Craig Davidson Libri

In steel-tipped prose, Craig Davidson conjures up a bleak world populated by hardscrabble pugilists, fighting dogs, sex addicts, and others held captive by their own bad luck and bad decisions. Visceral and with a dark urgency, Rust and Bone is a strikingly original debut.

An irresistible and bittersweet coming-of-age story in the vein of Stranger Things and Stand by Me about a group of misfit kids who spend an unforgettable summer investigating local ghost stories and urban legends "A celebration of the secret lives of children, both their wonders and their horrors . . . Immensely enjoyable, piercingly clever, and satisfyingly soulful." -Jason Heller, NPR Growing up in 1980s Niagara Falls - a seedy but magical, slightly haunted place - Jake Baker spends most of his time with his uncle Calvin, a kind but eccentric enthusiast of occult artifacts and conspiracy theories. The summer Jake turns twelve, he befriends a pair of siblings new to town, and so Calvin decides to initiate them all into the "Saturday Night Ghost Club." But as the summer goes on, what begins as a seemingly light-hearted project may ultimately uncover more than any of its members had imagined. With the alternating warmth and sadness of the best coming-of-age stories, The Saturday Night Ghost Club is a note-perfect novel that poignantly examines the haunting mutability of memory and storytelling, as well as the experiences that form the people we become, and establishes Craig Davidson as a remarkable literary talent.

Some places you just can't leave. The specific gravity's too strong, keeps you locked in orbit. You've got to be launched out, like a circus performer from a cannon. Cataract City is a tourist town with an uncanny hold over those born within its borders, a place with more to it than first meets the eye: beyond the gaudy storefronts and sidewalk vendors, past the hawkers of tourist T-shirts and souvenirs, are the townspeople who toil at The Bisk, the local cookie factory. And behind that crumbling façade are the truly desperate: those drawn to gritty alleyways on both sides of the US-Canada border, inhabitants of a shadow world that runs on money exchanged over dog races, bare-knuckle brawls, and night-time smuggling. Owen Stuckey and Duncan Diggs are born and bred in Cataract City. They grow into men who dream of escape, a longing made more urgent by a traumatic childhood incident that cemented their friendship. But in adulthood, their paths diverge: Owen stays above the law, becoming a police officer, while Duncan sinks deep into the town's underworld. Inevitably, the two find themselves pitched against each other. At stake are not only survival and the possibility of escape, but their lifelong bond, which is once again tested against the haunting wilderness just outside city lines.

When a pair of fighters step into an illegal ring, sometimes only one walks out. This is the story of two men from radically different backgrounds, but with one thing in common. For Rob, it’s a question of talent and duty. For Paul, it’s one of fear. In the bloody world of bare-knuckle boxing the stakes are mercilessly high. Testing the difficult relationships between fathers and their sons, The Fighter explores the lengths to which these men are driven for self-knowledge, and the depths they will plumb in order to belong. ‘This gripping novel sees two men dive perilously into a violent underworld – a world that very quickly threatens to rip them both apart’ Maxim ‘Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk and Irvine Welsh all rave about Davidson, with good reason. The Fighter is a brutally honest and explosively powerful novel. Examining masculinity in a startling way with visceral prose, it’s truly remarkable writing’ Big Issue