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The Inxpot Bookstore
In the inxpot, we have a handpicked selection of the latest progressive titles for you to browse while enjoying food and drink, or available for purchase.
Our founders, Susan Taylor Chehak and Thomas Chehak are both famed authors, some of Susan's books are featured below and in our location.
Rampage by Susan Taylor Chehak
Once again, Chehak has mined her Midwestern roots and produced a highly charged novel where the questions of the present are
inextricably bound up with the secrets of the past. In this novel, Chehak sets her story in a small town called Rampage, and as its
name implies, it is a place where much violence converges on those whose lives are bound up in its dark history.
Madlen Cramer has come back home with her two young children to be reunited with her childhood friend Rafe, the sexy drifter who
has abducted a four-year-old girl from an abusive foster family, leaving the parents for dead. During this hot Iowa summer, the
past will refuse to stay past as painful truths begin to emerge: about Rafe's own foster family; about Madlen's marriage, whose
bonds had begun to unravel in the months before her husband's tragic accident; and about her beautiful self-absorbed mother, whose
passions bring about the devastating entanglement of two families in an embrace that cannot be undone until Rafe has gone on the
rampage that will destroy everything in sight and leave readers breathless.
A master of the Midwestern gothic, Susan Taylor Chehak is that rare writer who brings the closely observed detail to a level of
storytelling that has earned her both an Edgar nomination and the praise of critics nationwide. Rampage is for people who
understand, on every level, that you really can't go home again.
Dancing on Glass by Susan Taylor Chehak
This startling novel is a tale of illicit passion, transgression, and retribution, set in the very heart of middle America.
Bader Von Vechten's marriage to Katherine Craig unites the leading families of Cedar Hill and promises to heal the wounds of three
generations. But when Bader commences a love affair with a beautiful young man, Katherine is goaded to the desperate act that will
change their lives irrevocably, setting in motion the series of tragic events that will play themselves out over two generations.
Only twenty-five years later, in the wake of death, murder, and disgrace, can Bader, changed almost beyond recognition, return to
Cedar Hill. There a chance encounter affords Bader his last hope for human contact -- and redemption.
Psychologically uncompromising and emotionally gripping, Dancing on Glass is a bold novel that sweeps the reader along from its unforgettable opening scene to its climactic ending. A brilliant evocation of the passion and violence that lurk beneath the surface of smalltown life, it marks a significant step forward in the career of a writer whose fiction has already been hailed as masterly.
Smithereens by Susan Taylor Chehak
This compelling novel, set once again in the heartland of America, pairs two unlikely friends in a dark tale of seduction and
murder. It is May Caldwell's sixteenth summer, and life couldn't be more dull in Linwood, Iowa. Vaguely suicidal and haunted by
half-remembered scenes from her early childhood, May is a girl waiting for her life to happen. And happen it does with the
unexpected arrival of Frances Anne Crane, a.k.a. Frankie, a girl with too much past and nothing to lose. Together they seduce an
older man as Frankie awakens all that May has been holding inside: the mystery of her uncle Brodie's illicit past, the painful
truth of her grandparents' slow dissolutions, and her own emerging sexuality. Where Frankie leads, May follows, and what's left is
a murder no one can pin, a family's buried past resurfaced in a wild night of mayhem, and May's safe world blown to smithereens in
this unforgettable tale of betrayal and desire. Harmony by Susan Taylor Chehak
This powerful novel of love and adultery recounts the story of Clodine Wheeler and the small Midwestern town where she was born
and raised. As Clodine tells of her upbringing, courtship, and marriage, her narrative circles ever closer to the troubling secret
and shocking death that stand at its center. It is a tale of passion and domestic violence -- and their incalculable
consequences.
No one knows exactly when Lilly Duke, wife of a convicted killer, arrived to seek refuge in a cabin on the sore of Harmony Lake, but her arrival changes Clodine's life forever. At first Lilly finds no friends except Clodine -- and Clodine's wayward husband, Galen. But after her child's body is found drifting on the lake, the town crowds to Lilly's aid. Still, no one can explain what Lilly was doing when her baby crept out of the cabin. The answer to this question leads to the shattering climax of this unforgettable novel.
The Truth about Annie D. by Susan Taylor Chehak
(originally titled The Story of Annie D.)
In this old-fashioned tale of murder and retribution we meet a strong-minded woman who has always feared for her family and
tried to protect her father and her two sons. Annie D., the narrator of this fine first novel, was raised in Nebraska, all flat
farmland and cornfields, except along its rivers. Widowed and living in the town of Wizen River, she tends to her beloved garden
and enjoys frequent visits from her old high school friend, Phoebe Tucker. Then one fine morning Phoebe drives her Chevy off the
road, into a ditch, and up an oak tree, and Annie D. is forced to take stock. Despite what Annie D. says, life in Wizen River
appears to by idyllic. But we learn that the idyll has been disrupted by two violent killings, and when a third young woman is
found strangled and raped, we trust to Annie D., with her sharp tongue and good heart, to make sense of it all. Nominated for an
Edgar Award; New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Don Quixote Meets the Mob: The Craft of Fiction and the Art of Life by Susan Taylor Chehak
This unique and appealing approach to the craft of fiction writing reinvents thewriting method and breathes new life into the
writing instructional. Chehak is a facile and entertaining storyteller who uses personal anecdote to find in practicing the art of
fiction deep and moving lessons for engaging in the art of life.