{"title":"Lee Durkee","description":"\u003cp\u003eDive into Lee Durkee's darkly comic and fiercely original novels. Perfect for readers who enjoy character-driven stories with a Southern Gothic edge, exploring themes of alienation and redemption.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"last-taxi-driver-book-lee-durkee-9780857304575","title":"The Last Taxi Driver","description":"The Last Taxi Driver is a darkly comic novel about a day in the life of an exhausted, middle-aged cabbie about to lose his job to Uber, his girlfriend to lethargy, and his ability to stand upright to chronic back spasms. Lou - a lapsed novelist and UFO enthusiast who has returned to his home state of Mississippi after decades away - drives for a ramshackle taxi company that operates on the outskirts of a college town among the trailer parks and housing projects. With Lou's way of life fast vanishing, an ex-dispatcher resurfaces in town on the lam, triggering a bedlam shift which will test Lou's sanity and perhaps cost him his life.   Against this backdrop, Lou has to keep driving, and driving - even if that means aiding and abetting the host of criminal misfits haunting the back seat of his Town Car.   Written by a former cabbie, The Last Taxi Driver careens through the highways and backroads of North Mississippi as Lou becomes increasingly somnambulant and his fares increasingly eccentric. Equal parts Bukowski and Portis, Durkee's novel is an homage to a dying American industry.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49533021552913,"sku":"GOR011754421","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49737731571985,"sku":"NGR9780857304575","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51334803423505,"sku":"CIN0857304577VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0857304577.jpg?v=1751363015"},{"product_id":"rides-of-the-midway-book-lee-durkee-9780393322903","title":"Rides of the Midway","description":"Meet Mississippi teenager Noel Weatherspoon: ghost-seeing insomniac, endearing dopehead, wanna-be erotic photographer, and possible Baptist faith healer. Noel, who prefers The Exorcist to Ecclesiastes, must navigate a world of Bible-thumpers, born-again Christians, and a stepfather who bears an uncanny resemblance to Billy Graham. Darkly comic and lyrically moving, Rides of the Midway introduces a formidable talent in contemporary fiction.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49561895076113,"sku":"GOR013024917","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51002051920145,"sku":"NIN9780393322903","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51415780786449,"sku":"CIN0393322904VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52394378854673,"sku":"CIN0393322904G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52487548141841,"sku":"NLS9780393322903","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0393322904.jpg?v=1750781426"},{"product_id":"stalking-shakespeare-book-lee-durkee-9781982127145","title":"Stalking Shakespeare","description":"\u003cb\u003eA darkly humorous and spellbinding detective story that chronicles one Mississippi man's relentless search for an authentic portrait of William Shakespeare.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFollowing his divorce, down-and-out writer and Mississippi exile Lee Durkee holed himself up in a Vermont fishing shack and fell prey to a decades-long obsession with Shakespearian portraiture. It began with a simple premise: despite the prevalence of popular portraits, no one really knows what Shakespeare looked like. That the Bard of Avon has gotten progressively handsomer in modern depictions seems only to reinforce this point. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eStalking Shakespeare\u003c\/i\u003e is Durkee's fascinating memoir about a hobby gone awry, the 400-year-old myriad portraits attached to the famous playwright, and Durkee's own unrelenting search for a lost picture of the Bard painted from real life. As Durkee becomes better at beguiling curators into testing their paintings with X-ray and infrared technologies, we get a front-row seat to the captivating mysteries--and unsolved murders--surrounding the various portraits rumored to depict Shakespeare. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhisking us backward in time through layers of paint and into the pages of obscure books on the Elizabethans, Durkee travels from Vermont to Tokyo to Mississippi to DC and ultimately to London to confront the stuffy curators forever protecting the Bard's image. For his part, Durkee is the adversary they didn't know they had--a self-described dilettante with nothing to lose, the Dan Brown of English portraiture. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA lively, bizarre, and surprisingly moving blend of biography, art history, and madness, \u003ci\u003eStalking Shakespeare\u003c\/i\u003e is as entertaining as it is rigorous and will forever change the way you look at one of history's greatest cultural and literary icons.