Browse A-Z Authors: Ma-Mb

This study of church discipline cases describes a system of subjection with obligations for all--men, women, parents, children, masters, and servants. Although many historians have mistaken this for "oppression," most Southerners accepted the idea of "subjection," regarding it as a divinely ordained system for their mutual governance and benefit. Using Baptist church record books from across North and South Carolina, the author invites readers to sit in on business meetings of the past to see how churches regulated the behavior of their members. Chapter 1, "Subjection: A Cultural Consensus," describes this system of subjection that encompassed members from all walks of life. Chapter 2, "Unity and Discord," examines cases of general contention between church members, demonstrating that churches expected brothers and sisters to submit to each other in Christian fellowship. Chapter 3, "Crucifying the Carnal Man," focuses on discipline cases wherein men were brought under subjection to church standards. Chapter 4, "Fellow labourers," examines financial matters, demonstrating that while expectations varied for men and women, they both bore financial responsibilities as church members, and both were held equally accountable for their secular dealings. Chapter 5, "Promiscuity and Marriage," concentrates on the relationship between husbands and wives, a common symbol of Christian subjection. Complete with a map and statistical tables, this book argues that church discipline bound everyone together in mutual subjection to a shared code of conduct rather than empowering white men exclusively with a position of authority over others.

Dr. Madison combines her experience as historian and a homeschooling mother in this collection of five poems about church history, complete with contemporary illustrations. Poems include "Religions of the World," "The Waldenses of the Alps," "The Lollards of Britain," "The Baptists of America," and "Passing the Torch."

Baptists who migrated from England and Wales to the Delaware Valley brought with them conflicting ideas about what it meant to be a Baptist. Doctrinal, cultural, and political differences shaped two competing interpretations of denominational identity, as envisioned by "outsiders" and "insiders." At the associational level, the contest demanded a certain degree of consensus, and by the early nineteenth century the Philadelphia Baptist Association had committed to an assimilationist path that would make them "reckoned among the nations."

Children's. "This is the story of a small family farm across several generations. Part historical fiction and part personal memoir, it reminds us of what is most important in life." --Kentucky Humanities

Fiction; 160 pages. Josephine Wildt Cardwell, 29, has been waiting for several years to land the reporting job she really wants at the Paducah Sun. Few people on staff know more about the town's history than Jo, but she has been relegated to event planning and research by a good old boy editor who clearly got his job from an old fraternity brother. One day, she receives an anonymous note on her desk at work that makes her reconsider everything she thought she knew about her lineage. It seems that her parents, dead from a plane crash while on an archaeological research trip in Italy when she was 6, are not actually her biological relatives. The story jumps to 1978, and a young woman named Lilly who goes away to college and finds herself in love for the first time. Her family doesn't approve of her choice, so she decides to run away with her love, which results in scandal, a broken heart and a tragedy.

Poems; 95 pages. Untitled and unpunctuated, the seventy poems in this collection seem to cascade from one page to another. Maurice Manning extolls the virtues of nature and its many gifts, and finds deep gratitude for the mysterious hand that created it all.

Poems; 96 pages. The Common Man, Maurice Manning's fourth collection, is a series of ballad-like narratives, set down in loose, unrhymed iambic tetrameter, that honors the strange beauty of the Kentucky mountain country he knew as a child, as well as the idiosyncratic adventures and personalities of the old-timers who were his neighbors, friends, and family. Playing off the book's title, Manning demonstrates that no one is common or simple. Instead, he creates a detailed, complex, and poignant portrait-by turns serious and hilarious, philosophical and speculative, but ultimately tragic-of a fast-disappearing aspect of American culture.The Common Man's accessibility and its enthusiastic and sincere charms make it the perfect antidote to the glib ironies that characterize much contemporary American verse.It will also help to strengthen Manning's reputation as one of his generation's most important and original voices. AUTHOR MAURICE MANNING, the author of four collections of poetry, was awarded the 2009 Hanes Poetry Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His first book, Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions, was selected by W. S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets.

Poems; 128 pages. This collection of highly original narrative poems is written in the voice of frontiersman Daniel Boone and captures all the beauty and struggle of nascent America. We follow the progression of Daniel Boone's life, a life led in war and in the wilderness, and see the birth of a new nation. We track the bountiful animals and the great, undisturbed rivers. We stand beside Boone as he buries his brother, then his wife, and finds comfort in his friendship with a slave named Derry. Praised for his originality, Maurice Manning is an exciting new voice in American poetry. The darkest place I've ever been did not require a name. It seemed to be a gathering place for the lint of the world. The bottom of a hollow beneath two ridges, sunk like a stone. The water was surely old, the dregs of some ancient sea, but purified by time, like a man made better by his years, his old hurts absorbed into his soul, his losses like a spring in his breast. -from "Born Again"

Poems; 54 unnumbered pages.

Poems, 95 pages. Welcome to "Fog Town Holler," Pulitzer Prize finalist Maurice Manning's glorious rendering of a landscape not unlike his native Kentucky. Conjuring this mythical place from his own roots and memories -- not unlike E. A. Robinson's Tilbury Town or Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County -- Manning celebrates and echoes the voices and lives of his beloved hill people. In Fog Town Holler men have "funny names," like Tiny Too and Eula Loom. A fox is known as Redleg Johnny. A neighbor issues a complaint against an early-rising rooster; another lives in the chicken coop. "Lawse," a woman exclaims, "the sun can't hardly find this place!" But they feel the Lord watching, always, as the green water of Shoestring Branch winds its way through hillbilly haunts and memories. The real world no longer resembles the one brought so vividly to life in the poems in these pages, but through his meditations on his boyhood home, Manning is able to recapture what was lost and still, yet, move beyond it. He brings light to this place the sun can't find and brings a lost world beautifully, magically, once again into our present.

This year's winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Maurice Manning's Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions. These compelling poems take us on a wild ride through the life of a man-child in the rural South. Presenting a cast of allegorical, yet very real, characters, the poems have authority, daring, and a language of colour and sure movement, says series judge W.S. Merwin. Maurice Manning is a native of Danville, Kentucky.

