The Last Best Class of Fish River Community School had lost one of its members every year since the second grade. Waffle Houses were popping up throughout small-town Alabama with one corporate rule: "Good Food Fast." Struggling to cope with the tragedy that shadowed him most of his life, Dr. Jimmy Ryan dedicated himself to bringing people back from the brink, driven by his own guiding principle "Ain't Dead Yet." Not until Jimmy's own death did the folks at the Waffle House in Penelope, Alabama, learn the full extent of the secrets buried with the dead. Secrets resurrected over hot coffee refills at the Waffle House.

Waffle House Rules

Literature & Fiction

Formichella, Joe

Genre Fiction

River's Edge Media, LLC

Over the hot tropical waters of West Africa a fitful breeze flung salt spray in the faces of fishermen. Storms are common in the Atlantic between June and November. Most weather disturbances falter and die, no sooner born than ended. Wind blowing from the east six miles high may collide with wind blowing from the opposite direction, creating a shear that will decapitate a storm and rip it apart before an eye can solidify. Warm waters fuel a hurricane, but cold ocean currents can destroy the system before it gains strength. For the moment, this particular disturbance has no name. Meteorologists say she is a tropical depression that should be watched, but five days east of Florida, with gale force winds, she is worthy of no more than a warning to seafaring ships. When winds reach hurricane force, they will dignify her with a name: Katrina. Nine-year-old Thelonious Monk DeCay lives in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward with his grandmother. His mother dead and his father missing, Monk is determined to find his father. With their harmonicas and bottle-cap taps, Monk and his best friend entertain the tourists in Jackson Square under the watchful eyes of eccentric historian Quinton Toussaint, who knows where to find Monk's father. Hurricane Katrina changes everything. Left homeless and alone after the storm, Monk befriends a deranged man and survives by sneaking across the rooftops and courtyards of the French Quarter, stealing food and supplies while hiding from both a murderer and the police. In the midst of the storm and its aftermath, a woman Monk has never met appears in New Orleans with answers to his questions about his long-lost father.

Thelonious Rising

Richards, Judith

Contemporary

From David Henry's point of view, everything that was wrong with life in small town America in the 1890's has been cured by more than a century of progress, while everything that was best about it has been destroyed. David's assumptions about the past are tested when a mysterious splash of light transforms David's life, opening a doorway not only to the past but to the love of a young woman named Mary Harrison. The past and present of Noblesville weave happiness and heartache for the two lovers separated by a century but joined in their desire to find some place in time to spend their lives together.

Noblesville

Romance

Meyer, Kurt A.

Historical

Shari Smith's roots reach into the Midwest and spread under the Mason-Dixon line into the heart of Dixie. She draws on both in this collection of heartwarming stories that originated on her blog, Gunpowder, Cowboy Boots, and Mascara. With the compassion of an old soul, irreverent wit, her North Carolina vernacular, and more than a few cuss words, Shari takes the reader into "her country," the small town of Claremont, North Carolina and a mystical land in Alabama called Waterhole Branch. Holding nothing back, she explores the sensitive issues of a rural community, creative minds of the music and literary world, and how a small town's tragedy affects an entire nation. Smith introduces the reader to real war heroes and a Bronze Star recipient author who told their story in graphic detail in We Were Soldiers Once and Young. She allows us to listen in on a telephone conversation with a handsome cowboy actor who had called that hard-nosed reporter to thank him for his work, and without a word of introduction, the reporter passed the phone to Shari, telling the movie star to "say hello." Shari Smith writes with insight into the ordinary folks who meet each morning at the Claremont Café, the Boys at the Back Table, and with equanimity of prize-winning writers, songwriters, and musicians who gather on the deck of her hundred-year-old farm house. Her world is populated with beloved dogs, horses, children, neighbors, and a bunch of crazy artist-types. All are "her people" - people you want to know.

I Am a Town

Biographies & Memoirs

Smith, Shari

Memoirs

Every family has its shameful secrets, but none more so than those of the Lee family. Aramenta Lee escaped her controlling mother by moving to Paris thirty years ago. Her quiet life there is shattered by a terse wire: AM DYING - COME HOME - MOTHER. Aramenta arrives in Mobile, Alabama just hours prior to her mother's death. She wants nothing more than to quickly settle the estate and escape family ties, but finds herself thwarted by a macabre secret her mother has held for thirty years.

The Sounds of Silence

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Thrillers & Suspense

A collection of Southern cartoons and tweets from Alabama's political cartoonist J.D. Crowe. A few years ago J.D. discovered Twitter and stumbled upon a genus coven of tweeters who were laugh-out-loud funny. They were his "tweeple". He joined in, and now we have collected some of Crowe's best.

Half-Thunk Thoughts and Half-Fast Drawings

Comics & Graphic Novels

Crowe, J.D.

Comic Strips

Irrepressible Terrell Calder is a cigarette-smoking, lunch trading, school skipping six-year old boy growing up in a migrant work camp during the last days of the Great Depression under growing rumors of World War II. Son of the camp manager, Terry has no interest in school, and instead is drawn into an unlikely friendship with Mr. McCree, an eccentric old man living in the cracks of civilization. Together they prowl the Everglades in search of rattlesnakes, epiphytes, and adventure, until the law and society change their lives forever. Based on a true story the award-winning Summer Lightning has been reprinted in 15 languages since its first publication in 1978.

Summer Lightning

Seminole Summer is the eagerly awaited sequel to Judith Richards’s international best-seller Summer Lightning. Redheaded, freckle-faced Terry Calder has returned to the swamps of the Everglades where he lives in a migratory work camp with his mother and younger sister. While his father investigates atrocities in World War II Poland, ten-year-old Terry fills the role of the man of the family. Along the way, Terry becomes the legs for a wounded veteran, the conscience for an angry Indian boy, and the mind for a gentle friend who accidentally brings tragedy to them all. A novel about triumph in the midst of adversity, Seminole Summer tells the story of a family tested yet emerging all the stronger.

Seminole Summer

High School Runner (Freshman) effectively follows the long-held tradition of coming-of-age novels, but with some twists. It tells the story of Sherman Leopold Kindle, or K1, a ninth grader beginning his high school journey as an initially apprehensive member of the cross-country track team. Over the course of the season, he learns to rise to the challenge of the work, self-discipline, teamwork, and most importantly, empathy. His often hilarious, sometimes pathetic, and ultimately pitiful coach mentors all of the runners - veteran or rookie, braggart or slacker, star or dud - in less-than-conventional fashion. As his life falls completely apart - both personal and professional - Coach Viddstein molds his team and inspires them to their greatest success. With splendid details and incisive, humorous writing, Bill Kenley brings Freshman Runner to the finish line.

High School Runner: Freshman

Kenley, Bill

Humor & Satire

As a housing development bears down, Dan Reynolds is removing architectural details from a 150-year old farmhouse slated for demolition. Like the old farmhouse, Dan is isolated from the modern world, resentful and unhappy, but afraid to change. It takes an unlikely friendship with a mysterious woman to show him that salvage is about hope and redemption and that “delicate things must be carefully kept.” Kurt Meyer’s second novel tells the story of two souls brought together by unlikely circumstances and raw desperation. Bound together by personal loss, they find their courage to move forward amid the destruction of everything they love.

The Salvage Man

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Fantasy

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