The Ancient Hours
  • Published: 16 March 2021
  • ISBN: 9781612198644
  • Imprint: Melville House
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 112
  • RRP: $32.99

The Ancient Hours

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Michael Bible's tragic and sublime third novel tells the story of a massacre in a small Southern town and expands into a heart-breaking meditation on guilt, trauma and redemption.

"The Ancient Hours […] packs a wallop" —New York Times Book Review

"The Ancient Hours is brilliant.” —Bud Smith, author of Work

"Bible is a fantastic writer." —Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here


Harmony, North Carolina is a typical town—full of saints and sinners you can’t tell apart...

Its history echoes with lynchings and shootings; mob violence and vigilante justice. But those are just whispers of a past lost to time. The summer of 2000 was different. Iggy in the Baptist church. Gasoline and a match. Twenty-five people dead. This, Harmony couldn’t forget.

Told in a kaleidoscope of timelines and voices, Michael Bible examines every dimension of a tragic but all-too-American story in The Ancient Hours. The victims, witnesses, perpetrators, and condemned comingle and evolve as the passage of time works its way through their lives. What emerges is a fable of the American South in the highest tradition: soaring, tragic, and eternally striving for redemption.
  • Published: 16 March 2021
  • ISBN: 9781612198644
  • Imprint: Melville House
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 112
  • RRP: $32.99
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Praise for The Ancient Hours

"Bible's style is unique: swift, mythic without pretense, eccentric but focused." --LITERARY HUB

"Poetic and with flashes of brilliance . . . we have a promising new writer here." --NPR

"A singular new voice . . . [Michael Bible] is so open, so easy, so fluid, you'll smile with joy turning every page." --Barry Hannah

"Michael Bible has the golden hand of Carson McCullers and the joyous cosmic heart of Richard Brautigan." --William Boyle, author of Gravesend and The Lonely Witness

"Bible's talent is such that he knows how to take scripture and bend and twist it into something that can exist in both heaven and hell... Bible is a fantastic writer." --Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang

"Most contemporary fiction makes me wonder why people try to write anymore. Michael Bible helps me remember why." --Blake Butler, author of Three Hundred Million