Tonight: Jon Sealy reads from "simmering powerhouse of a novel"

A Prohibition-era sharecropper's son named Mary Jane in an Upstate South Carolina mill village. A Myers Park matron named Aunt Lou who runs a big-time bootlegging organization from her house with its polished brass fixtures and lacquered floors. A whiskey baron named Larthan Tull whose Hillside Inn, a one-time boarding house on Highway 9, is a front for his underground liquor business. A double murder. A star-crossed romance. No wonder Jon Sealy's first novel, "The Whiskey Baron," sold out its first printing. No wonder Wiley Cash calls this book "a simmering powerhouse of a novel."  No wonder Kirkus Review calls the novel "a near-flawless effort by a writer to watch."

Come hear Sealy read from "The Whiskey Baron" (Hub City Press, $26) tonight at 7 at Park Road Books at Park Road Shopping Center, Charlotte.