Behind the Pine Curtain

Behind the Pine Curtain
Author: Gerri Hill
Publisher: Bella Books
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2006-06-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1594937540

Jacqueline Keys was ostracized from her small hometown of Pine Springs, Texas when she was seventeen, sent away because she was gay. Her family was the largest employer in the county, owning Pine Springs Lumber, and her father was mayor of this small town. Her mother could not accept the fact that her only child was gay, could not tolerate the gossip about her family. So, with a hundred dollars in her pocket and a one-way bus ticket out of town, Jacqueline was told not to come back until she had come to her senses. And that included being prepared to marry the son of a business associate of the family. Fifteen years later—long after she'd hitch-hiked to Los Angeles, long after she'd worked nights to put herself through college, and long after she'd written her first best seller, No Place For Family—Jacqueline is persuaded to go back to the tiny town of Pine Springs after her father's death. The quick trip she'd envisioned for the funeral turns into weeks as she learns her father's business is suddenly hers to manage. And she is also again face-to-face with the woman who, as a teen, had been Jackie's first crush. She and Kay had been inseparable as kids, and later as teens. They find themselves falling back into their old habits, and Jackie is soon fighting the same feelings she'd had when she was seventeen. But living behind the pine curtain, Kay is afraid of her love for Jackie, afraid of what her family will say, afraid of how the town will react. Jackie refuses to hide, refuses to crawl back into the closet, so once again, she leaves Pine Springs...alone.

Spying on the South

Spying on the South
Author: Tony Horwitz
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2020-05-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1101980303

The New York Times-bestselling final book by the beloved, Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Tony Horwitz. With Spying on the South, the best-selling author of Confederates in the Attic returns to the South and the Civil War era for an epic adventure on the trail of America's greatest landscape architect. In the 1850s, the young Frederick Law Olmsted was adrift, a restless farmer and dreamer in search of a mission. He found it during an extraordinary journey, as an undercover correspondent in the South for the up-and-coming New York Times. For the Connecticut Yankee, pen name "Yeoman," the South was alien, often hostile territory. Yet Olmsted traveled for 14 months, by horseback, steamboat, and stagecoach, seeking dialogue and common ground. His vivid dispatches about the lives and beliefs of Southerners were revelatory for readers of his day, and Yeoman's remarkable trek also reshaped the American landscape, as Olmsted sought to reform his own society by creating democratic spaces for the uplift of all. The result: Central Park and Olmsted's career as America's first and foremost landscape architect. Tony Horwitz rediscovers Yeoman Olmsted amidst the discord and polarization of our own time. Is America still one country? In search of answers, and his own adventures, Horwitz follows Olmsted's tracks and often his mode of transport (including muleback): through Appalachia, down the Mississippi River, into bayou Louisiana, and across Texas to the contested Mexican borderland. Venturing far off beaten paths, Horwitz uncovers bracing vestiges and strange new mutations of the Cotton Kingdom. Horwitz's intrepid and often hilarious journey through an outsized American landscape is a masterpiece in the tradition of Great Plains, Bad Land, and the author's own classic, Confederates in the Attic.

East Texas Troubles

East Texas Troubles
Author: Jody Edward Ginn
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2019-07-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0806165472

When the gun smoke cleared, four men were found dead at the hardware store in a rural East Texas town. But this December 1934 shootout was no anomaly. San Augustine County had seen at least three others in the previous three years, and these murders in broad daylight were only the latest development in the decade-long rule of the criminal McClanahan-Burleson gang. Armed with handguns, Jim Crow regulations, and corrupt special Ranger commissions from infamous governors “Ma” and “Pa” Ferguson, the gang racketeered and bootlegged its way into power in San Augustine County, where it took up robbing and extorting local black sharecroppers as its main activity. After the hardware store shootings, white community leaders, formerly silenced by fear of the gang’s retribution, finally sought state intervention. In 1935, fresh-faced, newly elected governor James V. Allred made good on his promise to reform state law enforcement agencies by sending a team of qualified Texas Rangers to San Augustine County to investigate reports of organized crime. In East Texas Troubles, historian Jody Edward Ginn tells of their year-and-a-half-long cleanup of the county, the inaugural effort in Governor Allred’s transformation of the Texas Rangers into a professional law enforcement agency. Besides foreshadowing the wholesale reform of state law enforcement, the Allred Rangers’ investigative work in San Augustine marked a rare close collaboration between white law enforcement officers and black residents. Drawing on firsthand accounts and the sworn testimony of black and white residents in the resulting trials, Ginn examines the consequences of such cooperation in a region historically entrenched in racial segregation. In this story of a rural Texas community’s resurrection, Ginn reveals a multifaceted history of the reform of the Texas Rangers and of an unexpected alliance between the legendary frontier lawmen and black residents of the Jim Crow South.

Getting To Know You

Getting To Know You
Author: Frank W. Butterfield
Publisher: Frank W. Butterfield
Total Pages: 594
Release: 2019-04-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Howdy! I'm Eddie Smith and this is the story of my first romantical adventure with my new boyfriend, Whit Hall. I'm 52 and a big bear of a guy. Whit is 35 and a tall, muscled retired pro football player. Apparently, opposites do attract! Funny thing is, though... Whit knows more about classic movies than me and, it turns out, he loves 70s music as much as I do... Maybe we're not so different, after all... Anyway, we're here on Mo'orea, the island next door to Tahiti, and it's amazing! We've got a nice bungalow over a beautiful harbor and, well, it's beyond romantic... What you might not know is that Whit and I have only known each other for a few days. And, even though we had a rocky start, the topic of marriage has already come up. Too soon? Probably... And like the song says, we're getting to know each other... Only thing is... There's this guy who's following us around the island and he might be taking pics of us because, well, it's a big deal when Whit Hall, only son of a big-time megachurch preacher who hangs with Trump, turns out to be gay... I hope the internet doesn't find out!

