines From this boozy, brilliant cast of characters, Toad eventually learns that a man and his art are two different things, that the worth of one may far exceed the other, and that there are dangerously thin lines between creativity and madness, between dedication and obsession. The Calling is beautifully written and thoroughly engrossing novel of passion and purpose — one that tells much about the calling and the called. "The characters ...are vividly realized, resistant to stereotypes. And the story's three female leads — Ardis, Toad's sometime girlfriend; Missy Sully, Odom's wife; and Lindy, Odom's current mistress — are complex individuals who play out their expected roles in unexpected fashion," said Nancy Pate in her review for the Orlando Sentinel. And, the Winston Salem Journal wrote, "Watson has much to say about life and art, about creativity and obsession, about the danger of violating reasonable bounds. He says it very well."

Sent to live in the humidity of rural Florida with his grandparents and his sixteen-year-old Aunt Delia for the summer, twelve-year-old Travis becomes absorbed in the closed ways of small-town life. Captivated by Delia, Travis watches her attempt to find a place for herself in the socially stunted, gossip-driven town. Delia's secrets go beyond what Travis can understand, but he believes that he alone can save her--a belief that not only forces him to grow up fast, but one that builds to a dangerous and disturbing climax. In trying to free Delia from her past, Travis leads her into a shocking present and a most uncertain future. In a work at once honest, chilling and compulsively addictive, author Sterling Watson has created a time and place where rock 'n' roll hums from AM radios, steam rises from a secluded riverbed and violent summer storms threaten the peace of silent nights. Watson's characters are brought vividly to life through Travis's touching, powerful and intensely personal voice. A dark and evocative coming of age tale, Sweet Dream Baby begins steeped in innocence and ends in a dramatically different place. "I can't remember a book that sneaked up and grabbed me the way Sweet Dream Baby did. It's a real shocker by a very good writer." --Elmore Leonard "Sterling Watson's Sweet Dream Baby is one of the finest novels I've read in years, an incandescent blend of gothic noir, Faulknerian dreamscape and bittersweet coming-of-age story. Months after reading it, it haunts me still." -Dennis Lehane "Sterling Watson's Sweet Dream Baby brings us the words and music, the tastes and smells of that special time-as well as its heartache and secret shame. I was utterly absorbed in these fierce pages." -Fred Chappell, author of Look Back All the Green Valley "Sweet Dream Baby is a beautiful book. Sterling Watson is surehanded and telling in a story that is as elegiac as it is gripping." -Michael Connelly, author of Chasing the Dime "Some delicious page-turning."-Kirkus Reviews A Book Sense 76 Top 10 Selection Named to Top Ten Crime Books of 2002, Toronto Globe and Mail "Watson proves himself a first-rate storyteller."-Publishers Weekly "A comprehensive work of art that is as thought-provoking as it is disturbing."-Orlando Sentinel

Sweet Dream Baby

Dramas & Plays

Sourcebooks Landmark

"The telling is masterful...Sit back and enjoy Watson's latest. It's better than bourbon on the rocks." --Kirkus Reviews, Starred review "Hypnotically beautiful novel...Paranoia has been defined as 'seeing too much pattern.' Author Watson can make us sweaty victims of that madness, partaking of it, suffering from it, and loving every minute." --Booklist, Starred review "Watson's magic is in pacing and taut prose...Suitcase City is an absorbing thriller, a vivid adventure in a bright, humid, perilous underworld...[A] tense, bloody thriller with a strong sense of place and a soft heart." --Shelf Awareness, Starred review "[A] noir gem...a deeply contemplative and darkly poetic prose style complements the well-crafted plot." --Publishers Weekly "A solid revenge tale...There is plenty of action to be had in this suspense tale, but it is the examination of the characters' motivations that really makes it shine. For fans of Lee Child and Nicci French." --Library Journal "Gripping....As [Watson] spins additional threads within the plot, deepening our interest in even minor characters, his grip remains steady....Peeling back the layers of Tampa society to reveal a crosshatching of race and class--the country club scenes are particularly fine--Watson stealthily heightens the suspense." --Barnes &amp; Noble Review "Watson weaves...questions about race into a plot that takes one bloody turn after another, a crescendo of violence that ends with a day at sea that might be the most chilling of all." --Tampa Bay Times "[An] irresistible earworm of a novel...With its airtight atmosphere of impending, life-sinking doom, and taut language evoking palpable Gulf Coast Florida seediness, Suitcase City duly takes its place alongside the best works of former Floridian Pete Dexter, and the brilliant Tampa novels of Dennis Lehane." --Paste Magazine "Suitcase City [is] such a damn great book, a too-rare (and sometimes nearly too real) depiction of the wildly different worlds that exist side by side in the city by the bay....Events uncoil with an unflashy confidence and understated poetry, drawing in diverse characters whose deep inner lives give the wire-tight plot a thumping, nervous heart." --Creative Loafing Tampa "Suitcase City is a beautifully crafted labyrinth of plot and subplot." --Florida Book Review "The novels of Sterling Watson are to be treasured and passed on to the next generation." --Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River "Sterling Watson is an American treasure. If this taut literary crime novel doesn't center him on the map, we should change maps." --Tom Franklin, author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter "I am a huge fan of Sterling Watson's writing, and take it from me: Suitcase City is arguably his best novel to date. I began reading and did not look up again until the very last page, so taken was I by its twists and turns, its explorations of race and honor and the love a father has for his daughter. Turn off your phone, lock your door, and dive into Suitcase City." --Ann Hood, author of The Obituary Writer "As Watson reminds us, corruption and cruelty survive through their uncanny ability to take on new shapes." --Laura Lippman, author of I'd Know You Anywhere A man gets himself into a little bit of trouble, then a little bit more, then a lot. And then his whole world becomes a nightmare. How does he get himself out of this mess of his own creation? The answer involves the end of an extramarital affair, reconciliation with a daughter he has neglected, and a deadly encounter with a man who comes out of the past bearing bad news and the keys to a new life. Set in Tampa, Florida, in the late 1980s, Suitcase City captures the glitter of the high life and the steamy essence of low places in the Cigar City. As always, Sterling Watson tells his story in prose that sings.

Suitcase City

Akashic Books Ltd

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Books by Watson, Sterling

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

Blind Tongues

Weep No More/

The Calling

Deadly Sweet

Weep no more, my brother: A novel

The calling: A novel

Blind Tongues

The Calling

Sweet Dream Baby

Suitcase City