Poetry; 32 unnumbered pages. "This book was handset in Cloister Lightface type, printed on a hand-fed C&P, then handbound. 400 copies were printed on Mohawk Superfine paper. A special edition of 46 copies was printed on Rives paper. The wood engravings are by Wesley Bates. Design, composition, printing and binding by Leslie Shane, Carolyn Whitesel and Gray Zeitz at Larkspur Press."--Colophon.

Poems. "Maurice Manning displays not just terrific cunning but terrific aim." --New York Times Book Review "Manning's genius--his truly staggering genius--is in his ability to put this ancient question into a true American idiom, to make this fundamental human inquiry both vividly, heartbreakingly poignant and madly, idiosyncratically his own." --Smartish Pace "He's saved himself with the most basic of things--a place, its people, and one of its songs." --Orion Pulitzer finalist Maurice Manning is at the height of his powers as he searches through layers of dreams, imagination, and memory to reconnect with oneself and one's place in the cosmos. Drawing deep from his Kentucky roots, Manning's poems are peopled with ordinary and extraordinary rural characters, as he gives voice to a region well-loved and full of tradition. From "Something to Say about Possums": I've taken so many backward steps, I have believed history can be explained, only to learn, like sin, it can't. How I've needed more and more forgiveness! I've needed grace, and followed it into a dream of green and yellow light coming from a-way on high, maybe a mountain.

Poetry; 9 unnumbered pages. Cover is handmade cotton and Osage orange bark paper. "Produced with permission from Grinnin Possum Press; published in a limited edition of 40." -- Colophon.

Poems; 35 pages. In an edition of 100 copies. "This book was handset in American Uncial type, printed on a hand-fed C & P on dampened Copperplate paper, then handbound. The wood engraving 'Boss's Bucket' was cut by John Andrew Dixon. Design, composition, printing and binding by Leslie Shane and Gray Zeitz at Larkspur Press."--Colophon.

The venture of this inviting collection is to look, from the many vantages that the 35 poets in this eclectic anthology chose to look, at what it was--knowing that a poem can't be conceived in advance of its creation--that helped their poems to emerge or connected them over time. The Rag-Picker's Guide to Poetry permits an inside view of how poets outwit internal censors and habits of thought, showing how the meticulous and the spontaneous come together in the process of discovery. Within are contained the work and thoughts of: Betty Adcock, Joan Aleshire, Debra Allbery, Elizabeth Arnold, David Baker, Rick Barot, Marianne Boruch, Karen Brennan, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Michael Collier, Carl Dennis, Stuart Dischell, Roger Fanning, Chris Forhan, Reginald Gibbons, Linda Gregerson, Jennifer Grotz, Brooks Haxton, Tony Hoagland, Mark Jarman, A. Van Jordan, Laura Kasischke, Mary Leader, Dana Levin, James Longenbach, Thomas Lux, Maurice Manning, Heather McHugh, Martha Rhodes, Alan Shapiro, Daniel Tobin, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Alan Williamson, Eleanor Wilner, and C. Dale Young.

Poems, 87 pages. Railsplitter, the seventh collection from Pulitzer Prize Finalist and Guggenheim Fellow Maurice Manning, envisions the role of poetry in the life of Abraham Lincoln. Manning, who writes each piece in Lincoln's persona, provides a lasting reflection on how poetry guided and shaped the President's mind while leading a divided nation. Equal parts prophetic and rich in both rural folklore and literary allusions--from Shakespeare, to Whitman, to Poe, to the comedic--Railsplitter transcends the darkness of Lincoln's time, to imagine a new lore entirely--one comprised of buzzard feather quills, horse treats in a top hat, and finally, a fateful bullet. Lincoln, who was born nearby to Maurice Manning's childhood home in Kentucky, is alive again, in new form.

Poems; 40 unnumbered pages. "[The book] was composed in DeRoos types & printed at the press in the year of our Lord, 2008. Gaylord Schanilec did the wood engravings. Of forty-eight copies, this is number ..."--Colophon.

A Tracker for the dead, named Gatchett, steps into the Graveyard where all souls arrive after their untimely deaths. In this case, a ghost sends Gatchett to avenge not only her own murder, but her child's, as well. The problem is the fact that the murderer is Eero--Gatchett's vampire brother. In this adventure, our hero must locate his brother, sifting through a mist of terror.

Against their parents' wishes, Gilbert and Bobby trespass into an abandoned old house, unaware of the horrors that lurk inside. With Bobby's sudden disappearance, Gilbert finds himself caught up in an adventure that only starts with the ghosts who reside in the house. After stepping through a door into the Sectors, Gilbert is confronted with an entirely new world populated with werewolves, vampires, zombies, ghosts, robots, humans and a cannibal...

This is the sequel to the first Shepherd book, "Blue Lights in a Jar." The Shepherd has returned. This time accompanied by cyclopean, yellow-eyed, dark-skinned sulfuric smelling monsters called the Ockuli. Their job is to help him to not only search for human souls, but bodies for his army. Right now the Shepherd has directed his sights on a soul named Mason who has escaped the imprisonment of the glass jar. A young girl named Nettie finds herself in the clutches of everyday stress in middle school, soon stumbling into a ghostly world entitled the Sublime with her brother Nate--as well as helping Mason elude the wrath of the Shepherd. The Afterlife has surprises lurking around each corner, especially when it emerges that a computer teacher who teaches at Nettie's school is their only hope.

A villain called the Shepherd has lost one of his flock, a soul who he has collected and has stuffed in a jar, placing it in his room in Purgatory. A kind-hearted, plump fellow named Vergil is the flock's only hope not only to escape the Shepherd, but to find the way to Heaven. Follow along as the world shifts into odd scenery of the afterlife where one encounters the dead - but not long forgotten.

Riley Lewis stands atop an enormous cliff with an abusive father, teenage bullies, and the demon inside the closet all ready to shove him over the edge. When he reaches his limits will he finally break free of the terror that threatens to consume him, or will he become the monster that everyone wants him to be?

Some say a person can change attitudes, change moods, and so forth, but in this tale Selwyn's change involves a slip into the odd and into the bizarre as he is shoved into a world without an option of looking back, only an option of looking over his shoulder, watching out for the horrors.

