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With its collection of lusty, lazy, hard-drinking characters, Always Happy Hour proves Mary Millers essential role in American fiction.

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Combining hard-edged prose and savage Southern charm, Mary Miller showcases transcendent contemporary talent at its best. Claustrophobic and lonesome, acerbic and magnetic, the women in Always Happy Hour seek understanding in the most unlikely places - a dilapidated foster home where love is a liability, a trailer park laden with a history of bad decisions, and the empty corners of a dream home bought after a bitter divorce. Miller evokes the particular gritty comfort found in bad habits as hope turns to dust.

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Mary Miller is the author of the novel Last Days of California. Her work has been published in Mcsweeneys Quarterly, American Short Fiction, the Oxford American and other journals. She is a former Michener Fellow and John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at Ole Miss.

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