Written in the author's wry and masterful voice, these evocative stories are infused with all the peculiar customs, ironies and humor so special to the South.The twelve stories in this collection include "Red Clay," which won an Edgar Allen Poe Award, in which a local girl from Thermopylae becomes a movie star who moves back to her sleepy North Carolina home town and is tried for murdering her unfaithful husband. Her trial causes the town and one man in particular to look back with longing and nostalgia at this exquisite Southern belle who captivated-and sometimes manipulated-every man she met."Fast Love," the recipient of an O. Henry Award, is the story of a man who chases down his future wife after seeing her jog past. As he gets closer to his quarry, he also gains the courage to stand up for what he wants and to champion what he believes.In "Blue Cadillac," Marie, blonde and beautiful, shares dinner and her love of Elvis with a high-tech sales rep on his way home to Memphis. Along the way and on the road, they have exquisite sex and decide to part, Marie in her blue Cadillac. As he rings the bell at his mother's house, the young man discovers that he has been robbed of his wallet and his whole life on cards.Self-contained masterpieces, each of these short stories has the impact and power of a full-length novel.Stella : red clay --Marie : blue Cadillac --Precious : winners and losers --Charmain : white trash noir --Lucy : maniac loose --Flonnie : the rising of the South and Flonnie Rogers --Patty : love and other crimes --Meredith : fast love --Angie : the power --Mona : Miss mona's bank --Betty : a deer on the lawn --Mattie : invitation to the ball

    Her father’s tragic death earlier in the year still haunts her. For decades, Juan Velarde Cortez obsessively hunted a legendary treasure, and his passing has left unresolved feelings for Fawn. Now, when a series of grisly killings rock the small island community—each victim’s face has a distinct signature—Fawn suspects a bizarre connection between the murders, her father’s quest, and the death ritual of an infamous Seminole Indian from the 1800s. A cigar box that once belonged to her father appears to hold the key. As Fawn draws closer and closer to solving the 200-year-old puzzle and determining the killer’s identity, she will be forced to unravel historical clues that will lead her on a harrowing journey. Time is quickly running out as a serial killer is watching and waiting in the shadows. Will Fawn discover the truth before she becomes the next victim? With historical links and storyline twists, this follow-up to Gary Williams’ & Vicky Knerly’s debut novel, Death in the Beginning, engages all the necessary elements of and delivers a fast-paced, heart-pounding thriller. This is a new release of a previously published edition.

    We read every chapter and summarize it in one or two paragraphs so you can get the information contained in the book at a much faster rate. This is an InstaRead Summary of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed. Below is a preview of the earlier sections of the summary: Prologue The year is 1995. Cheryl, the narrator and author of the story, explains that she was 26 years old when at the lowest point of her life she began her solo trek on the Pacific Crest Trail. She describes the trail as being 2,663 miles long and two feet wide, stretching from Mexico to Canada and including nine mountain ranges. She has embarked on her journey just 38 days before in an effort to find herself. As she stops to rest at the peak of a mountain, one of her hiking boots tumbles away down the mountain and into some trees far below. Realizing the other is of no use to her anymore, she tosses it out into the trees as well. She reflects on her situation and decides that though she is alone, battered and bruised, shoeless, and at least days from the next supply stop, she must walk on. Part One: The Ten Thousand Things Chapter One: The Ten Thousand Things Cheryl reflects on when her journey actually began and decides that it truly began a over four years ago, on the day that she had learned her forty-five year-old mother was going to die of advanced stage lung cancer. She recalls being at the Mayo clinic with her mother and stepfather on the day of the diagnosis and cursing the smaller town doctors that had given the same diagnosis in the weeks leading up to the visit to Mayo.  She had wanted them to be wrong. Angry at her absent older sister and younger brother, and refusing to believe that her extremely health-conscious, non-smoking mother could possibly have cancer, she argues with the doctor, then crumbles at the news that her mother has a year, at most, to live. She describes the deep love and devotion of her mother to her and her two siblings. Pregnant at nineteen, her mother had married her father only to find out within three short days that he was brutal and abusive. Her mother left him several times, but not permanently until she was twenty-eight years old. A single mother of three, her mother worked all the time, but never seemed to get ahead. She sugar-coated poverty for her children, making games out of their plight and dating an interesting slew of men. Her mother finally met Eddie, a man eight years her junior, and he married her and took on the roles of husband and father with ease. After a disabling accident and settlement, the couple bought forty acres of land an hour and half from Duluth, Minnesota...