Transitional Delusions, book 1. A scarecrow crucified on a wooden cross made from a pair of two-by-fours sits in a field of corn, placed there to frighten away birds and protect the crops. Under its straw hat large buttons pose as its eyes, placed there by child's fingers, view something sinister in the grave sky, appearing in front of the full moon. Twisting, it forms into a sleek black mass, peering down upon the town of Woodbury. Four demons called The Reckoning has pulled this shadow, this urban legend from the past, out of an unmarked grave to bring terror across the planet, shoving it toward an apocalypse. Now it cuts through the air, as if it were opening wounds in flesh, peering down at the first house that it hovers over... Shadow Out of the Sky is Book One of the Transitional Delusions Series

Transitional Delusions, book 2. The Shift of the world transitioned without delusion. The Reckoning has molded a brand new world, beginning with a colony ran by a large corporation called Slader Corp which invents a bizarre lottery, randomly choosing a winner, awarding him or her with infamous amounts of BodyKredd to spend nearly however they wish; though, in turn, surrendering their bodies to the demi agents when they come calling. But what happens when a child wins the lottery?

Juvenile fiction; 279 pages. Free ebook available through Project Gutenberg, Google Books, and Internet Archive.

Juvenile fiction; 305 pages. Free ebook available through Project Gutenberg and ExploreUK.

Fiction; 111 pages. Free ebook available through Project Gutenberg and ExploreUK.

Fiction; 379 pages. Free ebook available through Google Books, Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, and ExploreUK.

Fiction; 409 pages. Free ebook available through Internet Archive, HathiTrust, Project Gutenberg, and ExploreUK.

Fiction; 285 pages. Free ebook available through Google Books and HathiTrust.

Juvenile Fiction; 252 pages. Free ebook available through Internet Archive.

Fiction; 206 pages. Free ebook available through Project Gutenberg and ExploreUK.

Fiction; 134 pages. Free ebook available through Project Gutenberg and ExploreUK.

Fiction; 351 pages. Free ebook available through Google Books and Internet Archive.

Fiction; 281 pages.

Fiction, short stories. Contents: The star-spangled banner / by Marion Hill --A little feminine Casabianca / by George Madden Martin --A white sheep / by G.K. Turner --A tune in court / by Marion Hill --The little boy and his pa / by Ellsworth Kelley --The accolade / by Louise Herrick Wall --A love story / by Annie Webster. Free ebook available through Internet Archive and HathiTrust.

"Reprinted from McClure's Magazine for October 1922." Free ebook available through HathiTrust.

Zadie Anson and Emma Colley have been best friends since their early twenties, when they first began navigating serious romantic relationships amid the intensity of medical school. Now they're happily married wives and mothers with successful careers - Zadie as a pediatric cardiologist and Emma as a trauma surgeon. Their lives in Charlotte, North Carolina are chaotic but fulfilling, until the return of a former colleague unearths a secret one of them has been harbouring for years.

In this whip-smart and timely novel from acclaimed author Kimmery Martin, two doctors travel a surprising path when they must choose between treating their patients and keeping their jobs. Georgia Brown's profession as a urologist requires her to interact with plenty of naked men, but her romantic prospects have fizzled. The most important person in her life is her friend Jonah Tsukada, a funny, empathetic family medicine doctor who works at the same hospital in Charleston, South Carolina and who has become as close as family to her. Just after Georgia leaves the country for a medical conference, Jonah shares startling news. The hospital is instructing doctors to stop providing medical care for transgender patients. Jonah, a gay man, is the first to be fired when he refuses to abandon his patients. Stunned by the predicament of her closest friend, Georgia's natural instinct is to fight alongside him. But when her attempts to address the situation result in incalculable harm, both Georgia and Jonah find themselves facing the loss of much more than their careers.

Hannah, Compton, and Kira have been close friends since medical school, reuniting once a year for a much-needed vacation. Just as they gather to travel in Spain, an outbreak of a fast-spreading virus throws the world into chaos. When Compton Winfield returns to her job as an ER doctor in New York City, she finds a city changed beyond recognition--and a personal loss so gutting it reshapes every aspect of her life. Hannah Geier's career as an ob-gyn in San Diego is fulfilling but she's always longed for a child of her own. After years of trying, Hannah discovers she's expecting a baby just as the disease engulfs her city. Kira Marchand, an infectious disease doctor at the CDC in Atlanta, finds herself at the center of the American response to the terrifying new illness. Her professional battle turns personal when she must decide whether her children will receive an experimental but potentially life-saving treatment. Written prior to Covid-19 by a former emergency medicine physician, Doctors and Friends incorporates unexpected wit, razor-edged poignancy, and a deeply relatable cast of characters who provoke both laughter and tears. Martin provides a unique insider's perspective into the world of medical professionals working to save lives during the most difficult situations of their careers.

Fiction. 303 pages; 22 cm.

Reed Futrell spends his time working in the town's uranium plant and chasing his girlfriend, a biologist named Julia, until rumors of plutonium contamination at the plant and Reed's refusal to see the danger threaten their relationship.

Ann Workman is smart but naïve, a misfit who's traveled from rural Kentucky to graduate school in the transformative years of the late 1960s. While Ann fervently seeks higher learning, she wants what all girls yearn for--a boyfriend. But not any boy. She wants the "Real Thing," to be in love with someone who loves her equally. Then Jimmy appears as if by magic. Although he comes from a very different place, upper-middle class suburban Chicago, he is a misfit too, a rebel who rejects his upbringing and questions everything. Ann and Jimmy bond through music and literature and their own quirkiness, diving headfirst into what seems to be a perfect relationship. But with the Vietnam War looming and the country in turmoil, their future is uncertain. Many years later, Ann recalls this time of innocence--and her own obsession with Jimmy--as she faces another life crisis. Seeking escape from her problems, she tries to imagine where she might be if she had chosen differently all those years ago. What if she had gone to Stanford University, as her mentor had urged, instead of a small school on the East Coast? Would she have been caught up in the Summer of Love and its subsequent dark turns? Or would her own good sense have saved her from disaster? Beautifully written and expertly told, Dear Ann is the wrenching story of one woman's life and the choices she has made. Bobbie Ann Mason captures at once the excitement of youth and the nostalgia of age, and how consideration of the road not taken--the interplay of memory and imagination--can illuminate, and perhaps overtake, our present.

