William Styron

William Styron's stunning debut: a classic portrait of one Southern family's tragic spiral into destruction. First published to wide critical acclaim in 1951, Lie Down in Darkness centers on the Loftis family - Milton and Helen and their daughters, Peyton and Maudie. The story, told through a series of flashbacks on the day of Peyton's funeral, is a powerful depiction of a family doomed by its failure to forget and its inability to love. Written in...

Styron's provocative anti-war novel: The story of two marine reservists' rejection of the forced conformity of the military machine. In the shadow of the Korean War, a series of misfired mortar shells kill six men in a marine camp during a training exercise, prompting the commanding officer to order a grueling punishment: a thirty-six mile march through the suffocating heat of the Carolina summer. Intended to beat discipline into the aging reservists,...

Styron's stirring account of his plunge into a crippling depression, and his inspiring road to recovery   In the summer of 1985, William Styron became numbed by disaffection, apathy, and despair, unable to speak or walk while caught in the grip of advanced depression. His struggle with the disease culminated in a wave of obsession that nearly drove him to suicide, leading him to seek hospitalization before the dark tide engulfed him.   Darkness...

Set This House on Fire is a story of evil and redemption involving three American men whose paths converge on a film shoot in Italy at the close of the 1940s. Shortly after Peter Leverett meets Mason Flagg in a small Italian village, a woman is found raped and murdered. The investigation soon centers on the mysterious circumstances involving Mason and an alcoholic painter named Cass Kinsolving. Peter's attempts to uncover the true events of that fateful...

The “magnificent” Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times–bestselling novel about the preacher who led America’s bloodiest slave revolt (The New York Times).
The Confessions of Nat Turner is William Styron’s complex and richly drawn imagining of Nat Turner, the leader of the 1831 slave rebellion in Virginia that led to the deaths of almost sixty men, women, and children.

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Best known for his ambitious novels, Styron also created personal but no less powerful tales based on his real-life experiences as a U.S. Marine. This book collects five of these meticulously rendered narratives, one published here for the first time, bringing to life the drama, inhumanity, absurdity, and heroism that forever changed the men who served in the Marine Corps.--From publisher description.

Recounts Mark Twain's life told primarily through his own words. Includes interviews with Hal Holbrook, Arthur Miller, William Styron and many others.