Jill Fryman (Friday to her friends) is a Line Supervisor at a truck manufacturing plant in a small southern Indiana town—and life on the assembly line is almost as predictable as her love life. When it comes to matters of the heart, Friday always seems to be making the wrong choices. Things go from bad to worse when El, a sultry labor organizer from the UAW, sweeps into town to unionize the plant right after it’s been bought out by a Japanese firm. Sparks fly on and off the line as Jill and El fight their growing attraction for each other against a backdrop of monster trucks, fried catfish dinners, Pork Day USA, and a bar called Hoosier Daddy.

It's spring in Pawpaw County, Indiana and everybody has a bad case of hanky-panky pants. In the Baby Daddy Mystery oldster sleuths Ruby Jane (RJ) and Veenie are on the run, chasing down cheating heart jezebels and shaking child support out of deadbeat daddies. After Avonelle Apple’s husband, William, the esteemed town dentist, passes away, she receives a child support letter from a self-proclaimed mistress. Suspicious, she hires the Shady Hoosier Detective Agency, to determine if her late husband was a philandering baby daddy. The case seems simple until Avonelle’s son, Bromley, heir to his father’s dental empire, and well-known King of the Hanky-Panky Pants Club, pops up dead in a scarecrow costume. The mounting romantic mysteries come to a surprise head as the senior sleuths outrun shotgun showers to close in on the answers at the Moon Glo Motor Lodge, the Original Home of Hillbilly Hanky Panky. Veenie and RJ have to buy an extra case of Bengay and a buttload of BBs just to keep up with the romantic misadventures in this award-winning humorous cozy mystery. This is Book 2 in The Shady Hoosier Detective Agency Series, featuring amateur women sleuths.

Tony Macucci is god in the music industry. Admittedly, he is a rather unscrupulous god, but none of his exploits can prepare him for his ultimate challenge. To keep his cushy job, he must revive the faded career of Dave McGuinn and catapult that dusty hit American Sky into Americas Number 1 Song. Macucci decides that the only way to ensure success is to perfectly time a hit on the aging singer. Trouble is, the music maestro begins to admire the performer. As Macucci ultimately discovers, its far more difficult to call off a hit than to plan one.

Winner of the 2020 Chicago Folklore Prize CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2020 Despite predictions that commercial mass culture would displace customs of the past, traditions firmly abound, often characterized as folklore. In The Practice of Folklore: Essays toward a Theory of Tradition, author Simon J. Bronner works with theories of cultural practice to explain the social and psychological need for tradition in everyday life. Bronner proposes a distinctive “praxic” perspective that will answer the pressing philosophical as well as psychological question of why people enjoy repeating themselves. The significance of the keyword practice, he asserts, is the embodiment of a tension between repetition and variation in human behavior. Thinking with practice, particularly in a digital world, forces redefinitions of folklore and a reorientation toward interpreting everyday life. More than performance or enactment in social theory, practice connects localized culture with the vernacular idea that “this is the way we do things around here.” Practice refers to the way those things are analyzed as part of, rather than apart from, theory, thus inviting the study of studying. “The way we do things” invokes the social basis of “doing” in practice as cultural and instrumental. Building on previous studies of tradition in relation to creativity, Bronner presents an overview of practice theory and the ways it might be used in folklore and folklife studies. Demonstrating the application of this theory in folkloristic studies, Bronner offers four provocative case studies of psychocultural meanings that arise from traditional frames of action and address issues of our times: referring to the boogieman; connecting “wild child” beliefs to school shootings; deciphering the offensive chants of sports fans; and explicating male bravado in bawdy singing. Turning his analysis to the analysts of tradition, Bronner uses practice theory to evaluate the agenda of folklorists in shaping perceptions of tradition-centered “folk societies” such as the Amish. He further unpacks the culturally based rationale of public folklore programming. He interprets the evolving idea of folk museums in a digital world and assesses how the folklorists' terms and actions affect how people think about tradition.

Yeshua or Yahshua is the Hebrew form of the name JESUS. Yeshua means the LORD's salvation the perfect name for the Savior. Yeshua took our hard yoke of sin on Himself and He placed a soft yoke of devotion on us. He said, "Take my yoke upon you ... and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy." Real peace is linked to a yoke. To discover the secret of this paradox, one has to study Yeshua's life. He has relieved millions of their burdens and inspired them with new energy. The Yoke of Yeshua harmonizes the four gospels into one story. It shows how events followed each other and then it explains their meaning in context.

