This humorous book is full of new insights into ways we’ve been missing the point of so many beloved Bible stories. Approximately 80 percent of Americans admit they haven’t read the Bible. If they did, they’d be pleasantly surprised by its impressive quantity of sex and poop jokes. David danced naked. Noah was basically a moonshining hillbilly. Ezekiel baked poop bread. Herod was eaten by worms. Jesus cursed a fig tree, just to prove he could. Mark went streaking. Hosea married a prostitute. Lot was date-raped by his own daughters. It turns out, there’s a lot of weird stuff in the Bible. Murder-Bears, Moonshine, and Mayhem is a funny look at some of the stranger tales in the Bible. From Elisha, who loosed homicidal bears on some kids because they called him bald (it’s a long story), to the story of Ehud, who gets away with assassinating a tyrannical king because his servants think said king is taking a dump (also a long story), this book examines and casts new light on some of the Bible’s stranger moments. Organized by topic (poop, genitalia, weird violence, prostitution, gratuitous nudity, seemingly pointless miracles, and other fun stuff), Murder-Bears, Moonshine, and Mayhem is a thoroughly researched (really!), reverent, and insightful look at the amazing book at the center of our faith.

Ava Fisher is a flamboyant flake. Kenny Summers is a recent high school graduate. Luvon Ramsey is a junk dealer. Marie Elrod is a handicapped sixteen year old. Their mutual error is saying "Hello" to a very charming psychopath. Each ends up strangled and holding onto a Teddy Bear with a knife in its back. The serial killer is hidden in plain sight and has his focus on Olivia Haines, an English teacher at Fairfield High School in West Los Angeles. She considers herself a stranger to these murders until one day someone leaves her an unusual calling card-a strangled cat dangling in her classroom. She is suddenly aware she is being scheduled as murder victim number five. Olivia is rapidly convinced she is in a life and death struggle between the killer and herself and one of them will not survive. Using every teaching skill she possesses, she wages an all out battle for survival against a very lethal psychopath. If you like Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, you'll certainly relish Olivia Haines in Teddy Bear Murders.

On opening day of bear hunting season in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a game warden is murdered right under Little Donny's tree stand. Little Donny disappears into the backwoods, forcing sixty-six-year-old Gertie to use her "unique" investigative techniques to find her favorite grandson. Gertie's search is hampered by her pin-curled bodyguard Kitty, her man-hungry friend Cora Mae, and Grandma Johnson?who should be mushing peas between her new false teeth in the Escanaba nursing home instead of setting up camp at Gertie's place. To top it off, Gertie's son Blaze, the local sheriff, seems more concerned with arresting his mom for cruising down Highway M35 without a driver's license than finding Little Donny or catching the killer. Note: NO animals are harmed in this romp through the backwoods! Praise for the series: "Laugh-out-loud funny" Crimespree Magazine "Fans of Janet Evanovich, imagine Grandma Mazur with a shotgun." Green Bay Press Gazette "One of the most memorable heroines in recent crime fiction." Lansing State Journal.

Helen Lockwood's boat was found drifting off Sleeping Bear Dunes with no one aboard. A year later, her body was found in a shallow grave on South Manitou Island. She had been in court, fighting with the National Park Service, which was trying to take her family's four-hundred-acre cherry orchard for the new national park. Burr Lafayette, recently divorced and the deposed head of a major Detroit law firm, had kept the Park Service at bay for seven years. But now Helen's husband, Tommy, is arrested for her murder. It seems he had been trying to sell the orchards to the Park Service ever since Helen went missing. All of the evidence points to Tommy, but there's no shortage of suspects. A man at loose ends, Burr is a brilliant litigator who prefers sailboats and dogs over courtrooms and clients. He's not a criminal lawyer, but he's convinced there is a clue somewhere that will unlock the truth.

In this cozy mystery, there's no place more heartwarming than a small-town teddy bear shop—especially when a coldblooded killer is on the loose. Autumn in Silver Hollow, Michigan, means crisp air, colorful leaves, and the annual teddy bear festival, Oktobear Fest.As the manager of Silver Bear Shop and Factory, Sasha Silverman will host the opening Cranbeary Tea Party. She barely has a moment to agonize over the return of her former high school rival, Holly Parker, whose new toy and bookstore in town could spell big trouble for the Silver Bear Shop—not to mention her cousin's adorable bookstore. But when Sasha discovers the dead body of Holly's shop assistant, the unpleasant woman suddenly looks like a real backstabber. So does Sasha's ex-husband, rumored to have rekindled the fiery extramarital affair he once had with the victim. Sasha can't let a homicide investigation takes over Oktobear Fest—but catching the real killer will be far from child's play.

