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A Hanging at Cinder Bottom

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What to expect

From the author of The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart and set in the boom years of the West Virginia coalmining industry, this is an epic story of personal ambition, exile and return, and a grand heist.

Keystone, West Virginia, 1910

In the hot August rain the townspeople gather to witness the first public hanging in over a decade. At the gallows are none other than poker player, Abe Baach, and his lover, the madam of the town’s brothel, one Goldie Toothman.

Abe split town seven years prior and has been playing cards up and down the coast ever since. But when he returns to Keystone to reunite with Goldie and to set the past right, he finds a brother dead and his father's saloon in shambles – and suspects the same men might be responsible for both. Only then, in facing his family's past, does the real swindle begin.

Critics Review

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Praise for A Hanging at Cinder Bottom:

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‘It's not enough to say Glenn Taylor is a brilliant writer. He's that rarity nowadays, a great storyteller… irresistible. You'll never have a better time at a hanging’ Stewart O'Nan, author of A Prayer for the Dying

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Praise for The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart:

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‘[A] galloping, defiant epic…a virtuoso performance…vigorous and sincere, located squarely in the tradition of Twain, Faulkner and McCullers’ GUARDIAN

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‘Taylor has created a marvellous, jump-off-the-page character…a defiantly incredible creation…The writing is limber, and the real life it bundles up into its freakish, charismatic character make this a genuine success that admirers of John Irving – and others too – will surely enjoy’ THE INDEPENDENT

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‘[A] mesmerisingly fluid narrative…Smart, brash, but totally convincing, this has the makings of a page-turning literary sensation’ WATERSTONE'S BOOKS QUARTERLY

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‘A confident, funny and often surprising read’ METRO

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‘Wildly inventive’ THE TIMES

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‘This is indeed a book that succeeds in its early pages to completely capture the reader’ LE MONDE

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‘It is an exceptional novel with a rare picaresque power…Taylor is a master’ LE FIGARO

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‘Taylor's prose is so fluid and seemingly effortless that The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart bridges the usually irreconcilable gap between popular fiction and literary fiction. It's that rare creature-a literary page-turner. . .a stunning, fully realized, unique and ambitious book that proves there's still passion, fire and brilliance in the American novel’ HOUSTON CHRONICLE

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‘An energetic romp’ DAZED AND CONFUSED

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‘Think of this novel as an American version of One Hundred Years of Solitude’ BOB HOOVER, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE

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