Kirjahaku

John Hepsebah Lawless, in "The Santa Train", wants to build a free hospital in the Smoky Mountains for people suffering from tuberculosis. It's 1936, the depth of the Depression, and he needs money to do it. The people who can supply the money first want a favor. They want Lawless, a circuit-riding preacher, to take Christmas - everything from hams to quilts - to the needy people of the mountains on the first Santa Train, set to depart on Christmas Eve day on The Little River Railroad. In "Holly and Mistletoe", a recently divorced state trooper with four dollars in his pocket discovers he can still make Christmas something special. And in "Bump and The Stranger", a garageman finds he's far from alone on Christmas Eve. First there a stranger who walks into Bump Asher's gas station, then a young couple trying to get to the hospital in a broken-down car, next a deputy who's shot in Bump's driveway, followed by the man who shot the deputy who now wants to rob Bump. Three stories for the season, stories that will both surprise you and warm your heart.

What did you do for your 80th birthday? You haven't got there yet? Writer Jerry Peterson has. He had a party. James Early came at the age of 102, the second oldest man in Kansas. He also put in an appearance when he was much younger. The Fish came, a great little detective you've met before. And Tubby Smith. He's new to you, coming from his favorite hangout, The Nevermind Tap. And Clint Boone, also new to you, a foreign correspondent with the International News Service. An INS competitor came, Walter Cronkite, as did Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, Lowell Thomas, Richard Nixon, and one-time U.S. Treasury Secretary William Simon. You'll meet them all and many more in this new anthology, Jerry's stories-83 in total-his gift to you on his 80th birthday.

Moonshiners, revenue agents, murder, revenge, and securing justice. They are all here in this collection of stories set in Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountains. So are romance, a love for old movies, winning the lottery, and an old-timey fundraiser for a school-a box social. You are going to thoroughly enjoy this anthology. I guarantee it.

James Early has been driving the highways and back roads of Kansas since 2004, tracking down killers, thieves, and escapees. But his life is more than that. It's also family and friends. You will meet for the first time or perhaps re-meet several of what today we would call James Early's BFFs-Mose Dickerson, John Silver Fox, and particularly Buck Thompson featured in the last two stories in the book, Thompson whose life Early had saved in World War II. And holidays, particularly Christmas. My James Early Christmas stories I think are exceptional. If you've not read them before, you can in this book, along with 12 other James Early short stories, five of the stories never before published.

Swamped by the demands of life? No time to read a big book, although you'd really like to read Stephen King's bestseller "It", all 1,168 pages of it? This book is for you, just as my first "Hyper Fiction" was . . . 50 new super short stories and poems, often of fewer than 500 words. The Fish returns in a new mini crime story. There is romance here as well, and thrills, and deception, and two stories you just have to read, "Water Wars/The Garden" and "The Day the Elephant Wreaked Her Revenge." You'll also get your kicks on Route 66 in two stories that will take you back for a ride on that fabled highway. "Hyper Fiction," another fast-reading anthology you're going to love.

Pressed for time? It's all you can do to scan through your daily Yahoo news feed? You'd like to read a novel, but, my golly, "Moby Dick" is long. Well, this book is for you, 50 super short stories and poems that I call hyper fiction . . . stories and poems often of fewer than 500 words. You'll meet a new detective here-The Fish. A number of my favorite characters return-Cody Debbs and Derek Wilson, James Early and Mose Dickerson, and John Wads. Even Alex Trebek stops by for a visit and a Jeopardy Thanksgiving challenge. You are going to thoroughly enjoy this fast-reading anthology.

From a thrill ride down Mount Crashmore on a snow saucer to a disastrous experience mowing lawns for money, you are going to love Cody & Me, two middle-school aged guys for whom nothing seems to go right . . . but they keep on truckin' just as you and I did when we were their age.But there's more in this short story anthology . . . from a wild Halloween Eve for a neighborhood tough kid, a bully, to a bittersweet story of a son and his father in the father's last days.It's more than Christmas this time around, far more. And you'll enjoy it all.