This is a book to let you know that God is with us in every stage of our lives, no matter where that place might be. I would like to think that when you read this, it will help you discover God for yourself just as I did, for to do that, this is not just a testimony of my life, but it is my goal to lift up the name of Jesus.My prayer is that you will receive more of him than I did. Otherwise, this book will be of no effect! Yes! God is with you right now!Matthew 28:20 says, "Lo, I am with you always, even until the end of the world."
Set at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries during the English Reformation, The Seduction of Almighty God describes the spiritual ascendancy of an adolescent priest and the apalling discovery that he possesses the power of life and death over others, both religious and secular. Victimised by his brethren and eventually murdered by his female followers, the youth Loftus argues himself into the belief that God, weary of his own impotence, has devolved His powers upon him... Barker's interest in the Christian faith and the phenomenon of prayer finds expression in a number of his works, from The Last Supper and Two Skulls to the mass of parables that constitutes The Ecstatic Bible.
Cutting Loose in Paradise is a mystery novel set in a remote island full of quirky people off the northeast coast of Florida. The story involves the death of a middle-aged woman who supposedly committed suicide by shooting herself in the chest. But local hair stylist and single mom LaRue Panther has her doubts. When part-Seminole LaRue is cutting the dead womans hair in the casket, she realizes the womans neck has been slashed and that there is no wound in the chest. LaRue and her local friends, a bartender and a journalist, are on the case to find out what really happened.
What made three young men cross the line of no return? Was it a curse? Some people would say, Is this a generational curse? This story is about three young men in different cities, venturing down the same path, eventually receiving many years in the California State Penitentiary. All three carry the same last name, Patterson, and although they were brought up in the church, all three truly found God at last; when He demanded their undivided attention behind prison walls. They learned to have faith that only God could open the doors of freedom, giving them a second chance at life. They prayed for a new beginning, seeking an appeal to reduce their time. The three young men have different stories, but the same plight. Jam, Briddle, Cooter and their comrades.
It is 1949. Harry “the Hammer” Higgins’s first mistake was winning a fight he’d been paid to lose. His second mistake was that the man he’d beaten was the reigning heavyweight champion of the world. Framed for the champ’s death, he is forced out of boxing. Now he earns his living fighting in barns and alleys of small backwater towns. Although the standard pay was about fifty dollars, the biggest share of his profits came from the side bets common at such events. Whether he was supposed to win or lose made no difference to Higgins. He wagered accordingly. After accepting money to throw such a match, he was forced to change the outcome when winning turned out not to be enough for his opponent. The man accepted a baseball bat from someone in the crowd with the intention of using it on Higgins as he lay prone on the mat, pretending to be too whipped to continue. As before, winning a fight he’d agreed to lose infuriated those in the know who’d wagered heavily against him. And like before, these men wanted revenge for their losses. For Harry, it was time to get out of Mississippi. While traveling by freight train back to his home and family in Saint Louis, he encounters a kid nearly as desperate to get out of Mississippi as he was. Despite the fact that a black man traveling with a white kid could get him hanged, the two become travel mates. The journey soon proves to be more adventurous than either traveler is prepared for. And soon, each finds they are dependent on the other for their very survival.
The Year of Jubilee is a lyrical coming-of-age novel set against the backdrop of the turbulent South in the early 1960s. The Mockingbird family has always lived peacefully in Jubilee, Kentucky, despite the divisions that mark their small town. Until the tense summer of 1963, when their youngest child, Isaac, falls gravely ill. Middle sister Grace, nearly fourteen, is determined to do whatever it takes to save her little brother. With her father and mother away at the hospital, Grace is left under the loving but inexperienced eye of her aunt June, with little to do but wait and worry. Inspired by a young teacher’s mission for change, she begins to flirt with danger—and with a gifted boy named Golden, who just might be the key to saving Isaac’s life. Then the unthinkable happens, and the world as she knows it shifts in ways she never could have imagined. Grace must decide what she believes amid the swirling, conflicting voices even of those she loves the most. From gifted songwriter Cindy Morgan comes this lyrical, tender tale of a girl standing at the threshold of adulthood, learning the depths of the human heart and the bonds of family that bend, break, and bind together over and over again.
One more deadly romantic comedy. Meet Mitzi, Molly, and Marla—three sisters, southern-fried born-and-bred, and the ghosts who love them. Marla Newberry has no interest in dating someone local. She much prefers midnight runs to a biker bar in Shreveport. Cooter Haines, drummer for a Grateful Dead tribute band called Skull Bone, owns the biker bar called The Deadhead. He also happens to be the only guy who can curl her toes like a sprung guitar string. And while she enjoys surrendering to his toe-curling on occasion, she’s not interested in bringing the long-haired drummer home to daddy. Until the night Cooter tells him he loves her, and then he comes up missing. That Saturday night, a rival drummer makes a deal with the devil (aka the Skull Bone’s manager) and steals the drummer job away from Cooter. Cooter angrily speeds off on his bike and doesn’t return. Marla smells a rat. Later, she wakes up to find a ghostly Cooter sitting at the foot of her bed. Dead isn’t so great, he tells her, and those rumors about Southern Rock bands jamming in Heaven? He’s seen no evidence. Plus, he’s pretty sure someone jacked up something on his Harley making him roll the bike. He needs her help to find out who wanted him dead. But is Cooter really dead, or was Marla only dreaming? And days later, where is he? Can she and her sisters solve this final mystery of the men in their lives, and the ghosts(?) who love them?
Rachels journey from Chipola Roads, the rural community in northwest Florida where she was born in the mid-ninteen-twenties, was so much further than the few miles it took to arrive in the small town where the highschool was located Her nave approach to life was a result of her plain-spoken, down to earth poor farm familys upbringing, where lifes rules came mostly from their understanding of the Good Book as handed down to them.
“Lansdale’s best known—and frequently most disturbing—stories . . . sanctified in the blood of the walking Western dead and righteously readable.” —The Austin Chronicle From the award-winning master of mojo storytelling, spinner of over-the-top yarns of horror, suspense, humor, mystery, science fiction, and even the Old West comes the first “true best of Lansdale” anthology. Sanctified and Chicken-Fried brings together a unique mix of well-known short stories and excerpts from his acclaimed novels, along with new and previously unpublished material. In this collection of gothic tales that explore the dark and sometimes darkly humorous side of life and death, you’ll meet traveling preachers with sinister agendas, towns lost to time, teenagers out for a good time who get more than they bargain for, and gangsters and strange goings-on at the end of the world. Out of the blender of Lansdale’s imagination spew tall tales about men and mules, hogs and races, that are, in his words, “the equivalent of Aesop meets Flannery O’Connor on a date with William Faulkner, the events recorded by James M. Cain.” “He may be violent, gruesome and shocking, but Lansdale is also one of the greatest yarn spinners of his generation: fearless, earthy, original, manic and dreadfully funny . . . If you’re new to Lansdale, not easily shocked or offended, Sanctified and Chicken-Fried is a good place to jump in and hang on for a crazy ride off the rails.” —The Dallas Morning News
