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Dark Days on Bear Creek
Over the Barnes Bridge, Vol. 3, By Harry T. Barnes
This book begins in 1929 with the stock market crash igniting the Great Depression. Ida and Jim Barnes eke out a living during the dark days of the 1930s while also dealing with the angst and misadventures of their five adolescent children. The story includes vignettes, many originally written by the author’s mother in the decade before her death in 2011.
As Jim and the four Barnes boys seek work logging, mining, and doing odd jobs in the mountains of Western Maryland, Ida and their daughter tend crops, hogs and chickens, cooking on a wood stove, laboring over a scrub board, and mending clothes by kerosene lamp. Until President Roosevelt’s New Deal brings hope to America, life is a day-by-day struggle for survival.
“Dark Days on Bear Creek” is a roller-coaster of emotional episodes ranging from near-death experiences and family feuds to poignant joyful moments. Throughout the decade of hopelessness and hardship, the children eventually mature, work picks up, and times get better.
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The Barnes Bridge (Over the Barnes Bridge, Vol. 2)
By Harry T. Barnes
It was 1919, and the death of their infant son drove Ida Barnes nearly mad, resulting in an avalanche of events that she and her husband, Jim, were totally unprepared for. He had lived in Baltimore City all his life, and could not imagine moving to the “wilderness” of Appalachia as Ida’s condition demanded. The Barnes Bridge, the second book in the Over the Barnes Bridge series, is a true story about the hardships Ida and Jim Barnes endured and how they created a new life for themselves and their five children in the mountains of Western Maryland. Danger and adventure were daily events; near-death experiences all too common. Jim became a coal miner and logger. Ida labored over a scrub board and wood cook stove, tended crops, kids, and chickens, and made a home for them.
She Called Him Jim (Over the Barnes Bridge, Vol. 1)
By Harry T. Barnes
Ida was a coal miner’s daughter from the Appalachian Mountains. Norman was the son of a Baltimore City carpenter. At the age of seven, in separate incidents, both of their fathers died violently. In their teens, Ida was sent to a girl’s reform school by her brutal stepfather, and Norman lost his mother to mental illness and was left to fend for himself. Both had to grow up fast, and there was little time for tears. "She Called Him Jim" tells the story of how these children rose above adversity and came to know and love one another. It is a true story of courage and perseverance, describing their adventures, hardships, and romance in the early 1900s of Baltimore City, Maryland.The next book in the series, "The Barnes Bridge," is a collection of stories about Ida and Jim, their children, and their lives in Friendsville, Maryland—their joys and sorrows, harrowing near-death experiences, hardships, humor, and courage.
Doctor Goldbunny
A Modern Fable for Middle Grade through Adult
By Valerie Haynes
Enter the world of Doctor Goldbunny, the story of the animal who becomes...
The Doctor of the Earth
Leopard Goldbunny...One of a group of animals now able to speak English, knows the ancient arts of natural healing, and is the first animal to go to medical school...
...But due to secretive forces operating against animals and natural medicine, he is stopped in his tracks.
Flora...a girl with an "Incurable" disease...is taken by Leopard on a search for a lost medicinal herb.
General Undowar, the world's leading military strategist...flies them to the rumbling, volcanic Mt. Ararat in his experimental jet.
The 100 Adopted Bunnies...help Leopard and Flora uncover the lost Ark on Mt. Ararat.
Joshua...a boy who wants to save the Arctic animals...which are threatened with extinction from a massive corporate hunt, teams up with Dr. Goldbunny, Flora and the animals who have arrived in the Arctic in the Ark.
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Rope & Bone, A Novel in Stories
By Ginnah Howard
Rope & Bone’s thirty-four story/chapters span the years from 1946 to 1993.
The novel opens in 1984 on Chicken Farm Road when Del Merrick, an art
teacher living without plumbing or electricity, enlists help in changing a
flat tire from Carla Morletti, a member of the Pagan Biker’s auxiliary, now
studying for her G.E.D. This chance connection between these two women will reroute their lives and the lives of their children.
The first section of the novel, “Wildest Dreams,” flashes back to pivotal
moments in the past. Part 2, “Castanets,” tells of Carla and Del’s misadventures as they try to raise their kids, get their old cars started on subzero mornings, and put in enough wood to get through until April— at the same time they’re testing their theory: a good man’s hard to find. In Part 3, “Shelter,” Carla and Del’s friendship darkens as their children’s lives become more chaotic.
The Colour of the Times
A novel of the American Revolution
By Forrest Bachner
In April 1776, three years into what would come to be known as the revolutionary War, Margaret (Peggy) Shippen met Major General Benedict Arnold of the Continental Army.
He was thirty-six, the hero of Ticonderoga, Valcour Island, Saratoga, and arguably the most revered filed commander in the country.
She was eighteen, the highly educated daughter of a leading Philadelphia family, a renowned beauty and, along with a fifth of the white population, a British loyalist.
This sweeping historical saga arrives at on of the most defining, yet least appreciated moments in American history.
Alone In Onasego
By Forrest Bachner
In the late 1990s, Anna Lawson, a lifestyle columnist for Manhattan Living Magazine, agrees to move her troubled family from the rush and thrill of the Big Apple to what will surely be a simpler, more manageable life in upstate New York. She has no idea that betrayal, romance, and her worst nightmare, all await in the proud and determined small town of Onasego. At once funny, tragic, and wise, ALONE IN ONASEGO combines urban-rural divide, the tight grip of family, and one woman’s grudging search for herself.
The Devil's Widow, And Other Stories
By Richard A. Average
Illustrations by Walter Gurbo
​A twist-turning escape into ten magical realism stories of Man’s relation to the Sea, Love, Life and Death, these ten gems will entertain and give pause to the reader, whether she or he be landlubber or sailor.
Author Richard A. Average is an “old sea dog” with a twinkle in his eye, and a magical touch to describing both Seafaring and Landlubber realms.
The whimsical illustrations of Walter Gurbo, formerly the artist for the Back Page of The Village Voice, are the perfect counterbalance to Mr. Average’s magical realism stories.
Mobydyptera
By Richard A. Average
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​Mobydyptera is a seafaring rollercoaster ride told in erudite pipe-in-cheek style. It's the story of a young follower of the obscure philosopher Catallanus, at odds with family and friends, who finds himself shanghaied aboard a strange ship where darkness, distrust, and worse-case scenarios seem to be lurking behind every mast and bulkhead.
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