Set against the backdrop of the historic flooding of the Mississippi River, The Tilted World is an extraordinary tale of murder and moonshine, sandbagging and saboteurs, and a man and a woman who find unexpected love, from Tom Franklin, the acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, and award-winning poet Beth Ann Fennelly

The year is 1927. As rains swell the Mississippi, the mighty river threatens to burst its banks and engulf everything in its path, including federal revenue agent Ted Ingersoll and his partner, Ham Johnson. Arriving in the tiny hamlet of Hobnob, Mississippi, to investigate the disappearance of two fellow agents who'd been on the trail of a local bootlegger, they are astonished to find a baby boy abandoned in the middle of a crime scene.

Ingersoll, an orphan raised by nuns, is determined to find the infant a home, and his search leads him to Dixie Clay Holliver. A strong woman married too young to a philandering charmer, Dixie Clay has lost a child to illness and is powerless to resist this second chance at motherhood. From the moment they meet, Ingersoll and Dixie Clay are drawn to each other. He has no idea that she's the best bootlegger in the county and may be connected to the agents' disappearance. And while he seems kind and gentle, Dixie Clay knows full well that he is an enemy who can never be trusted.

When Ingersoll learns that a saboteur might be among them, planning a catastrophe along the river that would wreak havoc in Hobnob, he knows that he and Dixie Clay will face challenges and choices that they will be fortunate to survive. Written with extraordinary insight and tenderness, The Tilted World is that rarest of creations, a story of seemingly ordinary people who find hope and deliverance where they least expect it—in each other.

These stories focus on the entrepreneurs building or acquiring golf courses, their biggest achievements and challenges, and their perspectives on past, present and future trends in the golf industry. These stories attest to the perseverance, breadth of skills, and passion for the business and game of golf, and are as varied as the personalities of the people themselves.

In addition to the owners' oral histories and summations of the lessons they have learned, this book reviews the history of the game of golf and its playing fields, the strengths and challenges of the golf industry over the past 10 years, and resources directing readers to the most influential trade associations leading the industry.

Until Tom Franklin started working on this book, there were no books on golf facility management or ownership. There are numerous books on golf history, agronomy and the responsibilities of golf course superintendents, golf course architecture, playing the game, tourism and the entertainment side of the industry. Sun-Up to Sun-Down aims to correct this void and provide insight into the roles played by those who have taken on this often frustrating but exciting business.

Inside this book, you'll find wisdom collected from 18 different golf course owners covering all aspects of the business, including the following: Financing and Budget Planning, Golf Course Design and Construction, Customer Service, Managing Staff, Being a Community Asset, The Joys and Perils of Partnership, Meeting Guests, Expectations of Quality, Seeking Advice from the Right Sources, Making Mistakes ... and Learning from Them, Too, Types of Ownership, from Multigenerational to Start-up Courses, from Corporate to Independent Mom-and-Pop Ownership, Emerging Trends in the Industry. You will also find a forward by Mike Hughes, CEO of the National Golf Course Owners Association.

This fascinating book explores the interwoven lives, radical art, and shared experimental spirit of Marcel Duchamp and four of America's most important postwar artists: composer John Cage, choreographer Merce Cunningham, and visual artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. The publication traces the relationships among all five of these artists by mapping their intersections and examining the depth of their artistic exchanges.

At the heart of the publication is an anthology of key texts from selected interviews, magazine articles, and book excerpts, by scholars, critics, and the artists themselves, that together narrate the younger generation's first connections to Duchamp and his work, which would profoundly redefine his legacy as well as the entire field of contemporary art. A new text by Calvin Tomkins provides an insightful first-person account of his encounters with these artists at a key moment in the 1960s. The book also includes the first extensive chronology that recounts the lives, art, and common projects of this influential group of artists.

In the 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas '32' Jones were boyhood pals in a small town in rural Mississippi. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry was the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, black single mother. But then Larry took a girl to a drive-in movie and she was never seen or heard from again. He never confessed . . . and was never charged.

More than twenty years have passed. Larry lives a solitary, shunned existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has become the town constable. And now another girl has disappeared, forcing two men who once called each other 'friend' to confront a past they've buried for decades.

It's 1911 and the townsfolk of Old Texas, Alabama, have had enough. Every Saturday night for a year, E. O. Smonk has been destroying property, killing livestock, seducing women, cheating and beating men, all from behind the twin barrels of his Winchester 45-70 caliber over-and-under rifle. Syphilitic, consumptive, gouty, and goitered—an expert with explosives and knives—Smonk hates horses, goats, and the Irish, and it's high time he was stopped. But capturing old Smonk won't be easy—and putting him on trial could have shocking and disastrous consequences, considering the terrible secret the citizens of Old Texas are hiding.

In 1897, an aspiring politician is mysteriously murdered in the rural area of Alabama known as Mitcham Beat. His outraged friends -- ?mostly poor cotton farmers -- form a secret society, Hell-at-the-Breech, to punish the townspeople they believe responsible. The hooded members wage a bloody year-long campaign of terror that culminates in a massacre where the innocent suffer alongside the guilty. Caught in the maelstrom of the Mitcham war are four people: the aging sheriff sympathetic to both sides; the widowed midwife who delivered nearly every member of Hell-at-the-Breech; a ruthless detective who wages his own war against the gang; and a young store clerk who harbors a terrible secret.

Based on incidents that occurred a few miles from the author's childhood home, Hell at the Breech chronicles the events of dark days that led the people involved to discover their capacity for good, evil, or for both.

In ten stunning and bleak tales set in the woodlands, swamps and chemical plants along the Alabama River, Tom Franklin stakes his claim as a fresh, original Southern voice. His lyric, deceptively simple prose conjures a world where the default setting is violence, a world of hunting and fishing, gambling and losing, drinking and poaching-a world most of us have never seen. In the chilling title novella (selected for the anthologies New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 1999 and Best Mystery Stories of the Century), three wild boys confront a mythic game warden as mysterious and deadly as the river they haunt. And, as a weathered, hand-painted sign reads: 'Jesus is not coming.' This terrain isn't pretty, isn't for the weak of heart, but in these deperate, lost people, Franklin somehow finds the moments of grace that make them what they so abundantly are: human.