One Simple Thing

Warren Read

Paperback

Regular price$16.95With free membership trial$8.4850% off your first book+ Free shipping

Currently out of stock. Place a backorder.

Do you recommend this book?

Yes!

"One Simple Thingis fit to burst with grit, atmosphere, pathos and suspense. With his expertly paced second novel, Mr. Read invites comparisons to the crime masters of the mid-twentieth century--guys like Chandler, and Thompson, and Willeford."―Jonathan Evison

"In Warren Read's stories, setting is a character, stealthy, lush, and full of hidden depths. The very air has texture, holding the characters tight as their small town worlds unfold. A twisting, twisted tale full of well-developed characters and dense setting, One Simple Thing is a story that will hold you in its grip until the satisfying end." ―Jessica Barksdale Inclán, author of The Burning Hour and When We Almost Drowned

"One Simple Thing is anything but simple. This tense, layered story brings us into the world of hardscrabble folks who are fighting and often failing to get by. Opening on a boy's heart-wrenching journey through the implosion of his family, One Simple Thing flowers into a captivating crime mystery. While tempting to compare Warren Read to classic crime writers, he also vividly chronicles lives lived on the margins, like writers such as Larry Brown or Willy Vlautin.

Book Details

Publisher: Ig Publishing
Publish Date: Jan 26th, 2021
Pages: 280
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 8.10in - 5.50in - 0.90in - 0.65lb
EAN: 9781632461193
Categories: • Literary• Small Town & Rural• Crime

About the Author

Read, Warren: - Warren Read is the author of a 2008 memoir, The Lyncher in Me, about his discovery that his great-grandfather had incited a lynching in 1920, and the 2017 novel, Ash Falls, which was called "a moody, haunting foray into rural Americana in the mold of Daniel Woodrell and Christian Kiefer," by Kirkus. His fiction has been published in Hot Metal Bridge, Mud Season Review, Sliver of Stone, Inklette, Switchback and The Drowning Gull. In addition, he has had two short plays directed and produced by Tony winner Dinah Manoff. Warren earned his MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University.

Praise for this book

"Read meticulously weaves the gritty, hard-knock lives of many men and women from this impoverished, rural town in mountainous Washington into 'tight little complicated knots.'...A moody, haunting foray into rural Americana in the mold of Daniel Woodrell and Christian Kiefer."--Kirkus Reviews

In this fine first novel, Read deftly portrays the competing feelings of suffocation and loneliness that can breed in small towns. Pair this with Daniel Woodrell's marvelous Tomato Red." --Booklist

Though set in a bleak place at a bleak time, Read's novel ultimately is one of hope. As it winds to its conclusion, each character finds a key to closing the self-created distance between who they are and who they'd like to be, culminating in an extraordinary Christmas Eve act of love. Most readers will enjoy."--Library Journal

A well-crafted, subtle psychological thriller. --Publisher's Weekly

A stunning display of grit made alluring. Both beautiful and stark, Ash Falls is a slice-of-life portrait that gives color to the grayest of times. --Shelf Awareness

Ash Falls is a dynamite debut: keenly observed, well-paced, and dripping with atmosphere. Read's gritty, hard-knock characters walk off the page.--Jonathan Evison, best-selling author of The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving and West of Here

"Warren Read's Ash Falls is one of those compelling novels that works into your awareness in layers until, almost without knowing it, you find yourself involved with a whole community of intersecting lives. This is sophisticated storytelling, quiet and unpredictable and gorgeous. Read creates characters with such precision and exactitude that the book has the quality of a Vermeer painting, of people captured in moments of their ordinary, miraculous, so-lit lives."--Kent Meyers, author of New York Times bestsellers The Work of Wolves and Twisted Tree.

"Warren Read spins an engrossing and eloquent narrative that sharpens our moral conscience through the power of a great story. Ash Falls is a gift of a book, and a delicious place to lose yourself in an immersing read."--Carol Cassella, best-selling author of Oxygen, Gemini and Healer