Master storyteller Chris Offutt's acclaimed crime series has been praised by Ian Rankin as righteous Kentucky noir with top notes of Daniel Woodrell and S. A. Cosby, and in this breakneck new novel, sheriff Mick Hardin navigates the treacherous terrain of a town's festering secrets and the violent forces who want to keep them hidden

Lauded as a masterclass in the craft of crime fiction (CrimeReads), Chris Offutt's beloved and critically acclaimed Mick Hardin series is an atmospheric, tightly crafted testament to Southern noir. The Reluctant Sheriff is a dark, bracing return to the hills of eastern Kentucky where secrets roil beneath the surface, and nothing and no one stays in the past for long.

Mick Hardin never wanted to be sheriff. An ex-Army CID officer, he's supposed to be retired--or he was until his sister, Linda, was shot in the line of duty, requiring him to step in as interim sheriff while she recovered. Now he's stuck in Rocksalt, the place he was most hoping to escape.

Back in uniform, Mick is chafing at the sudden dissolution of his retirement plans, wearied by the petty squabbles of Rocksalt's townsfolk. It's all business as usual, until the murder of a local bar owner draws an unlikely suspect who threatens to fan the flames of Mick's past. When two more bodies turn up, seemingly unconnected to the first, Mick is forced to reckon with the mysterious circumstances of a case not so open-and-shut as everyone believes. Meanwhile, Linda is slowly healing when a familiar business tycoon with a vested interest in her returning as sheriff makes it difficult for her to remain on the sidelines.

Unflinching and devilishly compulsive, The Reluctant Sheriff is an explosive thriller confirming Chris Offutt as a Southern writer of muscular prose and unrivaled talent.

A literary master across genres, award-winning author Chris Offutt's latest novel, The Killing Hills, is a compelling, propulsive thriller in which a suspicious death exposes the loyalties and rivalries of a deep-rooted and fiercely private community in the Kentucky backwoods.

Mick Hardin, a combat veteran now working as an Army CID agent, is home on a leave that is almost done. His wife is about to give birth, but they aren't getting along. His sister, newly risen to sheriff, has just landed her first murder case, and local politicians are pushing for city police or the FBI to take the case. Are they convinced she can't handle it, or is there something else at work? She calls on Mick who, with his homicide investigation experience and familiarity with the terrain, is well-suited to staying under the radar. As he delves into the investigation, he dodges his commanding officer's increasingly urgent calls while attempting to head off further murders. And he needs to talk to his wife.

The Killing Hills is a novel of betrayal--sexual, personal, within and between the clans that populate the hollers--and the way it so often shades into violence. Chris Offutt has delivered a dark, witty, and absolutely compelling novel of murder and honor, with an investigator-hero unlike any in fiction.

Army-CID-officer-cum-unofficial-PI Mick Hardin is up against unforeseen forces who will stop at nothing in this vividly atmospheric thriller from acclaimed novelist Chris Offutt.

Chris Offutt is a literary master across genres, and his most recent novel THE KILLING HILLS was one of his most successful, earning him a new audience and earning praise from the likes of The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Crime Reads. His latest book, Shifty's Boys, is a compelling, propulsive thriller of murder and mayhem in the hills of eastern Kentucky.

Mick Hardin is home on leave, recovering from an IED attack, when a body is found in the center of town. It's Barney Kissick, the local heroin dealer, and the city police see it as an occupational hazard. But when Barney's mother, Shifty, asks Mick to take a look, it seems there's more to the killing than it seems. Mick should be rehabbing his leg, signing his divorce papers, and getting out of town--and most of all, staying out of the way of his sister Linda's reelection as Sheriff--but he keeps on looking, and suddenly he's getting shot at himself.

A dark, pacy crime novel about grief and revenge, and the surprises hidden below the surface, Shifty's Boys is a tour de force that confirms Chris Offutt's Mick Hardin as one of the most appealing new investigators in fiction.

