In the past, when I’ve talked to audiences like this, I’ve often started off with a lawyer joke, a complete caricature of a lawyer who’s been nasty, greedy and unethical. But I’ve stopped that practice. I gradually realized that... Read More

“Dear Mother, I will not write about someone else’s family,” writes the author. Though terror and struggle recur in her life with frightening frequency, she will not prune the story to make it easier to reconcile, to show herself... Read More

Depending on one’s frame of reference, the term “Gothic novel” conjures images of beautiful young women in trailing diaphanous vestments, treading winding cobweb-ridden staircases in mouldering old mansions, armed only with... Read More

It all started out as a joke. A local sports columnist in Bloomington, Indiana had hoped to get people amped up about bringing a minor-league baseball team to town someday. But that joke turned into a very real effort by the residents to... Read More

A wooded cemetery at twilight is not the place to be, the author thought to herself as she paused in front of a headstone in the midst of an overgrown Michigan graveyard in 1995. The heavy feeling of a troubled presence caused her to... Read More

The Langston Blue of the title is a battle-scarred Vietnam War deserter who’s been hiding out for more than thirty years in the backwoods of West Virginia. His life is reasonably serene until the day someone tries to assassinate him by... Read More

Falling asleep on guard duty in the Air Force can lead to severe punishment, even court-martial, and that’s what Fred had done: fallen asleep while guarding one of the president’s planes. Lucky for Fred, his loyal and loving dog... Read More

Deep-fried Twinkies. Yes, deep-fried Twinkies. That’s just one of the more, um, exotic recipes that can be found in this book. While ostensibly a cookbook, this ring-bound volume is actually a celebration of the culture that has... Read More