Ford County Stories, John Grisham
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Ford County: Stories

Author: John Grisham

Narrator: John Grisham

Unabridged: 8 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/03/2009


Synopsis

In his first collection of short stories John Grisham takes us back to Ford County, Mississippi, the setting of his first novel, A Time to Kill.

Wheelchair-bound Inez Graney and her two older sons, Leon and Butch, take a bizarre road trip through the Mississippi Delta to visit the youngest Graney brother, Raymond, who's been locked away on death row for eleven years. It could well be their last visit.

Mack Stafford, a hard-drinking and low-grossing run-of-the-mill divorce lawyer gets a miracle phone call with a completely unexpected offer to settle some old, forgotten cases for more money than he has ever seen. Mack is suddenly bored with the law, fed up with his wife and his life, and makes drastic plans to finally escape.

Quiet, dull Sidney, a data collector for an insurance company, perfects his blackjack skills in hopes of bringing down the casino empire of Clanton's most ambitious hustler, Bobby Carl Leach, who, among other crimes, has stolen Sidney's wife.

Three good ol' boys from rural Ford County begin a journey to the big city of Memphis to give blood to a grievously injured friend. However, they are unable to drive past a beer store as the trip takes longer and longer. The journey comes to an abrupt end when they make a fateful stop at a Memphis strip club.

The Quiet Haven Retirement Home is the final stop for the elderly of Clanton. It's a sad, languid place with little controversy, until Gilbert arrives. Posing as a lowly paid bedpan boy, he is in reality a brilliant stalker with an uncanny ability to sniff out the assets of those "seniors" he professes to love.

One of the hazards of litigating against people in a small town is that one day, long after the trial, you will probably come face-to-face with someone you've beaten in a lawsuit. Lawyer Stanley Wade bumps into an old adversary, a man with a long memory, and the encounter becomes a violent ordeal.

Clanton is rocked with the rumor that the gay son of a prominent family has finally come home, to die. Of AIDS. Fear permeates the town as gossip runs unabated. But in Lowtown, the colored section of Clanton, the young man finds a soul mate in his final days.

Featuring a cast of characters you'll never forget, these stories bring Ford County to vivid and colorful life. Often hilarious, frequently moving, and always entertaining, this collection makes it abundantly clear why John Grisham is our most popular storyteller.


From the Hardcover edition.

Author Bio

John Ray Grisham, Jr. was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas on February 8, 1955. Grisham graduated from Mississippi State University and later from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1981. He was a practicing criminal attorney for over ten years and then served in the House of Representatives from 1984 to 1990. He published his first novel in 1989 after working on it for five years. ‘A Time to Kill’, his first novel, launched his new career and was later made into a major motion picture. His first bestseller, ‘The Firm’, released in 1991, sold over seven million copies and was made into a box office hit starring Tom Cruise two years later. Almost twenty years later in 2012, a TV series was launched and picks up the life of Mitch McDeere and his family ten years after the events of the novel.

John Grisham has had his novels translated into more than forty languages and has sold nearly 300 million copies worldwide. He is a winner of the prestigious Galaxy British Book Award and is one of only three authors (the other two being Tom Clancy and J.K. Rowling) to ever sell two million copies of a first published novel. Nine of his novels (including ‘The Firm and ‘A Time to Kill’ have been made into major motion pictures.

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