Creekside is a peaceful small town until its serenity is disturbed by a violent crime. Hank is a high-school dropout who loses his job and is then accused of that crime. He runs to the woods to hide, hoping to survive on his rusty Boy Scout training. There he encounters Amy, a raven-haired beauty who has come to her own woodland sanctuary to read and pray. Two different worlds have collided. Amy desires to show the redeeming love of God to Hank. But how can she do that? How can she make him understand? Sometimes words are not enough. Sometimes actions are required. But how much is she willing to risk, to see a lost soul redeemed?
This collection includes my earlier poetry, written from the time I began writing through 2000, and a handful of short stories, some of them more recent. Many of the poems have West Virginia themes as the older ones were written when I lived there and some of the more recent ones included ones looked back on my growing up in West Virginia.
In Creekside, dedicated archaeologist Meg Harrington guides her students in a race against time to protect the legacy of the past before bulldozers rip it to shreds. The setting is a Kentucky pasture slated for development—the construction of the new Creekside subdivision. Once, that same beautiful stretch of land was home to three generations who experienced love, loss, and tragedy in their log cabin beside the creek. It was here during the late 18th century that Estelle Mullins struggled to build her home on the dangerous frontier. In Meg’s 21st-century world of archaeology we read about excavation techniques, daily experiences at a dig, tight construction deadlines, the use of heavy equipment, report writing, artifact analysis, damage from looters and collectors, and the reality of site destruction in the path of modern development. The depiction of Estelle’s frontier life includes Kentucky’s early Euro-American settlement of the Cumberland Gap, encounters with Shawnee defending their land, Protestant fragmentation, the rise of religious fundamentalism, the immigrant stampede down the Ohio River, and the persistent issue of class-based land ownership. The two partially interwoven story lines link artifact and place, ancestors and descendants, the present and the past, and inspire us to explore the personal connections between them all in fresh and vital ways.
Can love help heal the past? The Doctor Takes a Wife by Laurie Kingery Sarah Matthews can see that Nolan Walker is a good man. But she can’t return the handsome doctor’s affection. She still holds too much bitterness from the war. Then the town is struck by a deadly influenza epidemic, and it’s Nolan who battles to save Sarah’s life. And when a shadow from the past returns, Sarah must decide if she’s finally ready to say “I do.” Rocky Mountain Redemption by Pamela Nissen Dr. Ben Drake has always held a place in his heart for strays. His compassion is tested when his brother’s widow arrives at his door. Just one look into Callie’s eyes brings years of hurt and despair to the surface, yet Ben can’t turn her away. But Callie seeks more than shelter, and her search for the truth threatens to expose the Drakes’ darkest family secrets…
Do you want to...Help distribute money to the poor and be given a fee to do so? Share in Al Qaeda's hidden gold? Help a young girl orphaned in the tsunami? In their highly entertaining and often shocking new book James Morton and Susanna Lobez follow up their bestselling Gangland Australia by delving into the world of Australian con artists such as Mario Condello, Helen Demidenko, Christopher Skase, Brenton Jarrett, Peter Foster, Lola Montez and Fairlie Arrow. Here are highly talented men and women and their tricks: changing paper into banknotes, selling other people's property, faking deaths, and forging paintings; promising miracle cures and impersonating aristocracy, preachers, military gents, lawyers and doctors. In fact, whatever it takes to separate the unwary from their money. Read about the scams and think twice about that offer that seems almost too good to be true.
The tale begins over three-hundred years ago, when the Fair People—the goblins, fairies, dragons, and other fabled and fantastic creatures of a dozen lands—fled the Old World for the New, seeking haven from the ways of Man. With them came their precious jewels: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls... But then the Fair People vanished, taking with them their twelve fabulous treasures. And they remained hidden until now... Across North America, these twelve treasures, over ten-thousand dollars in precious jewels, are buried. The key to finding each can be found within the twelve full color paintings and verses of The Secret. Yet The Secret is much more than that. At long last, you can learn not only the whereabouts of the Fair People's treasure, but also the modern forms and hiding places of their descendants: the Toll Trolls, Maitre D'eamons, Elf Alphas, Tupperwerewolves, Freudian Sylphs, Culture Vultures, West Ghosts and other delightful creatures in the world around us. The Secret is a field guide to them all. Many "armchair treasure hunt" books have been published over the years, most notably Masquerade (1979) by British artist Kit Williams. Masquerade promised a jewel-encrusted golden hare to the first person to unravel the riddle that Williams cleverly hid in his art. In 1982, while everyone in Britain was still madly digging up hedgerows and pastures in search of the golden hare, The Secret: A Treasure Hunt was published in America. The previous year, author and publisher Byron Preiss had traveled to 12 locations in the continental U.S. (and possibly Canada) to secretly bury a dozen ceramic casques. Each casque contained a small key that could be redeemed for one of 12 jewels Preiss kept in a safe deposit box in New York. The key to finding the casques was to match one of 12 paintings to one of 12 poetic verses, solve the resulting riddle, and start digging. Since 1982, only two of the 12 casques have been recovered. The first was located in Grant Park, Chicago, in 1984 by a group of students. The second was unearthed in 2004 in Cleveland by two members of the Quest4Treasure forum. Preiss was killed in an auto accident in the summer of 2005, but the hunt for his casques continues.
The story of Lane's journey as he visits coyote territories: swamps, nature preserves, old farm fields, suburbs, a tannery, and even city streets. Along the way, he gains insight concerning the migration into the Southeast of the American coyote, an animal that, in the end, surprises him with its intelligence, resilience, and amazing adaptability.
Taking the literary world by storm, Eimear McBride’s internationally praised debut is one of the most acclaimed novels in recent years; it is “subversive, passionate, and darkly alchemical. Read it and be changed” (Eleanor Catton). Eimear McBride’s debut tells, with astonishing insight and in riveting detail, the story of a young woman’s relationship with her brother, the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumour, and her harrowing sexual awakening. Not so much a stream-of-consciousness, as an unconscious railing against a life that makes little sense, and a shocking and intimate insight into the thoughts, feelings and chaotic sexuality of a vulnerable and isolated protagonist, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing plunges inside its narrator’s head, exposing her world firsthand. This isn’t always comfortable—but it is always a revelation. Touching on everything from family violence to religion to addiction, and the personal struggle to remain intact in times of intense trauma, McBride writes with singular intensity, acute sensitivity, and mordant wit. A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing is moving, funny, and alarming. It is a book you will never forget.
