Bøger udgivet af Angelina River Press

Co-authors Terry Dalrymple, Jerry Craven and Andrew Geyer deliver the excitement promised in the title and then some as they propel the reader through pages of love, lust, betrayal and redemption. The sixteen interlocked narratives move at a clip through time and space, from the Civil War to the present, from sun-scorched brush country to the lush and sometimes lethal Piney Woods. Although readers may detect shades of Hawthorne and Faulkner in the haunted houses, serial characters, disembodied voices and rattling family skeletons appearing in these stories, their ethos is distinctly Texan, complete with fields of swaying bluebonnets, sprawling ranches, a champion roping horse and plenty of three-alarm chile. The authors deftly sidestep stereotypes, however, instead showcasing such unexpected characters as a cowboy who hates cattle, a parrot that curses mailmen, and a Hill Country farmer who prays to the Roman goddess Fortuna. Reading this story cycle is like doing a jigsaw puzzle--there's no mistaking the satisfaction of snapping that final piece into place and admiring the master narrative that suddenly emerges.

With a respectful, well-traveled eye, Jerry Bradley explores the magical, mythical and mundane of Mexico's cultural expanse, from the sun-baked Southwest to the jutting fist of Tulum. Witty and observant, poignant and sure, these poems peer past the exotic surface of far-flung moments, drawing out the universally human like aguamiel from the heart of a hardy maguey.

Jerry Craven, a writer of literary fiction with a flare the dramatic, presents his best fiction in the 11 stories included in 'Ceremonial Stones of Fire.' Here you will meet Steven Duck, a Malaysian street dealer in coins who is determined to teach an American the way commerce can numb the spirit; Joko, a man in Bali who understands the true danger of magic monkeys and magic pigs; Weng, a man who must contemplate the moral implications of revenge upon a pirate; and other sympathetic characters who deal with what life brings them in what to us are exotic lands and events.

Within hours of arriving in Malaysia, Amarillo cowboy Noland Fritch and East Texas artist Kent Day face both dangerous criminals and over-zealous local police. While some of the thugs who confront Noland and Kent in the streets of Kuala Lumpur seem harmless and comical, others, especially those trafficking in sex slaves and drugs, prove to be serious in planning to murder the two Texans. The "detective" who searches for and follows Noland and Kent is a bumbling playwright who hopes to catch the two by writing and producing a play about them.

The first stories in this baker's dozen are set in the fictive Guess County, Oklahoma, and trace the county's evolution from the times of folk lore to today's manicured tourist traps. In them you will meet the shape-shifter Jake Skin, a pioneer couple who bring life back into their relationship by saving the life of an infant, and adolescents shedding their youth while coming to terms with their place and heritage. The Guess County tales are accompanied by stories set somewhere else. Two stories investigate "gothic" mental states, two stories have their origins in the Vietnam war, and two stories deal with creative urges and loving obsessions. The last story is a fanciful creation tale. Welcome to Oklahoma and Else, a territory where there is violence, guile, and survivor's guilt, but where there is also hope and music, even in a glass of wine

This is an account of family stories with a determined emphasis on showing what happened when two people in the arts spawned three children who also became artists. In this, Jan Seale's latest book, Jan presents a biography of her family's immersion in the arts. The book examines how every member of the family, parents and their three sons, became accomplished artists, each in a different art form.

Those interested in reading engaging accounts of scientific observations about a wide variety of plants and animals will do well to read Dr. Fail's short essays. A bonus in this small treasure trove of information is Dr. Fail's habit of introducing people and incidents into each essay. These are folk you will enjoy meeting, for all are eccentric, sometimes in bizarre ways. In these pages you will meet Daddy-Pop, the author's weird, brilliant, and often comical grandfather whose love of plants and animals inspired Gail to give much of her life to studying biology. Other essays tell of Gail Fail's siblings, who are all, she says, a bit odd. And there are other family members, friends, and colleagues whose life experiences get stirred into the delightful stories and unusual facts about cats, water bears, Brewers blackbirds, orb weavers, wild grapes, devil babies, and many other living things.

Acting as himself in his essays and as various protagonists in his stories, the author shows us a hunger for a vanished world of natural splendor and ideal love. The essays are persuasively strong, rising to a thematic climax in the powerfully reasoned "Environmentalist as Misanthrope." As for the matching antiphonal stories, they delight with their surprise endings and several-"The Swimmer," "The Bright Side," "Assassinations" -may best be described as small masterpieces. Both the essays and stories that comprise Field Guide share a feature I call "page richness," a literary quality that causes the reader to savor certain pages before continuing toward the conclusion, as one might pause on a long journey to enjoy especially appealing vistas. Writers either have this ability or they don't. Steve Sherwood has it.