From the author of Summer at Hideaway Key comes a sweeping new Southern women's fiction novel about forgiving the past one letter at a time... The truth lies between the lines... A year ago, Dovie Larkin's life was shattered when her fiancé committed suicide just weeks before their wedding. Now, plagued by guilt, she has become a fixture at the cemetery where William is buried, visiting his grave daily, waiting for answers she knows will never come. Then one day, she sees an old woman whose grief mirrors her own. Fascinated, she watches the woman leave a letter on a nearby grave. Dovie ignores her conscience and reads the letter—a mother's plea for forgiveness to her dead daughter—and immediately needs to know the rest of the story. As she delves deeper, a collection of letters from the cemetery's lost and found begins to unravel a decades-old mystery involving one of Charleston's... Views: 5
Sergeant Heath “Tick” Hawthorn, the best tracker in Mandrake Company and the captain’s right-hand man, has been admiring microbiologist Lauren Keys from afar for months. Unfortunately, she’s dedicated to her science and doesn’t seem to have any interest in relationships. He’s not even sure she knows his name.
Determined to change that, Heath develops a surefire plan: he signs up to be a specimen in her latest study. Once she gets to know him better, he’s positive she’ll find his charms appealing.
But when he starts hearing other people's thoughts and receiving eerie premonitions, he questions the wisdom of turning himself into a lab rat. On a mission planet-side with Lauren, they finally have some time alone together, but he’s too worried he’s turning into a freak to be charming. Further, the outing soon turns dangerous, as predators and bounty hunters show an interest in the party. If he and Lauren aren’t careful, they’ll end up dead instead of dating. Maybe Heath's plan wasn’t as surefire as he thought.
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"Love can make people do terrible things."
Welcome to Spencerville, Virginia, 1977. Eight-year-old Rocky worships his older brother, Paul. Sixteen and full of rebel cool, Paul spends his days cruising in his Chevy Nova blasting Neil Young, cigarette dangling from his lips, arm slung around his beautiful, troubled girlfriend. Paul is happy to have his younger brother as his sidekick. Then one day, in an act of vengeance against their father, Paul picks up Rocky from school and nearly abandons him in the woods. Afterward, Paul disappears.
Seven years later, Rocky is a teenager himself. He hasn’t forgotten being abandoned by his boyhood hero, but he’s getting over it, with the help of the wealthy neighbors’ daughter, ten years his senior, who has taken him as her lover. Unbeknownst to both of them, their affair will set in motion a course of events that rains catastrophe on both their families. After a mysterious double murder brings terror and suspicion to their small town, Rocky and his family must reckon with the past and find out how much forgiveness their hearts can hold.
**Review
“A lush mystery-within-a-coming-of-age-tale-within-a-Southern-Gothic. If a book could have an Instagram filter, Tarkington’s would be set on something called ‘Nostalgic’ . . . interesting, readable and beautifully written.”—NPR Books
“Tarkington’s writing is talky, devoid of flash, and calls to mind a young Pat Conroy . . . propulsion is its primary attribute. Not mere plot propulsion—though there’s plenty of that, especially after the corpses turn up—but emotional propulsion: Tarkington’s fidelity to period and place is matched by his fidelity to human contradictions, to the gray area between heroism and villainy in which most of us reside. The gothic elements add spice, but the protein in this assured debut—the part that sticks to your ribs—is the beautiful but ever-threatened connection between Rocky and Paul. Only Love Can Break Your Heart is a novel about brotherhood, most of all, about the delicate fortress of that bond.” —Garden & Gun
“This heartbreakingly effective coming-of-age story about the importance of love in one’s life is replete with moments of harsh cruelty and tender love. Beautifully written....Readers will stop and reread paragraphs, not because of confusion but for the pure joy of the language . . . Fans of Kathryn Stockett’s The Help will embrace debut author Tarkington’s depiction of Southern life at a time of changing social mores. Most of all, readers who can’t get enough of Wiley Cash, Ron Rash, and Brian Panowich will delight in discovering this fine new writer.” —Library Journal, starred review
“A coming-of-age story that evolves into a whodunit with tangled roots in three families whose lives collide in 1977... [a] well-plotted, generous inquiry into the intricacies of the human heart — especially the broken variety ... Secrets abound, imaginations run wild ...”—Atlanta Journal Constitution
“This is a wonderful novel about a small Southern town and love within, and outside of, families. It is not a typical coming-of-age story.”—Daily American (Somerset, PA)
“A clear winner—a taut, engrossing, crisply written tale of loss and abiding love.”—*Charlotte Observer*
“A rich, moody, moving novel about growing up and growing old before your time. Tarkington’s people are rakes, rascals, irascible losers, femme fatales, rich buffoons, dunderheads, beautiful loons, and one very cool dude, all balanced by the voice of a narrator you come to love as much as he loves his doomed older brother. On top of all that, it’s a very fun, deeply satisfying, page-turner of a book.” —Brad Watson, author of The Heaven of Mercury and *Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives*