In this blistering return to Chris Offutt's acclaimed crime series, Mick Hardin is tested like never before as familial allegiances and old wounds collide, threatening to destroy everything he loves

With his signature crackling prose, literary master Chris Offutt has staked out his own territory in crime fiction, a place of familial allegiances, old wounds, and revenge--the code of the hills. His new book, a sharp, twisty southern noir with echoes of James Sallis and Daniel Woodrell, will force Mick to face up to the way of life he thought he'd escaped.

Mick Hardin is supposed to be retired, transitioning to civilian life. Back in the hills of Kentucky after a two-year absence, he'd planned to touch down briefly before heading to France, marking the end of his twenty-year Army career.

But in Rocksalt, trouble is brewing. Mick's sister Linda, recently reelected as sheriff, and her deputy Johnny Boy Tolliver are investigating the murder of Pete Lowe, a sought-after mechanic at the local racetrack. Mick doesn't want to get involved--he wants to say his goodbyes and get out of Dodge. But when he reluctantly agrees to intervene in a family dispute requiring a light touch, he uncovers evidence of an illegal cockfighting ring and another body, somehow linked to the first. And then, Linda steps into harm's way, leaving Mick to solve the crimes himself.

Code of the Hills is a harrowing novel of family--of what we're willing to do to protect and avenge the ones we love.

Chris Offutt is an outstanding literary talent, whose work has been called lean and brilliant (New York Times Book Review) and compared by reviewers to Tobias Wolff, Ernest Hemingway, and Raymond Carver. He's been awarded the Whiting Writers Award for Fiction/Nonfiction and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Fiction Award, among numerous other honors. His first work of fiction in nearly two decades, Country Dark is a taut, compelling novel set in rural Kentucky from the Korean War to 1970.

Tucker, a young veteran, returns from war to work for a bootlegger. He falls in love and starts a family, and while the Tuckers don't have much, they have the love of their home and each other. But when his family is threatened, Tucker is pushed into violence, which changes everything. The story of people living off the land and by their wits in a backwoods Kentucky world of shine-runners and laborers whose social codes are every bit as nuanced as the British aristocracy, Country Dark is a novel that blends the best of Larry Brown and James M. Cain, with a noose tightening evermore around a man who just wants to protect those he loves. It reintroduces the vital and absolutely distinct voice of Chris Offutt, a voice we've been missing for years.

In this blistering return to Chris Offutt's acclaimed crime series, Mick Hardin is tested like never before as familial allegiances and old wounds collide, threatening to destroy everything he loves

With his signature crackling prose, literary master Chris Offutt has staked out his own territory in crime fiction, a place of familial allegiances, old wounds, and revenge--the code of the hills. His new book, a sharp, twisty southern noir with echoes of James Sallis and Daniel Woodrell, will force Mick to face up to the way of life he thought he'd escaped.

Mick Hardin is supposed to be retired, transitioning to civilian life. Back in the hills of Kentucky after a two-year absence, he'd planned to touch down briefly before heading to France, marking the end of his twenty-year Army career.

But in Rocksalt, trouble is brewing. Mick's sister Linda, recently reelected as sheriff, and her deputy Johnny Boy Tolliver are investigating the murder of Pete Lowe, a sought-after mechanic at the local racetrack. Mick doesn't want to get involved--he wants to say his goodbyes and get out of Dodge. But when he reluctantly agrees to intervene in a family dispute requiring a light touch, he uncovers evidence of an illegal cockfighting ring and another body, somehow linked to the first. And then, Linda steps into harm's way, leaving Mick to solve the crimes himself.

Code of the Hills is a harrowing novel of family--of what we're willing to do to protect and avenge the ones we love.