From prize-winning author Bobbie Ann Mason, a brilliantly wrought novel about the first woman to give birth to quintuplets in early 1900s America. Set in the apocalyptic atmosphere of 1900--a time when many Americans were looking for signs foretelling the end of the world--Feather Crowns is the story of a young woman who unintentionally creates a national sensation. A farm wife living near the small town of Hopewell, Kentucky, Christianna Wheeler gives birth to the first recorded set of quintuplets in North America. Christie is suddenly thrown into a swirling storm of public attention. Hundreds of strangers descend on her home, all wanting to see and touch the "miracle babies." The fate of the babies and the bizarre events that follow their births propel Christie and her husband far from home, on a journey that exposes them to the turbulent pageant of life at the beginning of the modern era. Richly detailed and poignant, Feather Crowns focuses on one woman but opens out ultimately into the chronicle of a time and a people. Written in Bobbie Ann Mason's taut yet lyrical prose, the novel ranges from a peaceful farming community to a fire-and-brimstone revival camp, from traveling shows to the the nation's capital. Moving through the center of it all is Christie, a charming, headstrong, loving woman who struggles heroically to come to terms with the extraordinary events of her long life. Feather Crowns is an American parable of profound resonance. Spellbindingly readable, it is a novel of classic stature that confirmed Bobbie Ann Mason as one of America's most important writers. First published in 1993. Finalist for the National Book Critics Circles Award.

Inspired by the wartime experiences of her late father-in-law, award-winning author Bobbie Ann Mason has written an unforgettable novel about an American World War II pilot shot down in Occupied Europe. When Marshall Stone returns to his crash site decades later, he finds himself drawn back in time to the brave people who helped him escape from the Nazis. He especially recalls one intrepid girl guide who risked her life to help him--the girl in the blue beret. At twenty-three, Marshall Stone was a U.S. flyboy stationed in England. Headstrong and cocksure, he had nine exhilarating bombing raids under his belt when enemy fighters forced his B-17 to crash-land in a Belgian field near the border of France. The memories of what happened next--the frantic moments right after the fiery crash, the guilt of leaving his wounded crewmates and fleeing into the woods to escape German troops, the terror of being alone in a foreign country--all come rushing back when Marshall sets foot on that Belgian field again. Marshall was saved only by the kindness of ordinary citizens who, as part of the Resistance, moved downed Allied airmen through clandestine, often outrageous routes (over the Pyrenees to Spain) to get them back to their bases in England. Even though Marshall shared a close bond with several of the Resistance members who risked their lives for him, after the war he did not look back. But now he wants to find them again--to thank them and renew their ties. Most of all, Marshall wants to find the courageous woman who guided him through Paris. She was a mere teenager at the time, one link in the underground line to freedom. Marshall's search becomes a wrenching odyssey of discovery that threatens to break his heart--and also sets him on a new course for the rest of his life. In his journey, he finds astonishing revelations about the people he knew during the war--none more electrifying and inspiring than the story of the girl in the blue beret. Intimate and haunting, The Girl in the Blue Beret is a beautiful and affecting story of love and courage, war and redemption, and the startling promise of second chances.

Sam Hughes, whose father was killed in Vietnam, lives in rural Kentucky with her uncle Emmett, a veteran whom she suspects is suffering from exposure to Agent Orange. Sam is a typical teenager, trying to choose a college, anticipating a new job at the local Burger Boy, sharing intimacies with her friend Dawn, breaking up with her high school boyfriend, and dealing with her feelings for Tom, one of Emmett's buddies. Sam feels that her life is bound to the war in Vietnam and becomes obsessed with the idea because of the reluctance of her family and Tom to talk about it. Her father's diary finally provides the insight she seeks, insight she cannot accept until she has visited the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. In Country is both a powerful and touching novel of America that analyzes the impact of the 1960s on the culture of the 1980s and a beautiful portrayal of an often forgotten area of the country. --Library Journal review. First published in 1986.

One of the most highly regarded writers in America, the author of In Country, presents 16 wise and potent stories that are mainly about small-town people coping with love: its kinds and degrees, its pressures and residues, its ties and kinks. First published in 1988.

A disabled trucker builds his dream house from Lincoln Logs. A recent divorcee fantasizes about time travel as she lies in a tanning booth and wishes for a future "unbounded by time and space or custody arrangements." These are a few of the people who inhabit the world of Midnight Magic, a collection of Bobbie Ann Mason's best short fiction, featuring "Shiloh." In her signature style, Mason moves quietly through the lives of her Kentucky characters, capturing their tangled aspirations and buried disappointments. Men and women struggle with the ironies of modern life in a traditional rural society, trying to cope with fractured families, television evangelism, women's lib, and MTV. With an introduction by the author especially written for this new volume, this timeless collection chronicles the perplexed lives of contemporary people as they confront our ever-changing society. As one character wryly puts it, "Nobody knows anything. The answers are always changing."

Kentucky native Nancy Culpepper boldly left home to attend school in Massachusetts, married a Yankee, and raised her son in the Northeast. Yet no matter where she travels, her rural southern heritage is never far from her thoughts, her habits, and her heart. Nancy is on a lifelong quest to understand her place in the world. Returning home to the family farm, she brings home strange ideas and an assertiveness she learned up north. Always adventurous, Nancy travels far and wide--searching, seeking. The narrative sweep of her life traverses the turbulent sixties, the Vietnam War, the eighties and the foreboding death of John Lennon, and finally the new millennium--when a self-assured Nancy finally emerges.

"These stories will last," said Raymond Carver of Shiloh and Other Stories when it was first published (1982), and almost two decades later this stunning fiction debut and winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award has become a modern American classic. In Shiloh, Bobbie Ann Mason introduces us to her western Kentucky people and the lives they forge for themselves amid the ups and downs of contemporary American life, and she poignantly captures the growing pains of the New South in the lives of her characters as they come to terms with feminism, R-rated movies, and video games. "Bobbie Ann Mason is one of those rare writers who, by concentrating their attention on a few square miles of native turf, are able to open up new and surprisingly wide worlds for the delighted reader," said Robert Towers in "The New York Review of Books."

