"Michael Parker has captured a time, place, and sisterhood so perfectly it hurts to turn the last page. A riveting, atmospheric dream of a novel." —Dominic Smith, author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos Set in the hardscrabble landscape of early 1900s Oklahoma, but timeless in its sensibility, Prairie Fever traces the intense dynamic between the Stewart sisters: the pragmatic Lorena and the chimerical Elise. The two are bound together not only by their isolation on the prairie but also by their deep emotional reliance on each other. That connection supersedes all else until the arrival of Gus McQueen. When Gus arrives in Lone Wolf, Oklahoma, as a first time teacher, his inexperience is challenged by the wit and ingenuity of the Stewart sisters. Then one impulsive decision and a cataclysmic blizzard trap Elise and her horse on the prairie and forever change the balance of everything between the sisters, and with Gus McQueen. With honesty...

Acclaimed author Michael Parker tells the searing  and unforgettable story of one decision that irrevocably changes  the course of a young man’s life. In  the  early  1970s,  in  Stovall,  Texas,  seventeen-year-old  Earl—a  loner,  dreamer,  lover of music and words—meets Tina, the new girl in town. Tina convinces Earl to drive her to see her mother in Austin, where Earl and Tina are quickly separated. Two  days  later,  Earl  is  being  questioned  by  the  police  about  Tina’s  disappearance  and the blood in the trunk of his car. But Earl can’t remember what happened in Austin,  and  with  little  financial  support  from  his  working-class  family,  he  is  sentenced for a crime he did not commit. Forty  years  later,  Earl...

These eleven arresting, comic, and moving stories by acclaimed writer Michael Parker testify to the driving force of love, the lengths to which we'll go to claim it and pursue it, the delusions we'll float to keep it going, the torment that goes part and parcel with it. And despite all of the above, the absolute necessity of it, no matter its consequences.Whether it's a college student undone by the boy who leaves her, or the boyfriend intent on leveling old scores from high school for his lover, or the husband who discovers—in the grocery store—the woman he should have been with all along, every character, no matter how off track, wants to believe in debt and credit and payback and making the messy world—and the messy world of love—turn out neatly.

It is two years since the wife of best-selling author Max Reilly died in a car crash along with her lover. Max is still recovering from her death and her deception. So when he meets Emma - who is awaiting divorce from her violent husband - and quickly becomes attracted to her, it is hard to reconcile with his grief. Emma is cautious and keen to hold back and Max is determined to keep his secrets from her. This becomes increasingly difficult when he finds himself facing his past and one secret in particular, involving violence, murder and betrayal.

Secrets lurk around every corner as Gus Mason strides towards the Presidency of the United States of America. And from the Nazi death-camps to the steps of the White House, Gunter Haman and Jacob Demski, heir to the Jewish mafia empire, unravel a mystery that threatens the very fabric of the American way of life. However, as Lieutenant Amos, a Newark Police Officer, investigates the supposed suicide of a local senator, his investigations lead him deep into the corrupt world that inhabits the underbelly of American politics and closer to the truth.

Michael Parker has created a wholly original world from two known facts: (1) Theodosia Burr Alston, daughter of the controversial vice president Aaron Burr, disappeared in 1813 while en route by schooner from South Carolina to New York; and (2) in 1970, two elderly white women and one black man were the last townspeople to leave a small barrier island off the coast of North Carolina.In this fiction based on historical fact, Parker weaves a tale of adventure and longing as he charts one hundred and fifty years in the life and death of an island and its inhabitants— the descendants of Theodosia Burr Alston and those of the freed man whose family would be forever tethered to hers.It's a tale of pirates and slaves, treason and treasures, madness and devotion, that takes place on a tiny island battered by storms, infested with mosquitoes, and cut off from the world—as difficult to get to as it is impossible to leave for those who call it home. From Theodosia's. . .

Two strangers meet on a windswept car lot in West Texas. Marcus is fleeing the disastrous fallout of chasing a lifelong dream; Maria is returning to the hometown she fled years ago, to make amends. They begin to argue over the car that they both desperately want—a low-slung sky-blue twenty-year-old Buick Electra.The car, too, has seen its share of mistakes and failures. Every dent and seam has witnessed pivotal moments in the lives of others, from the boy who assembled it at the Cleveland factory to all the owners who were to follow: a God-fearing man who sells it when he sees a sexy girl sprawled across it; a doctor who can't dissociate it from his son's fate; and a rancher's wife who'd much rather live without it for all the history it carries.Marcus and Maria, after knowing each other for less than an hour, decide to buy the old car together. And as this surprising novel follows the rocky paths of the Electra and its owners—both past and...

What would you do if you knew who killed a friend of yours, but you couldn't come forward with the truth? From the prize-winning author of Hello Down There and Towns Without Rivers comes a novel about brotherhood and betrayal, deceit and desire. In the autumn of 1975, a small town struggles with the mysterious murder of a gay teenager found dead in his parents' bed following a high-school keg party. As Thomas Edgecombe, the editor of the town's newspaper, diligently reports on the crime, he begins to suspect that his two sons may be involved. Daniel, a straight-A student and a friend of the victim, seems destined for a prestigious college scholarship and a better life, while his younger brother Pete numbs his adolescence in a haze of marijuana and derelict behavior. The brothers have grown apart over the years, keeping secrets about life and love, girls and boys. Now, they will be forced to face hard truths about each other and their changing, dangerous world. Virginia Lovers...

In Michael Parker's new novel, Joel Dunn Jr. tells the story of how he did everything he could to save his family after his mother left and his father's tenuous hold on sanity unraveled. On a journey from the town of Trent, North Carolina, to the coast, Joel and his little brother Tank thread their way back to their mother, fueled by potato chips, Coke, and the soundtrack of the powerful soul music that their daddy taught them to love. Always keeping the faith that their mother is waiting for them, they move from one kindly stranger to another on their odyssey, Joel ever certain they are being guided to her door: "I was being passed from person to person," he says, "on my way back into her wide open window."Caught between the endless idealism of childhood and the sobering tests of adulthood, Joel and Tank bravely negotiate their way through a landscape of love and beauty, abandonment and betrayal, to learn that the one sure thing is often right by your side.