Narrator

Roger Clark

Roger Clark
  • Winner of the 2023 Spur Award

    James Wade, whose first two novels were praised as “rhapsodic” and “haunting,” delivers his most powerful work to date—a chilling parable about the impossible demands of hate and love, trauma and goodness, vividly set in the landscapes of Texas and Louisiana.

    Beasts of the Earth tells the story of Harlen LeBlanc, a dependable if quiet employee of the Carter Hills High School’s grounds department whose carefully maintained routine is overthrown by an act of violence. As the town searches for answers, LeBlanc strikes out on his own to exonerate a friend while drawing the eyes of the law to himself and fending off unwelcome voices that call for a sterner form of justice.

    Twenty years earlier, young Michael Fischer dreads the return of his father from prison. He spends his days stealing from trap lines in the Louisiana bayou to feed his fanatically religious mother and his cherished younger sister, Doreen. When his father eventually returns, an evil arrives in Michael’s life that sends him running from everything he has ever known. He is rescued by a dying poet and his lover, who extract from him a promise: to be a good man, whatever that may require.

    Beasts of the Earth deftly intertwines these stories, exploring themes of time, fate, and free will, to produce a revelatory conclusion that is both beautiful and heartbreaking.

  • Attempting to escape his abusive father and generations of cyclical poverty, young Jonah Hargrove joins the mysterious River—a teenage girl carrying thousands of dollars in stolen meth—and embarks on a southern gothic odyssey through the East Texas river bottoms.

    They are pursued by local drug kingpin John Curtis and his murderous enforcer, Dakota Cade, with whom River was romantically involved. But Cade and Curtis have their own enemies, as their relationship with the cartel controlling their meth supply begins to sour.

    Keeping tabs on everyone is the Thin Man, a silent assassin who values consequence over mercy.

    Each person is keeping secrets from the others—deadly secrets that will be exposed in savage fashion as their final paths collide and all are forced to come to terms with their choices, their circumstances, and their own definition of God.

    With a colorful cast of supporting characters and an unflinching violence juxtaposed against lyrical prose, River, Sing Out dives deep into a sinister and sanguinary world, where oppressive poverty is pitted against the need to believe in something greater than the self.

  • Eleven essential classics in one volume

    This volume is the definitive collection of the best science fiction novellas published between 1929 and 1964, containing eleven great classics. No anthology better captures the birth of science fiction as a literary field.

    Published in 1973 to honor stories that had appeared before the institution of the Nebula Awards, the Science Fiction Hall of Fame introduced tens of thousands of young readers to the wonders of science fiction and was a favorite of libraries across the country.

    This volume contains the following:

    Introduction by Ben Bova

    Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson

    Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr. (as Don A. Stuart)

    Nerves by Lester del Rey

    Universe by Robert A. Heinlein

    The Marching Morons by C. M. Kornbluth

    Vintage Season by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (as Lawrence O’Donnell)

    … And Then There Were None by Eric Frank Russell

    The Ballad of Lost C’Mell by Cordwainer Smith

    Baby Is Three by Theodore Sturgeon

    The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

    With Folded Hands by Jack Williamson