Daddy There's A Light in the Sky is a series of autobiographical sketches that cover a period from the early 1920's through the early 2000's. The sketches are not set in an orderly chronology but rather as an 85 year old man's mind thought about them. The thoughts were often triggered by some contemporary happening. This collection of writings make entertaining reading. Growing up in a broadly diverse neighborhood gave Twyman the impetus to explore areas of his inner being which shows in his writing.

My Daddy's in Heaven and I'm Still Here offers a great way for parents to help children deal with losing a father. Through a series of activities and moving stories, children create memories of their fathers that will last a lifetime. Follow Elizabeth Marie as her mother teaches her that she can still find the happiness her father would want her to have.

In the mind of each person on the planet, a set of notions and ideas of God or gods reside. Some of these systems are basic and simple. Others are highly complex and complicated. Some borrow their God/god notions from authority, or from others they know. Others are much more original - eclectically piecing together many separate parts from multiple sources. No two people in the world experience and translate God/gods in the same way. And this is what makes things so interesting! As I have encountered this wonderful life, I have also bumped up against countless people who were in the position to explain exactly who God was and was not. They were quite sure of themselves, and anxious to impart this wisdom to me. But because I had a mind and heart of my own, this put me on the outside looking in, for much of my life. We all come to a place where we realize we must make our minds up as to what we will and will not do, how we will think and who we will be. As I have encountered them and their God/gods, I have found my own way through this foggy maze, and discovered a modicum of peace and reconciliation in the process. This is the massive task of all of us, as well as why I needed to lay it out to you, in this lengthy, 2-part book.

The day he finished high school in 1967, Steve Sorensen began a fifty-year adventure in the southern Sierra Nevada. After learning to rock climb in Yosemite Valley, Sorensen went on to spend fourteen years working for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, where he became the leader of a backcountry crew, a skilled tree faller, an emergency medical technician, a wildland firefighter, a backcountry snow surveyor, and a mule packer. Working with park botanists, he developed new techniques for restoring damaged meadows, and his crews rehabilitated miles of eroded trails throughout the parks. Later he wrote the first two hiking guidebooks for the park’s frontcountry trails. Sorensen’s heartfelt tales of life in the southern Sierra Nevada are told with style and humor, both informative and touching at the same time. Though his blunt criticism of the National Park Service might anger some, many park employees will recognize the honesty and accuracy of his observations. A Branch of the Sky is infused with the love and respect Sorensen felt for his friends and coworkers, many of whom he lost to accidents and disease. How he made his peace with their ghosts is a unique and captivating story, beautifully told.

Tiger Ann Parker wants nothing more than to get out of the rural town of Saitter, Louisiana--far away from her mentally disabled mother, her "slow" father who can't read an electric bill, and her classmates who taunt her. So when Aunt Dorie Kay asks Tiger to sp the summer with her in Baton Rouge, Tiger can't wait to go. But before she leaves, the sudden revelation of a dark family secret prompts Tiger to make a decision that will ultimately change her life. Set in the South in the late 1950s, this coming-of-age novel explores a twelve-year-old girl's struggle to accept her grandmother's death, her mentally deficient parents, and the changing world around her. It is a novel filled with beautiful language and unforgettable characters, and the importance of family and home. My Louisiana Sky is a 1998 Boston Globe - Horn Book Award Honor Book for Fiction.

Though her beginnings were no more glamorous than most, author D?Orsay Logan accomplished some amazing things throughout her life?from raising seven accomplished children to seeing the world. In D?Orsay?s Story, she tells about the events that shaped who she has become. Filled with intimate details, this memoir starts with her birth in April of 1950 and includes accounts of growing up with her brothers and sisters, being brutally assaulted at age thirteen, getting married at sixteen while still a senior in high school, becoming a jockey in her early twenties, earning a nursing degree in her forties, and overcoming an addiction to alcohol. D?Orsay also shares stories of worldwide travels, during which she learned to skydive, swam in Loch Ness, stood in front of Stonehenge, and lived in African jungles. D?Orsay narrates a wide range of experiences from her life?the good, the bad, the sad, and the exhilarating. Intriguing and inspiring, D?Orsay?s Story communicates the message that life presents opportunities to overcome hardships and anything is possible.