Guide Me Home

Guide Me Home
Author: Attica Locke
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2024-09-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316494607

The case of a missing Black college student who has disappeared from her all-white sorority pulls Darren out of an early retirement; the third and final novel in the "timely and evocative" (NPR) Highway 59 trilogy, from Edgar Award-winning New York Times-Bestselling author Attica Locke. Texas Ranger Darren Mathews isn’t sure he’s been a good cop, but believes he’s got a shot at being a good man—if he manages to dodge the potential indictment hanging over his head and if he, from here on out, pledges allegiance to the truth. It’s a virtue the country appears to have wholly lost its grip on, but one Darren sees as his salvation. He is in the midst of remaking his life with the woman he loves, hoping for the peace of country living at his beloved farmhouse, when he is visited by someone who couldn’t hold the truth on her tongue if it was dipped in sugar, a woman who’s always been bent of tearing his life apart. His mother. Armed with a tall tale about a missing Black college student, Sera (whose white sorority sisters insist she isn’t missing at all). Darren must decide if his can trust his mother is telling the truth—and what her ulterior motive may be, and what if that motive has to do with a grand jury deciding his fate. Darren gets his hooks into the investigation, along the way discovering things about Sera’s family and her hometown that are odd at best, vaguely sinister at worst. Hamstrung by local law enforcement and the Texas Rangers who likewise doubt the account of a missing girl, if Darren wants answers, he’ll need help from the person whom he swore to never trust again—his mother. In this emotionally stirring conclusion to the singular Highway 59 series, Darren reckons with his life’s purpose as he’s forced to choose between his own peace and the higher call to do good.

On Writing Horror

On Writing Horror
Author: Mort Castle
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2006-11-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1582976937

The masters of horror have united to teach you the secrets of success in the scariest genre of all! In On Writing Horror, Second Edition, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Harlan Ellison, David Morrell, Jack Ketchum, and many others tell you everything you need to know to successfully write and publish horror novels and short stories. Edited by the Horror Writers Association (HWA), a worldwide organization of writers and publishing professionals dedicated to promoting dark literature, On Writing Horror includes exclusive information and guidance from 58 of the biggest names in horror writing to give you the inspiration you need to start scaring and exciting readers and editors. You'll discover comprehensive instruction such as: • The art of crafting visceral violence, from Jack Ketchum • Why horror classics like Dracula, The Exorcist, and Hell House are as scary as ever, from Robert Weinberg • Tips for avoiding one of the biggest death knells in horror writing—predicable clichés—from Ramsey Campbell • How to use character and setting to stretch the limits of credibility, from Mort Castle With On Writing Horror, you can unlock the mystery surrounding classic horror traditions, revel in the art and craft of writing horror, and find out exactly where the genre is going next. Learn from the best, and you could be the next best-selling author keeping readers up all night long.

Pelican's Landing

Pelican's Landing
Author: Gerri Hill
Publisher: Bella Books
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2015-07-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 159493794X

The high-powered high life loses all its allure in the face of family tragedy. A return to the Gulf Coast life and a chance to reconnect and reclaim what really matters leads to unexpected passion and a final chance at true love in this tumultuous summer romance from best-selling author Gerri Hill!

Nothing to Lose

Nothing to Lose
Author: Jim Sanderson
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2014-05-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0875655793

Roger Jackson is a grouch. He drinks too much with the wrong sorts of people. He dislikes where he lives—Beaumont, Texas, a small, humid southeast Texas town caught between a marsh and an impenetrable forest, between racial and social strife, between rival versions of Jesus. He dislikes his job—taking photos of cheating spouses. He dislikes his past. (He could have been a lawyer.) And now, he finds himself entangled in a crime. When the police find an aging ex-hippie dead from bullet wounds to the head and torso, they find Roger’s photos and want his help. Surrounded by a cast of colorful characters, Roger must do his job while maneuvering around the dangerous agendas of those around him. But the greatest obstacle is the recurring cocaine trail leading to Jewel McQueen, a small-time crook, who is guarded by his sociopathic brother, Sunshine McQueen, who hears voices from Jesus, Satan, and his mother. Jewell will stop at nothing—even murder—to keep his demented brother out of prison. Roger must leave the enclosed suburbs with their exclusive, prim, cleaned-up Jesus and cheap cocaine and liquor habits and, with his new partners, venture “behind the pine curtain,” into the deep Piney Woods with its wild, unruly Pentecostal Jesus and meth-lab economy and mentality.

In the Name of the Father

In the Name of the Father
Author: Gerri Hill
Publisher: Bella Books
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2007-10-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1594938989

Dallas Homicide Detectives Tori Hunter and Samantha Kennedy investigate the murder of a Catholic priest who is found naked and strangled to death. A sex scandal threatens to erupt and cover-ups are soon revealed as their only suspect is found shot dead—mere hours after the murder. Soon details of the murder begin to surface and the secret life of a well-loved priest is exposed. Lies and deceptions unfold as the detectives work to solve the case—even as their superiors demand it be closed.

The Range Bucket List

The Range Bucket List
Author: James Dodson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2017-05-09
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1476746710

"From beloved golf writer James Dodson, author of Final Rounds and American Triumvirate and the only two-time winner of the USGA's Herbert Warren Wind Award for best golf book of the year, The Range Bucket List is a funny, intimate, nostalgic journey of self and sport that introduces readers to the most revered courses and personalities in the game as the legendary author completes his golfing "bucket list.""--