Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence 2017 Profound and poignant, Perfume River is a masterful novel that examines family ties and the legacy of the Vietnam War through the portrait of a single North Florida family. Profound and poignant, Perfume River is a masterful novel that examines blood ties and the legacy of the Vietnam War through the portrait of a single North Florida family. Robert Quinlan and his wife Darla teach at Florida State University. Their marriage, forged in the fervour of anti-Vietnam-war protests, now bears the fractures of time, with the couple trapped in an existence of morning coffee, solitary jogging and separate offices. For Robert and Darla, the cracks remain below the surface, whereas the divisions in Robert's own family are more apparent: he has almost no relationship with his brother Jimmy, who became estranged from the family as the Vietnam War intensified. William Quinlan, Robert and Jimmy's father and a veteran of World War II, is coming to the end of his life, and aftershocks of war ripple across all their lives once again when Jimmy refuses to appear at his father's bedside. And a disturbed homeless man whom Robert at first takes to be a fellow Vietnam veteran turns out to have a devastating impact not just on Robert, but on his entire family.

Lynching in American Literature and Journalism consists of twelve essays investigating the history and development of writing about lynching as an American tragedy and the ugliest element of national character. According to the Tuskegee Institute, 4,743 people were lynched between 1882 and 1968 in the United States, including 3,446 African Americans and 1,297 European Americans. More than 73 percent of the lynchings in the Civil War period occurred in the Southern states. The Lynchings increased dramatically in the aftermath of the Reconstruction, after slavery had been abolished and free men gained the right to vote. The peak of lynching occurred in 1882, after Southern white Democrats had regained control of the state legislators. This book is a collection of historical and critical discussions of lynching in America that reflects the shameful, unmoral policies, and explores the topic of lynching within American history, literature, and journalism.

Nominated for the 2019 Hammett Prize Autumn 1915. The First World War is raging across Europe. Woodrow Wilson has kept Americans out of the trenches, although that hasn't stopped young men and women from crossing the Atlantic to volunteer at the front. Christopher Marlowe 'Kit' Cobb, a Chicago reporter and undercover agent for the US government is in Paris when he meets an enigmatic nurse called Louise. Officially in the city for a story about American ambulance drivers, Cobb is grateful for the opportunity to get to know her. Soon his intelligence handler, James Polk Trask, extends his mission and he is active again. Parisians are meeting 'death by dynamite' in a new campaign of bombings, and the German-speaking Kit seems just the man to discover who is behind this - possibly a German operative who has infiltrated with the waves of refugees? And so begins a pursuit that will test Kit Cobb, in all his roles, to the very limits of his principles, wits and talents for survival. Fleetly plotted and engaging with political and cultural issues that resonate deeply today, Paris in the Dark is a page-turning novel of unmistakable literary quality.

A Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller It is 1915, and "Kit" Cobb is working undercover in a castle on the Kent coast owned by a suspected British government mole, Sir Albert Stockman. Kit is working with his mother, the beautiful and mercurial spy, Isabel Cobb, who also happens to be a world-famous stage actress. Isabel's offstage role is to keep tabs on Stockman, while Kit tries to figure out his agenda. Following his mother and her escort from the relative safety of Britain into the lion's den of Berlin, Kit must remain in character, even under the very nose of the Kaiser.

The human head remains in a state of consciousness for one and a half minutes after decapitation. In a heightened state of emotion, people speak at a rate of 160 words per minute. Inspired by this, Robert Olen Butler wrote Severance, sixty-two vignettes each exactly 240 words in length, that capture the flow of thoughts that go through a person's mind after their head has been severed. Here are the imagined ultimate words of famous and invented figures - Medusa, Sir Walter Raleigh, Anne Boleyn, Jayne Mansfield, and a chicken, beheaded for Sunday dinner. Following on from this, Butler addressed the question of: what goes through the mind of a person while having sex? Turning his daring imagination to the intimate, Butler lays bare the most flagrant, personal thoughts and feelings of fifty, often surprising, couples in Intercourse.

A Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller War correspondent Christopher Marlowe 'Kit' Cobb arrives in Vera Cruz, Mexico, to cover the country's civil war. A passionate believer in the power of a free press and the moral superiority of the United States, Kit is no mere observer. He assumes a false identity to pursue German diplomat Friedrich von Mensinger en route to a meeting with revolutionary leader Pancho Villa, and the correspondent soon finds himself up to his neck in political intrigue. Along the way he's nearly shot by a mysterious sniper, joins forces with a double agent and falls in love with a headstrong young Mexican woman who may be mixed up in the revolutionary plot.

The data that professional sport generates, which is almost unparalleled in any other industry, provides a wealth of information for the economist to analyse. Sport offers economists the opportunity to study the behaviour, choices and outcomes of the decisions of players, referees, regulators and governments. Advances in Sports Economics is a collection of newly commissioned essays that examine a wide range of different sports, including baseball, basketball, cricket, football, horse racing, rugby, tennis and Gaelic games. The contributors consider economic issues such as incentives, rule changes, labour markets, competition structure, gambling, gender equality, match official behaviour, superstar players, funding and sports infrastructure as well as interogating the methods and theories used in sports economics. The essays showcase how the application of economic analysis can provide us with a better understanding of the mechanics of professional sport.

A Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller It is 1915 and Germany has allied itself with the Ottoman empire, persuading the caliphs of Turkey to declare a jihad on the British empire, as President Woodrow Wilson hesitates to enter the fray. War correspondent Christopher Marlowe Cobb has been tasked to follow Brauer, a German intellectual and possible secret service agent suspected of holding information vital to the war effort. As they travel on the Lusitania's fateful voyage, Cobb becomes smitten with famed actress Selene Bourgani. Cobb soon realizes that this simple actress is anything but, as she harbours secrets that could add fuel to the already raging conflict. Surviving the night of the infamous German U-Boat attack, Cobb follows Selene and Brauer into the darkest alleyways of London and on to the powder keg that is Istanbul. He must use all the cunning he possesses to uncover Selene's true motives, only to realize her hidden agenda could bring down some of the world's most powerful leaders.

Writers of the Black Chicago Renaissance comprehensively explores the contours and content of the Black Chicago Renaissance, a creative movement that emerged from the crucible of rigid segregation in Chicago's "Black Belt" from the 1930s through the 1960s. Heavily influenced by the Harlem Renaissance and the Chicago Renaissance of white writers, its participants were invested in political activism and social change as much as literature, art, and aesthetics. The revolutionary writing of this era produced some of the first great accolades for African American literature and set up much of the important writing that came to fruition in the Black Arts Movement. The volume covers a vast collection of subjects, including many important writers such as Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Lorraine Hansberry as well as cultural products such as black newspapers, music, and theater. The book includes individual entries by experts on each subject; a discography and filmography that highlight important writers, musicians, films, and cultural presentations; and an introduction that relates the Harlem Renaissance, the White Chicago Renaissance, the Black Chicago Renaissance, and the Black Arts Movement. Contributors are Robert Butler, Robert H. Cataliotti, Maryemma Graham, James C. Hall, James L. Hill, Michael Hill, Lovalerie King, Lawrence Jackson, Angelene Jamison-Hall, Keith Leonard, Lisbeth Lipari, Bill V. Mullen, Patrick Naick, William R. Nash, Charlene Regester, Kimberly Ruffin, Elizabeth Schultz, Joyce Hope Scott, James Smethurst, Kimberly M. Stanley, Kathryn Waddell Takara, Steven C. Tracy, Zoe Trodd, Alan Wald, Jamal Eric Watson, Donyel Hobbs Williams, Stephen Caldwell Wright, and Richard Yarborough.

