From a New York Times–bestselling author, the true crime story of a Rhode Island family murdered by a Sunday school teacher.When prosperous lawyer Ernest Brendel mysteriously disappeared, along with his wife Alice, and their eight-year-old daughter Emily, friends in the close-knit Rhode Island neighborhood worried that family had been kidnapped. It would be agonizing months in a massive FBI search before they would know the heartbreaking truth.The sh...

Friendly Connections: Philadelphia Quakers and Japan since the Late Nineteenth Century discloses the history of relations among members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, of Philadelphia and Japanese intellectuals, educators, and activists. In this book, Japanese and North American experts demonstrate that education, women's rights, interracial equality, politics, disaster relief, reform, and peace efforts have all benefited. Seventeen chapters detail this underappre...

A cycle of twenty stories, each of which is focused on childhood friends, the antics of his neighborhood and school chums, and the mysteries of adult life seen through a child’s unerring eye.

Donald Davis was inspired to write this book after his wife, who spent her life leading others to the Lord, died of cancer.He explains how faith has gotten him through tough times and outlines a process for new believers to walk with the Lord. He notes that when you give your life to Christ, it is not just for a moment—it is for eternity.As you read, you’ll consider questions such as:• Where are you going after you leave this world?• Why should you give back...

Donald Davis was a young United Methodist minister when the telephone rang one morning. "It's your daddy," the caller said, "Mama just couldn't get him awake this morning. He is gone.""A million questions about him began to line themselves up in my mind." Davis writes. "Where did he go to high school? I did not know." Did he get any education behind that? What were his early jobs, and where did he live then? I was now only twenty-eight, my father was dead, and I had been to young a...

This is a set of three stories about trouble with little brothers, especially mine. One is the story of the haircut he badly needed, and so I gave it to him. One is the story of getting permanently fired as his babysitter. The third is the story of one of the many science projects for which he was my personal chemistry set. These stories work to call memories forth from anyone who had to live in relationship to siblings. --Donald Davis

We all know someone like them: women whose lives revolve around their cats. Here Donald Davis paints verbal portraits of two very different women in his life who shared a fiercely unshakable sense of priorities. It was simply understood that the cats came first, and once you accepted that, everything else made perfect sense.Employing his trademark Carolina drawl, droll wit, and sharp observations, Davis is in top form here as he pays homage to these two remarkable women and their d...

There was a time during Donald Davis's college freshman year when he wasn't really sure if he wanted to claim his hometown of Sulpher Springs, North Carolina. But a boy by the name of Stanley Easter changed his mind."The year after that," he recalls, "I did go home from college for Thanksgiving. In fact, I had now become so proud of where I was from that I could hardly wait to get home. I no longer had to lie about where I was from. The world of childhood was quickly becoming a dea...

This is a double set of double stories. The first set is made up of a story my Grandmother told me about when my mother broke her arm...twice! The second story in this set is my story of when we broke my little brother's collarbone...twice! It is about how trouble is genetic in families. The second set follows up with the same neighbor boys, the Leatherwoods, and shows what happens when two big brothers team up against two little brothers. It also shows us that fathers are always smarter t...

The title story here is the story of my Mother's fear of snakes and of the way she eventually got passively even with me for making fun of her. She always came out on top. The second story we put on this recording is called 'The Red Coat,' as it is a story that happened in the same family setting. It is the story of how my father and his brothers-in-law finally stopped playing Christmas tricks on their sister-wives. --Donald Davis

Who doesn't remember the holiday sights and sounds and smells of Grandma's house? The living room aglow with a tree that touches the ceiling, the clatter of silverware and kitchen pans, the banter of relatives, and especially Grandma's bright face—Donald Davis captures these memories and more and relays them through the eyes of a child.

Storyteller Donald Davis had a very sensible mother. She had a pretty good idea what boys would do, so she was always on the lookout. As Davis later learned, always being on the lookout is what mamas do. His vigilant but gentle mother gave her son multiple gifts in life, and—as we learn in the end—gifts that do not end with her passing.