Book excerpt: Charles Alcorn's debut collection is a ten-story road trip from ice-cold Oslo to the Philippine Sea, from Saint John the Baptist Parish to the sands of Sonora with lots and lots of South Texas, West Texas, rural Texas and urban Texas in the rear-view mirror. Morgan Wooten, the shape-shifting protagonist, weaves through 25 years of a peculiar American Dream before returning to his blood's country in search of peace with a dying father. "Charles Alcorn looks at the world through an oddly perceptive lens. Argument Against the Good-Looking Corpse is a collection to ponder created by a writer whose take on the American landscape calls to mind a young Larry McMurtry set loose in 21st century Texas."--Eric Miles Williamson "It's soothing to move through a collection with a narrator as beautifully-voiced as Morgan Wooten. Pero mios dio. What a strange world. This collection unpacks a time, place and people I know from points of view entirely new and revealing."--Macarena Hernandez