Strattford County Series

The first volume of Gregory Hill’s award-winning Strattford County Series, East of Denver is an unflinching look at rural America, a poignant, darkly comic tale about a father and son finding their way as their livelihood slowly disintegrates. When Stacey “Shakespeare” Williams returns to his family’s farm to bury his dead cat, he finds his prematurely-senile father living in squalor. There’s no money, the land is fallow, and what the hell happened to the old man’s beloved Cessna airplane? With no job and no prospects, Shakespeare becomes caretaker to his father and the farm. Drawn by desperation to reunite with a misfit crew of old classmates—losers, same as he—and motivated by boredom as much as by revenge, Shakespeare hatches a half-serious plot to rob the town bank.  What ensues is all kinds of funny: peculiar, ha-ha, & why-am-I-crying. WARNING! THIS NOVEL CONTAINS IRREVERENT DEPICTIONS OF: rural Americanism, death (primarily that of small mammals), early-onset dementia, and eating disorders. Also: thirty-nine instances of the word fuck.

Someone shot his dad. Something killed his horse. So...anybody wanna a drink? Author Gregory Hill trades the mythos of the classic western for a psychological what-the-hell ride within a landscape of supernatural paranoia and cryptic humor. It’s 1975 and cowboy Johnny Riles is a headcase. He’s depressed, he’s drunk, and he’s Lonesome as hell. Left by his family to care for the ranch on his own, Johnny manages to keep the cattle alive while struggling to justify his own existence. Embittered by the success of his younger brother, Kitch, a professional basketball player, it is only thanks to a salt-dry sense of humor and a plentiful supply of whiskey that Johnny keeps himself above ground. On really bad days, he scavenges for arrowheads on the other side of the river that doesn’t run. It calms him down, he says, to collect the old shards. On one of these bad days, Johnny uncovers an artifact far older than an arrowhead. The relic will plunge him into the terrifying underworlds of the Great Plains, where pity and kindness are indistinguishable from despair. ALERT! THIS NOVEL CONTAINS DESCRIPTIONS OF: Cigarette smoking, whiskey consumption, claustrophobic situations, and a basketball game involving a character who was in no way inspired by the life of David Thompson. Also: twenty-eight instances of the word fuck.

The sun's been setting for several months. Nobody's blinking. And no matter how hard he blows, the referee's whistle doesn't make a sound. Time to make up some new rules. With audacious humor, unpredictable turns, and outlandish calls, Zebra Skin Shirt is the brilliantly-conceived conclusion/solution to Gregory Hill’s Strattford County Series. Before the clocks stopped, Narwhal Slotterfield was an ordinary basketball referee. He blew his whistle. He stretched the rules. He even had a girlfriend. But then the clock thing happened.  Now it’s 7:23 pm, Narwhal’s in a diner in the middle of the Great Plains, and now is all he’s got.  Left to wander a planet where people stand like manikins and raindrops never reach the earth, our ref soon realizes he has the power to officiate the universe itself, an endeavor that leads him along a philosophical mobius strip wrapped around the world as tightly as a wedding ring.  A love story, in other words.  DANGER! THIS NOVEL CONTAINS DESCRIPTIONS OF: Hallucinatory drugs, self-loathing, time-warpage, and numerous flashbacks. Also: fifty-eight instances of the word fuck.