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  The Cross Timbers - Memories of...

  Edward Everett Dale

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  The activities of a young boy on a small farm in the Texas Cross Timbers during the 1880s seem especially distant today. No one can remember the adventure of a sixteen-and-a-half-mile journey, which consumed the greater part of a day; or hurried predawn dressing in a frosty cold loft while the fragrance of a hearty breakfast wafted upward through the floor cracks; or a two-room schoolhouse, where the last half of Friday afternoon was given over to “speaking pieces” or to spelling and ciphering matches.  Through the recollections of Edward Everett Dale we are able to view a pattern of life in rural America now gone forever. For The Cross Timbers is a story which, with but a few minor variations, could have been told about a vast number of small boys on farms cleared from the virgin forests in the timbered regions of many states.  After presenting a brief introduction to the members of the Dale family and the plant, animal, and bird life of the Lower Cross Timbers countryside, the author describes his boyhood of a past century. He tells of his home, its furnishings, and the food served there, as well as the neighbors and relatives who come to visit. We learn of the superstitions, the humorous homespun expressions, the mores of early rural Texans. We hunt and fish with young Master Dale in the thick woods and along the clear creeks. Pioneer life demanded much hard work, but not to the exclusion of a diverting social life—both of which included the youngsters, as the author so graphically relates. Dale tells us also of the religious and secular education of the era, showing the significance of the home in supplementing these two influences.  Anyone reading this volume must be impressed by the great differences in the lifeways of rural children today and of those of the end of the nineteenth century.

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  Joining the Dots - An...

  Jonathan Ancer, Chris Whitfield

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  PRAVIN GORDHAN has been at the centre of many of the political storms that have torn through South Africa’s political landscape. He has been investigated by the Hawks, fired as finance minister, accused of running a ‘rogue unit’ at SARS and come up against the public protector, to name a few. 
    
  Seasoned journalists Jonathan Ancer and Chris Whitfield take a magnifying glass to someone at the centre of this tumultuous period to try to understand the man behind the public image. They go back to Durban in 1949, when Gordhan was born, tracing the significant events and influences that shaped his life and prompted him to become involved in politics as a pharmacy student. 
    
  The authors interview former fellow activists to build a picture of the role Gordhan played in the struggle, including his detention and torture. It was during this time that he worked closely with Jacob Zuma, the man who would become president and Gordhan’s nemesis and, on the back of a bogus intelligence report, fire him as finance minister. 
    
  The book examines why President Cyril Ramaphosa’s right-hand man has been dragged into major controversies and made enemies such as public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, Julius Malema and many of those associated with corruption. 
    
  Joining the Dots is an in-depth, insightful, gripping and satisfying read about a man who found the courage to stand up to the dark forces of state capture.

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  Bailout Over Normandy - A...

  Ted Fahrenwald

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  A daredevil pilot in the famed 352nd Fighter Squadron, the author of this remarkable memoir bailed out of his burning Mustang two days after D-Day and was launched on a thrilling adventure on the ground in Occupied France.After months living and fighting with the French Resistance, Fahrenwald was captured by the Wehrmacht, interrogated as a spy, and interned in a POW camp-and made a daring escape just before his deportation to Germany. Nothing diminished this pilot's talent for spotting the ironic humor in even the most aggravating or dangerous situations-nor his penchant for extracting his own improvised and sometimes hilarious version of justice.A suspenseful World War II account and an outrageously witty tale of daring and friendship, this book brings to vivid life the daily bravery, mischief, and intrigues of fighter pilots, Resistance fighters, and other Allies in the air and on the ground.

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  Roger the Boxer - I Am Just...

  Roger Canon

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  This book tells the story of the extraordinary life of a man from North London, from 1960 to 2020. He battles his way through life, mostly in a catastrophic manner. To the reader he openly admits his faults and mistakes, from violence, cocaine, sexual differences, prison, and to Northern Ireland and back to London.  
  Whilst reading this book you will feel joy, sorrow, then more joy. You will want to love him, hit him, then love him some more. It’s an enjoyable read for everyone to learn from his mistakes and understand how he turned his life around to success.

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  The Voyage of The Aegre - From...

  Nicholas Grainger

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  The Voyage of The Aegre is a dramatic true account of how a plan to sail a little fishing boat from the Highlands of Scotland down the coast to England turned into a trans-oceanic odyssey for Nick and Julie Grainger. It was the 1970s and their simple wooden boat was equipped with none of the aids modern yachts enjoy. Navigation was by sextant and compass, food cooked on a Primus, and weather forecasting by guesswork. Diligent preparation before they set sail eventually saved their lives in the violent storms and dangers they encountered, vividly described in this absorbing narrative. Their capsize at night in a fierce storm south of Tahiti and subsequent survival makes a gripping climax to the story. A born storyteller, the author has produced a stirring tale that ranks among classic sea adventures. 
  From a simpler age of sailing when you were led across oceans by the sun and the stars, this book deserves to join the classics. It is simply a top class read - Paul Heiney, Royal Cruising Club. 
  A terrific adventure - John Ridgway, 1966 North Atlantic rower, Round the World sailor, Adventurer, Author. 
  One of the greatest sailing stories I have ever read - John Quirk, Afloat magazine.

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  Sacrificial Axe - Voodoo Cult...

  C.J. March

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  The “Axe-man” came in the night. No one heard him come. No locks could keep him out. In the morning, whole families lay slaughtered in their beds, a riot of blood corrupting the room. Town by town, terror gripped the black communities of Louisiana and East Texas, as men, women, and children fell to the killer’s ax. The police were powerless to stop it. 
   
  Was it simply a homicidal maniac on the loose, or was a deeper evil afoot? Could one person perpetrate over forty atrocities? Was the serial killer even a man? People whispered voodoo, and white newspapers in the Jim Crow era South fanned the hysteria. As the police slowly unraveled the mystery, they were stunned by the bizarre truth of the “Axe-man.”

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