You Want More

With his signature darkly acerbic and sharp-witted humor, George Singleton has built a reputation as one of the most astute and wise observers of the South. Now Tom Franklin introduces this master of the form with a compilation of acclaimed and prize-winning short fiction spanning twenty years and eight collections, including stories originally published in outlets like the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Playboy, the Georgia Review, the Southern Review, and many more. These stories bear the influence of Flannery O’Connor and Raymond Carver, at other times Barry Hannah and Donald Barthelme, and touch on the mysteries of childhood, the complexities of human relationships, and the absurdity of everyday life, with its inexorable defeats and small triumphs.  

Assembled here for the very first time, You Want More represents a body of work that showcases the incisive talent that earned George Singleton’s place among "the great pillars of Southern literature.” (New York Times)


Genre: Literary Fiction

"Over his career, George Singleton has written unruly characters living unruly lives. His depictions of the American South - in particular the everyday tumult of white blue-collar men and women struggling to come to terms with this strange and chaotic world - are both tragic and comic, heartbreaking, surreal, and - when least expected - weirdly ebullient. Singleton is a brilliant storyteller; his vision is crystal clear and wonderfully warped." - Julianna Baggott

"George Singleton is one of the funniest writers in America. He's also the writer most attuned to the American freakshow?its hilarity, its hopes, its heartbreak. His fiction has mattered, a lot, for as long as he's been writing it, but it's never mattered more than now. You Want More is a major book from a major writer." - Brock Clarke

"People always ask what the one book you’d take to a deserted island. For me, it might be this one." - David Joy