    The story takes us from Glenn's unexpected diagnosis of 'three months at best' just days before the birth of his only child, to his miraculous remission and the ironic death of his father. It is a journey that is by turns heartbreaking, painfully funny, misanthropic, loving and ultimately heroic. Rodeo In Joliet tramples the Hallmark cliches and platitudes of traditional cancer survival stories and presents in their place an experience that leaves the reader in awe and grateful for his or her every breath.

    The Second World War has gone on too long. Shops are closed ‘for the duration’. Trains run a restricted service ‘for the duration’. Life has paused, for the duration. A little girl, Pamela, is growing up fast. A young Englishman, Rupert Blundell, vows there’ll be no more wars. Both are waiting for their lives to begin.Then comes Hiroshima. Finally, devastatingly, the war is over.1962. Rupert is now strategic advisor to Lord Mountbatten, and his close confidant. Pamela is eighteen and has moved to London, eager for love and experience of every kind. There’ll be parties at Cliveden, Christine Keeler, Stephen Ward, the Astors. Life is a whirlwind.But beneath the glamour lies quiet, desperate terror, as the Cuban missile crisis unfolds and the world spins ever closer to nuclear war.Reckless is a gripping novel set against the world in crisis, by a superb novelist at the height of his powers.

    But it’s not what the storm took away that gets Matt’s attention – it’s what it left behind. Deep in the debris under what remains of his house, something has washed up that makes Matt the central target in a deadly conspiracy involving some very high-profile players. Not knowing who to trust, Matt must turn to his eccentric neighbor, his high school buddy, and ultimately his estranged wife to try and help him stay one step ahead – and alive – long enough to bring some order back into his life.

    Medallion.Story summary: Something is odd about Grace. She has mismatched eyes, one dark and one light. She thinks she's seen God. When her mother dies, she begins to get letters from her, as if from the grave. The letters tell of her mother's life before she married Grace's father, in time, confessing fiercely guarded family secrets. "I wasn't always a Preacher's Wife... I made mistakes along the way."Looking back, as a middle-aged woman, Grace relives those transformative years, coming of age in the 1960s as the daughter of The Reverend Thad Carsten and his much-younger wife, Sharon. When they move to a new neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, Sharon is healthy and Grace takes turmoil in stride: a new school, her backward neighbors, the simmering Vietnam War and political unrest. On the whole, life is sublime-until Sharon gets sick and dies. Then Grace's world turns upside down.Days after Sharon is gone, the letters to her daughter start coming, delivered mysteriously in the dark of night. Grace finds them-addressed to her-and devours every word, desperate to figure out who's delivering them. As she struggles with questions of loss and faith, she begins to butt heads with the preacher, increasingly focused on the mysterious messenger and her mother's letters. The handwritten pages arrive periodically as Grace matures, fostering a strange mother daughter relationship.Early on, the letters offer motherly advice, but increasingly they shift their focus to Sharon's early teens, eventually confessing a forbidden young adult romance. By then, Grace is desperate for the rest of the story, searching everywhere for her mother's writings, until finally there's a breakthrough. When she reads the last of the letters-and an astonishing truth-she embarks on a journey that changes her life and perspective forever.What did Sharon confess in the last letter to her daughter? How does it affect their unusual mother daughter relationship? As Grace runs away to trace her mother's past and teenage romance, what will she find?With its elements of romance and mystery, The God of Sno Cone Blue, sometimes searched as "Snow" Cone Blue is best described as contemporary women's fiction, though its strong central male character also appeals to men. The novel's storyline and mother daughter relationship are fitting Inspirational Fiction, and its passion and coming of age tale are appropriate for teenagers and young adults.* USA Today Bestselling Author Linda Needham on this inspirational fiction story: "The God of Sno Cone Blue is a joyous celebration of a young girl's journey to womanhood. Grace is a modern match for Tom Sawyer, with a grand spirit and enough spunk to weather the heartache of losing her mother at a tender age. Along the way, she gains the wisdom to recognize the breadth of her mother's love through a series of posthumous, sometimes shocking letters delivered in the years that follow. With a driving style and a colorful cast of eccentric characters, author Marcia Coffey Turnquist fiercely delivers equal parts laughter, sorrow and the kind of joy that will stay with you long after you've finished the book."*Author Rod Gramer on this novel fraught with family secrets: "Marcia has created a compelling character in Grace, one whose great personal loss is redeemed by a great personal discovery."*Portland Society Page editor Elisa Klein on the story's mystery and romance: "Surprises abound and the twists and turns kept me flipping pages late into the night as I curled up in my favorite chair to drink it all in."*Award-winning artist D.K. Lubarsky on this coming of age novel: "A masterful storyteller, Turnquist takes you on a magical journey of discovery in this poignant tale of innocence and growing up. The God of Sno Cone Blue is a delightful read."

