. .Barbara Parker is Miss Blackpool of 1964, but she doesn't want to be a beauty queen. She wants to make people laugh.So she leaves her hometown behind, takes herself to London, and overnight she becomes the lead in a new BBC comedy, Sophie Straw: charming, gorgeous, destined to win the nation's hearts.

    The chronicle of an elderly black farmer arrested for the murder of a white man and under threat from the lynch mob is a characteristically Faulknerian tale of dark omen, its sole ray of hope the character of the young white boy who repays an old favour by proving the innocence of the man who saved him from drowning in an icy creek.

    A microcosm of the deep horrors of civil war, the Shelton Laurel Massacre as it came to be known, pitted neighbor against neighbor, touching every family with violence at their own front door. Told by those who lived it– Confederate and Unionist alike--Keith, who ordered the execution, Polly, whose children’s death precipitated the massacre, Judy and Marthy, who bore torture to protect their men, and Sim, conscripted by the Confederates and haunted by his part in the Massacre—the novel offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of five people tangled in history’s web, caught up together in love and hate. And all five will bear the mark of the massacre long after the event, struggling to come to terms with the bleak consequences of civil war. Based on an actual event and historical characters, And the Crows Took Their Eyes is a richly imagined portrait of a dark and bitter time—illuminated by gleams of humanity at its best

    He relates his youth in a cycle of growing-up stories, beginning before he enters school and culminating with the loss of friends to the Vietnam War. The characters are memorable: Miss Daisy--one of the six Boring sisters, teachers every one; Daff-Knee Garlic, owner of the Sulpher Springs Big-Screen Drive-In Theater; and Aunt Laura, who knows to listen for the crack of dawn. Developed in oral performance, Davis's stories resonate in the experiences of his listeners and readers. These stories will teach readers the importance of caring, fairness and respect.

    The first woman to be named the Country Music Association's Entertainer of the Year, Lynn boasts sixteen #1 singles, fifteen #1 albums, and sixty other hits including “Honky Tonk Girl,” “Before I'm Over You, “ “The Pill,” and “After the Fire Is Gone. “ Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner's Daughter, a bestseller and the basis of the Oscar-winning film, is the intimate, revealing story of her journey from eastern Kentucky to Nashville to stardom to legend—told in her own voice, which rings as clear, natural, and powerful as the best of her songs.

    Peter Serafinowicz's Questions and Answers is a showcase for the razor wit and joyful nonsense of one of Britain's cleverest comedians, firing back genuinely funny instant replies to a stream of questions from the general public. This book collects together several hundred jokes from Peter's store of one-liners in a stylish, faux-Victorian, gifty hardback, just in time for Christmas. 'Peter Serafinowicz is hilarious' David Walliams' 'It's funny, but Peter Serafinowicz is the kind of funny person that funny people find funny' Simon Pegg 'Peter Serafinowicz is one of the funniest women in the world' Derren Brown

    But a lot's happened since then, and he's in the mood to discuss it all, in the inimitable style that's made him the most popular social commentator to tickle people AND tick them off. From being PC to watching MTV, from rednecks to black militants, from singing the praises of the South to sounding off on the problems of just about everywhere else, nothing and nobody escapes when Grizzard shoots from the lip...and hits the "nekkid" truth every time.

    In this first volume of his misadventures, Gussett sets his sights on the most prestigious prize in golf, the petrified middle finger of St. Andrew, patron saint of Scotland. Presiding over the world's most cantankerous golf club, Gussett must motivate his members through battles with incontinence, single malt Scotch, and a litany of other unmentionable afflictions in a friendly competition with their ancient rivals, the notorious McGregor clan. Anyone who loves the game or knows someone who does will be unable to resist Feherty's hilarious storytelling and golfing gravitas.

    Now, with his brilliant portrait of Luce, a young woman who inherits her murdered sister's troubled twins, Frazier has created his most memorable heroine.Before the children, Luce was content with the reimbursements of the rich Appalachian landscape, choosing to live apart from the small community around her. But the coming of the children changes everything, cracking open her solitary life in difficult, hopeful, dangerous ways.Charles Frazier is known for his historical literary odysseys, and for making figures in the past come vividly to life. Set in the twentieth century, Nightwoods resonates with the timelessness of a great work of art.

    With their savings, the couple bought a ramshackle house and forty acres of land on a ridge top and set out to be farmers like Henry's forebears.To this personal account of the trials of a city woman trying to learn the ways of the country and of her neighbors, Janice Holt Giles brings the same warmth, humor, and powers of observation that characterize her novels. Enlightening and evocative, personal and universally pertinent, this description of a year of "backaches, fun, low ebbs, and high tides, and above all a year of eminent satisfaction" will be welcomed by Janice Holt Giles's many readers, old and new.Janice Holt Giles (1905-1979), author of nineteen books, lived and wrote near Knifley, Kentucky, for thirty-four years. Her biography is told in Janice Holt Giles: A Writer's Life.

    And while the literary landscape of the rural South is peppered with great storytellers, few are as endearing as James Aloysius "Buster" Holcombe, Jr., the observant narrator of Sams's new novel.From Reconstruction, the first World War, the Depression, and World War II , to racial integration, land speculation, and economic boom, Buster Holcombe recounts the events that have shaped our country since the mid-nineteenth century through the eyes of the wide-ranging denizens of "our town." Down Town offers a panoptic history of the American South, carefully observed and skillfully presented by a native son.

    

    Oddly) Flowers is living quietly in Oregon with Winnifred, her tortoise, when she finds out her dear father has been knocked into a coma back in Newfoundland. Despite her fear of flying, she goes to him, but not before she reluctantly dumps Winnifred with her unreliable friends. Poor Winnifred. When Audrey disarms an Air Marshal en route to St. John’s we begin to realize there’s something, well, odd about her. And we soon know that Audrey’s quest to discover who her father really was—and reunite with Winnifred—will be an adventure like no other.

    You'll also discover: - How to Treat a Radioactive Spider Bite - How to Design and Build a Costume - How to Swing from Building to Building - How to Maintain a Secret Identity - Hot to Take On a Gang of Henchmen Plus a few skills that would benefit all the Peter Parkers in the world (such as How to Deal with a Nightmare Boss, How to Live on a Meager Income, and more). Complete with colorful step-by-step illustrations, "The Spider-Man Handbook "is essential reading for all your web-slinging needs!

    Disco is over, but punk never happened. They don't have cable. They don't really have pop culture, unless you count grain prices and alcoholism. People work hard and then they die. They hate the government and impregnate teenage girls. But that's not nearly as awful as it sounds; in fact, sometimes it's perfect.Mitch Hrlicka lives in Owl. He plays high school football and worries about his weirdness, or lack thereof. Julia Rabia just moved to Owl. She gets free booze and falls in love with a self-loathing bison farmer who listens to Goats Head Soup. Horace Jones has resided in Owl for seventy-three years. He consumes a lot of coffee, thinks about his dead wife, and understands the truth. They all know each other completely, except that they've never met.Like a colder, Reagan-era version of The Last Picture Show fused with Friday Night Lights, Chuck Klosterman's Downtown Owl is the unpretentious, darkly comedic story of how it feels to exist in a community where rural mythology and violent reality are pretty much the same thing. Loaded with detail and unified by a (very real) blizzard, it's technically about certain people in a certain place at a certain time...but it's really about a problem. And the problem is this: What does it mean to be a normal person? And there is no answer. But in Downtown Owl, what matters more is how you ask the question.