Fiction. Includes full-color illustrations by Haeri Yoo. In RANCHO WEIRDO, Laura Chester's new collection of short stories, life on the U.S./Mexican border presents a clash of cultures and expectations that is explored with insight and dark humor. Chester's short fiction, accompanied by Haeri Yoo's quirky drawings, challenge our perceptions of the new Southwest--which includes snowbirds, illegal immigrants, Native Americans, ranchers, and cowboys--whose fates intertwine in the harsh and beautiful Arizona landscape. Laura Chester has edited six widely-praised literary anthologies, most recently Eros & Equus: A Passion for the Horse (Willow Creek Press), with exquisite black and white photographs by Donna DeMari. "RANCHO WEIRDO is a wonderful book and will thoroughly enliven any reader of serious fiction"--Jim Harrison.
HOME ON THE STRANGE An Offbeat Mystery Jeff and Terry Winslow are tired of life in the big city. So it seems like fate when they run into Jeff’s old Veterinary school chum at a convention. Stewart Varney is doing service for the state of Nevada in a small town, paying back an obligation for a college grant, and is equally tired of the country life. They happily agree to swap lives for one year, and Jeff hands his practice to Stewart, while Terry takes a sabbatical from her job as an anthropology professor. Jeff and Terry arrive in the quirky town of Silver Peak to find a very different world from the one they left. The Mayor is a nudist, acid reject who lives in a copper-clad tower on the town’s highest hill, a brothel serves as the town’s gathering spot, prostitutes and prospectors are numerous, and the town’s most revered citizen is a burro that loves good coffee and watches Star Trek religiously. Jeff also discovers that he is not only the town Veterinarian, but also the town Doctor, one of many things Varney neglected to mention. From their very strange home that also serves as his office, they become acquainted with the townsfolk and their various maladies. Jeff biopsies a growth from Jenny the burro, when her owner, Jack Derry, asks the couple to accompany him to a strange find out in the desert. After a long hike, they come upon a flexible, metallic, cylindrical object half-buried in the sand that was exposed by the latest monsoon. They need help to get it out, and enlist the town’s leaders, including the hefty, female cafe owner, Biggie, and brothel owner, Darrel Barlowe. They store what they come to call “whateverthehellitis” in the Winslow’s stable. Meanwhile, Terry notices that Marilyn, one of the local prostitutes, has been spending a lot of time at the Copper Castle, home of the secretive mayor known as Zeus. She confronts the girl, pays her for information about the strange man, and learns that he insists on nudity, has no penis, and is paying her to work on a large item of unknown origin in the big tower, which is surrounded by a mammoth junkyard. Soon after in San Francisco, Stewart Varney gets a mysterious call saying that “they found it”. Jenny’s biopsy is cancerous, and the whole town pitches in to help pay for her treatment. The “whateverthehellitis” group decides to try to get inside their find. They use every possible method, including explosives and a chainsaw, but are unable to enter. During the process, Marilyn calls to tell them that State Troopers are on their way to the Winslow’s on a tip that they are growing Marijuana, but stopped for some action at the brothel. She keeps them busy, while in a last ditch effort, Jack, Biggie, Terry, Jenny the mule, and Jeff disrobe and visit the mayor to see what he knows. They walk up the high peak to find him waiting. He explains that he is from the Vega star cluster, and was sent to recover a probe that vanished here, unable to withstand Earth’s atmosphere. His people have transcended matter, and live as pure light and energy. The probe is the second of two, as the first was the craft in Roswell. He disguised himself as an acid-freak to explain his strange behavior when he first landed in the sixties, and built the Winslow residence and then the Copper Castle as devices to try to find the probe, but the local uranium deposits made it very difficult. His companion, Jenny, was traded with money to Jack for the town, in the hope that the prospector might come upon the probe in his travels. Zeus regards clothing as a light barrier and, therefore, pollution. Sensing trouble at the stable, he spirits them all back to the probe as light. At the stable, the cops have arrived, but are delayed by the naked forms of Terry and Biggie outside, while the men try to figure out how to hide or remove the probe. But, it’s too late, and Zeus and the others hide in the craft-- one must be naked to ent
Nineteen years before, a famous man disappeared from L.A., taking his two children to a rocky, desolate corner of New Mexico. Raising them in complete isolation, this utopian "Sanctuary" is one man's stand against the decadence of America. Dorothea, his daughter, now twenty three, is leaving this place for the first time, in search of her missing brother. A brilliant painter who fled the Sanctuary two years before, he has become lost in the dark underbelly of St. Lois and the even darker memories of a violent incident when he was a young child. Dorothea's search for her brother turns into an odyssey of discovery, leading to the shocking truth about her family's past and the terrifying events of the day that drove her father to flee California in a desperate attempt to protect his children from a dangerous world. But Dorothea's journey will also introduce her to another man who has suffered his own losses. Together they have a chance to make a discovery of a different kind: that though the heart can be broken by the tragic events of a day, a day can also bring a new chance at love and a deeper understanding of life's infinite possibilities.
