Book picks similar to
Story of a Southern Family by J. Keck


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Truth Is...


Michelle Mitchell - 2016
    She falls easily for his handsome looks, smooth words, and silken touch. Distracted by her feelings for Davis, Ansley ignores the warning bells going off in her head.Davis is charming, seductive, and tantalizing; a well-dressed Adonis used to getting his way, but behind those alluring eyes is a man weighed down by the burden of a troubled past. Although he genuinely cares for Ansley, Davis finds that old habits die-hard and himself on a familiar path. Just as Ansley and Davis settle into their blossoming relationship, sins from his past return like an old mistress out for revenge, igniting the flames of tragedy, which threaten to engulf them both.

Long Shot


Dan Ames - 2015
    When he is murdered during a sailboat race, no one sees it coming. Private investigator John Rockne investigates the killing and soon unravels a web of greed and betrayal. A hard-hitting, action-packed story in the bestselling and award-winning John Rockne Mystery Series.

Milicent Le Sueur


Margaret Moseley - 2001
    Millicent Le Sueur is an eccentric, obsessive-compulsive bag lady in a rural Southern town who witnesses the killing of a teenage girl. Or so she claims. Some townsfolk believe she killed the girl and made up the story to cover her crime. Counting, checking, deducing and tracking, she looks for a killer she hopes won’t count her as the next victim.

Honed: Finding Your Edge as a Man Over 40


Mike Simpson - 2021
    Special Forces. He was forty-eight years old.How did he keep up? By combining three decades of Special Forces training, the ancient wisdom of martial arts, and his own specialized knowledge as a doctor of emergency medicine assigned to the Joint Special Operations Command.Now, in Honed: Finding Your Edge as a Man Over 40, Mike makes his unique formula available to the general public, teaching you how to reach peak physical condition in your forties, fifties, and beyond so you can compete with men half your age.Learn how to maintain and build muscle through longevity optimization. Train step by step for long-term performance through these proven, science-backed programs of exercise, nutrition, recovery, and natural supplementation.If you think you’re past your prime, think again. In Honed, Mike Simpson proves that it’s not too late to find your edge and live the lifestyle of a warrior-athlete.

Eureka Mill


Ron Rash - 1998
    It is even more remarkable if the book is set where we live, a place we thought we'd been. These poems make up a dramatic and lyrical portrait of the migration of poor Buncombe County farmers to a mill village outside Chester, S.C. However, the book is much more than documentary. Rash, whose grandparents and parents worked in the Eureka Mill interweaves his family's personal history with the broader texture of mill life, giving us at once intimacy and perspective, heart and understanding.

Painting Deception


Brian Hebbel - 2018
    On the beach you'll be laughing and crying between the changing of the tides. Take a ride with the main character, Lily Clarke, as you contemplate her and your own lasting legacy. Lily Clarke, the elderly mother of three dysfunctional and distant daughters, makes life altering discoveries regarding her new found wealth and other dark secrets, after she receives a diagnosis that she has a terminal illness. The challenges and decisions she must face in her final months will define her lasting legacy. To execute her plan, she invites her three dysfunctional and distant daughters to her home for a short stay to determine you will receive her new found wealth. Her plans become disrupted when dark secrets emerge, questioning her decision making and the meaning of her entire life. The book includes family dysfunction, drama, humor, an a bit of historical fiction. From the book: Chapter 1: The old saying goes that everyone has a story. Unfortunately today, October 2, 2016, Lily Elizabeth Clarke’s story was coming to a quick end. It was a sunny day at the Sacred Heart Cemetery in Dundalk, Maryland, as cars began pulling up shortly after noon for her 1:00 p.m. funeral. Old rusted smoke stacks from a bankrupt steel mill could be seen in the background of the cemetery in this gritty part of Baltimore. Neighborhoods with seventy-year-old brick weathered rowhouses surrounded the neatly manicured cemetery. The funeral was taking place exactly as Lily had arranged it. No details were left out of the planning. While she was alive, she made sure that her funeral, burial arrangements, and reading of her Last Will and Testament were organized and would be executed exactly to her wishes. No one knew what would take place over the next twenty-four hours and weeks to follow except Lily, and she was deceased. Not even her lawyer and confidant, Jake Snyder, knew all of the hidden details that Lily had intentionally failed to disclose to him; some of which had remained bottled and silenced for a lifetime. He had been Lily’s lawyer for more than twenty years, and over the next two days, he would implement her final plan exactly as she had instructed. Jake knew her for almost his whole life and thought he knew everything about her, but he didn’t know the dark secrets about her past or the ones she intended to reveal in stages following her death. The health crisis that led to Lily’s death was nothing compared to the mental struggle she faced as a result of the long forgotten secrets resurfacing during the final months of her life. Lily’s struggle whether to reveal her secrets while she was alive and how to reveal them after her death would change lives and define her legacy. Lily didn’t want to have a formal viewing at a funeral home. She wanted her funeral to be short and sweet at the gravesite, so that everyone could get on with their lives. Lily’s three daughters didn’t remain close to her after they graduated from college and settled in the state of their college alma maters. Lily was unsure why her children didn’t stay close to her. She wasn’t sure if it was her sometimes overbearing husband or the fact that her children wanted to get out of the dirty blue-collar town Baltimore was in the 1970s. Maybe they were a little rebellious, stubborn, and adventurous, all rolled into one. In truth, Lily often wondered if the secrets she harbored created impenetrable barriers in her relationship with her daughters. However, it seemed the longer they were away from Baltimore, the further they grew apart from Lily, and she didn’t have the strength or courage to correct the situation. ...

