Showing results by publisher "Crossroad Press" in Literary Fiction

On the borderland between this world and the world of Quiddity, the sea of our dreams, sits Everville. For years, it has lived in ignorance of the gleaming shore on which it lies. But its ignorance is not bliss. Opening the door between worlds, Clive Barker delivers his characters into the heart of the human mystery; into a place of revelation, where the forces that have shaped our past - and are ready to destroy our future - are at work.

One day, it starts raining-and never stops. Global super-storms decimate the planet, eradicating most of mankind. Pockets of survivors gather on mountaintops, watching as the waters climb higher and higher. But as the tides rise, something else is rising, too. Now, in the midst of an ecological nightmare, the remnants of humanity face a new menace, in a battle that stretches from the rooftops of submerged cities to the mountaintop islands jutting from the sea. What hope does an already-devastated mankind have against this new supernatural adversary.

On a hot summer Texas afternoon, Cindy Nance introduces young Doug Hoover to the two great secrets of life. Doug likes the first secret a lot. The second, that guys grow up and go to work, doesn't appeal to him at all. A series of meaningless marriages and do-nothing jobs prove Cindy was right. Turned off by the present, Doug tries to recapture the joys of his past Captain Marvel and cinnamon squares, Dr. Pepper and window-peeking fun. Nothing goes right until Doug meets Sue Jean.

Grant, an ambitious photographer, is possessed by a young mental patient's strange drawings and becomes the disturbed young artist's confidant and guardian in a relationship that pushes Grant's own sanity to the edge.

The Dirty Parts of the Bible is a humorous adventure across America during the Great Depression - a rollicking tale of love and liquor, preachers and prostitutes, trains and treasure, sure to appeal to fans of O Brother Where Art Thou?, Water for Elephants, Mark Twain, Willie Nelson, and Johnny Cash. It's 1936, and Tobias Henry is stuck in the frozen hinterlands of Michigan. Tobias is obsessed with two things: God and girls. Mostly girls, of course. But being a Baptist preacher's son, he can't escape God.

Our Cinderellas, male and female, who put up with the scruffy-ness of life while striving to make it through their various personal seaside fogs. Theater; art; antiques; old movies; sex; more sex; death; fast and slow cars, chicken shit and cow poop; military bearing and erotic emissions-not to mention the wicked witch, the sea serpent by the sea shore, the village ogre, the village idiot, and several Prince Charmings-all figure into this merry tale with a multitude of happy endings.

Returning to characters introduced in her previous novel, acclaimed author Joanna Catherine Scott explores the terrain of a devastated South, where the war is over - but conflict lives on. Having endured years of hardship, Eugenia Mae Spotswood returns to Wilmington to find out who her mother is, only to be met with racism and hatred.... Until she is befriended by the most powerful Negro leader in the state Senate. Also driven forward are the strong-minded ex-slave Tom and his crippled former enemy Clyde Bricket.

Dreamer came back to Austin, Texas from a bad banana war with a souvenir slug in his head. No big deal, just a minor side effect: Now, every safe, every lock, every fancy alarm takes a nap when he's around. Dreamer's not tempted. He's straight arrow and doesn't need the dough. He's happy selling guppies, hanging out at Mama Lucy's Vishnu and Esus Barbecue.

Tom Prine figured that a stint as deputy in a backwash town like Claybank would give him a nice rest. Until, in the space of just a few days, arson, kidnapping and murder turn Claybank into a dangerous place Prine no longer recognizes. A lot of old secrets are being revealed and at their core is a single nagging question - is anybody in town who they pretend to be? Prine doesn't have long to find the answer . .

Hiding in the Weave, written from the perspective of 18-year-old Joel Barlev, a senior at Delamere, a school geared to talented young artists, plays off themes typically found in classic boarding-school novels - requited and unrequited romantic relationships, alienation, rebellion, sexuality, troubled home lives, moral dilemmas, epiphanies, and acquiring maturity. But there is more here...much more....

Do you believe you can shape your future, determine your destiny? One spring day in 1954, three sixth grade boys make a bet: the one who can climb first to the top of a small green merry-go-round outside their school will be "Champ for life!" For the rest of his days he'll be “on Easy Street!” So they engage in a "mad scramble - clambering over each other with murderous intent," and eventually one of them reaches the summit and stands triumphant, lording it over the others. He is the merry-go-round man.

The future of Lily van Velsen, San Francisco pearl "doctor" gemologist, looks assured, given her recent engagement to her goodnatured colleague Alan Purdue. But once she begins reading the diaries that recount many of her ancestors' illicit romances and their relationships with demon lovers, she is driven toward a dark destiny of her own, in the form of an affair with artist Johnny Penthe and a yearning for the opium that can calm her spirit.

Eugenia Mae Spotswood, the daughter of a failed aristocrat, longs to regain the life she lost. The slave Tom wants one thing: freedom. After becoming the property of Eugenia Mae, a dangerous affection grows. But he learns freedom is not something she can give him - he must fight for it himself. Clyde Bricket, the farm boy responsible for Tom's capture, has always believed in the South. But he soon learns that sometimes the only way to redeem yourself is to fight against everything you thought you believed in.

Homegrown is a story of longing, despair, and hope at a children's home in the mid-1980s. Three teenaged boys - Howard, Mark, and Cooter - have lived at the Protestant Children's Home for much of their lives. Worldly and wise sixteen-year-old Howard is the role model. Fifteen-year-old Mark is the angry rebel. And fourteen-year-old Cooter, the only true "orphan" of the bunch, is the peacemaker, doing his best to make everybody happy and to diffuse bad situations with outrageous humor.