Red dirt. What can one say about red dirt? The small town of San Augustine, Texas, sits on a twenty-six-mile swath of red clay. Once this red dirt gets into your system it is difficult to leave it behind, and if you do there is a tendency to return in your golden years. The town was organized in 1834 and was the gateway to early settlers after crossing the Sabine River into Texas. Most everyone who entered Texas in the early years passed through the town on the El Camino Real, the King’s Highway. Many settled here while others made their way to San Antonio. It was into this area of Texas that I was born and reared. This book contains 110 short stories of my experiences while growing up during the 1940s and 1950s in the town of red dirt. I have included stories of my married life as we lived in several different states through the years. A few stories of humorous events while working in law enforcement are also included. San Augustine, Texas, claims on good authority to be the oldest Anglo-Saxon town in Texas. The neighboring city of Nacogdoches is said to be the oldest town having had an Indian settlement there earlier than 1834. The debate will probably never be settled to everyone’s satisfaction.

This book explores the answers to lifes many questions, such as the following: Who was Sam Hill? What is Adams off ox? What is the difference between a redneck and a good ole boy? It is a lead pipe since you will enjoy reading this book because it is what it is, a fair-to-middling, rule-of-thumb, bird-in-the-hand explanation of the questions that you have always wanted to ask but never got around to.

Detective Jack Barnhill is going home. After more than thirty years in the Secret Service and in local law enforcement, he and his wife, Heather, are returning to their childhood roots for a nice, quiet retirement. Only their hometown is not what it used to be. A serial killer is on the loose, and Jack's old friends in the local police department need his help. The clock is ticking. A murderer is lurking. Will Jack's past finally catch up with him, or will he stand up and fight for the one thing threatening to tear his hometown apart--the truth. Step up. Find your courage. Face your fears.

The Essential Reference Guide to America’s Most Popular Songs and Artists Spanning More than Fifty Years of Music Beginning with Bill Haley & His Comets’ seminal “Rock Around the Clock” all the way up to Lady Gaga and her glammed-out “Poker face,” this updated and unparalleled resource contains the most complete chart information on every artist and song to hit Billboard’s Top 40 pop singles chart all the way back to 1955. Inside, you’ll find all of the biggest-selling, most-played hits for the past six decades. Each alphabetized artist entry includes biographical info, the date their single reached the Top 40, the song’s highest position, and the number of weeks on the charts, as well as the original record label and catalog number. Other sections—such as “Record Holders,” “Top Artists by Decade,” and “#1 Singles 1955-2009”—make The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits the handiest and most indispensable music reference for record collectors, trivia enthusiasts, industry professionals and pop music fans alike. Did you know? • Beyoncé’s 2003 hit “Crazy in Love” spent 24 weeks in the Top 40 and eight of them in the #1 spot. • Billy Idol has had a total of nine Top 40 hits over his career, the last being “Cradle of Love” in 1990. • Of Madonna’s twelve #1 hits, her 1994 single “Take a Bow” held the spot the longest, for seven weeks—one week longer than her 1984 smash “Like a Virgin.” • Marvin Gaye’s song “Sexual Healing” spent 15 weeks at #3 in 1982, while the same song was #1 on the R&B chart for 10 weeks. • Male vocal group Boyz II Men had three of the biggest chart hits of all time during the 1990s. • The Grateful Dead finally enjoyed a Top 10 single in 1987 after 20 years of touring. • Janet Jackson has scored an impressive 39 Top 40 hits—one more than her megastar brother Michael!

"This wonderful narrative by a retired history professor takes us back through the time and space of his ancestors and his own youth. Weaving between present and past, it offers a unique blend of nostalgia and incisive commentary about the imprint of Americans on the land and on each other. Gaines Post Jr. shares with us an odyssey that is at once personal and universal."-James McPherson, Emeritus Professor of History, Princeton University, and author of Battle Cry of Freedom On a solo trip in 2002, Gaines Post Jr. drives his 1966 Volkswagen Bug from California to Wisconsin and back, traveling so slowly that the land and its history seep into his bones. Crossing old trails kindles his imagination of the westward expansion that attracted his ancestors and shaped America's national character. In South Dakota, he visits Red Cloud's grave and hears the great Lakota leader whisper that Post is not at the end of his path. While working cattle on a Wyoming ranch, Post recalls his grandfather, born during Red Cloud's War. Part travelogue, part memoir, and overflowing with history's natural wonder, Blue Bug, Red Road speaks to those with a wandering spirit searching for quiet layers of time and memory within the American landscape.

“Sorry, John Green fans, but McDaniel’s been making us cry . . . for decades.” —Bustle.com Love, family, acceptance, and forgiveness are at the center of this heartfelt novel that explores the unpredictable paths that allow people to follow their dreams and help them find a way back home. Ever since Sloan won a reality television singing competition, her music career has taken off. She suddenly finds herself with a manager, a recording contract, and a tour in the works. Her manager warned her that strangers would ask her for all sorts of things, and that she must not respond. But one email stands out—from a young woman who claims to be Sloan’s half sister. Sloan’s mother, now deceased, never told her who her father was, so the prospect of knowing some family history is too strong a desire to ignore. Now Sloan must return to Windemere, the town where she grew up, to face a past she’s worked hard to forget. One trip leads to another, and when circumstances take a devastating turn, Sloan is faced with a complicated choice involving not only herself, but also those who have come to depend on her.

