Winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, A Bright Soothing Noise by Peter Brown is a captivating collection of short stories with the "scenic intensity and quality of Tennessee Williams' one-act plays" (Josip Novakovich, best-selling author). Always on the verge of something better, Brown's characters are often hard drinking and fast driving-tending to be both violent and religious. And as they grasp for hope, they sometimes make a leap into a new life.