Taylor Brown

I’m pleased to announce that my third novel, Gods of Howl Mountain, is now available for pre-order (links below). Here’s the scoop:

Set in the high country of 1950s North Carolina, Gods of Howl Mountain is a dark and compelling novel of family secrets, whiskey-running, vengeance, and love.

Maybelline Docherty, “Granny May,” is a folk healer with a dark past. She concocts potions and cures for the people of the mountains—her powers rumored to rival those of a wood witch—while watching over her grandson, Rory Docherty, who has returned from the Korean War with a wooden leg and nightmares of the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. Rory runs bootleg whiskey in a high-powered car to roadhouses, brothels, and private clients in the mill town at the foot of the mountains—a hotbed of violence, moonshine, and the burgeoning sport of stock-car racing.

Granny May must help her grandson battle rival runners and federal revenue agents, snake-handling pastors, and the mystery of his own haunted past: namely, the real story behind his mother’s long confinement in a mental hospital, during which she has remained completely silent.

With gritty and atmospheric prose, Taylor Brown brings to life a perilous mountain and the family who rules it, tying together past and present in one captivating narrative.

Pre-Order Gods of Howl Mountain now!

• Amazon
• Kindle
• BN
• Nook
• iBooks
• Kobo
• Indiebound

Save

Save

Save

Save

I’m so damn thrilled about the endpapers in The River of Kings hardcover. Huge thanks to my editor, George Witte, and all the people at St. Martin’s Press who made these happen.

Thrilled to announce that Fallen Land is available today in paperback!  And oh what a beautiful cover! Copies are available everywhere fine books are sold, and online as well:

Pick up your copy of Fallen Land in paperback!

Save

Save

You guys, The River of Kings is now available!  Get your copy today from one of these retailers:

• IndieBound
• Powell’s
• Barnes & Noble
• Books-a-Million
• Amazon.com
• iTunes

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Excited to share the cover art for The River of Kings, coming on March 21, 2017. Here’s the description:

The Altamaha River, Georgia’s “Little Amazon,” has been named one of the 75 “Last Great Places in the World.” Crossed by roads only five times in its 137-mile length, the blackwater river is home to thousand-year-old virgin cypress, descendants of 18th-century Highland warriors, and a motley cast of rare and endangered species. The Altamaha has even been rumored to harbor its own river monster, as well as traces of the most ancient European fort in North America.

Brothers Hunter and Lawton Loggins set off to kayak the river, bearing their father’s ashes toward the sea. Hunter is a college student, Lawton a Navy SEAL on leave; both young men were raised by an angry, enigmatic shrimper who loved the river, and whose death remains a mystery that his sons hope to resolve. As the brothers proceed downriver, their story is interwoven with that of Jacques Le Moyne, an artist who accompanied the 1564 expedition to found a French settlement at the river’s mouth, which began as a search for riches and ended in a bloody confrontation with Spanish conquistadors and native tribes. In The River of Kings, SIBA-bestselling author Taylor Brown artfully weaves three narrative strands—the brothers’ journey, their father’s past, and the dramatic history of the river’s earliest people—to evoke a legendary place and its powerful hold on the human imagination.

Save

I’m over the moon to let you know that my short story “Rhino Girl,” which follows the story of a Georgia-born anti-poaching ranger in South Africa, has been published in one of the biggest venues there is, The Rumpus, alongside some incredible artwork by Clare Nauman.

Read “Rhino Girl” Here

“Rhino Girl” was a finalist for the 2015 Rick DeMarinis Short Fiction Contest, awarded by Cutthroat:  A Journal of the Arts, and also a finalist for the Tenth Annual Danahy Fiction Prize, awarded by Tampa Review. The story was also awarded second place in the 2016 Doris Betts Fiction Prize, sponsored by the North Carolina Writers’ Network and managed by the North Carolina Literary Review.

Save

Save

Save

I’m thrilled to let you guys know that my tribute to Waylon, my German Wirehaired Pointer rescue, has been published in one of my favorite magazines, Garden & Gun (June 2016 issue).  The piece is part of the monthly Good Dog column, and it’s titled “Creature Comfort.”  It’s now online, so you can read it here:

Read “Creature Comfort” Here

Save

Save

Save

Save

I’m very pleased to announce that two of my short stories from 2015 have been nominated for Pushcarts:

• “Riverkeepers” — published in Chautauqua
• “World without End” — published in the North Carolina Literary Review

“Riverkeepers” is actually the basis for my novel The River of Kings, set on the Altamaha River near where I grew up.  It is forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press, probably in 2017.

Thank you so much to the editors of these publications for featuring my work.  I’m so very grateful and honored.

I’m pleased to announce that In the Season of Blood and Gold has been honored as the finalist in the Fiction:  Short Story category of the 2015 International Book Awards!

Press 53 was well represented, as Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet, edited by Clifford Garstang, was the finalist in the Fiction:  Anthologies category.

Congratulations to the winner of the Short Story category, John Henry Fleming, for his collection Songs for the Deaf, published by Burrow Press.

Fallen Land is due out January 12, 2016.  You can now pre-order it.  Here are some of the blurbs:

“A shattering debut that puts one strongly in mind of the young Cormac McCarthy, and the best historical fiction I’ve read in ages.”

–Pinckney Benedict, author of Town Smokes, The Wrecking Yard, and Dogs of God