Seven years ago, Chris Offutt made his literary debut with Kentucky Straight, a fiercely original collection that earned him not only critical praise but many prestigious awards.
The eight new stories in Out of the Woods mark Offutt's return to the form in which he first displayed his astonishing talent. Offutt, who draws landscape and constructs dialogue with the eyes and ears of a native son (The Miami Herald), is on strong home turf here, capturing those who have left the Kentucky hills and long to return. These are stories of gravediggers and drifters, gamblers and truck drivers a long way from home, tales that are so full of hard edges they can't help but tell some hard truths.

Virgil Caudill has never gone looking for trouble, but this time he's got no choice -- his hell-raising brother Boyd has been murdered. Everyone knows who did it, and in the hills of Kentucky, tradition won't let a murder go unavenged. No matter which way he chooses, Virgil will lose.
The Good Brother, Chris Offutt's finely crafted first novel, is the story of Virgil's struggle to find his real self in the wake of an impossible choice. Traversing the American landscape from the hollows of Eastern Kentucky to the plains of Montana, Offutt explores the hunger for belonging that drives our most passionate beliefs, and in the process shows himself to be one of our most powerful storytellers.

In his fortieth year, Chris Offutt returns to his alma mater, Morehead State University, the only four-year school in the Kentucky hills. He envisions leading the modest life of a teacher and father. Yet present-day reality collides painfully with memory, leaving Offutt in the midst of an adventure he never imagined: the search for a home that no longer exists.
Interwoven with this bittersweet homecoming tale are the wartime stories of Offutt's parents-in-law, Arthur and Irene. An unlikely friendship develops between the eighty-year-old Polish Jew and the forty-year-old Kentucky hillbilly as Arthur and Offutt share comfort in exile, reliving the past at a distance. With masterful prose, Offutt combines these disparate accounts to create No Heroes, a profound meditation on family, home, the Holocaust, and history.

From the critically acclaimed author of the novel The Good Brother and memoir My Father the Pornographer, Same River Twice is the second volume from an American literary star. If you haven't read Chris Offutt, you've missed an accomplished and compelling writer (Chicago Tribune).

At the age of nineteen, Chris Offutt had already been rejected by the army, the Peace Corps, the park rangers, and the police. So he left his home in the Kentucky Appalachians and thumbed his way north--into a series of odd jobs and even stranger encounters with his fellow Americans.

Fifteen years later, Offutt finds himself in a place he never thought he'd be: settled down with a pregnant wife.

Writing from the banks of the Iowa River, where he came to rest, he intersperses the story of his youthful journeys with that of his journey to fatherhood in a memoir that is uniquely candid, occasionally brutal, and often wonderfully funny. As he reckons with the comforts and terrors of maturity, Offutt finally discovers what is best in life and in himself.

A literary master across genres, award-winning author Chris Offutt's latest novel, The Killing Hills, is a compelling, propulsive thriller in which a suspicious death exposes the loyalties and rivalries of a deep-rooted and fiercely private community in the Kentucky backwoods.

Mick Hardin, a combat veteran now working as an Army CID agent, is home on a leave that is almost done. His wife is about to give birth, but they aren't getting along. His sister, newly risen to sheriff, has just landed her first murder case, and local politicians are pushing for city police or the FBI to take the case. Are they convinced she can't handle it, or is there something else at work? She calls on Mick who, with his homicide investigation experience and familiarity with the terrain, is well-suited to staying under the radar. As he delves into the investigation, he dodges his commanding officer's increasingly urgent calls while attempting to head off further murders. And he needs to talk to his wife.

The Killing Hills is a novel of betrayal--sexual, personal, within and between the clans that populate the hollers--and the way it so often shades into violence. Chris Offutt has delivered a dark, witty, and absolutely compelling novel of murder and honor, with an investigator-hero unlike any in fiction.

Army-CID-officer-cum-unofficial-PI Mick Hardin is up against unforeseen forces who will stop at nothing in this vividly atmospheric thriller from acclaimed novelist Chris Offutt.