Since the night they eloped as teenagers over forty years ago, Spence and Lila have spent a lifetime together. Now Lila has been diagnosed with breast cancer and faces surgery. Spence visits her in the hospital, but the notion of losing his wife is sometimes more than he can bear. He retreats to his fields, to his dog, and to the garden Lila has tended so lovingly through the years. While the children rally to their mother and the neighbors stock the refrigerator, Spence and Lila each recall moments, spent together and apart, that have infused their shared life with subtle, unspoken meaning. Harmoniously, their strands of memory twine into a single narrative, revealing the humor, perseverance, and faith essential to turning two ordinary people into one enduring and happy union. First published in 1988.

In this remarkable book, the author of Shiloh and Other Stories, In Country, and other award-winning books gives us powerful new stories that capture the restless energy of life in contemporary America. The characters here are travelers and seekers, feeling their way toward, or away from the defining moments of their lives. They roam out into the world to England, Alaska, Texas, Saudi Arabia, or ricochet back home to Kentucky, ceaselessly searching, exploring, testing for limits. I felt strange, says Chrissy in With Jazz, as though all my life I had been zigzagging down a wild trail to this particular place. In Charger, a teenage boy races along the interstate, seeking the father who abandoned him years before. In Rolling into Atlanta, a young woman searches for the kind of authenticity she remembers from her rural childhood. In Proper Gypsies, Nancy deals with the shock of being robbed in London. In The Funeral Side, Sandra comes home to try to fulfill her responsibilities to her family, but yearns to escape again to Alaska and the northern lights that haunt her. Writing in the spare, precise, beautifully nuanced language for which she is famous, Bobbie Ann Mason expands her art here in dramatic and illuminating fashion. These fascinating stories bring to life surprising individuals whose journeys shine a bright light on life as it is lived by many Americans today. Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail is a beautiful book by one of America's finest writers, a book full of drama, humor, and startling insights into the timeless longings of the human heart. First published in 2001.

In this superb memoir, the bestselling author of In Country and other award-winning books tells her own story, and the story of a Kentucky farm family, the Masons of Clear Springs. Like Russell Baker's Growing Up, Jill Ker Conway's The Road from Coorain, and other classic literary memoirs,Clear Springs takes us back in time to recapture a way of life that has all but disappeared, a country culture deeply rooted in work and food and family, in common sense and music and the land. Clear Springs is also an American woman's odyssey, exploring how a misfit girl who dreamed of distant places grew up in the forties, fifties, and sixties, and fulfilled her ambition to be a writer. A multilayered narrative of three generations--Bobbie Ann Mason, her parents and grandparents--Clear Springs gracefully interlaces several different lives, decades, and locales, moving from the industrious life on a Kentucky farm to travels around the South with Mason as president of the Hilltoppers Fan Club; from the hippie lifestyle of the 1960s New York counterculture to the shock-therapy ward of a mental institution; from a farmhouse to the set of a Hollywood movie; from pop music concerts to a small rustic schoolhouse. Clear Springs depicts the changes that have come to family, to women, and to heartland America in the twentieth century, as well as to Bobbie Ann Mason herself. When the movie of Mason's bestselling novel In Country is filmed near Clear Springs, it brings the first limousines to town, even as it brings out once again the wisdom and values of Mason's remarkable parents. Her mother,  especially, stands at the center of this book. Mason's journey leads her to a recognition of the drama and significance of her mother's life and to a new understanding of heritage, place, and family roots. Brilliant and evocative, Clear Springs is a stunning achievement.

When Bobbie Ann Mason first heard Elvis Presley on the family radio, she recognized him as "one of us . . . a country person who spoke our language"--Southern, working class, a little wild. In Elvis Presley, the bestselling author of the two modern American classics Shiloh and Other Stories and In Country captures all the vibrancy and tragedy of this mythic figure. With heartfelt intimacy and a novelist's insight, Mason charts the intoxicating life of the first rock-and-roll superstar, whose music shattered barriers and changed the sound of America. Elvis the impassioned singer and charismatic youth embraced the celebrity brought him by a host of top-forty hits and movies. But Elvis the small-town boy and devoted son was in no way prepared for being catapulted into an unimagined stratosphere. This is the riveting story of an unforgettable man and his indelible legacy.

The Girl Sleuth is a book for anyone who fondly recalls her late-night adventures inside a bedspread cave with a flashlight, a handful of snitched cookies, and a savvy heroine who has just two chapters left in which to decode the message, find the jewels, unmask the impostor, and then catch the next express to the big city. In this long-out-of-print work, which was first published in 1975, Bobbie Ann Mason examines the girl detective in her various guises through a combination of childhood reminiscences and insights as a fiction writer and observer of American popular culture. Mason ranges in her coverage from the Bobbsey Twins to the glamorous career-girl detectives Vicki Barr, Cherry Ames, and Beverly Gray to her own adolescent favorites--Judy Bolton, Nancy Drew, and Trixie Belden, a farm girl like herself. Mason's personal recollections of a rural youth spent longing for mysteries to solve represent a quintessential American girlhood experience. Mason reveals Nancy Drew ("as cool as Mata Hari and as sweet as Betty Crocker") to be a paradoxical figure: on the one hand a model of independence and courage; on the other, a lady, eternally feminine and firmly devoted to the preservation of middle-class values. The girl sleuths "thrilled us and contented us at the same time," the author writes. Holding up Nancy Drew as a model of "the conventional and the revolutionary in one compact package," Mason shows how the series heroines encouraged young readers to "dream big" and stay open to life's possibilities, dished up antidotes to spoon-fed notions of traditional femininity, and amiably subverted the literary snobbery of child experts, librarians, and book reviewers. Everyone who grew up reading mystery books will enjoy Bobbie Ann Mason's witty, sometimes nostalgic, observations on popular culture, childhood, and the pleasures of reading and writing.

Nonficiton; 196 pages.

