Bøger af Pete Dexter

Pete Dexter's National Book Award-winning tour de force tells the mesmerizing story of a shocking crime that shatters lives and exposes the hypocrisies of a small Southern town. The time and place: Cotton Point, Georgia, just after World War II. The event: the murder of a fourteen-year-old black girl by a respected white citizen named Paris Trout, who feels he's done absolutely nothing wrong. As a trial looms, the crime eats away at the social fabric of Cotton Point, through its facade of manners and civility. Trout's indifference haunts his defense lawyer; his festering paranoia warps his timid, quiet wife; and Trout himself moves closer to madness as he becomes obsessed with his cause-and his vendettas. Praise for Paris Trout "A masterpiece, complex and breathtaking . . . [Pete] Dexter portrays his characters with marvelous sharpness."-Los Angeles Times "A psychological spellbinder that will take your breath away and probably interfere with your sleep."-The Washington Post Book World "Dexter's brilliant understanding of the Deep South has allowed him to capture much of its essence-its bitter class distinctions, its violence, its strangeness-with a fidelity of detail and an ear for speech that I have rarely encountered since Flannery O'Connor."-William Styron "Dexter's powerfully emotional novel doesn't have any brakes. Hang on, because you won't be able to stop until the finish."-Chicago Tribune

In the 1970s and '80s, before he earned national acclaim for his award-winning novels, Pete Dexter was a newspaper columnist. Every week, in a few hundred words, Dexter cut directly to the heart of the American character at a time of national turmoil and crucial change. With haunting urgency, his columns laid bare the violence, hypocrisy, and desperation he saw on the streets of Philadelphia and in the places he visited across the country. But he reveled, too, in the lighter side of his own life, sharing scenes with the indefatigable Mrs. Dexter, their young daughter, and a series of unforgettable creatures who strayed into their lives. No matter what caught Dexter's eye, it was illuminated by his dark, brilliant humor. Collected here are eighty-two of the best of those spellbinding, finely wrought pieces--with a new preface by the author--assembled by Rob Fleder, editor of the bestselling Sports Illustrated 50th Anniversary Book. Paper Trails is searing, heartbreaking, and irresistibly funny, sometimes all at once. As Pete Hamill says in his foreword, these essays "are as good as it ever gets."

Train is an 18-year-old black caddy at an exclusive L.A. country club. He is a golf prodigy, but the year is 1953 and there is no such thing as a black golf prodigy. Nevertheless, Train draws the interest of Miller Packard, a gambler whose smiling, distracted air earned him the nickname "the Mile Away Man." Packard's easy manner hides a proclivity for violence, and he remains an enigma to Train even months later when they are winning high stakes matches against hustlers throughout the country. Packard is also drawn to Norah Still, a beautiful woman scarred in a hideous crime, a woman who finds Packard's tendency toward violence both alluring and frightening. In the ensuing triangular relationship kindness is never far from cruelty.In Train, National Book Award-winning Pete Dexter creates a startling, irresistibly readable book that crackles with suspense and the live-wire voices of its characters.

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE In this striking debut from the author of the National Book Award winner Paris Trout, Pete Dexter chronicles a murder and its consequences in the fictional blue-collar Philadelphia neighborhood of God's Pocket. Leon Hubbard makes other men nervous, talking to himself or anyone who will listen about the things he's cut with his straight razor. So when he crosses the wrong guy on a South Philly construction site and winds up with his head caved in, everyone is content to bury the bad news with the body. Everyone, that is, except Leon's mother-and a local newspaper columnist hoping the story will resurrect his career. Only a mother could love a man like Leon. But only an outsider could expect to change anything in God's Pocket. Praise for God's Pocket "Riveting . . . a first-class first novel . . . highlighted by superior writing, dialogue that rings true, and a highly believable background."-Associated Press "God's Pocket sings, snarls, mugs, wisecracks, buys you a drink, steals your wallet, and takes you home to meet the folks."-Richard Price "My own favorite among Mr. Dexter's work remains God's Pocket, which I continue to admire for its rich, well-nigh Dickensian mixture of verisimilitude, real-life absurdity, horror and romance."-Robert Stone, The New York Times Book Review "Rollicking . . . a tough Philadelphia neighborhood comes to life in these pages."-Playboy

Warren Spooner was born after a prolonged delivery in a makeshift delivery room in a doctor's office in Milledgeville, Georgia, on the first Saturday of December, 1956. His father died shortly afterward, long before Spooner had even a memory of his face, and was replaced eventually by a once-brilliant young naval officer, Calmer Ottosson, recently court-martialed out of service. This is the story of the lifelong tie between the two men, poles apart, of Spooner's troubled childhood, troubled adolescence, violent and troubled adulthood and Calmer Ottosson's inexhaustible patience, undertaking a life-long struggle to salvage his step-son, a man he will never understand.