A Book With No Pictures

By Brent Jones

Meet Terrence.

He’s pushing forty. He drinks. He smokes. He eats snack cakes for breakfast. And he’s the sole guardian of his orphaned nephew, Spencer.

But Spencer isn’t just any five-year-old. He’s a child prodigy, and living together requires compromises that neither uncle nor nephew are prepared to make.

This short story, from the author of 'Fender' and 'The Fifteenth of June', is teeming with raunch and dark humor, mocking the old adage that blood is thicker than water.

'A Book With No Pictures' also introduces readers to children’s librarian, Afton Morrison, the subject of an upcoming thriller series, also set in the fictional town of Wakefield.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brent Jones
• Release date: Feb 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370657094

Brent Jones

Brent Jones is the global manager for land records and cadastre at Esri. His is responsible for strategic industry planning, business development, risk analysis and marketing, focusing on high accuracy GIS, advanced surveying data management, civil engineering, cadastre, land records, and land registration in the developing world. Brent Jones is president-elect for the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) and past president of the Geospatial Information & Technology Association (GITA). He graduated from the University of Maine with a Bachelor of Science degree in survey engineering (1987).

Book preview

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Spencer asked me the other day if I had any good books he could read. Books. The damn kid is five.

I suppose he can’t be blamed for being such a tool. He’s just like his father. Looks like him, too. Dumbo ears, fat face, Coke-bottle glasses, and a haircut only a mixing bowl could be responsible for.

Julien—his father and my brother—was a first rate astrophysicist before he died. At least I think he was an astrophysicist. Something to do with spaceships and rockets, little green men and all that. It’s not like Julien and I kept in touch. He and I were never close, and I liked his wife even less. Blair tried too hard to be hip, parading around in overpriced yoga pants and swapping vegan snack recipes with other moms in town. You know the type. She’d even impose daily limits on screen time for Spencer. So his eyes wouldn’t get any worse, I guess, and so there’d be fewer chances for him to stumble upon a naked lady on the internet or something.

Even though Julien, Blair, and Spencer used to live a couple blocks from us, we saw them just a few times a year. Around the holidays mostly. Every now and then, Blair would show up unannounced with sugar-free, lactose-free, gluten-free, flavor-free bullshit. Homemade, of course. Rachel, my wife—now estranged wife—would smile and accept her gift with glee. They’d swap hugs and compliment each other’s manicures, and then no sooner than Blair was out the door, Rachel would start muttering about what a try-hard bitch our sister-in-law was. Ah, women. If there’s nothing else they love, it’s shitting on each other. At least once they think the other woman is out of earshot.

Well, as fate would have it, Julien and Blair died doing what they loved best. Enjoying the great outdoors or something like that. It’s what I tell Spencer, at least. That his mom and dad died on a hike. Sometimes I switch it up, just to fuck with him, and tell him it was a