John Grisham is the home run king of legal thrillers. Fans devour his books and can't wait for each blockbuster book every February. Since 2001, he has written a second, lightweight novella in the fall. This is gourmet Grisham. But who is John Grisham--the real John Grisham? He is an illusive, private, and mysterious person, who shuns publicity. The author of The John Grisham Story: from baseball to bestsellers peels away the layers of this fascinating Mississippi boy, who longed to be a professional baseball player. Grisham was a criminal lawyer, a Mississippi legislator, and is presently a novelist. Grisham came from a family of storytellers. His gypsy life as a child, moving from Arkansas to many small towns in Mississippi, was fodder for many of his ideas. Life experiences for Grisham left him full of disdain for lawyers, politicians, and government. Yet, he is a spiritual man, a family man, and an anonymous giver to charities. Buried behind his acres of land in the rolling hills of Virginia, Grisham coaches Little League and uses his novels to espouse his causes against homelessness, insurance scams, and crooked lawyers. Here is the inside story of John Grisham, written in a lively, informative, and colorful style.

With his seven legal thrillers, all published since 1989, John Grisham has won a huge following of readers and set a standard few contributors to the genre can match. Because of the success of his novels, the legal thriller is the most popular genre in American fiction today. In this study, Pringle explains how Grisham's legal thriller evolved from the thriller tradition and borrowed from the heroic romance novel, gothic novel, crime novel, and detective fiction. She shows how his novels examine contemporary social and legal problems that do not have simple solutions—ecology, ethnic relations, capital punishment, corporate greed, and health insurance—and how he depicts both the legal system and lawyers in their best and worst lights. Following a biographical chapter that focuses on Grisham's childhood in Arkansas, education, political career, and development as a writer, Pringle examines the legal thriller, its antecedents, and Grisham's contribution to the genre. An individual chapter is devoted to analysis of each of his novels. Each chapter synopsizes the novel, discusses its reception by critics, and features sections on plot development, character development, social/historical context and issues, and an alternative critical perspective from which to approach the novel, such as psychoanalytic theory or feminist criticism. The work includes a complete bibliography of Grisham's work, critical sources, and list of reviews of all of his novels. Because of Grisham's popularity with adults and young adults and the contemporary issues he raises, this study is valuable to students, book discussion group participants, and other interested readers, and is an essential purchase for school and public libraries.

This volume features in-depth, oral interviews with eleven incarcerated women, each of whom offers a narrative of her life and her reading experiences within prison walls. The women share powerful stories about their complex and diverse efforts to negotiate difficult relationships, exercise agency in restrictive circumstances, and find meaning and beauty in the midst of pain. Their shared emphases on abuse, poverty, addiction, and mental illness illuminate the pathways that lead many women to prison and suggest possibilities for addressing the profound social problems that fuel crime. Framing the narratives within an analytic introduction and reflective afterword, Megan Sweeney highlights the crucial intellectual work that the incarcerated women perform despite myriad restrictions on reading and education in U.S. prisons. These women use the limited reading materials available to them as sources of guidance and support and as tools for self-reflection and self-education. Through their creative engagements with books, the women learn to reframe their own life stories, situate their experiences in relation to broader social patterns, deepen their understanding of others, experiment with new ways of being, and maintain a sense of connection with their fellow citizens on both sides of the prison fence.

John Grisham is one of the most prolific and beloved mystery writers today, still reaching the top of the bestseller lists with books like The Testament (1999) and King of Torts (2003). In recent times, he has also experimented with different genres, such as A Painted House (2001), a semi-autobiographical work, and Skipping Christmas (2001), a holiday narrative. This volume follows up the critical analysis of Grisham's work in John Grisham: A Critical Companion, examining his writing from 1997 to the present.

After an illuminating account of the history of Patrick and Henry counties, which occupies the first third of the book, the authors turn their attention to genealogy, providing authoritative histories of no fewer than 110 families. The genealogies generally begin with the first settler in either Patrick or Henry County and proceed to enumerate descendants in several generations, providing incidental detail according to the materials available. In addition to the remarkable collection of genealogies, the book also contains transcriptions of important genealogical source materials, such as the Patrick and Henry land grants and patents registered in the old Land Office in Richmond.

Just what is it that we want from the past? History offers us true stories about the past; heritage sells or provides us with the past we appear to desire. The dividing line between history and heritage is, however, far from clear. This collection of papers addresses the division between history and heritage by looking at the ways in which we make use of the past, the way we consume our yesterdays. Looking at a wide variety of fields, including architectural history, museums, films, novels and politics, the authors examine the ways in which the past is invoked in contemporary culture, and question the politics of drawing upon 'history' in present-day practices. In topics ranging from Braveheart to Princess Diana, the Piltdown Man to the National History Curriculum, war memorials to stately homes, "History and Heritage" explores the presence of the past in our lives, and asks, how, and to what end, are we using the idea of the past. Who is consuming the past and why?

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In his first collection of short stories John Grisham takes us back to Ford County, Mississippi, the setting of his first novel, A Time to Kill. This riveting collection of short stories features an unforgettable cast of characters: Wheelchair-bound Inez Graney and her two older sons embark on a bizarre road trip through the Mississippi Delta to visit Inez’s youngest son, Raymond—on death row. A hard-drinking, low-grossing divorce lawyer fed up with his wife, his life, and the law plans a drastic escape after an unexpected phone call. A quiet, unassuming data collector sets out to bring down a flashy casino owner with his skill at blackjack—as payback for the theft of his wife. A stalker hunts victims in a retirement home, a lawyer confronts a vengeful adversary from the past, and a young man from a prominent family is driven off by scandal and fear—but finds unexpected redemption on the wrong side of the tracks. Often hilarious, frequently moving, and always entertaining, this collection makes it abundantly clear why John Grisham is our most popular storyteller. Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!

Once again, the State of Arkansas has adopted An Arkansas History for Young People as an official textbook for middle-level and/or junior-high-school Arkansas-history classes. This fourth edition incorporates new research done after extensive consultations with middle-level and junior-high teachers from across the state, curriculum coordinators, literacy coaches, university professors, and students themselves. It includes a multitude of new features and is now full color throughout. This edition has been completely redesigned and now features a modern format and new graphics suitable for many levels of student readers.

This volume contains biographical sketches of some 1,200 and genealogical data of some 30,000 other families / individuals for the following counties: Anderson, Blount, Bradley, Campbell, Clairborne, Cocke, Grainger, Greene, Hamblen, Hamilton, Hancock, Hawkins, James, Jefferson, Johnson, Knox, Loudon, McMinn, Meigs, Monroe, Morgan, Polk, Rhea, Roane, Sevier, Sullivan, Unicoi, Union, and Washington.