Kirjahaku

Safe in Heaven Dead, a first novel similar to last year's art house movie phenomenon, Memento, is a page-turning literary noir by a brilliant new writer. Everything was rolling along smoothly for Robert Elgin. He and his wife, Laura, had a loving marriage, and had taken enough "me" time before having kids - one girl, one boy. After doing the hippie, idealistic thing for awhile, he finally allowed his father in law to get him a job in labour negotiations where he could still fuel his power to the people energies by fighting on the common man's behalf. When Robert becomes too good at his job and is recruited by the County Executive's office to conspire in some dirty negotiations that would allow for a run at Governor, the perfect life begins to crumble. And to make matters much, much worse, Robert learns his five year-old daughter has been molested by the local 12 year-old neighbour, and the crumbling becomes a full-scale slide. While his wife becomes obsessed with grief counsellors, rape specialists, being saved by Jesus, and putting the twelve year old behind bars, Robert finds himself losing touch with his family and losing his grip on reality. When he learns of a secret, dirty fund the labour office has been skimming off the public, he takes the money and runs. And so begins Robert's life as a dead man. Told from the end to the beginning, this Memento-style literary noir about one man's undoing is a fresh new style of fiction. Safe in Heaven Dead is a stunning book by a new voice in contemporary literature.

Wonderland is a fantastic collection of stories. Sam Ligon has mastered the art of capturing the sweet derangement of love. His characters are drunk with desire and reckless in all the right ways, and his prose is incandescent, absurd, wickedly funny and, in the end, achingly true.

Ligon's second story collection is a tightly crafted series about a girl wandering the United States, seeking not to find but to escape herself.

"A masterful exhibition in storytelling; a breathless page-turner. Ligon drives his narrative like a formula one racer. Buckle your seat belts and get ready for a thrilling ride."--Jonathan Evison, West of Here"Part meditation on modern love's dark and often unexamined underbelly; part can't-put-it-down-even-for-a-dinner-break-thriller, this novel contains one of the most convincingly and complicatedly terrifying fictional characters I have run into."--Pam Houston, Contents May Have Shifted"A wildly original love story, a ghost story, a tense and suspenseful story in which the wickedly talented Ligon channels voices--of the lost, the longing, and the damned."--Jess Walter, We Live in WaterPraise for Safe in Heaven Dead: "A superbly convincing first novel....An expertly motivated debut."--Kirkus, starred review"This debut novel instantly seizes and holds the imagination."--Publishers Weekly, starred review"Ligon is firmly in control, laying out the elements of the story like the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle."--New York Times Book ReviewNikki has spent her life running from her abusive mother and the violent boyfriend she killed years ago, and now from his brother, Burke, just released from prison. Burke doesn't know yet how his brother died, but he's obsessed with finding Nikki and claiming her--and her daughter--as his own. Now she's run out of room to run.Samuel Ligon is the author of Safe in Heaven Dead (HarperCollins, 2003) and Drift and Swerve. His stories have appeared in more than twenty literary journals. He teaches at Eastern Washington University's Inland Northwest Center for Writers, and is the editor of Willow Springs.