Speaking Stone

Michael Griffith's previous books are Trophy (named one of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2011), Bibliophilia, and Spikes. He is Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati and was the Founding Editor of Yellow Shoe Fiction, an original-fiction series from Louisiana State University Press.

• A State of Ungress: Composing as RamblingThe Absent Guest: Leon Van LooBake Visibly!: Gustav Huenefeld“A Great Awkward Bunglehood of Woman”: Fanny WrightInterlude: The Bank-Shot Unmemoir“Death’s Taxicab”: Willard Hess and Martin Hale CraneAccidental Charon: Jacob Strader, Dred Scott, and Body-Snatching“Due Allowance for Foam”: Martha McClellan Brown and the Ohio Women’s Crusade“Another Well-Picked Skeleton”: Homunculi, Mail-Order Tree Stumps, Petrified Logs, and the Many, Many Charles MillersOutlook Hazy: Laura Pruden, Harry Houdini, and Arthur Conan Doyle Interrogate the SpiritsGhosts of the Walldogs: Gus HolthausInterlude: The Crypto Auto-Obituary“And They Did Kill Her by Inches”: The Strange Case of Carrie ElderThe Sculptor, His Son, the Odd Fellows, and the Weird Assassin: Louis Rebisso(s) and Oscar MundhenkSix Degrees of Jonathan CilleyThe Permeable EarthAcknowledgmentsIndexNotesIllustrationCredits

Griffith is a master storyteller. He begins finitely and then goes everywhere, and we readers are delighted to go with him. He makes the local, universal. This book will appeal to readers everywhere. -- David Kirby, American poet and bert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English, Florida State University