Thomas Martin is a pranksterone of those guys who thinks his jokes are funny. Living in the foothills of the Smokey Mountains, he revels in executing pranks on the campers and hikers; he has mastered the art of scaring the city folk. Sometimes his stunts have deadly consequences. He calls himself the Woodsman. Though loyal to her father, Martins ten-year-old daughter Jennifer is often afraid, especially when Martin abuses her mother, Eileen. Jennifer is with him the day a hiker dies as a result of one of his foolish pranks, bringing the family to a breaking point. Just a few days before Jennifers eleventh birthday, Martin is brutally murdered. Eileen disappears, and Jennifer has no memory of her fathers tragic death. Time passes, but Jennifer has her never forgotten the abuses her father heaped on the family. She now leads a life full of murder and deceit, getting revenge on those who mistreat women and those who stick their noses in her business. Her mother served revenge up on a platter, but for Jennifer, revenge is spoon-fed and dressed to kill. She is the Woodsmans daughter.

A big raw-boned, brave novel in the post civil War era.

Gwyn Hyman Rubio's first novel, Icy Sparks , was hailed as 'vivid and unforgettable' ( The New York Times Book Review ), 'a combination of fire and ice that will take your breath away' ( Atlanta Journal-Constitution ). Now, Rubio has done it again with The Woodsman's Daughter , a richly absorbing tale of the gothic South that, like Icy Sparks , has another unforgettable heroine at its heart. Dalia is the brassy and beautiful eldest daughter of Monroe Miller, a shrewd turpentine farmer in 1800s southern Georgia haunted by a devastating secret. A resilient and resourceful young woman, Dalia strives to create a better life for herself and will stop at nothing to protect her family, but the sins of the father are never far behind. In this spellbinding, page-turning epic, Rubio brings the swaying pines, humble shantytowns, and insular bustle of small-town living vibrantly to life. The Woodsman's Daughter is certain to cement Rubio's reputation as a major southern voice in American fiction.

Russia, 1905. Behind the gates of the Karenin Palace, Sergei, son of Anna Karenina, meets Tolstoy in his dreams and finds reminders of his mother everywhere: the almost-living portrait that the Tsar intends to acquire and the opium-infused manuscripts she wrote just before her death, one of which opens a trapdoor to a wild feminist fairytale. Across the city, Clementine, an anarchist seamstress, and Father Gapón, the charismatic leader of the proletariat, tip the country ever closer to revolution. Boullosa lifts the voices of coachmen, sailors, maids, and seamstresses in this playful, polyphonic, and subversive revision of the Russian revolution, told through the lens of Tolstoy’s most beloved work.

Simple versions of more than sixty fables use animals to teach lessons about wise and foolish human behavior.

Abraham Lincoln's Legacy of Laughter, a substantial revision of P. M. Zall's 1982 classic, Abe Lincoln Laughing, consists of stories, jokes, and anecdotes on a wide range of topics by and about Abraham Lincoln before and after he became president. Establishing which tales are authentic and which are frauds and delusions, Abraham Lincoln's Legacy of Laughter includes stories derived from Lincoln's writings and speeches; writings by others up to April 1865; post-Civil War writings by those who knew him; and writings by others about Lincoln in later decades, including a sample from the twentieth century. Within each group, entries are arranged in the order they appeared in print. The volume contains notes, a bibliography, an index of the entries by section, and a subject index.

Scholars of film and television history as well as cultural studies will enjoy this significant volume.

More than any other American before or since, Abraham Lincoln had a way with words that has shaped our national idea of ourselves. Actively disliked and even vilified by many Americans for the vast majority of his career, this most studied, most storied, and most documented leader still stirs up controversy. Showing not only the development of a powerful mind but the ways in which our sixteenth president was perceived by equally brilliant American minds of a decidedly literary and political bent, Harold K. Bush’s Lincoln in His Own Time provides some of the most significant contemporary meditations on the Great Emancipator’s legacy and cultural significance. The forty-two entries in this spirited collection present the best reflections of Lincoln as thinker, reader, writer, and orator by those whose lives intertwined with his or those who had direct contact with eyewitnesses. Bush focuses on Lincoln’s literary interests, reading, and work as a writer as well as the evolving debate about his religious views that became central to his memory. Along with a star-struck Walt Whitman writing of Lincoln’s “inexpressibly sweet” face and manner, Elizabeth Keckly’s description of a bereaved Lincoln, “genius and greatness weeping over love’s idol lost,” and William Stoddard’s report of the “cheery, hopeful, morning light” on Lincoln’s face after a long night debating the fate of the nation, the volume includes selections from works by famous contemporary figures such as Hawthorne, Douglass, Stowe, Lowell, Twain, and Lincoln himself in addition to lesser-known selections that have been nearly lost to history. Each entry is introduced by a headnote that places the selection in historical and cultural context; explanatory endnotes provide information about people and places. A comprehensive introduction and a detailed chronology of Lincoln’s eventful life round out the volume. Bush’s thoughtful collection reveals Lincoln as a man of letters who crafted some of the most memorable lines in our national vocabulary, explores the striking mythologization of the martyred president that began immediately upon his death, and then combines these two themes to illuminate Lincoln’s place in public memory as the absolute embodiment of America’s mythic civil religion. Beyond providing the standard fare of reminiscences about the rhetorically brilliant backwoodsman from the “Old Northwest,” Lincoln in His Own Time also maps a complex genealogy of the cultural work and iconic status of Lincoln as quintessential scribe and prophet of the American people.

The Caribbean islands have a vibrant oral folklore. In Jamaica, the clever spider Anansi, who outsmarts stronger animals, is a symbol of triumph by the weak over the powerful. The fables of the foolish Juan Bobo, who tries to bring milk home in a burlap bag, illustrate facets of traditional Puerto Rican life. Conflict over status, identity and power is a recurring theme--in a story from Trinidad, a young bull, raised by his mother in secret, challenges his tyrannical father who has killed all the other males in the herd. One in a series of folklore reference guides by the author, this volume shares summaries of 438 tales--some in danger of disappearing--retold in English and Creole from West African, European, and slave indigenous cultures in 24 countries and territories. Tales are grouped in themed sections with a detailed subject index and extensive links to online sources.