Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction Best Book (nominee)
PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction Best Book (nominee)
National Book Award for Fiction Best Book
2010 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
At the rock-bottom end of the sport of kings sits the ruthless and often violent world of cheap horse racing, where trainers and jockeys, grooms and hotwalkers, loan sharks and touts all struggle to take an edge, or prove their luck, or just survive. Equal parts Nathanael West, Damon Runyon and Eudora Welty, Lord of Misrule follows five characters -- scarred and lonely dreamers in the American grain -- through a year and four races at Indian Mound Downs, downriver from Wheeling, West Virginia.
Horseman Tommy Hansel has a scheme to rescue his failing stable: He'll ship four unknown but ready horses to Indian Mound Downs, run them in cheap claiming races at long odds, and then get out fast before anyone notices. The problem is, at this rundown riverfront half-mile racetrack in the Northern Panhandle, everyone notices--veteran groom Medicine Ed, Kidstuff the blacksmith, old lady "gyp" Deucey Gifford, stall superintendent Suitcase Smithers, eventually even the rulled-off "racetrack financier" Two-Twi and the ominous leading trainer, Joe Dale Bigg. But no one bothers to factor in Tommy Hansel's go-fer girlfriend, Maggie Koderer. Like the beautiful, used-up, tragic horses she comes to love, Maggie has just enough heart to wire everyone's flagging hopes back to the source of all luck.
Genre: Literary Fiction
At the rock-bottom end of the sport of kings sits the ruthless and often violent world of cheap horse racing, where trainers and jockeys, grooms and hotwalkers, loan sharks and touts all struggle to take an edge, or prove their luck, or just survive. Equal parts Nathanael West, Damon Runyon and Eudora Welty, Lord of Misrule follows five characters -- scarred and lonely dreamers in the American grain -- through a year and four races at Indian Mound Downs, downriver from Wheeling, West Virginia.
Horseman Tommy Hansel has a scheme to rescue his failing stable: He'll ship four unknown but ready horses to Indian Mound Downs, run them in cheap claiming races at long odds, and then get out fast before anyone notices. The problem is, at this rundown riverfront half-mile racetrack in the Northern Panhandle, everyone notices--veteran groom Medicine Ed, Kidstuff the blacksmith, old lady "gyp" Deucey Gifford, stall superintendent Suitcase Smithers, eventually even the rulled-off "racetrack financier" Two-Twi and the ominous leading trainer, Joe Dale Bigg. But no one bothers to factor in Tommy Hansel's go-fer girlfriend, Maggie Koderer. Like the beautiful, used-up, tragic horses she comes to love, Maggie has just enough heart to wire everyone's flagging hopes back to the source of all luck.
Genre: Literary Fiction
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Used availability for Jaimy Gordon's Lord of Misrule
Hardback Editions
September 2011 : UK Hardback
November 2010 : USA Hardback
Paperback Editions
June 2012 : UK Paperback
September 2011 : UK Paperback
March 2011 : USA Paperback
2011 : USA Paperback

Title: Lord of Misrule
Author(s): Jaimy Gordon
ISBN: 0-307-74527-9 / 978-0-307-74527-9 (USA edition)
Publisher: Vintage Contemporaries, 2011
Availability: Amazon
Audio Editions
January 2011 : USA Audio edition
January 2011 : Canada Audio edition
2011 : USA MP3 CD
Kindle Editions
March 2018 : USA, Australia, Canada Kindle edition
August 2011 : UK Kindle edition