Bøker av Austin Smith

Do you ever wonder where your neighbor goes after you leave for work? What about the pretty woman you pass on the street? What kind of lives do they live? Bump follows the lives of dozens of different character, constantly changing the narrative. When the protagonist touches someone else, they become the next star of the book. Everyone has a different story with different ideas and viewpoints. Bump explores the lives of a diverse group of people such as teenagers, cheating spouses, criminal gangs, the elderly, and much more. Much like in real life different characters have different genres throughout their days. Who will the protagonists bump into next?

In 1971, two priests from a Catholic order left their monastery in order to reinvent the contemplative life amid a Liverpool community oppressed by poverty and systemic racism.

Are you ready to take a journey into the vortex of destruction that only losing your grip on reality can bring ?On the outside, James looked like a fine member of society. He pays his bills and shows up at work on time. Does the daily wash-rinse-repeat that so many of us do. However, on the inside James is a bubbling mess of conflict and repression. In the same was Suzy mirrors James in this regard. The two of them bound together through the invisible web of fate.Dabbling with the debate over predisposition and free choice, "The man in the corner of the room " brings into vivid color the idea that maybe an external force is influencing the world around us...with bloody and violent consequences.The story is one of giving in to your desires and giving yourself permission to follow your dreams, then dealing with the aftermath.It is in essence the story of Lust and Betrayal. Longing and self destruction. The world we all inhabit inside our minds. Holding it together or doing as you will.If you are prepared for a wild ride and have a strong constitution ...then hop on board and hold on tight.

Sometimes the way life treats you makes you want to scream. But nobody is listening. Life can be cruel and without pity or mercy or justice. This is a fact that seems to fill the pages of "A way out of Hell". When a bored lonely housewife decides to take the plunge into adultery she doesn't quite get the excitement she had in mind. Circumstances and a bizarre series of events lead her into the arms of her daughters molesting biology teacher with deadly results. But is James, the Biology teacher, merely a victim of another's cruel game or simply a sociopath with psychopathic tendencies? When a night of heavy drinking and accidental encounters converge the mother, daughter, father and biology teacher in a tangle of sex and murder the only outcome is a Tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. Drug induced psychedelic hallucinations and supernatural visitations take their toll on James Norris as he wades his way through a mind bending series of self destructive inflictions. Firstly, molesting a student was a definite NO-NO but James is led further down the rabbit hole by the advice of his best and only friend who doesn't even exist, leaving a trail of blood and devastation in his wake. The story follows Rebecca, the daughter, as she tries to understand her relationship to James and the lack of guilt she feels as he awakens her true sexuality. Then as the relationship sours and she finds herself fighting for her life we watch as everything she has ever known and loved is taken from her. We follow the Father whose alcoholism and childish behavior push his wife away when all he really wants is her affection. His selfishness and aggression masking his true feelings, which he is unaware of until it is too late. Throughout all of this a malevolent presence is growing, pulling the strings to try and break the mind of James and win freedom from the shadows. Ultimately the story ends in a bloody showdown in a deserted farm house, but has good conquered evil or is James destined t

The "e;memorable"e; (Stephanie Burt, Yale Review) and "e;impressive"e; (Chicago Tribune) debut from a remarkable new voice in poetryAlmanac is a collection of lyrical and narrative poems that celebrate, and mourn the passing of, the world of the small family farm. But while the poems are all involved in some way with the rural Midwest, particularly with the people and land of the northwestern Illinois dairy farm where Austin Smith was born and raised, they are anything but merely regional. As the poems reflect on farm life, they open out to speak about childhood and death, the loss of tradition, the destruction of the natural world, and the severing of connections between people and the land.This collection also reflects on a long poetic apprenticeship. Smith's father is a poet himself, and Almanac is in part a meditation about the responsibility of the poet, especially the young poet, when it falls to him to speak for what is vanishing. To quote another Illinois poet, Thomas James, Smith has attempted in this book to write poems "e;clear as the glass of wine / on [his] father's table every Christmas Eve."e; By turns exhilarating and disquieting, this is a remarkable debut from a distinctive new voice in American poetry.From Almanac:THE MUMMY IN THE FREEPORT ART MUSEUMAustin SmithAmongst the masterpieces of the small-townPicassos and Van Goghs and photographsof the rural poor and busts of dead Greeksor the molds of busts donated by the ArtInstitute of Chicago to this dyingtown's little museum, there was a mummy,a real mummy, laid out in a dim-litroom by himself. I used to goto the museum just to visit him, a pharaohwho, expecting an afterlifeof beautiful virgins and infinite foodand all the riches and jewelshe'd enjoyed in earthly life,must have wondered how the hellhe'd ended up in Freeport, Illinois.And I used to go alone into that roomand stand beside his sarcophagus and say,"e;My friend, I've asked myself the same thing."e;