'Michael Frayn's tremendous play is a piece of history, an intellectual thriller, a psychological investigation and a moral tribunal in full session' Sunday Times 'A profound and haunting meditation on the mysteries of human motivation' Independent 'Frayn has seized on a ral-life historical and scientific mystery. In 1941 the physicist Werner Heisenberg, who formulated the famous Uncertainty Principle about the movement of particles, and was at that time leading the Nazi's nuclear programme, went to visit his old boss and mentor, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen. What was the purpose of his visit to Nazi-occupied Denmark? What did the two old friends say to each other, particularly bearing in mind that Bohr was both half-Jewish and a Danish patriot?...Frayn argues that just as it is impossible to be certain of the precise location of an electron, so it is impossible to be certain about the workings of the human mind...What is certain is that Frayn makes ideas zing and sing in this play' Daily Telegraph

How did religion rise? Why did it survive from prehistory up into the modern age? What will happen in the world now that it has begun to decline in every educated country in the world? Where are we going to be as a nation filled with the faithless, with closed churches and the faithful barely existing beyond isolated pockets around the nation? Answers exist for all questions, they need only be sought, herein lie the answers of one author who has researched the issue from multiple angles, written for all so that they might find understanding, and ease their fears, and find hope in a future without faith.

In this excerpt from his autobiography, Timeless Echoes: The Life and Art of Robert Butler, Robert depicts the heritage of Florida ranches by sharing his experiences with Florida ranchers while archiving their way of life on canvas. The 57 ranch paintings included in the book reveal a way of life that is quickly disappearing from the fabric of Florida, succumbing to "progress." Butler paintings are distinctive in their dramatically lit, romanticized portrayals of his beloved wild Florida. His paintings are known to be finely detailed, while exuding an ethereal light in them, giving them an almost sacred quality, the music of his heart. In addition to his story and paintings, Robert gives a separate tribute to the Cracker Cowman, as well as one to the Cracker Cowgirl.

Highwaymen Artists: An Untold Truth is the story of the Florida Highwaymen artists from the perspective of Robert Butler. This book focuses only on Robert Butler's Highwaymen years. Find his complete autobiography in Timeless Echoes: The Life and Art of Robert Butler. Highwaymen Artists is very unique in that it includes 43 of the approximately 200 Robert Butler paintings that were lost in a horrific fire in Lakeland, Florida, February 10, 2008. Regarding this book, Robert said, "The late 1960s should have been the worst time in United States history for African Americans to be peddling primitive art on the streets of Florida But looking back at the collectors of my paintings offers me the picture of an alternate subliminal reality, a place of heart wherein the love of art transcended the moment. "I am now enlightened, believing that true artists are defined neither by ethnicity nor nationality, but by their ability to articulate a meaningful perception of life. Perhaps that is why my art is conspicuously absent of any narrative of the human drama that characterized life during its creation. "Tested amid that great caldron of American history, the Highwaymen's passionate pursuit of the American dream reflects only the best of what we are. That is what made painting the world of my beloved Florida so special. "If it is true that each person's work is a self portrait, the sketch of life that I have devoted to the fabric of American culture is my picture painted in the hues of passion for the place I love. To that end my story seeks to convey not only my unique perspective on American life as an artist, but also to articulate what it was like to experience a sensory world where every valid equation of sight, sound, and color heightened every nuance of an historical moment. "The story of my Highwaymen years is not only an historical calendar of the events, people, and places that shaped the artist I became, it also parallels the quickening of America's pulse at the epicenter of an historical time, the Civil Rights Era. For all Americans it was a time to question the spiritual narrative of our dreams anew and to discover the color of our passion amid the changing order of American life. For me, it all unfolded along the highways of Florida beginning in 1968. "The thoughts, facts, and reflections found in this book developed during the years herein characterized as my Highwaymen years. Many are my personal eye witness account of events. Other sources include historical research of American art prior to the Civil War and discussions with fellow Highwaymen artists and Highwaymen art collectors. James Fitch (author who coined the name), Geoff Cook (major collector of Highwaymen art), and many other personal owners of our art have also contributed."