Nashville 1864: The Dying of the Light


Madison Jones - 1997
    This award-winning novel follows twelve-year-old Steven Moore and his slave companion on a nightmarish journey behind Union lines.

Touched by Heaven: Inspiring True Stories of One Woman's Lifelong Encounters with Jesus


Nancy Ravenhill - 2015
    These remarkable, firsthand encounters with Jesus reveal the breathtaking compassion and love He has for us, and offer true encouragement for those facing life's darkest moments.

What Happens In Cornwall...


T.A. Williams - 2015
    But with bills to pay her options are limited…until a discovery on Rock Island in Cornwall gives her a reason to escape… Head to the Cornish coast! In Cornwall, questions are thrown up at every turn: who is the glamorous owner of Rock Island that the paparazzi are so interested in? How has the irresistible, but impossibly arrogant, history professor James Courtney managed to get so far under Sam’s skin? And will it ever stop raining so Sam can lose the cagoule and sip a cool drink in the sun? One thing’s for sure: there’s never been a holiday quite like this one! Enjoy a summer of surprises and romance with What Happens in Cornwall…, the perfect retreat for fans of Fern Britton

Writing Flash Fiction: How to Write Very Short Stories and Get Them Published


Carly Berg - 2015
    She is the author of Coffee House Lies: 100 Cups of Flash Fiction. www.carlyberg.com

Smash All the Windows


Jane Davis - 2018
    It will take courage to learn how to live again.‘An all-round triumph.’ John HudspithFor the families of the victims of the St Botolph and Old Billingsgate disaster, the undoing of a miscarriage of justice should be a cause for rejoicing. For more than thirteen years, the search for truth has eaten up everything. Marriages, families, health, careers and finances.Finally, the coroner has ruled that the crowd did not contribute to their own deaths. Finally, now that lies have been unravelled and hypocrisies exposed, they can all get back to their lives.If only it were that simple.Tapping into the issues of the day, Davis delivers a highly charged work of metafiction, a compelling testament to the human condition and the healing power of art. Written with immediacy, style and an overwhelming sense of empathy, Smash all the Windows will be enjoyed by readers of How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall and How to be Both by Ali Smith.

Landscape at the End of the Century


Stephen Dunn - 1991
    Dunn's landscape at the end of the century embraces the spectrum of urgencies and obsessions that we live with and for. It's a landscape that we share with citizens and spies, revelers and mourners, women who weep, men who keep secrets, and especially with the poet himself.

Things Are Happening


Joshua Beckman - 1998
    The inaugural winner of the annual American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Award.

Cows Can't Jump


Philip Bowne - 2020
    It’s 2016, and as a grave-digger, he’s working the ultimate dead-end job. To make matters worse, he’s a virgin, and there’s no hope of him meeting a girl any time soon. The only women at work are in coffins. Billy’s home life isn’t any better. In the evenings, he observes his dysfunctional family: his grandad’s engaged to a woman half his age, his dad’s become obsessed with boxing, and he suspects his mum is having an affair. All the while, celebrities are dropping like flies and Britain is waiting for the EU referendum. Everything is changing, and Billy hates it. Billy’s life gets a jump start when he falls in love with Eva. Just as things are looking up, Eva travels back to her home in Switzerland. But Billy won’t give up that easily. He gambles everything for a chance to be with her again. When things start to go wrong, Billy’s journey across Europe involves hitch-hiking with truckers, walking with refugees, and an encounter with suicidal cows. But the further he goes, the harder it is to be sure what he’s chasing – and what he’s running from.

Invasion


P.P. Corcoran - 2017
    A secret past. A past that the K’tai didn’t reckon on. Humanity, previously dependent on the K'Tai for its Redlazore, discovers vast resources of the most valuable mineral in the galaxy on Agate and are now free to expand across the stars: Redlazore is also the key component to faster-than-light travel. The planet Agate is, however, the human colony-world which lies perilously close to the K'Tai Imperium and the K'Tai resolve to put the upstart humans back in their place. The K'Tai Imperium invades Agate. On the ground, in the midst of the whirlwind conflict is the Carter family: Dave a mid-level exec is working in downtown Gemini City, Sue his wife, a high school teacher and their teenage twins, Jodee and Chris are on a school trip to a Redlazore mine. In space, the League Border Patrol face overwhelming odds as the K'Tai fleet advance. The K'Tai soldiers of the infamous Black Legion descend on Agate, opposed by the meagre, poorly-armed militia and a sprinkling of regular marines. The planet and those upon it are engulfed in the flames of war. The K'Tai, however, did not count on the Carters. For the Carters have a secret. A secret which will cost the K'Tai Imperium dearly. The Carters are Agate's human population's only hope.