In the centerpiece story, an eighteenth-century Eno Indian tells of the fiery fate of his adopted father, English explorer John Lawson. In the surrounding stories, the age-old conflicts between newcomer and old-timer play out as twenty-first century retirees, carnies, runaways, heartbroken women, and farmers stumble into new lives and new insights in Ambler County, North Carolina. "Hudson's prose is pure as birdsong," says novelist Doris Betts. "These fine stories of change and discovery are a field guide to the human species in transition."

    Determined to get in and get out of the abandoned property, she finds the valuable land tangled in a trust, and wonders who she can really trust, Not the property manager and affable southern gentleman, Taylor Simpson. Caught up in the mechanics of a farm, a legal document she can’t break, and pressure from her company for money, Evelyn turns to her own wiles and willpower…but can she resist the South’s wooing?

    If you’re looking for the outer orbits of America, come to Florida, and if you seek the Sunshine State’s funky-drumbeat fringe, you can do no better than Lynn Waddell.”—Tim Dorsey, New York Times best-selling author “Waddell takes readers to Florida’s wild side, where strippers, swingers, bikers, exotic animals, and carnies enjoy sun-kissed lives in America’s strangest state.”?Trevor Aaronson, author of The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism “Lynn Waddell’s riveting you-are-there reporting lives at the intersection where Florida’s wacky subcultures and seamy undersides meet up. When you read this book, make sure you’re standing over carpet—that way you won’t hurt your jaw from dropping it so many times.”—Craig Pittman, author of The Scent of Scandal: Greed, Betrayal, and the World’s Most Beautiful Orchid “A fast, fascinating read. Waddell delivers ten surprising subcultures you might not dare visit on your own.”?Lyn Millner, Florida Gulf Coast UniversityFlorida has a titillating underbelly that few tourists ever see. Beyond the theme parks and the beaches lies a periphery most residents know about but—out of decorum or discomfort?prefer not to discuss. In Fringe Florida, Lynn Waddell explores the exotic, sensational, and sometimes illicit worlds of the oddest state in the nation.Waddell takes the reader on a colorful journey to meet the most unconventional of Floridians in unbelievable and spectacular places. At Fetish Con, she befriends furries and pony girls. She travels to Cassadaga, the oldest active Spiritualist community in the South, where trained mediums converse with the dead, and to the Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando, where one can eat a hot dog while watching a reenactment of the Crucifixion. She interviews the founder of the Leather & Lace Motorcycle Club, a Daytona Beach-area grandmother who hosts the club’s annual gathering, welcoming scores of lady bikers to camp out on the lawn of her subdivision home. At an Animal Amnesty Day outside Busch Gardens, Waddell meets exotic reptile owners who give up their beloved-but no-longer-manageable pets and others who vie to take home the cast-offs.If you’ve ever wanted to parade around on a pimped-out swamp buggy amidst a couple thousand beer-swigging mud boggers or fall asleep with a python hissing in your ear, been tempted to bring a Capuchin monkey in a stroller to a Little League game, or contemplated sitting on the beach waiting to be picked up by a UFO but couldn’t quite bring yourself to such extremes, Fringe Florida is for you.

    The Idle Years comprises two semi-autobiographical novels (My Father's House and The Idle Years) that form part of a series; these two are set during the 1920s and 1930s, a period of major social change in the new Turkish Republic. The unnamed narrator grows up in an affluent household in Adana with his brother, sisters, mother and formidable father, a well-known political agitator. When the father falls foul of the authorities the family migrates to Beirut, where the narrator becomes something of a rebel while attempting to support his now impoverished family. He returns alone to Adana as a disaffected teenager, but lack of money and prospects prompts him and his best friend to set off for Istanbul in an ill-fated attempt to seek fame and fortune. Soon, however, he is forced to return home as a humiliated and alienated youth struggling on the bottom rung of society. Things only begin to look up when he meets a young factory girl ..." In his writings Orhan Kemal examines the struggles that ordinary people face in order to survive in the harsh conditions that can result from social and economic upheaval. A master at portraying the relationship between the individual and society, he left an immortal literary legacy - not only to Turkey but to the world.

     What was supposed to be a one-time fling between Heavenly and Fabian transpired into a full-blown, secret relationship. Certain her son, Maverick, would not approve of them, Heavenly swore to keep their relationship discreet. Fabian’s feelings were growing for ‘Miss J’ by the day. He wanted Heavenly and would do anything to keep her happy. Harboring their secret was the plan he agreed to, until Maverick’s dad, Mason, came into town trying to get back what Fabian had deemed his. Fabian loved his best friend, Maverick, but he loved his mother more. He wasn’t willing to let her go that easily. Will Fabian and Heavenly get the happily ever after they deserve? Or will their love for Maverick stand in the way?