With racial tensions rising, Rose Lee Carter must find her place in the burgeoning civil rights movement in this sequel to "Midnight Without a Moon."

"Everything I have to say about race and religion and politics is in the novels," declares Barry Gifford. The Rooster Trapped in the Reptile Room gathers generous portions of all thirteen novels and novellas, as well as first-person essays, generous helpings of poetry, journalism, and a new interview with the author. The broad contours of an episodic output emerge—a full-length view of the freaks and freakish incidents that populate Gifford’s unique human comedy. A world, as Lula, the author’s favorite of all his characters, reflects, "wild at heart and weird on top." The Rooster Trapped in the Reptile Room provides essential reading for anyone after the soul of American writing.

During the 1940s, country music was rapidly evolving from traditional songs and string band styles to honky-tonk, western swing, and bluegrass, via radio, records, and film. The Blue Sky Boys, brothers Bill (1917-2008) and Earl (1919-1998) Bolick, resisted the trend, preferring to perform folk and parlor songs, southern hymns, and new compositions that enhanced their trademark intimacy and warmth. They were still in their teens when they became professional musicians to avoid laboring in Depression-era North Carolina cotton mills. Their instantly recognizable style was fully formed by 1936, when even their first records captured soulful harmonies accented with spare guitar and mandolin accompaniments. They inspired imitators, but none could duplicate the Blue Sky Boys' emotional appeal or their distinctive Catawba County accents. Even their last records in the 1970s retained their unique magical sound decades after other country brother duets had come and gone. In this absorbing account, Dick Spottswood combines excerpts from Bill Bolick's numerous spoken interviews and written accounts of his music, life, and career into a single narrative that presents much of the story in Bill's own voice. Spottswood reveals fascinating nuggets about broadcasting, recording, and surviving in the 1930s world of country music. He describes how the growing industry both aided and thwarted the Bolick brothers' career, and how World War II nearly finished it. The book features a complete, extensively annotated list of Blue Sky Boys songs, an updated discography that includes surviving unpublished records, and dozens of vintage photos and sheet music covers.

"And the Sky Was Clean" is a compelling story; beautifully written about life on the windswept shores of a small southern town on the Gulf of Mexico; Long Beach, Mississippi. It was the summer of '69 that a monster was lurking in the Atlantic Ocean, biding her time and growing like a fast spreading cancer. Her name was Camille. She would be dubbed "the storm of a lifetime"; devastating the entire Gulf Coast and a way of life beloved by all. The Gervais' family, like so much of the Coast, is a melting pot of cultures. Gene, the patriarch hailed from the beautiful land of lakes in far off St. Paul Minnesota. He met married Ida, a daughter of the south, whose roots run deep in the Mississippi mud after World War II while stationed at Keesler Air Force Base in the nearby town of Biloxi. Later, their youngest, Cathy would fall in love with a handsome young Biloxi boy by the name of Ricky Suarez who's Cajun French and Spanish ancestry is forever linked with the sea and all her bounty. While the south endured times of civil unrest and the Vietnam War, it also was forced to suffer through Camille, a level five catastrophic hurricane on a hot August night in 1969; who forever changed the standard of measurement for all other storms that rolled ashore thereafter. Then in 2005, the storm of all storms: hurricane Katrina made Camille look as though it were a mere warm up performance for the main act. It's been said that hurricane Camille killed more people in 2005 than she did in 1969, due to the local attitudes that espoused her as the icon of all storms, the tempest that would surely never come to pass again! As New Orleans took center stage in the national news, the fact that Mississippi bore the brunt of Katrina's wrath was lost to a nation glued to events unfolding in the Crescent City. Countless small villages and communities across Mississippi were plunged into darkness, cut off from the rest of the world; struggling to survive the elements! Life and the effects of these two catastrophic events are told in this compelling story based on the events as they unfolded with both families, bound by the love of their two children for one another. Each family is touched and forever changed by their struggles and triumphs as Cathy and Ricky discover through their faith in God that no matter how great the battle; God's love and hope is greater still!