The New York Times bestselling author of Napa tells the captivating story of how the Napa Valley region transformed into an extraordinary engine of commerce, glamour, and an outsized version of the American dream--and how it could be lost--in "a strong plea for responsible stewardship of the land" (Kirkus Reviews).Not so long ago, wine was an exclusively European product. Now it is thoroughly American; emblematic of Napa Valley, an area idealized as the epicenter of great wines and foods and a cultural tourist destination. But James Conaway's candid book tells the other side of the romanticized story. Napa at Last Light reveals the often shadowy side of the latter days of Napa Valley--marked by complex personal relationships, immense profits, passionate beliefs, and sometimes desperate struggles to prevail. In the balance hang fortunes and personal relationships made through hard work and manipulation of laws, people, and institutions. Napans who grew up trusting in the beneficence of the "vintner" class now confront the multinational corporations who have stealthily subsumed the old family landmarks and abandoned the once glorious conviction that agriculture is the best use of the land. Hailed as the definitive Napa writer, Conaway has spent decades covering the region. Napa at Last Light showcases the greed, enviable profits, legacy, and tradition that still collide in this compelling story. The area is still full of dreamers, but of opposing sorts: those longing for a harmonious society based upon the vine, and self-styled overlords yearning for wealth and the special acclaim only fine wine can bring. Bets are still out on what the future holds. "This is a stunning and sad look at how an idyllic community became a victim of its own success...fascinating and well-researched" (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Welcome to the new Wild West: a vast, sprawling land of eternal hope and busted dreams, of grizzlies, dune buggies and range wars, dope growers, corporate bandits, ecotage and, yes, even gun-slinging. With grace and humor the author takes the reader along on an exhilarating land voyage from the Pecos River to the Pacific Northwest and south again to the Mexican border.... (Originally published in hardcover by Houghton Mifflin) Jim Harrison (author of Legends of the Fall): "A wonderful and well-considered evocation of the New West, all the better because it reads like a fine novel." Wallace Stegner (Angle of Repose): "He got into places and activities that most native Westerners never even get close to, and he reports them with verve, wit, irony, and a very sharp eye. He gives us, pretty much from the viewpoints of the antagonists, the battles between those who want to use the West, even to death, and those who want to preserve it... He makes abundantly clear that the myths of untrammeled freedom, space, and individualism unchecked by social responsibility thrive... A sound and very lively book." Tracey Kidder (Mountains Beyond Mountains): "This immensely entertaining book contains much more than fine writing about beautiful places. It is a portrait gallery of fascinating, characters, hilarious and sad, and... a meditation on the past and future of the 'World West.'"

This novel of violence and racial strife set in New Orleans is full of social and physical contrasts. Comiski, a newspaper reporter, descends into an underworld of corrupt policemen, narcotics dealers and black militants in an attempt to unravel a mysterious grave-robbing and find some meaning in his own life. Powerful and compelling. (Originally published in hardcover by Houghton Mifflin) St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Grim, gripping, violent and practically impossible to put down." Publisher's Weekly: "The scene is unglamorous New Orleans - decay, dirt, garbage... smell, every kind of filth, human and animal, in a brief, well-written novel of hopeless degradations that has a unique impact." Library Journal: "A short- fast-paced and absorbing novel... that probes deeply into the texture of the contemporary South, and entertains from first page to last."

World's End (first published by William Morrow) is about love, corruption, and retribution in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina swept much of that world away. Nostalgically bittersweet, intricately plotted, it works on several levels -- as a family saga, a political thriller, and a kind of generational noir. A compelling literary experience, and a complement to the author's novel The Big Easy. New York Daily News: "If tight melodrama laced with sex, power grabs and corruption is your dish, you'll devour World's End with the relish of a hungry mule in a cornfield...a spellbinder." Kirkus: "This Louisiana tale, with its Mafia crime barons pitted against corrupt-government barons, expertly lifts numerous Puzo-ian scenes and motifs - tit-for-tat violence, family honor - while adding some strong local colorations and cinematic effects... there's enough action and avarice down among the bayous to make this a solid, never crass or tasteless, commercial entry." Philadelphia Inquirer: "The teaser on the jacket flap says that James Conaway's new novel 'will remind some readers of 'All the King's Men' and others of 'The Godfather'... The good news is that it's an astonishingly successful hybrid." New Orleans Times-Picayune: ..". fascinating and absorbing... one of those rare you-can't-put-it-down books."

James Conaway knew there was something wrong with his father before he let himself think too deeply about it.The signs were there, in unfocused phone calls and cryptic letters. Then on a reporting trip to his hometown Conaway had to face facts: his father was in the early stages of Alzheimer's, a dreaded illness that inspired this beautifully written memoir of family and the South. As memory left his father, the author was moved to recreate the world they had shared, memory being the bulwark against oblivion. Many of these fragments are outrageously funny. The book takes us back to a society where the rules of southern gentlemanliness were still in effect, if barely. Propriety had always fought a dubious battle with bourbon, and now was being defeated by the likes of Elvis Presley and Jack Kerouc. With rueful wit Conaway artfully renders a youth of hunting and fishing giving way to brawling, debutante parties, and literary exploration. The story's told against a wistful background of an older generation with belated appreciation for its hopes, ideals and diminished postwar reality. Conaway writes of the idiosyncrasies of family life with a keen yet tender sense of the absurd, particularly the sometimes loving, mysterious relationship with his father. Linking the generations is an antiquated but powerful code of conduct, recalled here with extraordinary vividness and humor. Jim Lehrer in The Washington Post - "Profound... hilarious... honest and serious... proof that the gods look more favorably on some writers than they do on others... conaway moves through his family and life in Memphis in the '40s and '50s with the flow and grace of an impressionist painter." Tracy Kidder (Mountains Beyond Mountains, House) - "Exemplary... absorbing... sad and funny... It awakens our own memories, makes our own lives more available to us." Rick Bass (The Ninemile Wolves) "I'm crazy about this book, and implore the nation to read it... about the shuddering magnificence, the depthlessness, of the human heart."