In 1946, a powerful freight train storms across West Virginia. Half a century later, police learn the terrible truth about that night. The railway mystery sets off a bizarre series of present-day crimes that threaten to derail State Police detective Josh Draper and his alluring assistant, Annie McBride. The two race to unravel the past while an environmental disaster looms and dangerous criminals from New York prepare to clash with the inhabitants of a tranquil valley called Briar Fork. Enjoy this tour-de-force Henry D. Smith classic, complete with his trademark humor, flamboyant characters, striking West Virginia settings'¦and the engineering marvels he is renowned for bringing to life.
Pick up a glass of fine wine and join West Virginia police detective Josh Draper and his spunky sidekick Annie McBride in another puzzling murder mystery, this involving a treasure from the past. When an Italian diplomat turns up dead at a rambling estate in the Allegheny Mountains, the U.S. Government calls on Josh and his subtle people skills to ferret out the killer without ruffling diplomatic feathers. He's locked in the mansion without weapon or police resources until he can work out which of the smooth European negotiators is behind the brutal death and why. You won't rest a moment until this sensitive and deadly Josh Draper mystery is finally put to bed.
It's a misty night on Puckachee Mountain high in the Alleghenies. A violent storm has cut power and rendered roads nearly impassable. Then a young professor's body is found under a fallen power line...with bite wounds in her skull. This is another fascinating West Virginia mystery, calling on the wits of detective Josh Draper and his alluring assistant Annie McBride. What caused the death? Could it be the famed eastern cougar, thought to be extinct? Surrounded by a host of characters, all with a vested interest in the case, Josh and Annie must sort through clues and prevent further deaths on the fabled mountain. With his characteristic high-powered prose and West Virginia voice, novelist Henry D. Smith gives us a dark whodunit. You'll be stumped and surprised and never feel safe, until the final unexpected twist.
The mystery surrounding a man sealed into a West Virginia coal mine horrifies the public and threatens the entire state's mining industry. Investigator Josh Draper and delectable sidekick Annie McBride risk their lives to unravel the mystery. A walloping who-dun-it, interlaced with sharply etched portraits of the state and her people. "After reading this novel, I can say it now is at the top of my list of all time favorites." - MCCOA's Book Review
"A humorous, non-politically correct look into the life of college athletics. Pete Wallace, the most persevering, glad-handing athletic director who ever worked in higher education, reminisces about some of the strangest episodes in his career, from dealing with Title IX regulations and liberal professors to handling student-athletes with anger and mental health issues"--
The salt of proverbs is of great service if discreetly used in sermons and addresses; and I have hope that these SALT-CELLARS of mine may be resorted to by teachers and speakers, and that they may find them helpful. There are many proverb books, but none exactly like these. I have not followed any one of the other collections, although, of necessity, the most of the quaint sayings are the same as will be found in them. Some of my sentences are quite new, and more are put into a fresh form. The careful omission of all that are questionable as to purity has been my aim; but should any one of them, unknown to me, have another meaning than I have seen in it, I cannot help it, and must trust the reader to accept the best and purest sense which it bears; for that is what it meant to me. It is a pity that the sale of a proverb should ever be unsavory; but, beyond doubt, in several of the best collections, there are very questionable ones, which ought to be forgotten. It is better to select than indiscriminately to collect. An old saying which is not clean ought not to be preserved because of its age; but it should, for that reason, be the more readily dropped, since it must have done harm enough already, and the sooner the old, rottenness is buried the better. My homely notes are made up, as a rule, of other proverbial expressions. They are intended to give hints as to how the proverbs may be used by those who are willing to flavor their speech with them. I may not, in every case, have hit upon the first meaning of the maxims: possibly, in some instances, the sense which I have put upon them may not be the general one; but the meanings given are such as they may bear without a twist, and such as commended themselves to me for general usefulness. The antiquary has not been the guide in this case; but the moralist and the Christian. From what sources I have gleaned these proverbs it is impossible for me to tell. They have been jotted down as they were met with. Having become common property, it is not easy to find out their original proprietors. If I knew where I found a pithy sentence, I would acknowledge the source most freely; but the gleanings of years, in innumerable fields, cannot now be traced to this literary estate or to that. In the mass, I confess that almost everything in these books is borrowed — from cyclopedia’s of proverbs, “garlands,” almanacs, books, newspapers, magazines — from anywhere and everywhere. A few proverbs I may myself have made, though even this is difficult; but, from the necessity of the case, sentences which have become proverbs are things to be quoted, and not to be invented.
