A Reckoning Up Black Cat Hollow
Coming January 27, 2026
Pre-Order Now:
“For everyone that didn’t already know, Matthew F. Jones is the true heir apparent to the kingdom of Cormac McCarthy. Yeah, he’s that fucking good.”
— Brian Panowich
author of ‘Bull Mountain’ and ‘Nothing But The Bones’
— Daniel Woodrell
Author of ‘Winter’s Bone’
“Matt Jones is an immensely talented writer, and this harrowing novel deserves a wide and appreciative audience.”
— Ron Rash
Author of ‘Serena’ and ‘The World Made Straight’
“Matthew Jones isn’t just one of our best writers of rural noir. He is one of our best writers. Period.”
— Mark Powell
author of ‘The Late Rebellion’
“Matthew Jones has proven once again that he’s one of the best and most original storytellers around.”
— Donald Ray Pollock
Author of ‘The Heavenly Table’ and ‘The Devil All The Time’
“This is extraordinary work—thrilling, ambitious, and sharp-eyed. I can’t recommend it enough.”
— William Boyle
author of ‘Saint of the Narrows Street’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matthew F. Jones is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels as well as a number of screenplays. His novels have been widely translated and several times have been named on best novels of the year lists.
Three of his novels, A Single Shot, Deepwater and Boot Tracks, have been made into major motion pictures. He has taught creative writing at a number of colleges and universities, including Randolph Macon College, Lynchburg College and the University of Virginia.
He grew up on a horse and dairy farm in rural upstate New York and currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Critical Acclaim
“A harrowing literary thriller….a powerful blend of love and violence, of the grotesque and tender”
“Superlatives have been sapped of their meaning by overzealous critics, and somehow it sounds fake to say that a book is one of the ‘best things’ you’ve ‘read.’ It’s just that, sometimes (as in the case of Matthew F. Jones’s Boot Tracks) that happens to be true. I haven’t read something that made me empathize with a bad guy this intensely since I read In Cold Blood in high school.”
“Jones is unpredictable and, therefore, terrifying. His characters are knowable, if changeable and complicated. If you say yes to his use of language (like deciding to read poetry) you will not be able to shake him. Jones is a surgeon throughout the novel, extracting the kernels of relationships, the black holes in the characters’ characters and giving even the smallest cameo roles unforgettable, essential quirks (reminiscent of Hitchcock).”
“The Elements of Hitting approaches issues more important than keeping one’s eye on the ball and taking a level swing: the nature of forgiveness, the importance of self-respect, the many faces of love. At its core…[it] is an often haunting and occasionally beautiful story of man’s attempt to rebuild his life with two strikes against him.”
“The Cooter Farm will remind readers of John Irving one minute, Joyce Carol Oates the next. An altogether remarkable debut.”
“Matthew F. Jones’s Deepwater is one of the best novels to cross my desk. Full of darkness and rage and nightmares its premise evokes James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice. Brilliantly written, sweatily erotic, and unbearably suspenseful, Deepwater should go directly to the top of your reading list.”
“A backwoods drama that is part Crime And Punishment, part Deliverance and all white-knuckled suspense…A Single Shot packs a helluva punch.”
“Boot Tracks is a strange but artful novel enlivened by some of the best low-life dialogue this side of Elmore Leonard….and Jones, who has written other well-regarded novels, is a writer worth meeting.”
“Blind Pursuit is the kind of novel the phrase ‘a page-turner’ might have been invented for, an extremely well constructed (and sometimes quite moving) mystery.”
“Deepwater is a harrowing and unsettling piece of fiction. It accomplishes the neat trick of fulfilling its literary aspirations without belying its affinity for genre fiction…it dissolves the boundaries between present and past, memory and prediction, doing and dreaming…inescapably chilling, it is the dark shadowy figure that lives on the other side of magical realism.”
“Jones and Daniel Woodrell are the leading contemporary authors of country noir, a subgenre whose roots trace back to James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice. Jones builds tension from two seemingly contradictory sources: the noirist’s stock-in-trade, the disaster waiting to happen, and the crackling unpredictability that comes from the expert melding of genres: noir thriller crossed with psychological horror.”
“Dickens and Irving are high standards against which to measure any novel, let alone a debut. It’s a tribute to The Cooter Farm that those are exactly the comparisons it invokes.”
“A Single Shot {is} the finest portrait of guilt since Crime and Punishment.”
“Boot Tracks has the grace of a Japanese Noh poem and the violence of two lives burning out in front of our eyes.”
“Blind Pursuit stoops to little of the crude button-pushing typical of child-kidnapping thrillers. As in A Single Shot, Jones’s 1996 novel about a hunter who accidentally shoots a teenage runaway, the interior story is as gripping as the exterior plot, both unfolding with an awful inexorability.”
“Matthew F. Jones has given us a tough, tender, beautifully realized novel…a book for all seasons.”
“Jones owns a fine writer’s eye for the kind of details that matter…it is Jones’ skillful straight-from-the–shoulder depiction of [Moon] and his pinched world that resonates and then compels…the author draws his disoriented thoughts with dark and excellent detail.”
“[A] high-voltage thriller, a gritty, claustrophobic blend of Jim Thompson and James Dickey.”
“A swiftly paced thriller about a hit gone wrong, Matthew F. Jones’s Boot Tracks is also a brooding character study of a man who’s morally compromised though not entirely soulless.”
“More than just a very good crime thriller, this dark but illuminating novel shows us the psychopathology of the criminal mind. Brilliantly chilling in its step-by-step examination of the mechanics of committing a criminal act—the novel’s true terror is an interior one: an extreme close-up vision of the drive toward homicide. A nightmare thriller with the power to haunt.”
“It’s a grim story, and one told exceedingly well…[Jones] creates tension with remarkable economy and intricacy in a sinister narrative that ultimately reveals itself as a powerful expression of loneliness, dangerous passions, and the quest for identity.”
“A backwoods drama that is part Crime And Punishment, part Deliverance and all white-knuckled suspense…A Single Shot packs a helluva punch.”
“It’s a grim story, and one told exceedingly well…[Jones] creates tension with remarkable economy and intricacy in a sinister narrative that ultimately reveals itself as a powerful expression of loneliness, dangerous passions, and the quest for identity.”