A collection of short stories about the rough and sometimes mysterious watersWriter Paul Ruffin celebrates the mysteries of the sea in the short story collection The Time the Waters Rose. From shrimp boat captains to shipyard workers, Ruffin's characters are men who drink, swear, fight, and sometimes kill, but what unifies them is that all-embracing magic of the Gulf coast and the barrier islands. While some are drawn to the Gulf for its mystery, others ar...

Fourteen darkly comic and artfully crafted Deep South tales in the spirit of O'Connor"Mister, most stories about people are sad. The ones about animals sometimes turn out all right, but not them about people," muses a character in master storyteller Paul Ruffin's yarn of obsession and quest "In Search of the Tightrope Walker." Raging against this fated sadness—and often against a deadening and inescapable status quo—the characters in Ruffin's newest collection,

An accomplished Southern storyteller's colorful reflections on literature, booze, firearms, violence, and sexThis fourth collection of essays by Paul Ruffin highlights his idiosyncratic wit and practiced storytelling skills in memorable autobiographic pieces ranging from the comic to the confessional.The first section, "Things Literary, More or Less," includes the title essay, in which Ruffin takes the reader on a rollicking tour with iconic Southern writer...

This book traces the evolution of the Browning Automatic Rifle from the Model of 1918, first to face combat in World War I, through its various configurations in all arenas of combat all the way to the present-day1918 A3 SLR developed and manufactured by Ohio Ordnance Works.The Browning Automatic Rifle, known simply as the BAR, was a shoulder-fired light machine gun fed by a twenty-round box magazine of 30-06, the same ammunition used by the 1903 Springfield. Weighing in at under t...

When Don Reid published Eyewitness in 1973, the chronicle of his conversion from a supporter of the death penalty to an ardent opponent, the book was an immediate sensation. Perhaps never before in the history of the American penal system has a man witnessed more electrocutions than Reid, who as Associated Press and Huntsville Item representative watched 189 men die in ‘Old Sparky,' as the electric chair in the Texas Department of Corrections' death chamber was not so aff...

It should come as no surprise that poets are often exceptionally fine cooks, savoring food the way they savor words and at the same time recognizing that just as a gathering of words does not necessarily mean a good poem, neither does a mixture of ingredients necessarily mean a good recipe. In Cooking with the Texas Poets Laureate, the editors, all members of Dr. Paul Ruffin’s 2014 graduate Editing/Publishing class, solicited recipes and food-related poetry and prose from Texas Po...

**With a rare combination of emotional insight, narrative power, and lyrical grace, Justin Cronin transforms the simple story of a dying man’s last wish into a rich tapestry of family love.“A work of art . . . a great American novel.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer**On an evening in late summer, the great financier Harry Wainwright, nearing the end of his life, arrives at a rustic fishing camp in a remote area of Maine. He comes bearing two things: his wish for a day of...

The fourth in the bestselling series of psychological thrillers featuring Carson Ryder, the detective with a unique perspective on serial killers.Children are disappearing in Mobile, Alabama, the latest snatched from her own bedroom. There are no clues – and, as yet, no bodies.Homicide Detective Carson Ryder is called in to investigate the abduction of little LaShelle Shearing only to find the case getting tangled up in murky departmental and civic politics. And with his pa...

Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson led the design of such crucial aircraft as the P-38 and Constellation, but he will be more remembered for the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes. His extraordinary leadership of the Lockheed “Skunk Works” cemented his reputation as a legendary figure in American aerospace management.From the Trade Paperback edition.

A bizarre murder in an idyllic Southern town propels a boy and his father into a world of evil in this World Fantasy Award–winning horror novel.New York Times –Bestselling and Bram Stoker Award–Winning AuthorSmall town boys see weird sights, and Zephyr has provided Cory Jay Mackenson with his fair share of oddities. He knows the bootleggers who lurk in the dark places outside of town. On moonless nights, he's heard...

The helicopter changed war forever. This book examines the range of duties helicopter pilots carried out in Vietnam, from air-lift, med-evac and fire-support to landing in high volume crossfires in 'Hot LZs'. Protected by little more than an armoured seat, operating in terrible conditions and flying long hours these brave men led hard, dangerous lives, and casualties were high. Following these pilots from initial deployment through to the deadly thrill of combat in a war zone, Vietnam vete...

In this shattering and iconic American novel, PEN prize-winning writer, Smith Henderson explores the complexities of freedom, community, grace, suspicion and anarchy, brilliantly depicting our nation's disquieting and violent contradictions.After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral eleven-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face to face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution,...