With an introduction by Wade Hall, Morris Grubbs has sifted through vintage classics, little-known gems, and stunning debuts to assemble this collection of forty stories by popular and critically acclaimed writers. In subtle and profound ways they challenge and overturn accepted stereotypes about the land their authors call home, whether by birth or by choice. Kentucky writers have produced some of the finest short stories published in the last fifty years, much of which focuses on the tension between the comforts of community and the siren-like lure of the outside world. Arranged chronologically, from Robert Penn Warren's "Blackberry Winter" to Crystal E. Wilkinson's "Humming Back Yesterday," these stories are linked by their juxtaposition of departures and returns, the familiar and the unknown, home and beyond. Contributors: Robert Penn Warren, Caroline Gordon, James Still, Jane Mayhall, Elizabeth Hardwick, Dean Cadle, Jesse Stuart, Billy C. Clark, Janice Holt Giles, A.B. Guthrie, Jr., Hollis Summers, Ed McClanahan, Sallie Bingham, Robert Hazel, Jack Cady, Jim Wayne Miller, David Madden, Gayl Jones, Jane Stuart, Gurney Norman, Walter Tevis, Bobbie Ann Mason, Joe Ashby Porter, Leon V. Driskell, Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, Richard Cortez Day, Sena Jeter Naslund, Pat Carr, Wendell Berry, James Baker Hall, Lisa Koger, Barbara Kingsolver, Normandi Ellis, Guy Davenport, Kim Edwards, Chris Holbrook, Paul Griner, Chris Offutt, Dwight Allen, Crystal E. Wilkinson. Edited by Morris Allen Grubbs; with an introduction by Wade Hall and an afterword by Charles E. May.

Twayne's Studies in Short Fiction, no. 74. Provides an in-depth critical introduction to the short stories of Bobbie Ann Mason. Includes a detailed analyses of every significant story, biographical information, a chronology of the artist's life and works, and a representative selection of critical responses.

Throughout human history, motherhood and maternal experience have been largely defined and written by patriarchal culture. Religion, art, medicine, psychoanalysis, and other bastions of male power have objectified the maternal and have disregarded female subjectivity. As a result, maternal perspectives have been ignored and the mother's voice silenced. In recent literary texts, however, more substantial attention has been given to motherhood and to the physical, psychological, social, and cultural dynamics affecting maternal experience. In Maternal Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Lee Smith, Paula Gallant Eckard examines how maternal experience is depicted in selected novels by three American writers, emphasizing how they focus on the body and the voice of the mother. These novels include: The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved by Morrison; In Country, Spence + Lila, and Feather Crowns by Mason; and Oral History, Fair and Tender Ladies, and Saving Grace by Smith. By employing this focus, these writers lessen the objectification the maternal has received and restore a rich subjectivity that foregrounds the mother's perspective. Moreover, their fiction reflects a deep concern for history and culture and for a woman's experience of her world. They challenge the traditional representations of black and white motherhood that have appeared in southern literature and society, rendering complex portrayals of motherhood that defy cultural stereotypes. Eckard incorporates historical perspectives on African American and southern motherhood, utilizing the works of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Sally McMillen, Deborah White, Jacqueline Jones, and others. She draws upon the feminist criticism of Adrienne Rich, Elaine Showalter, Naomi Schor, Tillie Olsen, Karla F. C. Holloway, Barbara Christian, and others, and the linguistic and psychoanalytic theories of Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, and Luce Irigaray. The author also addresses the cross-cultural connections shared by Morrison, Mason, and Smith, showing that, despite their racial and cultural differences, striking similarities can be found in their renderings of maternity. The three women writers employ related image patterns, metaphors, and symbols involving the maternal body. By centering maternity so strongly in their novels, Morrison, Mason, and Smith establish the primacy of the mother and obviate the neglect to which maternal perspectives have been subjected. They restore the mother's lost voice and her diminished subjectivity. Together they depict the maternal as a powerful force that shapes human lives and communities.

Bobbie Ann Mason burst onto the American literary scene during a renaissance of short fiction that Raymond Carver called a "literary phenomenon." Anne Tyler hailed Mason as "a full-fledged master of the short story." Mason's work, charged with a spirit of exploration, garnered both popular and critical acclaim. This reader collects outstanding examples of Mason's award-winning work from throughout her writing career and provides a unique look at the development of one of the country's finest writers. Patchwork contains short stories first published in the New Yorker and other leading periodicals; chapters from Mason's acclaimed novels, including In Country, An Atomic Romance, and The Girl in the Blue Beret; and riveting excerpts from Mason's eclectic nonfiction. Some examples of Mason's recent explorations in flash fiction appear here in print for the first time. Mason's writing glows with a nuanced understanding of the struggles and pathos of American life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. George Saunders writes in his introduction, "Bobbie Ann Mason is a strange and beautiful writer.... Her stories exist to gently touch on, and praise, even mourn, what it feels like to be alive in this moment." Patchwork conveys Mason's extraordinary talent and range as a writer.

A study guide to Bobbie Ann Mason's In country which include a profile of the author, an explanation of genre and structure with detailed chapter by chapter synopsis. With a full discussion of themes and issues, review of what the critics say about the text with full examples of a literary essay response and of a creative response.

An analysis introducing Mason's nonfiction prose, short stories and novels. Price sheds light on the writer's distinctive style and thematic concerns in her writings about contemporary Western Kentucky.

Audio disk; approx. 49 minutes. Originally produced as an audiocassette in 1985. Recorded April 1985 in the author's home in rural Pennsylvania. Covers Mason's major thematic and aesthetic concerns, including her use of popular culture and her commitment to writing about the kind of people who make up the majority of the American population, such as those who shop at K-Mart, listen to rock and roll, and believe in the American dream.

Archival material. Housed at the Kentucky Historical Society.
Collection consists of 41 boxes of letters, drafts of his publications; copies of interviews conducted by James Baker Hall with other writers; draft copies of manuscripts from other authors; drafts of unpublished James Baker Hall stories, poems, and two novels; journals and notebooks; and memorabilia (clippings, magazines, etc.) related to the literary career of James Baker Hall. Included are letters from Hall's literary friends and colleagues such as Wendell Berry, Robert Hazel, Ed McClanahan, Bobbie Ann Mason, Gurney Norman, and Barry Spacks, as well as other artists.