“Well-written and observed . . . Tarkington carefully lays out his elaborate storyline and sensitively depicts his troubled characters.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Welcome to small town, late 1970s, old money Virginia where teenagers can still roam wild and free. Ed Tarkington’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart brilliantly explores the winding roads and cul-de-sacs of love, especially the troubled and troubling bond between two step-brothers, Paul and Rocky Askew. Narrated by Rocky, the younger of the two, in a voice that is beguiling and wise, this addictive tale of abandonment and forgiveness will haunt you long after you’ve turned the last page.” —Elizabeth Stuckey-French, author of *The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady*
“A wonderful, beauty-haunted piece of work. Tarkington’s voice in his hard-to-put-down debut novel has a timeless feel to its cadences, the same bittersweet music we hear in the storytelling of the best of our Southern writers who remind us how hard the world can be for dreamers.” —Bob Shacochis, author of *The Woman Who Lost Her Soul *
“A reader need not be a disciple of rock legend Neil Young to find that Only Love Can Break Your Heart strikes a nostalgic chord. But for those of us who appreciate Young’s immense musical gifts, Ed Tarkington’s debut novel will likely prove twice as harmonious. In many ways a classic coming-of-age story, the novel also digs deep into the loamy depths of the modern Southern Gothic genre, circa 1970s . . . Tarkington’s impressive first novel achieves every author’s goal: Once you start reading, you can’t stop. And as an added bonus for Neil Young fans, Tarkington’s riveting tale provides plenty of classic rock riffs, too.”—BookPage
“Ed Tarkington kicks off his first novel, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, with a ghost, a gun and an abandoned, white-pillared Southern mansion called Twin Oaks. He wraps it up with a grisly double murder in the same place. In between, his story touches on nearly every benchmark of good Southern Gothic literature: violence, sex, money, sibling rivalry, antipsychotic drugs, incest, abortion, religious fanaticism and plenty of alcohol . . . he tells his story with the confident ease of Dickens in Great Expectations . . . an accomplished, confident coming-of-age story in the Southern Gothic tradition”—Shelf Awareness for Readers
“From beginning to end, the plotline is intense, never flagging.”—Booklist
“Well-written and observed . . . Tarkington carefully lays out his elaborate storyline and sensitively depicts his troubled characters.”—Kirkus Reviews
“A grisly and suspenseful debut novel.”—Nashville Lifestyles
“Elegant...Only Love Can Break Your Heart is a love story that just might break your heart, too.” —Matt Bondurant, author of The Night Swimmer and *The Wettest County in the World *
“I’m speechless. I don’t remember the last debut novel that kept me turning pages enthralled. Only Love Can Break Your Heart is part The Graduate, part southern gothic dysfunctional family, part Edisto, part The Moviegoer. It’s all Ed Tarkington, though. Funny, desperate, sad, tender, suspenseful, intelligent, insightful, and full of nothing but heart, heart, heart.” —George Singleton, author of *Between Wrecks *
“Ed Tarkington’s first novel manages an expert narrative feat--it is somehow both ruminative and remarkably suspenseful. A novel of family and love and class, of beautiful youth and terrible consequences. And of heartbreak, of course, as the title makes plain and life makes inescapable. Readers will be born along on the strength and clarity of Tarkington’s prose, the twists and pivots of his plot. Only Love Can Break the Heart is a truly auspicious debut.” —Michael Knight, author of *The Typist*
“Tarkington’s childhood was accompanied by the sounds of classic rock . . . and now it’s at the heart of his debut novel, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, a story of love, loyalty, murder and vinyl.”—The Tennessean (Nashville)
“Tarkington’s prose is effortlessly smooth...creating a story that is at once bizarre and utterly familiar. He asks us to remember that we are all trying desperately to be loved, often failing, but trying.” —Washington Independent Review of Books
“Ed Tarkington’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart harkens back to predecessors such as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Carson McCullers’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, and Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees . . . At the core of this small-town Southern story there are universal truths that transcend regionalism. If not for the crackling emotion powering this traditional bildungsroman—the loss of love to death and time, the struggle to find and keep a home, the confusion and despair of growing up—its straightforward prose might fall flat. From the opening page of Only Love Can Break Your Heart to the wrenching last, human relationships remain the narrative’s most compelling force . . . Yes, this is a novel about love, but not just the romantic kind. It’s an ode to love in all of its complicated forms: between estranged brothers, between fathers and prodigal sons, between a boy and his hometown.” Amy Greene, New York Times bestselling author of Bloodroot , for Chapter16.org (Nashville)
About the Author
Ed Tarkington received a BA from Furman University, an MA from the University of Virginia, and PhD from the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Florida State. A frequent contributor to Chapter16.org, his articles, essays, and stories have appeared in Nashville Scene, Memphis Commercial Appeal, Post Road, the Pittsburgh Quarterly, the Southeast Review, and elsewhere. A native of Central Virginia, he lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Views: 5