“These are the poems of a master poet. . . . When you read these poems, you will learn to hear deeply the sound a soul makes as it sings about the mystery of dreaming and becoming.” — Joy Harjo, Mvskoke Nation, U.S. Poet Laureate Pulitzer Prize winner and celebrated American master N. Scott Momaday returns with a radiant collection of more than 200 new and selected poems rooted in Native American oral tradition. One of the most important and unique voices in American letters, distinguished poet, novelist, artist, teacher, and storyteller N. Scott Momaday was born into the Kiowa tribe and grew up on Indian reservations in the Southwest. The customs and traditions that influenced his upbringing—most notably the Native American oral tradition—are the centerpiece of his work. This luminous collection demonstrates Momaday’s mastery and love of language and the matters closest to his heart. To Momaday, words are sacred; language is power. Spanning nearly fifty years, the poems gathered here illuminate the human condition, Momaday’s connection to his Kiowa roots, and his spiritual relationship to the American landscape. The title poem, “The Death of Sitting Bear” is a celebration of heritage and a memorial to the great Kiowa warrior and chief. “I feel his presence close by in my blood and imagination,” Momaday writes, “and I sing him an honor song.” Here, too, are meditations on mortality, love, and loss, as well as reflections on the incomparable and holy landscape of the Southwest. The Death of Sitting Bear evokes the essence of human experience and speaks to us all.

For more than half a century, grizzly bears roamed free in the national parks without causing a human fatality. Then in 1967, on a single August night, two campers were fatally mauled by enraged bears -- thus signaling the beginning of the end for America's greatest remaining land carnivore. Night of the Grizzlies, Olsen's brilliant account of another sad chapter in America's vanishing frontier, traces the causes of that tragic night: the rangers' careless disregard of established safety precautions and persistent warnings by seasoned campers that some of the bears were acting "funny"; the comforting belief that the great bears were not really dangerous -- would attack only when provoked. The popular sport that summer was to lure the bears with spotlights and leftover scraps -- in hopes of providing the tourists with a show, a close look at the great "teddy bears." Everyone came, some of the younger campers even making bold enough to sleep right in the path of the grizzlies' known route of arrival. This modern "bearbaiting" could have but one tragic result…

The search for justice for a Lakota Sioux man wrongfully charged with murder, told here for the first time by his trial lawyer, Gerry Spence. This is the untold story of Collins Catch the Bear, a Lakota Sioux, who was wrongfully charged with the murder of a white man in 1982 at Russell Means’s Yellow Thunder Camp, an AIM encampment in the Black Hills in South Dakota. Though Collins was innocent, he took the fall for the actual killer, a man placed in the camp with the intention of compromising the reputation of AIM. This story reveals the struggle of the American Indian people in their attempt to survive in a white world, on land that was stolen from them. We live with Collins and see the beauty that was his, but that was lost over the course of his short lifetime. Today justice still struggles to be heard, not only in this case but many like it in the American Indian nations.

Thanks to her recent adventures in Dying for Chocolate, Goldy Bear, the premier caterer of Aspen Meadow, Colorado, is no stranger to violence--or sudden death. But when she agrees to cater the first College Advisory Dinner for Seniors and Parents at the exclusive Elk Park Preparatory School, the last thing she expects to find at the end of the evening is the battered body of the school valedictorian. Who could have killed Keith Andrews, and why? Goldy's hungry for some answers--and not just because she found the corpse. Her young son, Arch, a student at Elk Park Prep, has become a target for some not-so-funny pranks, while her eighteen-year-old live-in helper, Julian, has become a prime suspect in the Andrews boy's murder. As her investigation intensifies, Goldy's anxiety level rises faster than homemade doughnuts. . .as she turns up evidence that suggests that Keith knew more than enough to blow the lid off some very unscholarly secrets. And then, as her search rattles one skeleton too many, Goldy learns a crucial fact: a little knowledge about a killer can be a deadly thing.