Fiction. Winner of the 2014 Miami University Press Novella Prize. When Pinson Charfo wakes one morning to find a strange note at his bedside from a Mr. Ralfo to a Mr. Cormill, neither of whom he knows, it proves to be the first in a series of odd clues designed specifically for him to follow, embroiling him in a complex mystery featuring plagiarized manifestos, narcotized cultists, the search for pornographic prints, and a busted fountain whose runoff forms an underground lake beneath the never-named city's unsuspecting feet. Tote Hughes's FOUNTAIN is a metaphysical detective story unlike any other, a comic tour de force set in a labyrinthine world of shifting signs and dreamlike insolubility.

"FOUNTAIN seems not unlike a witty and elegant English translation of some peculiar allegory from another land and another time. It's wonderful, in other words. I deeply admire this antic, atmospheric, and dreamily vivid tale."--Chris Bachelder

"Tote Hughes's FOUNTAIN is one of the strangest books I've come across in years, and I mean that as an extraordinary compliment. Hughes has the bureaucratic weirdness of Kafka, the twisted mystery of Hitchcock, the obsessive introspection of Bernhard, and a wholly original, funny-as-hell voice that makes me sure we'll be seeing lots more of this writer for a long time to come."--Amber Sparks