Books by George Williams

"The stories in this breathless and relentless collection are rendered in a voice both elegant and manic, as if we're seeing the world through a surreal and yet precise kaleidoscope, one that both celebrates and condemns our foibles and follies. Satirical and cutting as Jonathan Swift, hectic and skewed as Van Gogh, bitter and morbid as Poe, the stories collected in The Selected Letters of the Late Biagio Serafim Sciarra show us that all is not well in Paradise, that the savage wealth of America has created a land of lunacy. Perhaps only Gogol and Barthelme have written stories this fantastically brutal and beautiful. George Williams is one of the finest minds and writers of our generation." -Eric Miles Williamson

The day she turns fifteen Zoë ditches high school in Chandler, Arizona, and is picked up by an elderly man driving a step van turned into a laboratory. He promises to teach her all he knows if she trusts him to take her where she is fated to go. On their way to Illinois, they find themselves in the middle of an animal rights activists' liberation of the creatures in Topeka's Zoomorphological Wonders of the World and take aboard two companions from an infamous bestiary. From Topeka they travel to an abandoned movie theater in Pittsfield, where war-horse and inventor Skelton builds a miniature version of the CERN particle accelerator. From there they go to Paris and from Paris they drive south to Lacoste, where the story culminates with a confederacy of the wealthiest men in the world gathered in the garden courtyard of Marquis de Sade's castle to sell Zoë into sex slavery to the highest bidder, while Zoë's step-father, half-crazed with grief, is bidden by guilt to drive to the Chandler Fashion Center and confess to the bewildered employees of Victoria's Secret his unsuccessful attempts to molest his step-daughter, and to absolve his sins with V-strings and thong underwear knotted into a noose. At turns absurd, poignant, and comic, Zoë is a quicksilver phantasmagoria and enchanted road trip unlike any other, where travel is spectral and the traveling companions, if not real, are temporary visitors from imaginary worlds sent to show a girl lost in the moronic inferno of 21st century America the best way to her brightest possible future.

With inferno stories, George Williams returns with another original and electrifying collection. Two home invaders put on trial a descendant of San Juan Capistrano's oldest families for the sins of his ancestors. A man encounters a cult that mistakes him for both savior and sacrifice. Two screenwriters in search of a story follow a strange man from Istanbul up the coast of Italy to Duino, where he carves into a tree a baffling equation that changes their marriage forever. A fired White House speechwriter travels south along the East Coast in stolen rowboats with a woman he meets under a D.C. bridge, leaving a comedy of chaos in their wake. In the title story, a retired sex worker in L.A. turned trickster and avenging angel settles dozens of scores with methods of punishment both ancient and modern. Inferno takes the reader from east Texas to Catalina Island, from ancient Rome to cedar forests of Provence, from the low country of Savannah to the burning hills of Southern California. Brazen bulls and kamikaze pilots, karaoke and crucifixions, the canals of Venice and the killing fields of the I-45 corridor all figure in these twelve superbly crafted stories written in a subtle and daring range of voices and styles. Williams opens the door onto a world of uneasy inhabitants, credulous creatures who want the truth they already know they cannot bear, characters fully human in their heartbreak, cruelty, and capacity for self-deception. ***Praise for George Williams*** "George Williams writes with an electric energy, unpredictable inventiveness, and deft ear for dialogue that makes him one of the most exciting and compelling writers of his generation." -Richard Burgin, author of Rivers Last Longer and Shadow Traffic "...shows a darkly comic sensibility more akin to that of the filmmaking Coen brothers (think Barton Fink) than to more obvious literary influences...Recommended to adventurous readers, who will surely enjoy Williams's wildly irreverent inventions." -Library Journal "Williams paints a grotesque picture of modern America, one filled with witches and terrorists, con men and succubi. Actually, I don't know if there are any actual succubi in the pages . . . but it sure feels like there should be." -Popmatters "George Williams, a self-described "reformed anarchist," writes a hyper-controlled, smart and taut prose that goes beyond the spare exactness of the Moderns. The sentences seem so easy, but their accretion is sly: William's prose unveils a tough and dense vision, the steady shock of a live snapping wire." -Stephen D. Geller

Reports on an excavation programme developed by the Dyfed Archaeological Trust following its formation in 1975. The concentration of enclosures in the south-west of Wales was a well-known phenomenon, but their origins and development were poorly understood. The excavations showed activity from the Early Bronze Age to the post-Roman period. The volume presents seven sites in detail and considers the nature, function and status of the enclosures as well as the sequence and economy of the sites as a whole.With contributions by D. Benson, E. Besly, D. Brennan, A.E. Caseldine, P. Crew, J. Crowther, T.C. Darvill, A. David, T.G. Holden, B. Levitan, C. O'Mahoney, J. Webster and J.L. Wilkinson.Edited by Kevin Blockley.

In this fully revised fourth edition of A Charter of Rights for Australia, George Williams and Daniel Reynolds show that human rights are not adequately protected in Australia, contrary to what most people think. Using some pressing examples, they demonstrate how the rights of people at the margins of society are violated in often shocking ways.

A timely examination of the impact of Australia's antiterror laws after September 11, and the new 2014 terror laws. Timely and piercing, this book asks whether Australia really needed to enact anti-terrorism laws in the first place, let alone add to them. Most tellingly, the book asks whether seeing these anti-terror laws as normal is a danger in itself.

The definitive, clear-cut guide to the vote on recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Constitution. This book explains everything Australians need to know about the proposal to recognise Indigenous peoples in the Constitution. With clarity and authority, it shows the symbolic and legal power of such a change.

This detailed and well-illustrated 1845 study of Jerusalem's topography and antiquities formed part of the contemporary debate around the location of Calvary, supporting the traditionalist argument against some Protestant calls for relocation. For this work, George Williams (1814-78) received a medal for literary merit from Prussia's Frederick William IV.

Chris, an aerospace engineer, is on a mission. He abandons his life in Savannah and drives west. Along the way, first in New Orleans and in Austin, he picks up passengers. Julia, a Czech woman fleeing a boyfriend and business partner, and JC, the daughter of a Baptist minister, who on a manic whim joins them and leaves her life in Austin behind.

Deregulation has radically altered the way in which airlines are operated and managed. This book aims to examine the response of carriers to liberalization in a number of representative air transport markets and to provide an explanation for the wide variation in levels of competition.

This work on the impact of deregulation on airlines covers: the aims of deregulation; the response of US carriers; competition factors; the European approach to liberalization; deregulation in Canada and Australia; regulatory strategies; deregulation in UK industries; and other material.