Further Joy

In eleven expertly crafted stories, John Brandon gives us a stunning assortment of men and women at the edge of possibility--gamblers and psychics, wanderers and priests, all of them on the verge of finding out what they can get away with, and what they can't. Ranging from haunted deserts to alligator-filled swamps, these are stories of foul luck and strange visitations, delivered with deadpan humor by an unforgettable voice. "The New York Times" praised Brandon's last novel for a style that combined Elmore Leonard and Charles Portis, and now Brandon brings that same darkly American artistry to his very first story collection, demonstrating once again that he belongs in the top ranks of contemporary writers.

About the Author :
John Brandon's three novels are Arkansas, Citrus County, and A Million Heavens. He has spent time as the Grisham Fellow in Creative Writing at University of Mississippi, and the Tickner Writing Fellow at Gilman School, in Baltimore. His work has appeared in Oxford American, GQ, Grantland, ESPN the Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, The Believer, and numerous literary journals. He now lives in St. Paul, and teaches at Hamline University. This is his first story collection.

Review :
"An impressive collection, cleareyed and penetrating." --"Kirkus Reviews" "Intensely readable, and enormously entertaining." --"Booklist" "John Brandon's debut short story collection Further Joy is darkly entertaining, the stories poignant and remarkably accessible." --Largehearted Boy Praise for John Brandon's previous work: "John Brandon's novels are choral compositions in the voice of marginal Americans... At his best, which he's at with some frequency here, he writes in a crackling way about small hopes and larger despair. He gravitates to the kind of regional misfits who drew Flannery O'Connor's eye, and his dialogue is snappy and eccentric, like a combination of two masters of the craft, Elmore Leonard and Charles Portis. [His] strengths--assured prose, well-timed wisecracks and a convincing crew of pilgrims just waiting for directions--are quickly becoming Mr. Brandon's trademarks." --"The New York Times" "[John Brandon] deftly renders a desert wilderness where human hearts are compelled to seek isolation from the pains of the world, but tend to find connectedness despite themselves." --"Publishers Weekly" "A surreal exploration of the origin of inspiration, of what connects humans to each other and to their surroundings. ...Brandon's gift for conjuring a powerful sense of place has never been stronger as the high-desert sands invade every nook and cranny of the lives of his characters." --"Booklist" "Brandon deftly orients his readers to the level of his characters by perfectly evoking the everyday emotions, urges, and annoyances that are relatable despite the uncommon situations they are born of." --"ZYZZYVA" "'A Million Heavens, ' [is] a book that practically shouts from the rooftops its refusal to put on airs, its desire to strip down the prose and get out of its own way. Brandon's unadorned style and disdain for anything 'fancy' belie what a good (and sometimes fancy) writer he is, as well as how much he loves playing with the reader's expectations, interrupting and upending traditional elements of the novel even as he claims to want to be the deliverer rather than the composer." --"Atlanta Journal-Constitution" "Wondrous... More than once I handed A Million Heavens to a friendh