DESPERATION ROAD MICHAEL FARRIS SMITH MARKETING & SALES POINTS Longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger 2017

Home , Annie Proulx, Michael Farris Smith, Robert Olen Butler

'Every once in a while an author comes along who's in love with art and written language and imagery... writers like William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx. You can add Michael Farris Smith's name to the list' - James Lee Burke

For fans of Cormac McCarthy, Daniel Woodrell and Annie Proulx

Michael Farris Smith's previous novel, Rivers, won the 2014 Mississippi Authors Award for Fiction and was named a Best Book of 2013 by Esquire, Daily Candy, BookRiot, and Hudson Booksellers THE BOOK In the vein of Daniel Woodrell'sWinter's Bone and the works of Ron Rash, a novel set in a rough- and-tumble Mississippi town where drugs, whiskey, guns, and the desire for revenge violently intersect

For eleven years the clock has been ticking for Russell Gaines as he sat in Parchman penitentiary in the Download high resolution image Mississippi Delta. His time now up, and believing his debt paid, he returns home only to discover that Pub. Date: 23 February 2017 revenge lives and breathes all around. Price: £14.99 ISBN: 978-1-84344-987-4 On the day of his release, a woman named Maben and her young daughter trudge along the side of the Binding: Hardback interstate under the punishing summer sun. Desperate and exhausted, the pair spend their last dollar on Format: Royal (234 x 153mm) a motel room for the night, a night that ends with Maben running through the darkness holding a pistol, Extent: 288 and a dead deputy sprawled across the road in the glow of his own headlights. Weight: 550g Publishing UK & Commonwealth only, excl. Canada Rights: With dawn, destinies collide, and Russell is forced to decide whose life he will save - his own or that of Sales Exclusive: UK & Commonwealth excl. the woman and child? Rights: Canada. Open Market: RoW. excl. North America PRAISE FOR DESPERATION ROAD Market: Crime Fiction, literary fiction BIC Code: FA: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) 'Smith depicts a steamy American South redolent of lawless menace in sparse, simple, lyrical prose. He FF: Crime & mystery has produced a taut thriller that lays bare the legacy that violence leaves behind it, as it builds FH: Thriller / suspense BISAC Code: FIC019000: Fiction : Literary relentlessly to a dramatic climax. You will not be disappointed' - Daily Mail FIC050000: Fiction : Crime FIC066000: Fiction : Small Town & Rural 'Flickers with poetic splendour… Repetitions, the falling cadences of country music, phrases strung THEMA Code: FBA: Modern & contemporary fiction together in long passages of sustained beauty: it's rare for desperation to be rendered with such FF: Crime & mystery fiction Country of UK intensity' - Spectator Manufacture: 'A brilliantly compelling novel' - Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize winner Rpt. Code: IP 'Smith writes shapely prose and sharp dialogue and everywhere displays an acute sense of the

Marketing & PR moments and pain that can define lives in a small town.' - Kirkus Reviews Tel: 01582 766 348 'Cinema written all over it... A particularly good novel if you like whispering 'Sh*t...' in an incredulous [email protected] voice' - Shortlist No Exit Press UK Distribution: Turnaround Harpenden 3 Olympia Trading Estate 'Michael Farris Smith is one of the best writers of his generation, and this very well may be his best work Herts AL5 1EQ Coburg Rd Tel: +44 (0)1582 766348 London N22 6TZ — Desperation Road is taut, tense and impossible to put down' - Tom Franklin, NYT bestselling Tel: +44 (0)208 829 3000 author of Crooked Letter and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize www.turnaround-uk.com 'Smith's terse, muscular prose encapsulates a heart that renders this novel as rich and alive and noexit.co.uk/noexit.co.uk/ @noexitpress wounded as any you'll find in contemporary fiction' - Wiley Cash, NYT bestselling author of A Land 2 More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy 'Desperation Road is an elegantly written, perfectly paced novel about a man and a woman, indelibly marked by violence' - Ron Rash, NYT bestselling author of Serena and The Cove

MICHAEL FARRIS SMITH (Location: Oxford, USA)

Michael Farris Smith is a native Mississippian who has spent time living abroad in France and Switzerland. He is the recipient of the 2014 Mississippi Author Award and has been awarded the Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowship, the Transatlantic Review Award for Fiction, and the Alabama Arts Council Fellowship Award for Literature. His short fiction has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and his essays have appeared with The New York Times, Catfish Alley, Deep South Magazine, and more. He lives in Columbus, Mississippi, with his wife and two daughters.

michaelfarrissmith.com