Donald Davis has remarked that he "didn't learn stories, I just absorbed them" from a family of traditional storytellers that has lived on the same western North Carolina land since 1781. Considered by many to be the father of family tales, Donald turns the focus of his newest collection on his own father, Joe.As Donald reveals in the opening story, when he was 28, he mistakenly thought his father had died. Until learning of the mistake, he lamented that he'd been "too young and immature to know to ask for the stories that would have filled out his life." Given a "second chance," Donald asked those questions for the next 22 years. In this collection of 20 tender and often humorous stories--including one that tells how the elder Davis came to be called "Cripple Joe"--he shares the lessons he learned from his father. The late Wilma Dykeman wrote in an article for the New York Times, "I could have listened all morning to Donald Davis. . . . His stories often left listeners limp with laughter at the same time they struggled with a lump in the throat." If you are already a Donald Davis fan, here's his latest offering. If you have yet to discover him, here's your chance to see what all the excitement is about.

Steve White’s path from the housing projects to president of Comcast West was punctuated by defining—and often heart-wrenching—moments. Moments that helped him identify what matters most and how he positively made a difference in his life and in those around him. As one of four boys raised by a single mother, Steve’s life could easily have taken a different path. Instead, armed with his mother’s determination that her sons make a better life for themselves and his own refusal to be shaped by his circumstances, Steve forged a path to extraordinary professional and personal achievement. Steve’s lessons from every stage of life, and the people who influenced him along the way, form the basis of his overarching message: An uncompromising life is one where you stay true to what is important to you, what you believe in, and what you love. This leads to more fulfillment, purpose, and a lasting legacy. An uncompromising approach to life means you are fiercely independent, radically responsible, scrappy, and possess an undistracted mindset. It also means you have an unwavering commitment to your fight, which is defined by your core values, passion, and purpose. You uphold the courage of your convictions, stay locked in on your goals, get up when you fall and continue to forge ahead. Steve’s hard-won insights will help you find your fight—pursuing what matters most and discovering where you can make the biggest difference.

The purpose of this anthology is to provide an overview of the themes-universe under which storytelling is labeled today. Storytelling has gained increasing attention for a variety of purposes, from literature, science, technology, education, leadership to marketing. Storytelling has seen many technological disruptions since the dawn of humanity. From people sitting at the campfire, listening together to stories, to the internet which enables global audiences, and technologies like AR and VR with new user experiences up to immersiveness. What about this question: Does storytelling influence the lives of billions of people like the smartphone, robots, graphene-based batteries, nuclear-fusion, deep learning? 24 authors voice their views of their angle of storytelling.

Dino has three friends that are going to college with him in the fall of 1970. Their names are Tony, Joe, and Sam. Tony and Joe are probably going to be drafted into the army in January of 1971. Dino and Sam didn't have to worry about being drafted in the army because they both had each a physical deferment. Tony wants to go into the army and fight in the Vietnam War because he believes his country is doing the right thing being involved in the War. Joe is just the opposite he doesn't want to go in the army because he doesn't want to go to Vietnam and fight and may be die in a war he doesn't think is right. He is thinking about going to Canada if he is drafted. Dino and Sam are planning to transfer to the University of Wisconsin in Madison in the fall of 1971 when they are sophomores. They want to transfer because the college in Madison a good engineering program. When Dino and Sam first transfer to Madison they don't get involved in the peace movement. But after something happens to Tony in Vietnam Dino and Sam get involved in the peace movement in Madison.

This book of poems tells of the heartaches and shattered dreams of those who have learnt that the world in which they live in is very intolerant and remorseless, but as he descends in to the world of shadows, the God he loves is willing and able to always be there for comfort and direction. Here within the pages of The Beggar’s Life, you will realize and come to understand the life and directions of people who have found life a hard road to walk. They have fallen, risen, and collapsed again; and now they are trying to come to grips with the life they have heard about, seldom seen, but now have found it is where they live.

Based on the number of detective shows on TV, it appears that many people are fascinated by murder. Joe Klein, Detective is a compilation of short stories showing Joe Kleins progress from rough-and-tumble SWAT team member to becoming a paraplegic and evolving into a thinking detective. Each of the murders, or the method Joe uses to solve the murder, is different. Hes aided in several stories by his live-in girlfriend, Claire, a professor of antiquities and ancient history at Fresno State. A number of the stories start out with no discernible clue, but either Joe or Claire finds a way. Sometimes based on logic and dogged police work, others, recent discoveries in biology and science. Most of the stories concentrate more on the solution to the crime than they do on the crimes commission. Even though this is an anthology of short stories, you can see the characters develop as the stories progress.

"Adam Parfrey is one of the nation's most provocative publishers."—Seattle Weekly "Secret society historian Craig Heimbichner follows the Middle Path to wisdom. He works the graveyard shift in the secret lodge."—Joan d'Arc, Paranoia magazine Secret societies—now a staple of bestseller novels—are pictured as sinister cults that use hooded albinos to menace truth-seekers. Some conspiracy books claim that fraternal orders are the work of serpentine aliens and interbred humans who wish to supplant earth of its energy, and later, its very existence. On the other side of the aisle, books by high-ranked Freemasons—skeptical in tone but no less partisan in approach—protect their organization's public image by denying the existence of its most contentious ideas. Ritual America reveals the biggest secret of them all: that the influence of fraternal brotherhoods on this country is vast, fundamental, and hidden in plain view. In the early twentieth century, as many as one-third of America belonged to a secret society. And though fezzes and tiny car parades are almost a thing of the past, the Gnostic beliefs of Masonic orders are now so much a part of the American mind that the surrounding pomp and circumstance has become faintly unnecessary. The authors of Ritual America contextualize hundreds of rare and many never-before printed images with entertaining and far-reaching commentary, making an esoteric subject provocative, exciting, and approachable. Adam Parfrey is the author of Cult Rapture: Revelations of the Apocalyptic Mind and It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps. He is editor of the influential Apocalypse Culture series Love, Sex, Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment. Craig Heimbichner has recently appeared on a National Geographic documentary about the Bohemian Grove, contributed to the Feral House compilation Secret and Suppressed II, and wrote about the famous occult order the O.T.O. in Blood and Altar.