Full name: Signals of Distress: A Novel

Author: Jim Crace Year: 1994 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Historical fiction, Adventure, Award winners Purchase/reserch links: Goodreads Barns&Noble Amazon Google Books eBooks.com LibraryThing ISBNs: 9780312424428 0312424426

November, 1836. A fierce gale beaches an American steamer off the English coast, injuring an African slave below decks and eventually disgorging 300 head of cattle and an inn-ful of rowdy American sailors into a hardscrabble fishing village. The same storm drives into port a ship from London, bearing one Aymer Smith, the foolish well-intentioned prig who will deprive the town of its livelihood, free the American slave, and set into motion a whole series of unforeseeable, tragicomic events. Chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of 1995, Signals of Distress, Jim Crace's fourth novel, once again displays the author's gift for inventing richly strange and believable worlds that uncannily foretell our own. Similar books: The Other Side of the Sun by Madeleine L'Engle The River Road by Frances Parkinson Keyes The End by Salvatore Scibona A City of Bells by Elizabeth Goudge The Dean's Watch by Elizabeth Goudge Sins of the Fathers by Susan Howatch The Anatomist by Federico Andahazi The Right Hand of Sleep by John Wray The Translator by John Crowley Riven Rock by T. Coraghessan Boyle My Heart Laid Bare by Joyce Carol Oates Losing Nelson by Barry Unsworth The Ice-Shirt by William T. Vollmann The Maid of Buttermere by Melvyn Bragg The Rifles by William T. Vollmann Follow the River by James Alexander Thom Texas by James A. Michener Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge Camp X by Eric Walters