Chris Offutt is a literary master across genres, and his most recent novel THE KILLING HILLS was one of his most successful, earning him a new audience and earning praise from the likes of The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Crime Reads. His latest book, Shifty's Boys, is a compelling, propulsive thriller of murder and mayhem in the hills of eastern Kentucky.

Mick Hardin is home on leave, recovering from an IED attack, when a body is found in the center of town. It's Barney Kissick, the local heroin dealer, and the city police see it as an occupational hazard. But when Barney's mother, Shifty, asks Mick to take a look, it seems there's more to the killing than it seems. Mick should be rehabbing his leg, signing his divorce papers, and getting out of town--and most of all, staying out of the way of his sister Linda's reelection as Sheriff--but he keeps on looking, and suddenly he's getting shot at himself.

A dark, pacy crime novel about grief and revenge, and the surprises hidden below the surface, Shifty's Boys is a tour de force that confirms Chris Offutt's Mick Hardin as one of the most appealing new investigators in fiction.

Kentucky straight is bourbon with no mixer. Kentucky Straight is Kentucky seen without nostalgic gloss. These riveting, often heartbreaking stories, take us through country that is unmapped. They are set in a nameless Appalachian community too small to be called a town, a place where wanting an education is a mark of ungodly arrogance and dowsing for water a legitimate occupation; where hunting is not a sport but a means of survival. These are stories of coal miners and backwoods medicine men, of gamblers and marijuana farmers, tales of real tragedy and unutterable strangeness that convey their sense of place so vividly that we feel its ground rise beneath our feet.

Offutt has received a James Michener Grant and a Kentucky Arts Council Award.

Army-CID-officer-cum-unofficial-PI Mick Hardin is up against unforeseen forces who will stop at nothing in this vividly atmospheric thriller from acclaimed novelist Chris Offutt.

Chris Offutt is
a literary master across genres, and his most recent novel THE KILLING HILLS
was one of his most successful, earning him a new audience and earning
praise from the likes of The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal,
and Crime Reads. His latest book, Shifty's
Boys, is a compelling, propulsive thriller of murder and mayhem in the
hills of eastern Kentucky.

Mick Hardin is home on leave,
recovering from an IED attack, when a body is found in the center of town. It's
Barney Kissick, the local heroin dealer, and the city police see it as an
occupational hazard. But when Barney's mother, Shifty, asks Mick to take a
look, it seems there's more to the killing than it seems. Mick should be
rehabbing his leg, signing his divorce papers, and getting out of town--and most
of all, staying out of the way of his sister Linda's reelection as Sheriff--but
he keeps on looking, and suddenly he's getting shot at himself.

A dark, pacy crime novel about
grief and revenge, and the surprises hidden below the surface, Shifty's Boys
is a tour de force that confirms Chris Offutt's Mick Hardin as one of the
most appealing new investigators in fiction.

A literary master across genres, award-winning author Chris Offutt's latest novel, The Killing Hills, is a compelling, propulsive thriller in which a suspicious death exposes the loyalties and rivalries of a deep-rooted and fiercely private community in the Kentucky backwoods.

Mick Hardin, a combat veteran now working as an Army CID agent, is home on a leave that is almost done. His wife is about to give birth, but they aren't getting along. His sister, newly risen to sheriff, has just landed her first murder case, and local politicians are pushing for city police or the FBI to take the case. Are they convinced she can't handle it, or is there something else at work? She calls on Mick who, with his homicide investigation experience and familiarity with the terrain, is well-suited to staying under the radar. As he delves into the investigation, he dodges his commanding officer's increasingly urgent calls while attempting to head off further murders. And he needs to talk to his wife.

The Killing Hills is a novel of betrayal--sexual, personal, within and between the clans that populate the hollers--and the way it so often shades into violence. Chris Offutt has delivered a dark, witty, and absolutely compelling novel of murder and honor, with an investigator-hero unlike any in fiction.