Product Description

Master thriller writer and worldwide Number 1 bestseller John Grisham takes you into the heart of America's Deep South with a collection of stories connected by the life and crimes of Ford County: a place of harsh beauty where broken dreams and final wishes converge. A mercy mission that is hilariously sidetracked by human weakness; a manipulative death row inmate with one last plea; a small town divorce attorney who suddenly hits pay dirt; a man that sets out to break a casino to revenge a broken heart; a kidnapped lawyer who is confronted with one of his previous cases at gun point; a conman who preys on the rich and elderly; the boy dying of AIDS who finds mercy across the tracks in downtown Clanton: the sum total of human life is brilliantly captured in Grisham's unique evocation of lives lived and lost in Mississippi. Frequently moving, often hilarious, and always entertaining, "Ford County" brims with the same page-turning quality and irresistible narrative of his previous bestsellers, and is proof once more why John Grisham is our most popular storyteller.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #268 in Books
• Published on: 2009-11-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
When you are as securely at the top of the publishing tree (as John Grisham is), the temptation to simply relax and coast must be ever-present. But canny authors know that such laxity is not advisable if you don’t want your fan base to haemorrhage. And it’s clear that John Grisham – despite a few missteps recently (such as the period when he ill-advisedly let his born-again Christianity seep through into his novels), has tried to keep his writing fresh and vital. Ford County represents Grisham’s first foray into a form he has not tackled before, the short story, and it’s a challenging task (with the ghosts of such great American short story writers as F Scott Fitzgerald ever-hovering over the shoulder of any writer who attempts the form). But the range of subjects and characters tackled here is ambitious. The unexciting Sidney, an insurance company data collector, finesses his abilities at blackjack to take on the star player of a casino empire; the invalid Inez Graney and her two sons undertake a daunting odyssey to meet a relative who has been on death row for eleven years; three Ford County rednecks set out to give blood to an injured friend, but wind up in a Memphis strip joint. As these three stories (from a total of seven) suggest, John Grisham is clearly eager to spread his wings as a writer, and deal with more quirky areas of characterisation than he has tackled before. Some readers may wish that he had stayed in his familiar legal thriller territory, but real Grisham admirers will welcome this ambitious move. As in any short story collection, some entries are more successful than others, but everything here demonstrates solid accomplishment. --Barry Forshaw

About the Author
John Grisham has written twenty-one previous novels and one work of nonfiction, The Innocent Man, published in 2006. He lives in Virginia and Mississippi.

Customer Reviews

Great Collection
I'm not a huge follower of John Grisham's novels (I enjoyed the first few but haven't read any since "The Client") but always enjoyed his depictions of the southern states of America, so a series of stories set in Ford County appealed to me.

What was pretty much an impulse purchase (based partly on the colourful cover!) is possibly the best book I've read this year! 7 short stories linked by location, featuring lots of black humour, some wonderfully drawn characters, and some of the most heart rending writing I've read in years.

Marvellous stuff - I can't recommend it highly enough.

Gripping southern tales
Not a novel, but a series of short stories set in and around Mississippi's fictional Ford County. A few of them concern the misadventures of small-town lawyers, but overall John Grisham presents a greater diversity of characters and situations than in any of his previous works. His writing style is as compelling as ever, and the pages turn quickly, though not all the stories have a twist in the tail. A good read.

Brilliant
I have read every JG book ever published and most are very good, some are not so good. This one, however, is probably the best of his I have ever read. The stories all leave you wanting more and wishing they were novels in their own right. The last story had such a powerful ending, even I nearly shed a tear. Fantastic book, I cannot recommend it enough