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49618766070033,"sku":"CIN1982127147G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":49809147166993,"sku":"CIN1982127147A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51061622112529,"sku":"NIN9781982127145","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53262894366993,"sku":"CIN1982127147VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1982127147.jpg?v=1750772378"},{"product_id":"last-taxi-driver-book-lee-durkee-9781947793392","title":"The Last Taxi Driver","description":"\u003cb\u003eA Kirkus Best Book of 2020\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\"A wild, funny, poetic fever dream that will change the way you think about America.\" --George Saunders\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Hailed by George Saunders as \"a true original--a wise and wildly talented writer,\" Lee Durkee takes readers on a high-stakes cab ride through an unforgettable shift. Meet Lou--a lapsed novelist, struggling Buddhist, and UFO fan--who drives for a ramshackle taxi company that operates on the outskirts of a north Mississippi college town. With Uber moving into town and his way of life vanishing, his girlfriend moving out, and his archenemy dispatcher suddenly returning to town on the lam, Lou must finish his bedlam shift by aiding and abetting the host of criminal misfits haunting the back seat of his disintegrating Town Car. Lou is forced to decide how much he can take as a driver, and whether keeping his job is worth madness and heartbreak.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Shedding nuts and bolts, \u003ci\u003eThe Last Taxi Driver\u003c\/i\u003e careens through highways and back roads, from Mississippi to Memphis, as Lou becomes increasingly somnambulant and his fares increasingly eccentric. Equal parts Bukowski and Portis, Durkee's darkly comic novel is a feverish, hilarious, and gritty look at a forgotten America and a man at life's crossroads.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49746602754321,"sku":"CIN194779339XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49906888409361,"sku":"GOR012612209","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50403022602513,"sku":"CIN194779339XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/194779339X.jpg?v=1765448353"},{"product_id":"last-taxi-driver-book-lee-durkee-9781951142681","title":"The Last Taxi Driver","description":"\u003cp\u003eHailed by George Saunders as \"a true original--a wise and wildly talented writer,\" Lee Durkee takes readers on a high-stakes cab ride through an unforgettable shift. 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Equal parts Bukowski and Portis, Durkee's darkly comic novel is a feverish, hilarious, and gritty look at a forgotten America and a man at life's crossroads.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50059770691857,"sku":"CIN1951142683G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50397045195025,"sku":"CIN1951142683VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50404724277521,"sku":"CIN1951142683A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51068433170705,"sku":"NIN9781951142681","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1951142683.jpg?v=1765448313"},{"product_id":"rides-of-the-midway-a-novel-book-lee-durkee-9780393049718","title":"Rides of the Midway: A Novel","description":"A hilarious, poignant, and twisted novel by a writer best described as a young, southern John Irving. Mississippi teenager Noel Weatherspoon is many things: an unwitting clairvoyant, an extreme asthma sufferer, a ghost-seeing insomniac, an endearing dopehead, a wanna-be erotic photographer, a would-be baseball star, a regretful vandal, a lamentable virgin who becomes an older woman's sex toy, and a never-accused, somnambulant mercy-killer. Noel is haunted by the specter of the boy he knocked into a coma while sliding into home in Little League and by the spirit of his father who died in Vietnam. He is equally haunted by his embarrassing failures with girls and his own dark secrets. The surely damned Noel must navigate all manner of bible thumpers, from gossiping Baptists, Pentecostal cousins, born-again Christians, and righteous Methodists to a stepfather who bears an uncanny resemblance to Billy Graham. Funny and dark, Rides of the Midway is a brilliantly told story about a boy whose life spins completely out of control.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50196600389905,"sku":"CIN039304971XA","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51118859157777,"sku":"CIN039304971XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51696604315921,"sku":"GOR014365748","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51747261808913,"sku":"CIN039304971XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/039304971X.jpg?v=1751440010"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-lee-durkee.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}