Smoky Mountain Tracks

Smoky Mountain Tracks
Author: Donna Ball
Publisher: Center Point Pub
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2007
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781585479979

Rain Stockton, a dog trainer returns to active Search and Rescue work to help find a mother and six-year-old girl who have been kidnapped and taken deep into the wilderness.

Top Trails: Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Top Trails: Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Author: Johnny Molloy
Publisher: Wilderness Press
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2017-04-17
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 0899978770

Johnny Molloy, who has spent more than 800 nights backpacking in the Smokies, has updated his classic guide Top Trails: Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This revised edition has been completely updated, including the new backcountry reservation system implemented in the park. He has also added some excellent hikes, some of them well off the beaten path. For example, the hike to Baskins Creek Falls takes you past a pioneer homesite and to a scenic cascade overshadowed by more popular waterfalls nearby, making it an ideal destination for those who want to escape the crowds. A longer trek traverses the regal pine-oak forests of the western part of the park, making a stop at Abrams Falls, mixing solitude with a must-visit waterfall on every Smokies bucket list. Johnny also explores early park history on a hike up Kephart Prong. Here, you can see the remains of a fish hatchery constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps, as well as a trail shelter erected by the CCC when the park was just coming to be. Backpackers will enjoy the new loop incorporating Walnut Bottoms along cascading Big Creek, coupled with a stop by historic Mount Cammerer tower, replete with stellar views, before overnighting at Davenport Shelter on the Appalachian Trail. Additionally, Johnny--who considers the Smokies his home stomping ground--makes sure that all the necessary information to help you execute a hike from directions to maps are correct. New photos add flair to the book.

A Walk in the Woods

A Walk in the Woods
Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Anchor Canada
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2012-05-15
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 0385674546

God only knows what possessed Bill Bryson, a reluctant adventurer if ever there was one, to undertake a gruelling hike along the world's longest continuous footpath—The Appalachian Trail. The 2,000-plus-mile trail winds through 14 states, stretching along the east coast of the United States, from Georgia to Maine. It snakes through some of the wildest and most spectacular landscapes in North America, as well as through some of its most poverty-stricken and primitive backwoods areas. With his offbeat sensibility, his eye for the absurd, and his laugh-out-loud sense of humour, Bryson recounts his confrontations with nature at its most uncompromising over his five-month journey. An instant classic, riotously funny, A Walk in the Woods will add a whole new audience to the legions of Bill Bryson fans.

Who Pooped in the Park

Who Pooped in the Park
Author: Steve Kemp
Publisher: Farcountry Press
Total Pages: 49
Release: 2005-02
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1560373210

"Come along with Julie, Grant, and their family as they follow Ranger Gus and find poop (scat) and footprints (tracks) and discover which animal made them" -- Back cover.

Murder Creek

Murder Creek
Author: Donna Ball
Publisher: Blue Merle Publishing
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2020-03-10
Genre:
ISBN: 9780996561099

Book #14 in the Award-Winning Raine Stockton Dog Mystery SeriesRaine Stockton knows dogs, not kids. Nonetheless, she is supremely confident in her ability to take care her fiancé's ten year old daughter, Melanie, for a week while he is out of town. After all, how hard could it be?But things get complicated when Raine and her golden retriever, Cisco, rescue a dog who is locked in a hot car in a remote Smoky Mountain park... and subsequently discover the owner of that car drowned in the creek only a few dozen yards away. Was it an accident, or was it murder?Raine is certain that she recognizes the abandoned dog from her puppy training class six years ago. Mere months later, the dog, along with his three-year-old owner, disappeared from the child's bedroom during the night and were never seen again. Now the dog is back, and Raine is convinced his reappearance might hold the key to the truth about the missing child. The problem is that no one believes her.While Raine tries to unravel the mystery of the abandoned dog's past-and a six-year-old missing child case-her ex-husband, criminal investigator Buck Lawson, opens an investigation into the death of the man in whose car the dog was found. He soon finds himself involved in another cold case, one that leads him from an apparent serial killer in Florida to a murder in his own hometown.The one thing that ties the two cases together is the dog whose shadowy history opens the door to questions better left unasked, and whose answers may prove to be deadly. But when lives are in danger, it is up to Raine and Cisco to track down the truth, even though it means risking someone she loves.

Murder at the Jumpoff

Murder at the Jumpoff
Author: Susan Jennifer Bennett
Publisher: Canterbury House Publishing, Limited
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Great Smoky Mountains National Park (N.C. and Tenn.)
ISBN: 9780982905449

When Donald MacIntyre, an avid off-trail hiker, fails to return from a quest to bushwhack through difficult terrain up to the top of the Jumpoff, a dramatic cliff in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the good-natured back country ranger Hector Jones leads a search and rescue team into the remotest depths of the Greenbrier section of the park and discovers the body. From the nature of MacIntyre's injuries, it's clear that he had fallen-or been pushed-from the top. The job of investigating the suspicious death goes to Sally Connolly, a 31-year-old detective with the Sevier County, Tennessee, sheriff's office. Due to Hector's expert knowledge of the terrain, Sally enlists his help in the investigation. Murder at the Jumpoff is a novel with a powerful sense of place and the story of unusual characters who challenge themselves to seek excitement, beauty and fulfillment from undiscovered, treacherous mountain landscapes and from those they dare to love.

Outbound Train

Outbound Train
Author: Renea Winchester
Publisher: Firefly Southern Fiction
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2020-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781645262411

In 1976, memories from a night near the railroad tracks sixteen years earlier haunt Barbara Parker. She wrestles with past demons every night, then wakes to the train's five-thirty whistle. Exhausted and dreading the day, she keeps her hands busy working in Bryson City's textile plant, known as the "blue jean plant," all the while worrying about her teenage daughter, Carole Anne. The whistle of the train, the hum of those machines, and the struggle to survive drives Barbara. When an unexpected layoff creates a financial emergency, the desperate pressure of poverty is overwhelming. Unbeknownst to Barbara, Carole Anne sneaks out at night to walk the tracks so she can work at Hubert's Bar. She's hoarding money with plans to drive her mother's rusty, unused Oldsmobile out of Bryson City, and never return. She only needs one opportunity ... if she can just find it. When Carole Anne goes missing, Barbara finds herself at a crossroad--she must put aside old memories and past hurts to rely on a classmate for help finding her daughter. But this is the same man she blames for the incident years ago. Is she strong enough--or desperate enough--to do anything to keep her daughter safe? In Outbound Train, the Parker women struggle to make frayed ends meet in a town where they never quite do ... at least, not without expert weaving and a bit of brute force.

Smoky Mountain Tracks

Smoky Mountain Tracks
Author: Donna Ball
Publisher:
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2007
Genre: American fiction
ISBN:

"[Ball] turns her considerable talent to mystery writing and provides an exciting, original, suspense-laden who-done-it. A simply fabulous mystery starring a likable, dedicated heroine." - Midwest Book Review. North Carolina native Raine Stockton, a dog trainer and the ex-wife of a deputy sheriff, knows the woods of Hanover County as well as anyone. She stopped volunteering for Search and Rescue work after a tragic loss, but now she reluctantly returns to active duty-along with a young and inexperienced Golden Retriever named Cisco to help find a mother and six-year-old girl who have been kidnapped and taken deep into the wilderness.