Pete Dexter

Warren Spooner was born after a prolonged delivery in a makeshift delivery room in a doctor's office in Milledgeville, Georgia, on the first Saturday of December, 1956. His father died shortly afterward, long before Spooner had even a memory of his face, and was replaced eventually by a once-brilliant young naval officer, Calmer Ottosson, recently court-martialed out of service. This is the story of the lifelong tie between the two men, poles apart, of Spooner's troubled childhood, troubled adolescence, violent and troubled adulthood and Calmer Ottosson's inexhaustible patience, undertaking a life-long struggle to salvage his step-son, a man he will never understand.

In the 1970s and 1980s, before he earned national acclaim for his award-winning novels, Pete Dexter was a newspaper columnist. Every week, in a few hundred words, Dexter cut directly to the heart of the American character at a time of national turmoil and crucial change. With haunting urgency, his columns laid bare the violence, hypocrisy, and desperation he saw on the streets of Philadelphia and in the places he visited across the country. But he reveled, too, in the lighter side of his own life, sharing scenes with the indefatigable Mrs. Dexter, their young daughter, and a series of unforgettable creatures who strayed into their lives. No matter what caught Dexter's eye, it was illuminated by his dark, brilliant humor. Collected here for the first time are eighty-two of the best of those spellbinding, finely wrought pieces—with a new introduction by the author—assembled by Rob Fleder, editor of the bestselling Sports Illustrated 50th Anniversary Book. Paper Trails is searing, heart-breaking, and irresistibly funny, sometimes all at once. As Pete Hamill says in his foreword, these essays "are as good as it ever gets."

Ward James is a reclusive, obsessed young reporter, half of a famous investigative team in Miami, the son of a newspaper family. His younger brother, Jack, recently expelled from the University of Florida's swimming team, and then from the university itself, drives a delivery truck for their father's paper in northern Florida. The brothers are brought together when Ward returns home to investigate the case of a man awaiting execution for the revenge killing of the county's legendary sheriff. Ward is accompanied by his opportunistic partner, Yardley Acheman, and Charlotte Bless, an inordinately sexual and determined woman who has fallen in love through the mail with the sheriff's murderer. What is uncovered in the months that follow, in the exploration - and then exploitation - of the murder of Sheriff Thurmond Call, goes beyond the crime itself to the heart of the characters, and to the heart of the business of journalism.

Paris Trout is a 1988 American novel written by Pete Dexter. It was the winner of the National Book Award for Fiction.

The story of Samuel Hadlock, who was "involved in sealing and whaling; toured Europe beg. 1821 with his traveling show, featuring an Eskimo couple demonstrating kayaking and harpooning; in ca. 1830 left Maine in his vessel Minerva to capture seals in Labrador and never returned as was found by natives on the ice, frozen in a shooting posture; death date is approximate and no further news of the vessel or crew was ever discovered)"--LofC.

Simple text and colorful pictures introduce young children to different kinds of trains. Includes a sheet of train stickers.