    Four stories. Each one set in the enchanting world of the South. These are the kinds of stories your grandmother told you from a front porch swing. Ice Melts in Spring by Linda W. Yezak When Kerry Graham's boss forces her to return to the Gulf of Mexico where her husband drowned years ago, she feels only spring's chill and not the warmth of the Texas sun. Can the joy of a reclusive author and the compassion of a shrimp-boat preacher thaw Kerry's frigid heart? Lillie Beth in Summer by Eva Marie Everson With the untimely death of his wife, Dr. James Gillespie believes God has abandoned him. He also believes he's never met anyone like the young widow Lillie Beth, whose beloved Granny lies dying at home, and who sees a God who sweeps hope through a farmhouse window. Can a young woman whose husband died in Vietnam restore a faith that is all but dead. Through an Autumn Window by Claire Fullerton Because her larger than life mother Daphne Goodwyn is dead, forty-year-old Cate returns to Memphis with one thought in mind: something always goes wrong at a Southern funeral. But surrounded by the well-mannered society that raised her, the nostalgic rites of a three-day, autumn mourning bring the unexpected gift of the end of sibling rivalry. A Magnolia Blooms in Winter by Ane Mulligan With Broadway stardom within her reach, Morgan James returns home in winter to help an old friend. Maybe it s just nostalgia, but when she sees him again, an old flame rekindles. When she s called back to NYC to take the lead in a new musical, will fame be worth losing the man she loves?

    '"Beauty before comfort," she would say as she trimmed her brows and cinched her belts corset-tight. My grandmother is so beautiful she has never once been comfortable, a cross she bears with the subtlety of Liberace.'So writes Allison Glock at the start of her remarkable memoir, the story of her maternal grandmother, Aneita Jean Blair, and the extraordinary life she led growing up in Chester, West Virginia, a sooty factory town wedged between the unforgiving Appalachians and the Ohio River. As a girl, a young woman, and even late in life as a grandmother, Aneita Jean had a magnetism that attracted and enchanted all she came into contact with. Allison Glock takes us through the stages of her life, capturing not only the irrepressible vitality of a woman born ahead of her time, but also the eccentricities of a small-town, working-class West Virginia family, trying to survive the Great Depression and the Second World War.Aneita, blessed with 'the body of Miss America' was determined that she would escape the town that was holding her back. That she never made it, and the pattern that her life ended up taking, is just another small-town tragedy of the vanished dreams of one extraordinary person. Allison Glock writes with humour, lyricism and beauty to create a truly unforgettable portrait of a remarkable person.

    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

    They are likely to make one exclaim, ‘This couldn’t have happened!’ even as the narrators swear they are nothing but pure fact. The bizarre chronicle of a lazy daughter-in-law, the court clerk who loved eating chaat, two cousins inseparable even in death, a blind teacher who fell in love with a woman with beautiful eyes and other wild tales from Bareilly, Lucknow, Hapur, Badaun, Sapnawat and Pilibhit, places big and small, in that fascinating part of India called Uttar Pradesh.

    Here again she mines the territory of the small town of Zebulon, Mississippi, where even the most seemingly ordinary folks harbor well-disguised heartaches and intricate secrets. Thirteen-year-old Layla Jay was only pretending when she knelt before the preacher to seek salvation. She was hoping to make her grandma happy and get noticed by the cute new boy in town. But religion truly piques her interest when a young, handsome visiting preacher stays at her family’s home. Wallace seems genuinely interested in Layla Jay’s life–until he meets her mama and falls head over heels, like many men have before him. When Wallace marries Frieda, Layla Jay believes she will finally have the father she’s always wanted. But it seems that none of her dreams will come true as Layla Jay wrestles with her mother’s reckless ways, her unsavory stepfather, a best friend’s betrayal, and the longing for love’s first kiss. Yet everything pales in comparison to what happens next as Layla Jay is forced to tell a lie to save her mother’s world from crashing down.

    Stuck with each other for the night, they deal with their core prejudices, the walls that keep them from each other, and the discovery of their God-given humanity in one another.When talking about race, it helps to have something specific to talk about―a story we can all wrap our heads around. In Meals from Mars, Ben Sciacca provides that story: two men from different worlds forced by circumstance to see and hear and consider one another. It is a novel that demonstrates the social challenges and relational potential for racial reconciliation.

    

    A prime-time hurricane devastates southern Florida at the start of his honeymoon and he can't even use camcorder. Fortunate, really, as the results would not make family viewing back home in New York. Within hours the ruins are alive with Mobsters, crusaders, temptresses, presidential aides and escaped wild animals. Even a crucifixion, previously unheard of in these parts, can't halt the mayhem. For the inhabitants of Dade County, the hurricane is the second good rush - the year's hottest scam. Everyone wants a piece. And Max, he just wants to go home Lucky You Saturday afternoon in Grange, Florida. Virtually unnoticed, JoLayne Lucks stops by the Grab'n'Go to play the same numbers she's played every week for five years. 17-19-22-24-27-30. Each lotto number marking the age she dumped a tiresome lover. She doesn't know it yet, but the discarded men in JoLayne's life have finally amounted to something. $28 million and a whole swamp of trouble

    He portrays a character looking for love that reaches beyond death--with occasional morbid consequences.

    In 'The Cherry Pit', Clifford Stone - quixotic curator of arcane Americana at a Boston antiques foundation and a cataloguer of a 'vanished American past' - forsakes Boston and his icy wife to return to his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas, and a life that is both instantly familiar and disturbingly strange.