Category Archives: The City Quartet

Tattered Men, the Final Novel of the City Quartet by Michael Williams, Available Now in Print and eBook Formats!

Tattered Men, the final novel in the City Quartet from Michael Williams, is now available in print and eBook formats from Seventh Star Press!

Get your copy of Tattered Men at any of the direct links below!

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Tattered Men is the fourth and final installment in the City Quartet, a group of interrelated novels that can be read in any order. Readers of mythic fiction and magical realism will love this literary gem!

Synopsis of Tattered Men:

When a body washes ashore downstream from the city, the discovery saddens the small neighborhood south of Broadway.  A homeless man, T. Tommy Briscoe,  whose life had intertwined with a bookstore, a bar, and the city’s outdoor theater had touched many lives at an angle.  One was that of Mickey Walsh, a fly-by-night academic and historian, who becomes fascinated with the circumstances surrounding the drowning.

From the beginning there seems to be foul play regarding Briscoe’s death, and, goaded on by his own curiosity and the urging of two old friends, Walsh begins to examine the case when the police give it up.  His journey will take him into the long biography of a man who might have turned out otherwise and glorious, but instead fell into and through the underside of history, finding harsh magic and an even harsher world.  Despite the story of Tommy’s sad and shortened life, Walsh begins to discover curious patterns, ancient and mythic, in its events—patterns that lead him to secrets surrounding the life and death of Tommy Briscoe, and reveal his own mysteries in the searching.

About Michael Williams:

Over the past 25 years, Michael Williams has written a number of strange novels, from the early Weasel’s Luck and Galen Beknighted in the best-selling DRAGONLANCE series to the more recent lyrical and experimental Arcady, singled out for praise by Locus and Asimov’s magazines. In Trajan’s Arch, his eleventh novel, stories fold into stories and a boy grows up with ghostly mentors, and the recently published Vine mingles Greek tragedy and urban legend, as a local dramatic production in a small city goes humorously, then horrifically, awry.

Trajan’s Arch and Vine are two of the books in Williams’s highly anticipated City Quartet, to be joined in 2018 by Dominic’s Ghosts and Tattered Men.

Williams was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and spent much of his childhood in the south central part of the state, the red-dirt gothic home of Appalachian foothills and stories of Confederate guerrillas. Through good luck and a roundabout journey he made his way through through New England, New York, Wisconsin, Britain and Ireland, and has ended up less than thirty miles from where he began. He has a Ph.D. in Humanities, and teaches at the University of Louisville, where he focuses on the he Modern Fantastic in fiction and film. He is married, and has two grown sons.

Vine: An Urban Legend by Michael Williams Is Now Available in Print and eBook Formats!

Seventh Star Press is proud to announce that the reissue of Vine: An Urban Legend from Michael Williams is now available in print and all eBook formats!  The novel is part of his visionary, mythic fiction City Quartet!

Pick up a copy of Vine: An Urban Legend today using the links below!

eBook Formats

Kindle
Nook
Kobo
iTunes

Print Formats

Amazon
Barnes and Noble

The City Quartet is a group of mythic fiction titles that are interrelated but can be read as stand-alone novels.  They include Dominic’s GhostsVine: An Urban Legend, Trajan’s Arch, and Tattered MenVine is scheduled for reissue on September 28th in print and eBook formats, with Trajan’s Arch to follow in December, concluding with Tattered Men in early 2019.

Synopsis of Vine: An Urban Legend: Amateur theatre director Stephen Thorne plots a sensational production of a Greek tragedy in order to ruffle feathers in the small city where he lives. Accompanied by an eccentric and fly-by-night cast and crew, he prepares for opening night, unaware that as he unleashes the play, he has drawn the attention of ancient and powerful forces.

Michael Williams’ VINE: AN URBAN LEGEND weds Greek Tragedy and urban legend with dangerous intoxication, as the drama rushes to its dark and inevitable conclusion.

 

About Michael Williams: Over the past 25 years, Michael Williams has written a number of strange novels, from the early Weasel’s Luck and Galen Beknighted in the best-selling DRAGONLANCE series to the more recent lyrical and experimental Arcady, singled out for praise by Locus and Asimov’s magazines. In Trajan’s Arch, his eleventh novel, stories fold into stories and a boy grows up with ghostly mentors, and the recently published Vine mingles Greek tragedy and urban legend, as a local dramatic production in a small city goes humorously, then horrifically, awry.