DVD; approx. 120 minutes. Dramatic portrayal of a reclusive war vet and his 17 year old niece as they struggle to heal the wounds of Vietnam. Based on the book by Bobbie Ann Mason. Videodisc release of the 1989 motion picture.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and The Romanovs returns with another masterpiece of narrative biography, the extraordinary story of an obscure young German princess who traveled to Russia at fourteen and rose to become one of the most remarkable, powerful, and captivating women in history. Born into a minor noble family, Catherine transformed herself into Empress of Russia by sheer determination. Possessing a brilliant mind and an insatiable curiosity as a young woman, she devoured the works of Enlightenment philosophers and, when she reached the throne, attempted to use their principles to guide her rule of the vast and backward Russian empire. She knew or corresponded with the preeminent historical figures of her time: Voltaire, Diderot, Frederick the Great, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, Marie Antoinette, and, surprisingly, the American naval hero, John Paul Jones. Reaching the throne fired by Enlightenment philosophy and determined to become the embodiment of the "benevolent despot" idealized by Montesquieu, she found herself always contending with the deeply ingrained realities of Russian life, including serfdom. She persevered, and for thirty-four years the government, foreign policy, cultural development, and welfare of the Russian people were in her hands. She dealt with domestic rebellion, foreign wars, and the tidal wave of political change and violence churned up by the French Revolution that swept across Europe. Her reputation depended entirely on the perspective of the speaker. She was praised by Voltaire as the equal of the greatest of classical philosophers; she was condemned by her enemies, mostly foreign, as "the Messalina of the north." Catherine's family, friends, ministers, generals, lovers, and enemies--all are here, vividly described. These included her ambitious, perpetually scheming mother; her weak, bullying husband, Peter (who left her lying untouched beside him for nine years after their marriage); her unhappy son and heir, Paul; her beloved grandchildren; and her "favorites"--the parade of young men from whom she sought companionship and the recapture of youth as well as sex. Here, too, is the giant figure of Gregory Potemkin, her most significant lover and possible husband, with whom she shared a passionate correspondence of love and separation, followed by seventeen years of unparalleled mutual achievement. The story is superbly told. All the special qualities that Robert K. Massie brought to Nicholas and Alexandra and Peter the Great are present here: historical accuracy, depth of understanding, felicity of style, mastery of detail, ability to shatter myth, and a rare genius for finding and expressing the human drama in extraordinary lives. History offers few stories richer in drama than that of Catherine the Great. In this book, this eternally fascinating woman is returned to life.

The story of the love that ended an empire. In this commanding book, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert K. Massie sweeps readers back to the extraordinary world of Imperial Russia to tell the story of the Romanovs' lives: Nicholas's political naïveté, Alexandra's obsession with the corrupt mystic Rasputin, and little Alexis's brave struggle with hemophilia. Against a lavish backdrop of luxury and intrigue, Massie unfolds a powerful drama of passion and history--the story of a doomed empire and the death-marked royals who watched it crumble. First published in 1967.

Against the monumental canvas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and Russia, Robert K. Massie unfolds the extraordinary story of Peter the Great. A volatile feudal tsar with a taste for barbaric torture; a progressive and enlightened reformer of government and science; a statesman of vision who recreated his country's army and navy and founded St. Petersburg as his imperial capital: Peter the Great embodied the greatest strengths and weaknesses of Russia while being at the very forefront of her development. Robert K. Massie delves deep into Peter's life and character, chronicling the pivotal events that transformed the boy tsar into a national icon. His portrayal of the complexities and contradictions of this most energetic of Russian rulers - a man both impetuous and stubborn, generous and cruel - brings a towering historical figure triumphantly to life. Originally published in 1980. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, 1981.

In 1991, nine skeletons were exhumed from a shallow grave near Ekaterinberg, Siberia. Were these the remains of the last tsar and his family, murdered over 70 years before? Pulitzer Prize winner Massie now answers this question, going back to the horrifying moments of the slaughter, and describing in detail the ultimately successful efforts in post-communist Russia to discover the truth. of photos.

A gripping chronicle of the personal and national rivalries that led to the twentieth century's first great arms race, from Pulitzer Prize winner Robert K. Massie. With the biographer's rare genius for expressing the essence of extraordinary lives, Massie brings to life a crowd of glittery figures: the single-minded Admiral von Tirpitz; the young, ambitious Winston Churchill; the ruthless, sycophantic Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow; Britain's greatest twentieth-century foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey; and Jacky Fisher, the eccentric admiral who revolutionized the British navy and brought forth the first true battleship, the H.M.S. Dreadnought. Their story, and the story of the era, filled with misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and events leading to unintended conclusions, unfolds like a Greek tragedy in this powerful narrative. Intimately human and dramatic, Dreadnought is history at its most riveting.

In a work of extraordinary narrative power, filled with brilliant personalities and vivid scenes of dramatic action, Robert K. Massie, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and Dreadnought, elevates to its proper historical importance the role of sea power in the winning of the Great War. The predominant image of this first world war is of mud and trenches, barbed wire, machine guns, poison gas, and slaughter. A generation of European manhood was massacred, and a wound was inflicted on European civilization that required the remainder of the twentieth century to heal. But with all its sacrifice, trench warfare did not win the war for one side or lose it for the other. Over the course of four years, the lines on the Western Front moved scarcely at all; attempts to break through led only to the lengthening of the already unbearably long casualty lists. For the true story of military upheaval, we must look to the sea. On the eve of the war in August 1914, Great Britain and Germany possessed the two greatest navies the world had ever seen. When war came, these two fleets of dreadnoughts--gigantic floating castles of steel able to hurl massive shells at an enemy miles away--were ready to test their terrible power against each other. Their struggles took place in the North Sea and the Pacific, at the Falkland Islands and the Dardanelles. They reached their climax when Germany, suffocated by an implacable naval blockade, decided to strike against the British ring of steel. The result was Jutland, a titanic clash of fifty-eight dreadnoughts, each the home of a thousand men. When the German High Seas Fleet retreated, the kaiser unleashed unrestricted U-boat warfare, which, in its indiscriminate violence, brought a reluctant America into the war. In this way, the German effort to seize the trident by defeating the British navy led to the fall of the German empire. Ultimately, the distinguishing feature of Castles of Steel is the author himself. The knowledge, understanding, and literary power Massie brings to this story are unparalleled. His portrayals of Winston Churchill, the British admirals Fisher, Jellicoe, and Beatty, and the Germans Scheer, Hipper, and Tirpitz are stunning in their veracity and artistry. Castles of Steel is about war at sea, leadership and command, courage, genius, and folly. All these elements are given magnificent scope by Robert K. Massie's special and widely hailed literary mastery.

