Scott Gardiner--shattered by his father's death, harassment by classmates, and his mother's involvement with a colleague researching the heritage of an ancient castle--slips gradually into a horrifying world of dreams

Before there were titanium woods and graphite shafts, golf clubs were made from the wood of hickory trees and had intriguing names like cleek, mashie and jigger. Golf was a game played not with high-tech equipment but with skill, finesse, and creativity. And the greatest hickory player of all time was Walter Hagen---until the day he met a teenage caddie at a country club outside Chicago.     America’s first touring golf professional, Hagen made (and spent) more prize money than his friends Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey earned from baseball and boxing during the Golden Age of Sports. In this novel, set in the halcyon post-war Midwest of 1946, Hagen comes to historic Midlothian Country Club as the champion he is---but also as a man handicapped by a secret.     Waiting for him are two caddies. Harrison Cornell—a onetime rich playboy from the Bahamas—has a past; the other---Tommy O’Shea, a farm boy who caddies at the country club---may have a future . . . but only if he can somehow beat Hagen on the links, in one last game played with hickory.     Cornell is a mystery man who appears from nowhere and presents himself as a “looper,” a professional caddie. Soon everyone sees that he has a gift---within weeks he has improved the games of dozens of members. Only Tommy O’Shea, his eager pupil, knows Cornell’s real motive for coming to the club: his grudge against Walter Hagen, over something that happened during the Second World War in the lovely paradise known as the Bahamas.     As the playboy and the farm boy become friends, Harrison teaches Tommy the secrets of playing golf with hickory, along with lessons in life and love. But the shadow of Hagen, and the upcoming match, fall across the Midwest summer, and as the competition nears, Tommy’s hopes for the future---and his love for a member’s daughter---are threatened when the truth about Harrison’s past is revealed. Not until the climax, played out in an exciting shot-for-shot match, will all the questions be answered and all the scores settled.     As in his previous novel, The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan, author John Coyne has created a world rich in characters, action, and golf lore---this time including the fascinating history of hickory play. An entertaining, suspenseful read for anyone who loves the game, it is also a book that offers a pure dose of Midwestern soul, written by a new voice in golf literature who has firmly established himself as one of the leaders of the genre.Praise for The Caddie Who Played with Hickory:"A highly entertaining must-read for anyone interested in hickory golf or the history of the game. I loved it!" -- Randy Jensen, 7-time National Hickory Golf Champion"John Coyne knows his golf history, its characters and the game. He spins a story that includes a mysterious character, a hero, a romance, a semi-villain, and a classic golf match into a believable tale."-- Dr. Gary Wiren, noted golf teacher, and former Director of Research and Learning for the PGA of America“The legendary Walter Hagen, Chicago’s greatest amateur golfer, Chick Evans, hickory clubs and Chicago’s Midlothian Country Club are all featured in this tense story of championship golf and summer romance.  John Coyne spins a tale so involving, the reader is in enjoyable suspense about the outcome of every putt.”  -- Jerry Dudek, Director of Development, Evans Scholars Foundation/Western Golf Association

Returning as an honored guest to the exclusive country club where he caddied for Ben Hogan as a youth in 1946, historian Jack Handley recounts a dramatic match between Hogan and an idealized club pro. By the author of Easy on the Island. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Seventeen stories by authors who worked in the Peace Corps include John Coyne and Norman Rush (view table of contents)

Previously unpublished travel essays by Peace Corps workers chronicle journeys into such diverse regions as Ethiopia, Peru, the Caribbean, Kenya, and the Amazonian jungle.

A disaffected New York social worker adopts an autistic child discovered in the tunnels beneath the Port Authority and moves to a rural town where mysterious deaths and mutilations begin to occur

Disturbed by strange memories and violent passions, an upwardly-mobile New Yorker discovers with the aid of a channeller that she was once a Cro-Magnon, the target of a murderer who still stalks her

Manhattanites seek relief from the city on Mad River Mountain--inhabited by an incestuous community--in upstate New York, and coexist peacefully until the city women begin turning up dead

Troubled by strange visions, Father James, a young priest, undergoes regression therapy and discovers memories that go back to Biblical times

One by one a gruesome end comes to the six people claiming the legacy of a hideous ancestral horror that is the birthright of living death

After their mother, Caitlin DeLacey is shot, Maggie and her brothers and sisters return home to investigate her mysterious death and discover, piece by piece, the terrible truths each one has hidden about her from the others

The terrifying presence of an autistic child, Cindy Delp, in an affluent Washington suburb precipitates multiple horrors, including brain seizures and unexplained, orgasmic shudders, until Dr. Sara Marks deciphers what Cindy's hellish screeching means

Deborah Laste's love for young Father Stephen Kinsella leads his bishop to send him to a remote parish in the Blue Ridge Mountains where both he and his pastor witness the stigmatic ecstasy of a beautiful backwoods girl

Drawings, photographs, patterns, and complete instructions for cutting, sewing, stuffing, and finishing facilitate the creation of upside-down dolls, each a cast of characters, from the North Carolina mountains