    This new book takes place in Lockdown Three. This time Key can make Government-sanctioned expeditions out onto the streets of London (remember?). And it is there that the inaction takes place. Phone calls to his mother, promenades with his loyal friend, bubble-negotiations, sitting his fat arse down on benches, drinking mocha. Another three months of mind-freezing inertia. This time on the move. Conversations interspersed with poetry.

    Over one hundred years later, his spirit reaches out to help his troubled great granddaughter. A dramatic three-act tale spanning a century in the life of a vigorous Italian family.

    Teenagers are celebrating the first taste of freedom as they line their pockets with newly printed driver’s licenses and long-awaited paychecks. Days off are spent at the town’s only lake, nights under the yellow lights of the drive-in restaurant.But Billy Tupper’s life is a far cry from that of other teenagers. One mistake too many lands him in front of a judge who sentences him to a summer working for Old Lady Baxter, the victim of his latest carelessness…and the rumored child killer of Munroe, Kansas. As Billy sweats his way through endless months of mowing her lawn, weeding her garden, and painting her house, he also searches for the evidence to prove she’s guilty, but what he finds, and what he learns about himself, will change his life forever.I Know an Old Lady is a touching coming-of-age story of loss and redemption, of understanding and compassion, and of a family torn apart and slowly put back together.I Know an Old Lady is Billy Tupper’s story.

    But as a writer, he feared their love story would have a tragic ending.Fifteen years after that fateful encounter, Bill is in the DA's crosshairs: his research for a novel has eerie parallels to the circumstances surrounding Nora's death. In a harrowing progression of events, a murder trial ensues. What exactly did happen between Bill and Nora the day she died? And what constitutes truth? Fiction and fact coalesce, as the lines between fantasy and reality, guilt and innocence are blurred. The Lovers' Tango, a story of deeply abiding love, culminates in a shattering conclusion addressing devotion, commitment, and the meanings of truth and justice.

    As he looks into what seems to be a simple, tragic accident, the ante is raised when more people start to die or disappear, and Amos uncovers a world of treachery and hurt that shakes a large L.A. Jewish community to its core.

     Desperate to escape her past, Cristina Rodriguez moves into a picturesque hilltop home with an ocean view. The same place where, four years earlier, a young girl was kidnapped and murdered. Both the house and the scenic California beach town seem perfect. Fresh air. Fresh faces. And the ocean is just ten minutes away. But as Cristina and her daughter set about rebuilding their lives, they soon discover that the past is not about to let go so easily. A page-turning thrill ride, Cristina will grab you from the first page and keep you guessing until the very end...

    She knew she had important decisions to make and a holiday on the beautiful Greek island of Holkamos with her Nan would give her time to think things through.Kostas and Eleni’s traditional Greek restaurant didn’t draw in the holidaymakers. Financially struggling, tired and looking forward to the end of the summer, how would they continue to make ends meet? How would Yannis, their adult, yet socially shy, son cope with changes to his lifestyle?Demetrious had arrived from Athens to help decorate a friends gift shop.Carmela, a reputable French artist who lived on Holkamos each summer had recently died leaving secrets, upsets and an important legacy.How do all their lives entwine?Set amongst the backdrop of the picturesque Holkamos harbour, NEW BEGINNINGS IN GREECE is an endearing tale of how long-lasting friendships, romances and business partnerships are created from chance encounters.