Veenie Goens and Ruby Jane Waskom would like to retire, but they lack a nest egg. In fact, they barely have a nest. They co-own a ramshackle, but cozy home, that’s overrun with quirky characters. Determined to supplement their social security, the amateur aging women sleuths, who live in the small town of Knobby Waters, Indiana, decide to go pro with their one natural talent: nosiness. They sign on as detectives with the Shady Hoosier Detective Agency, run by Harry Shades, an incompetent womanizer. Their knees aching, but their spirits high, the senior sleuths’ first crime case, the Ghost Busting Mystery, finds the lifelong friends chasing ghosts, bank robbers and hillbilly hoodlums through the barnyards of rural Indiana. Follow Ruby Jane and Veenie’s antics in the Ghost Busting Mystery, an award-winning feel-good, funny mystery voted the Best Humor Book 2019 by the Indie Reader. This is Book 1 in the humorous Shady Hoosier Detective Agency Cozy Mystery Series.

Not everything is always as meets the eye. Sometimes that older man you see might not be a man, at all. And his actions and reactions may differ from what you would expect. Alan Twiling isn’t the man he appears to be. Nor is he the kidnapper or pervert the crowd thought he might be when he grabs a child to save her. Who is he, exactly?

In the summer of 2002, Brendan Tibbet, a filmmaker whose luck has run low, takes his ten-year-old son Brenlyn on a raucous road trip across America. Following a 1930s travel guide Brendan purchased at a yard sale, the two-week trek from LA to New Hampshire covers 16 states, hitting the iconic stops along the way, Yosemite, the Great Salt Lake, Yellowstone and Mt. Rushmore and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, replete with wild exploits both hilarious and perilous, but it’s the interior journey that is enlightening, deeply poignant and life-changing. Brendan assures the boy that each state will be an adventure, and on the second day proves it, seeing the kid washed away in fast-moving rapids, then foolishly putting them both in danger by refusing to back down to the massive black bear invading their campsite. That’s Brendan, impetuous and foolhardy, inciting trouble wherever he goes, a man with demons and bubbling angst. But neither of those missteps, or the many and scarier ones to follow, can begin to compare to the threatening storm cloud hanging over the expedition: the father’s struggle to find the perfect, worst time to reveal to his son the news that will break his heart and affect everything to follow. Ernest Thompson’s debut novel is a skillful, magical piece of 20th-century fin de siècle writing depicting a United States that, even in the aftermath of 9-11, seems almost innocent contrasted to the horrors and divisions, racism and rage challenging us now. The Book of Maps, with its powerful father-son relationship and one man’s relentless albeit unintentional quest to evolve into the better angel we all aspire to be, will capture the imagination of readers and leave them wanting to relive this mad, irresistibly moving, ridiculously funny, reflective and inspiring cross-country odyssey again and again.

This hilarious collection of recent Right-wing political snafus is a liberal retort to the bestselling "Do As I Say."

Clearly one redneck dictionary was not enough. And it’s no wonder. The South is positively bursting at the seams with colorful words and turns of phrases in this distinct dialect. Now men and women from all across this great land can further fine-tune their fluency and showcase their confidence when speaking to folks who hail from below the Mason-Dixon line. Need a crash course in this truly inspired lingo? Well, Jeff Foxworthy’s Redneck Dictionary II puts the “vern” in “vernacular,” offering up a veritable gumbo of must-be-known selections: infamy (in’fe-mé) adv. and n. another person’s intent to exact physical punishment. “Ever since I stole his girlfriend, Bobby’s had it infamy.” assassin (e-sas’-en) v. to disrespect verbally. “Don’t just stand there assassin me, boy–go clean your room!” honor student (än’-er stu’-dent) prep. and n. to be positioned over, and supported by, a pupil. “Yeah, I knew piano lessons after midnight was weird, but I still didn’t suspect nothin’ till I caught her honor student.” So open your ears and activate your funny bone with this hilarious, practical, and playfully illustrated reference. It’s like having your very own personal dialect coach–one who doesn’t mind getting picked up and read and laughed at and passed along to friends.