Rocky Roads and Bare Feet is about the times of a young boy growing up in rural Alabama in the decade of the 1950s. It is learning the hard way and how children thought and passed the time. The stories tell of a new generation who began life and grew into a time when there were no astronauts, no interstate highways and television was the newest rave. The stories and tall tales of Rocky Roads and Bare Feet are about the author and his brothers and sister as they grew up in the 1950s. These stories are the ones I told to my children. They were told as we sat on the porch in a swing or a rocking chair. In the evenings when there was nothing else to do, Jennifer, would say Daddy, tell me about when you were a little boy. The stories in the book were written to be passed on to my grandchildren. Many of the stories are true; the seven tall tales have fictional characters but are true more-or-less. The stories are interesting if you want to know how it was back then. Jeff Harper

Jeannie MacPherson left her ice cream empire to find peace on a rustic Maine island. Instead she found irascible Matthew Connelly, recovering from a suspicious gunshot wound. It didn’t help that he was drop-dead gorgeous. Or that he was just as reluctantly attracted to her as she was to him. Connelly had secrets, and Jeannie didn’t trust him. But that wasn’t enough to keep her away from him. Or to keep her from following him when he left without warning. Neither of them wanted to fall in love. But sometimes fate has other plans.

Mary Muriel Hall (nee Burns) was raised in a humble four-room house in Ennis, Ireland, In the 1940s. In this touching memoir, she vividly recalls her harrowing-yet often humorous-childhood. Muriel became familiar with adversity at an unusually young age. In this book, she remembers family life as a toddler with an abusive, alcoholic father and shares stories of a childhood marked by the tumultuous relationship of her mam and dad. Muriel recalls with special fondness her grandfather, who becomes the lone beacon of hope in her increasingly turbulent life. She recounts the sudden death of her father, a loss that combined intense sadness with an odd sense of family relief. She remembers the family move to England that allowed her to shed the negativity which surrounded her childhood, she started to look to a brighter future with mixed emotions. Feelings of great highs but also the dread of a different educational system, the meeting of new friends, whilst at the same time trying to bury the past, the same past which led her to pen this book (My Rocky Road & Beyond), accounting the early years in Ennis, Ireland. Circa 1940. The high expectations and hopes for the future. Can this cloud have a silver lining or is it possible that this silver lining is in fact full of clouds. Follow Muriel as she tells in her own words of the struggle to settle and shake the demons and the total disbelief when the unthinkable becomes a reality once again. In all, this is a book that weaves together personal stories to reveal the rich tapestry that was and Irish woman's life.

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In this autobiographical book, the author gives an informative and lively account of the first eight years of his and his family's living and serving in pre-revolutionary feudal Ethiopia. It is a story of adventure as a novice missionary couple learns and adapts to a vastly different culture while raising a family in the less developed hinterlands. The events take place from 1967 to 1975, a pivotal time in Ethiopia’s history; a time marked by growing discontent with feudalism and the ancient imperial regime that supported it. It was a time of growing turmoil that, in the midst of drought and famine, spilled over into an armed revolution; a time when ignorant men with guns over-powered the best minds and forced a tradition-bound society to join in a bloody experiment with radical socialism. It was a time when the slow and difficult years of missionary effort in planting the seeds of the Christian gospel began to sprout and take root and grow into what would become a mighty movement of transformation in that society.

On October 15, 1983, a young mother of six was murdered while walking across her village of Huitzilan de Serdán, Mexico, with her infant son and one of her daughters. This woman, Victoria Bonilla, was among more than one hundred villagers who perished in violence that broke out soon after the Mexican army chopped down a cornfield that had been planted on an unused cattle pasture by forty Nahuat villagers. In this anthropological account, based on years of fieldwork in Huitzilan, James M. Taggart turns to Victoria's husband, Nacho Angel Hernández, to try to understand how a community based on respect and cooperation descended into horrific violence and fratricide. When the army chopped down the cornfield at Talcuaco, the war that broke out resulted in the complete breakdown of the social and moral order of the community. At its heart, this is a tragic love story, chronicling Nacho's feelings for Victoria spanning their courtship, marriage, family life, and her death. Nacho delivered his testimonio to the author in Nahuat, making it one of the few autobiographical love stories told in an Amerindian language, and a very rare account of love among the indigenous people of Mesoamerica. There is almost nothing in the literature on how a man develops and changes his feelings for his wife over his lifetime. This study contributes to the anthropology of emotion by focusing on how the Nahuat attempt to express love through language and ritual.

Jake Stone was a recent college graduate who decided to move to New York City to pursue a career in Finance. Jake is man who is just one step away from being a regular guy, except for his uncanny knack for finding himself in the heart of trouble. When fate tosses him between the fierce agendas of the Mob and the FBI, Jake's life takes a turn that's anything but ordinary. The Mob and the FBI both have a genuine interest in having Jake as an ally. Their competing agendas are not exactly what Jake envision for his life. Their influence is so outside of ordinary, that the lines between hero and villain get distorted amid the bustling background of New York City. Antillus Stone is a story characterized with constant twists and a deep dive into the souls of its characters. Each page invites you to ponder the nature of right and wrong and what it means to be family. The author will plot an entertaining course that leads to an explosive conclusion where Jake must rise to save the day. I appreciate your time in exploring this journey with me and I hope that your time is well spent.