In this remarkable one-year journal, skilled horsewoman and adventurer Laura Chester brings us into her world, where we deeply connect with the earth and its seasons, with beauty and sometimes danger. While riding in places as far-reaching as Mexico, Australia, and India, Chester is always grateful to come home to the comforts of her familiar horse. As they cover the borderland of Arizona and the hills of Massachusetts, we get to know Barranca as intimate companion, mediator between soul and nature, whether entering the wilds of Cochise Stronghold or picking Berkshire apples from the saddle. Carried along on waves of memory, released by the gaits of her smooth-moving fox trotter, this literary memoir takes us on a personal exploration as well—where family relationships are fractured by anger, jealousy, illness, and death. With the help of her big-hearted animal, Chester is able to retrieve the past and find forgiveness. For as she says—"Riding Barranca puts me in the moment, which is where I want to live."
Sergeant Nick Chester has dodged the Geordie gangsters he once feared, is out of hiding and looking forward to a quiet life. But gold fever is creating ill-feeling between prospectors, and a new threat lurks in the form of trigger-happy Americans preparing for Doomsday by building a bolthole at the top of the South Island.As tensions simmer in the Wakamarina valley, Nick finds himself working on a cold-case murder and investigating a scandal-plagued religious sect. When local and international events reach fever pitch, Chester finds himself up against an evil that knows no borders.
The literary history behind this beautiful mountain region. The Massachusetts Berkshires have long been a mecca for literary greats, from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Edith Wharton to Sinclair Lewis and Joan Ackermann. The Green River in Great Barrington inspired William Cullen Bryant’s poetry. Charles Pierce Burton’s childhood hometown, Adams, became the setting for his frolicking Boys of Bob’s Hill children’s books. During an interlude in Lenox, Patricia Highsmith consulted a local undertaker for details to use in The Talented Mr. Ripley. In this book, Bernard A. Drew brings together a fascinating chronicle of some 250 wordsmiths who took inspiration from the hills and valleys of the Berkshires.
Jeeps are the most popular off-road vehicle and the most common modification to them is in the chassis and suspension. This book offers a compilation of tech articles from JP magazine, the number one magazine for Jeep enthusiasts. Includes articles on tires, wheels, brakes, lift kits, shocks, springs, and chassis stiffening/bracing.
A new middle grade contemporary fantasy from Adrianna Cuevas—author of the Pura Belpré Honor Book The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez—about a Cuban American boy who's sent to work on a ranch as punishment for a school prank gone wrong, where's he's confronted with a mystery as inexplicable as it is familiar and discovers that uncovering secrets will lead to learning hard truths about himself, told with Adrianna's signature self-deprecating humor. Rafa would rather live in the world of The Forgotten Age, his favorite fantasy role-playing game, than face his father’s increasing restrictions and his mother’s fading presence. But when Rafa and his friends decide to take the game out into the real world and steal their school cafeteria's slushie machine, his dad concocts a punishment Rafa never could’ve imagined—a month working on a ranch in New Mexico, far away from his friends, their game, and his mom’s quesitos in Miami. Life at Rancho Espanto isn’t as bad as Rafa initially expected, mostly due to Jennie, a new friend with similarly strong opinions about Cuban and Korean snacks, and Marcus, the veteran barn manager who's not as gruff as he appears. But when Rafa's work at the ranch is inexplicably sabotaged by a man (or a ghost) who may not be what he seems, Rafa and Jennie explore what's behind the strange events at Rancho Espanto—and discover that the greatest mystery may have been with Rafa all along.
Behind the Scenes takes place during a time referred to as the Golden Age of Hollywood, bookended by the end of silent films and the advent of television. Follow the meeting and subsequent lives of LA transients, the strikingly beautiful Dinah Nolan from Chicago and the high-ranking mobster David Abrams from New York; and the peripheral influences of the beginning and end of Prohibition, the Great Depression, and World War II, along with the growth of Las Vegas as the gambling capital of America. Three members of the mob community: David Abrams, Aaron “Crackers” Cohen, and Sara Balin bond on the streets of New York, rise in the underworld, and move to the West Coast at the request of the “Commission”, the mob’s governing body. Unexpected circumstances await the three and Dinah Nolan. Their world meets an unexpected end in 1952 for two of the four...as well as a new beginning...for the remaining two. Follow Stanley’s suspenseful and sensual story in Behind the Scenes...