Trajan’s Arch and Vine are two of the books in Williams’s highly anticipated City Quartet, to be joined in 2018 by Dominic’s Ghosts and Tattered Men.

Williams was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and spent much of his childhood in the south central part of the state, the red-dirt gothic home of Appalachian foothills and stories of Confederate guerrillas. Through good luck and a roundabout journey he made his way through through New England, New York, Wisconsin, Britain and Ireland, and has ended up less than thirty miles from where he began. He has a Ph.D. in Humanities, and teaches at the University of Louisville, where he focuses on the he Modern Fantastic in fiction and film. He is married, and has two grown sons.

Seventh Star Press Announces Michael Williams as Newest Member of Author Family!

Seventh Star Press is proud to announce Michael Williams as the newest member of our author family with his visionary literary project, the mythical realism City Quartet novels!

The City Quartet represents an ambitious and unique literary project from the highly-acclaimed author of early novels in the best-selling DRAGONLANCE series such as Weasel’s Luck and Galen Beknighted. The project will see revised editions of the novels Trajan’s Arch and Vine: An Urban Legend, and the releases of the third and fourth books in the City Quartet, Dominic’s Ghosts and Tattered Men.

Release dates for the revised editions of Trajan’s Arch and Vine: An Urban Legend will be announced very soon, along with the release date for Dominic’s Ghosts. Tattered Men will have a 2018 release date. The City Quartet novels will be released in both print and eBook formats.

“It is a great honor to be able to work with Michael to bring this project to readers everywhere,” Stephen Zimmer of Seventh Star Press commented. “The City Quartet weaves together exceptional literary quality and masterful storytelling, and these books represent a great contribution to the literary world, as well as being engaging, entertaining reads. A project like this does not come along often for a press and we are thrilled to be a part of bringing Michael’s vision to life.”

About the City Quartet: Four books (to be read in any order) centering on a mid-Southern city in which familiar human stories—coming of age, romantic triangles, political conspiracies, and crime investigations—take mythic form, and characters, anchored in the everyday, glimpse larger, inevitable patterns in the world around them.

The first book of the City Quartet is Trajan’s Arch, where a young man’s coming of age is haunted by his past, both figuratively and literally. The second book is Vine: An Urban Legend, in which an amateur performance of Euripides’ The Bacchae is disrupted by the god himself. The two novels may already be familiar to Williams’ readers, but they are the first members of the quartet, revised and re-visioned to fit a new, mythically charged world.

They will be joined by two other volumes: Dominic’s Ghosts, in which a silent film festival sparks an invasion of the city by figures from Central Europe’s nightmarish past, and Tattered Men, in which a burnt-out middle-aged writer, investigating the apparent murder of a homeless man, finds that the victim has traveled through worlds unimaginably large and ancient.

Each of these books can stand alone, but readers will discover that plots, characters, and patterns spill from one book to another, until the City Quartet forms a coherent, mythical world that celebrates our own mysteries and interconnections.

More about Michael: Over the past 25 years, Michael Williams has written a number of strange novels, from the early Weasel’s Luck and Galen Beknighted in the best-selling DRAGONLANCE series to the more recent lyrical and experimental Arcady, singled out for praise by Locus and Asimov’s magazines. His most recent books are Trajan’s Arch and Vine, an Urban Legend—novels he characterizes as “mythical realism”: in Trajan’s Arch, stories fold into stories and a boy grows up with ghostly mentors, and Vine mingles Greek tragedy and urban legend, as a local dramatic production in a small city goes humorously, then horrifically, awry.

Williams was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and spent much of his childhood in the south central part of the state, the red-dirt gothic home of Appalachian foothills and legends of Confederate guerrillas. Through good luck and a roundabout journey he made his way through New England, New York, Wisconsin, Britain and Ireland, and has ended up less than thirty miles from where he began. He has a Ph.D. in Humanities, and teaches at the University of Louisville, where he focuses on the the Modern Fantastic in fiction and film. He is married, and has two grown sons.

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