"Journey is Robert and Suzanne Massie's memoir of raising their hemophiliac son in the 1950's, and the significant differences they found between the American and French healthcare systems." --Goodreads

Pictorial works; 256 pages. Introductory text by Robert K. Massie; picture research and description by Jeffrey Finestone.

DVD video, 189 minutes. Based on the book "Nicholas and Alexandra" by Robert K. Massie. Academy Awards for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design, 1972. Summary, "The final years of the Russian Tsar and Empress are chronicled in this epic which begins in 1904. Tsar Nicholas II is celebrating the birth of his only son, the heir to the Russian throne. But all is not well in Russia, for it is at war with the Japanese and there is a growing threat of internal revolution. Empress Alexandra, searching for answers to troubles of her own, seeks the advice from the charismatic monk, Rasputin, who, many believe, has power over her. The Bolshevik unrest grows and The Duma, a parliament for the people, demands the Tsar's abdication. The Royal Family is imprisoned and then executed as a new government takes form under Lenin."

Fiction, short stories; 151 pages. Neighboring is a collection of short stories by Mark Mattmiller. The Cynthiana, KY resident delves deeply into rural and farm life using character associations and his thorough knowledge of the subject to bring his stories to life. Some of the places mentioned in Neighboring actually exist in Central Kentucky, making Mattmiller's stories that much more poignant.

Fiction; 159 pages. There I Shall Be is Kentucky author Mark Mattmiller's second novel.

An Iron Willed Giant is a non-fiction work that pinpoints the story of Clarence LeBus, scion of the family that became one of Kentucky's leading families at the beginning of the 20th Century and made the City of Cynthiana the center of Kentucky's heralded tobacco industry. Carefully researched, An Iron Willed Giant documents the exploits of the LeBus Family and its influence on the Commonwealth of Kentucky at the time when tobacco was king in the country.

A girl, Mattie McGraw, works for the governor of Kentucky, Sam Waters. She finds out that he had his opponent killed in the governor's race. And instantly, her life falls to pieces. Her husband is murdered, her child is kidnapped, and she is on the run from the governor's assassin, Antonio Scollini. She reaches out to her ex-boyfriend, Jake Esteban. Jake is a private investigator in the small town of Beaver Dam. He hopes he can get to Mattie before the monster does. Her life is on the line, and it's only a matter of time.

A classic in its field, this readable book is the only full-scale authentic treatment of the confidence rackets. Criminals themselves answer such questions as: How does a criminal maintain his reputation in his own culture? What are the attitudes toward the dominant culture? How are families established and maintained? How is protection organized and purchased? How does the criminal spend his money? Thieves, gamblers, carnival drifters, forgers, and criminal narcotic addicts are some of the criminal subcultures explored.

Fourth Edition, two supplements, abridged with annotation and new material. Originally published in 1963. Clarifies discrepancies between British and American English and defines the distinguishing characteristics of American English.

Publication of the American Dialect Society, 16.

The classic 1940 study of con men and con games that Luc Sante in Salon called "a bonanza of wild but credible stories, told concisely with deadpan humor, as sly and rich in atmosphere as anything this side of Mark Twain." "Of all the grifters, the confidence man is the aristocrat," wrote David Maurer, a proposition he definitely proved in The Big Con, one of the most colorful, well-researched, and entertaining works of criminology ever written. A professor of linguistics who specialized in underworld argot, Maurer won the trust of hundreds of swindlers, who let him in on not simply their language but their folkways and the astonishingly complex and elaborate schemes whereby unsuspecting marks, hooked by their own greed and dishonesty, were "taken off" - i.e. cheated--of thousands upon thousands of dollars. The Big Con is a treasure trove of American lingo (the write, the rag, the payoff, ropers, shills, the cold poke, the convincer, to put on the send) and indelible characters (Yellow Kid Weil, Barney the Patch, the Seldom Seen Kid, Limehouse Chappie, Larry the Lug). It served as the source for the Oscar-winning film The Sting.

Originally published in 1974. When the first American tax on distilled spirits was established in 1791, violence broke out in Pennsylvania. The resulting Whiskey Rebellion sent hundreds of families down the Ohio River by flatboat, stills on board, to settle anew in the fertile bottomlands of Kentucky. Here they used cold limestone spring water to make bourbon and found that corn produced even better yields of whiskey than rye. Thus, the licit and illicit branches of the distilling industry grew up side by side in the state. This is the story of the illicit side -- the moonshiners' craft and craftsmanship, as practiced in Kentucky. A glossary of moonshiner argot sheds light on such colorful terms as "puker," "slop," and "weed-monkey." David Maurer's tone is tongue-in-cheek, but he provides a realistic look at the Kentucky moonshiner and the moonshining industry.

Originally published in 1980. Collected and edited by Allan W. Futrell and Charles B. Wordell.

Fifth edition. Originally published in 1954. American lecture series, publication no. 915. A monograph in the Bannerstone Division of American lectures in public protection.

Whiz Mob is David W. Maurer's classic study of the world of pickpockets. Similar to his best-known work, The Big Con, in Whiz Mob Maurer explains the colorful expressions and vivid words used by pickpockets and uses them to provide a window into the life and experiences of the professional criminal. Although he is quick to point out that he never had any actual experience on the racket, Maurer spent many years interviewing pickpockets and learning about their way of life. The result is a fascinating look at the work, lives, morals, and dangers of this element of the criminal subculture. Whiz Mob is essential reading for sociologists, linguists, and everyone interested in the mystery and intrigue of the criminal underworld.

DVD. "The sting" was inspired by real-life cons perpetrated by brothers Fred and Charley Gondorff and documented by David Maurer in his book "The big con: the story of the confidence man."
The Sting: Set in the 1930s, this intricate comedy caper deals with an ambitious small-time crook (Robert Redford) and a veteran con man (Paul Newman) who seek revenge on the vicious crime lord (Robert Shaw) who murdered one of their gang. How this group of charlatans puts "the sting" on their enemy makes for the greatest double-cross in movie history, complete with an amazing surprise finish.

Ph. D. dissertation. Named person: David W. Maurer.