Honor means nothing to a dead man. But love … love makes its own rules. Mason I’ve been dead for a decade. I don’t exist ... and I have no family. It’s the only way to protect them. But today, I learned two things. My sister is marrying the son of the first man I ever killed. And her maid of honor has a child. My child. They both deserve better than me. But now that Taryn's in my arms again, how can I let her go? Taryn When the man you love comes back from the dead, that’s a shock. But then he tells you he’s a contract killer. And he’s here to do a job. I wish I could hate him. Or even resist him. But I can’t. I’ll do anything to protect my daughter. But how can I protect my heart? Author's Note: Hitman's Secret Baby is a full-length, standalone novel. No cliffhanger. No cheating. A Happily Ever After ending.** Views: 5
'If subtlety, originality and ambiguity are hallmarks of the best supernatural tales, then Walpole’s stand with the very best.’—So writes George Gorniak in his Introduction to this definitive collection of the most admired of Hugh Walpole’s supernatural and macabre shorter works, along with two previously uncollected early masterpieces, ‘The Clocks’ and ‘The Twisted Inn’. Perhaps best known for The Herries Chronicle (1930-34), four historical Lakeland novels which remain in print to this day, Walpole was widely recognised in his own lifetime as a consummate literary craftsman with a fine narrative style and an admirable ability to portray character, humour and dialogue. In classic tales such as ‘The Silver Mask’, ‘Tarnhelm’ and ‘The Snow’, he also demonstrates beyond question that he understood the experience of sheer, stark terror.
Walpole had a deep and abiding interest in the supernatural and consistently incorporated macabre, mystical and supernatural elements in his work. He also exhibits a markedly modern understanding of the psychological, and it is this combination which allows his more traditional ghost stories, such as ‘The Little Ghost’ and ‘Mrs Lunt’, to retain their power today.
This collection of twenty-five stories should help renew the recognition enjoyed by Walpole in his own lifetime. As he said himself ‘. . . the creator who relies more upon the inference behind the fact than upon the fact itself, more upon the dream than the actual business, more upon the intangible world of poetry than upon the actual world of concrete evidence, this kind of creator will come into his kingdom again.’ Views: 5
In this inviting and informed blend of religion, cultural history, and travelogue—illustrated with maps and dozens of color and black-and-white photographs—the archeologist, Bible scholar, and host of numerous television documentaries explores the cities of the Bible and how they influenced the creation and development of the Bible.Weaving together biblical archaeology, personal experience, and historical geography, Dr. Robert Cargill analyzes the relationship between the Bible and the cities from which it developed. We cannot understand the Bible without understanding the cities and cultures that produced it, he argues. The story of these cities—their history, their archaeology, their mysteries, and the people who inhabited them and later excavated them—is also the story of the Bible itself.Accessible, engaging, and erudite yet told in Cargill's compelling, humorous voice, The Cities That Built the Bible is a colorful tour through cities... Views: 5
A powerful and gripping debut grimdark fantasy novel, set in a world of criminals, pirates, assassins, and magic... "A man has only three reasons for being anywhere: to right a wrong, to earn a coin, or because he is lost." Cassius is not lost... The mage Cassius has just arrived on the island of Scipio. Five miles of slum on the edge of fifty miles of jungle, Scipio is a lawless haven for criminals, pirates, and exiles. The city is split in two, each half ruled by a corrupt feudal lord. Both of them answer to a mysterious general who lives deep in the jungle with his army, but they still constantly battle for power. If a man knows how to turn their discord to his advantage, he might also turn a profit... But trained on the Isle of Twelve, Cassius is no ordinary spellcaster, and his goal is not simply money. This a treacherous island where the native gods are restless, and anything can happen... Views: 5
When circumstances leave her with little choice but to volunteer for the Interstellar Bride Program, Hannah Johnson finds herself matched with not one but two mates. Her soon-to-be husbands are warriors of the planet Prillon, a world whose men are known far and wide for their prowess both in battle and in bed.Following her transport to a starship halfway across the galaxy, Hannah awakens in the presence of Zane Deston, the huge, fiercely handsome commander of the Prillon fleet. After informing her that she is now his mate, as well as the mate of his second, Zane takes it upon himself to supervise as Hannah is thoroughly and intimately examined. Her failure to properly cooperate with the ship’s doctor earns her a painful, embarrassing spanking on her bare bottom, but it is her body’s response to the exam which truly leaves her blushing.Though Hannah is shocked by the prospect of being shared by Zane and his second, the equally handsome warrior Dare, she cannot hide her arousal as her two dominant mates take their time in mastering her body. As the day of the claiming ceremony approaches, Hannah begins to long for the moment when Zane and Dare will make her fully theirs, but can she risk giving her heart to men who might die in battle any day?Publisher’s Note: Mated to the Warriors is an erotic romance novel that includes spankings, sexual scenes, medical play, elements of BDSM, and more. If such material offends you, please don’t buy this book. Views: 5