The Fast Red Road--A Plainsong is a novel which plunders, in a gleeful, two-fisted fashion, the myth and pop-culture surrounding the American Indian. It is a story fueled on pot fumes and blues, borrowing and distorting the rigid conventions of the traditional western. Indians, cowboys, and outlaws are as interchangeable as their outfits; men strike poses from Gunsmoke, and horses are traded for Trans-Ams. Pidgin, the half-blood protagonist, inhabits a world of illusion--of aliens, ghosts, telekinesis, and water-pistol violence--where television offers redemption, and "the Indian always gets it up the ass." Having escaped the porn factories of Utah, Pidgin heads for Clovis, NM to bury his father, Cline. But the body is stolen at the funeral, and Pidgin must recover it. With the aid of car thief Charlie Ward, he criscrosses a wasted New Mexico, straying through bars, junkyards, and rodeos, evading the cops, and tearing through barriers "Dukestyle." "Charlie Ward slid his thin leather belt from his jeans and held it out the window, whipping the cutlass faster, faster, his dyed black hair unbraiding in the fifty mile per hour wind, and they never stopped for gas." Along the way, Pidgin escapes a giant coyote, survives a showdown with Custer, and encounters the remnants of the Goliard Tribe--a group of radicals to which Cline belonged. Pidgin's search allows him to reconcile the death of his father with five hundred years of colonial myth-making, and will eventually place him in a position to rewrite history. Jones tells his tale in lean, poetic prose. He paints a bleak, fever-burnt west--a land of strip-joints, strip-malls, and all you can eat beef-fed-beef stalls, where the inhabitants speak a raw, disposable lingo. His vision is dark yet frighteningly recognizable. In the tradition of Gerald Vizenor's Griever, The Fast Red Road--A Plainsong blazes a trail through the puppets and mirrors of myth, meeting the unexpected at every turn, and proving that the past--the texture of the road--can and must be changed.

After sixty years, Dr. Roy G. Phillips, retired founding campus president at Miami-Dade College, Homestead Campus, returned to his native home in rural Webster Parish outside of Minden, Louisiana. It took him almost forty years to fulfill a dream, a journey that began as a conversation with renowned author Alex Haley culminated with the collection of fascinating stories, and then finished in a poignant book that tells the story of his ancestors in their trajectory from Africa to America. When he retired in December 2001, Phillips turned to writing, piecing together years worth of research. The final product, Exodus from the Door of No Return: Journey of an American Family (AuthorHouse) was published in September 2006 and revised in October 2008. Phillips family saga mirrors the lives of what arguably could be the tale of most African Americans. In the book, family is the glue that binds Phillips ancestors from Slavery to Reconstruction, Jim Crow Segregation, the World Wars, the Great Migration of black families out of the South, the tumultuous civil rights period of the sixties, to the present day. Phillips might never have started on the journey of family discovery if it had not been for a chance meeting with Haley, who had come to speak at the University of Michigan. At that time, Haley was in the midst of researching his book Roots, and Phillips was completing his doctoral dissertation in urban secondary administration. I spent half of the night talking to him about what to do, he recalls. He said, Go and talk to the old folks in your family. Get their stories. Phillips painstaking tracked down the descendants of the plantation owners James Germany McDade II who owned his great grandfather and other relatives. Phillips continues to meet and correspond with the McDades in Shreveport and East Texas. He also underwent DNA testing which helped him track both his paternal ancestry to the Mbute people in the Central African Republic and his maternal ancestry to the Mende people in Sierra Leone West Africa.

Six years of running isn’t long enough to help Reneata Morris escape the guilt and shame of her past. Leaving behind in Alabama her fiancé and first true love, Ty, who is willing to sacrifice everything to make her happy; Tess, her rambunctious little sister; and Gramps and JoAnn, her protective grandfather and estranged mother, who she later learns hides a horrid family secret. Reneata fights to overcome the generational curse of poverty, addiction, and rape, whose influences affect how she sees herself and the world. Now, struggling to heal after the murder of Ervin, her older brother, an art prodigy who struggled with drug addiction, Reneata is reluctantly admitted to Bethany Skylar Mental Institution after a suicide attempt. But her time at the hospital is a blessing in disguise. While there, she befriends, Dr. Bobby Brown, a young, attractive psychiatrist who goes out of his way to help Reneata face her fears. But unbeknownst to her, Dr. Brown knows something about the days leading up to her brother’s murder that he, Gramps, and JoAnn all decide not to disclose to Reneata in fear that it would setback her recovery. Before discovering the truth, Reneata is released from the hospital and sets out on a journey to start over and find love again. After moving to Georgia, changing her name, and attempting to forget her past, she falls in love with Cory Dubose, a young, wealthy, advertising executive from California who wants to marry her. Convinced that he can give her the life she wants, Reneata, who is still struggling with Ervin’s death, lies to Cory about her family, the suicide attempt, and her time at Bethany Skylar Mental Institution. She agrees to marry him, but only if the wedding takes place back in her hometown. Older and wiser, Reneata returns to Alabama to deal with what she left behind. But upon her arrival, six years after running away, her grandfather, Ty, Dr. Brown, and to her surprise, her mother, JoAnn, band together to force her to face the truth before her wedding day.

Part road trip, part nature hike, part journey of self-discovery, this evocative memoir follows the adventures of Subhranil De as he navigates a six-year quest to find a job that combines his passion for physics with his love of teaching. Seeking escape from the drudgery and anxiety of academics, he sets out to explore less-traveled backroads and byways, from New York to North Dakota to Minnesota. Along the way, he finds solace in poetry, music, and introspection, as his professional life advances from researcher to lecturer to a veteran of the interview circuit—and at long last, a fulfilling position at a university nestled in the beautiful rolling landscape of southern Indiana. Subhranil’s narrative seamlessly weaves together luminous descriptions of pure nature, deep reflections on the mysteries and wonders he encounters, and heartwarming anecdotes as well as wry observations about family, friends, colleagues, and the world of academia. The result is a holistic tapestry that is a celebration of a precious romanticism for life and the world.