Jeanette is not living anymore. She's surviving, running, hiding. All that she knew vanished and what remains doesn't make much sense anymore. Freedom and trust are as difficult to find as warmth and shelter in this desolated landscape. Through her strange encounters, she tries to piece together a frightening puzzle. Pushed to the brink, some emerge as heroes, others plunge into madness. Jeanette is skating on that thin line between both. Fear, doubt, more running... With her trusty companion Rufus by her side, she refuses to give up. She sees things, impossible things. Things that should not exist, yet that are slowly taking over. She has to tell someone, anyone, everyone. She will find hope in the face of despair, and light in the darkest hour of mankind. But mankind might not have that much longer. All Jeanette has are the dreams of her former life, and even those are starting to fade. Welcome to Coma Wagon: The realm of nightmares on a never ending trail toward the truth...

Yellowstone National Park. For years, a symbol of vacation time for Americans traveling from all the over the country to marvel at its beauty and treasures. But in the new world first explored inComa Wagon, it is now a faint hope of salvation for weary survivors. Meet Amos, Daniel, Gabe & Reggie, four individuals whose paths would never have crossed before all this happened. Brought together by chance, or fate, they form a bickering crew of hunters. With a familiar loyal dog in tow, they fight back against the beasts... Tired of being on the run, they organize traps to rid the land of the Sniffers. They are ferocious, they are restless, and they are hungry for human flesh.... After having hunted down more creatures than they can remember, and seeing no end in sight for their plight, our group needs a new plan. Rumors, stories, urban legends about Yellowstone... Risking their lives at every crossroads, they move forward. Sometimes as hunters, sometimes as prey. Each with their own motivations, they walk, hide, dream, kill...and bleed. Opening up a new exciting chapter of the Coma Wagon universe, Sniffers shows how the threat to all mankind is slowly revealing its plan.

Deeply personal essays probing the lingering legacies of the southern social divide   In Written in the Sky: Lessons of a Southern Daughter, Patricia Foster presents a double portrait of place and family, a book of deeply personal essays that interrogate the legacy of racial tensions in the South, the constriction of caste and gender, and the ways race, class, and white privilege are entwined in her family story. After interviewing girls at Booker T. Washington High School in Tuskegee, Alabama, visiting the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, and exploring Africatown in Plateau, Alabama, Patricia Foster was moved to reflect on the racial scars and crossroads in her southern past as well as to reckon with the intimate places of her own wounding and grief. The story of place, she discovers, emerges not only from family histories and cultural traditions but also from wrestling with a culture’s irreconcilable ideas: the hard push to determine what matters. What matters to her are the shadow stories beneath our mythologies, the complicated and radiant narratives that must be excavated and reckoned with, stories that have no neat or binary resolution, stories full of luminous moments and riveting facts, and stories where the secrets hide. Written in the Sky presents the best of nonfiction storytelling: searingly honest portraits, dramatic encounters, and lyrical narratives that will interest teachers and students as well as social justice advocates, policymakers, and readers compelled by stories of awakening and the white-hot beauty of language.

This is a book on how to read the essay, one that demonstrates how reading is inextricably tied to the art of writing. It aims to treat the essay with the close literary attention that has been given to other literary forms. Patricia Hampl explores F. Scott Fitzgerald's famously confessional "The Crack-Up" from what was once his grandmother's house in St. Paul, Minnesota; Sven Birkerts compares the power of Cynthia Ozick's brief essay "A Drugstore in Winter" to "watching an enormous jet achieve lift-off from the shortest little patch of tarmac;" and Gayle Pemberton turns to Ralph Ellison for a "bracing blast of air" when the racism in contemporary American culture seems inescapable. At once personal appreciation's and acute critical assessments, these pieces broaden our perspective on the essay as a literary art form.

Amanda and Jit Soldier grow up in the secluded beauty of Soldier Creek, Alabama. After their parents' marriage falls apart, the girls and their mother stay in Soldier Creek. Until Amanda wins a scholarship, leaving Jit alone with the mother who has long been needy toward Amanda but emotionally distant toward Jit. In Girl from Soldier Creek , the sisters must learn how to disentangle themselves from their home, their dysfunctional family, and ultimately, from each other to discover who they will become.

Jeanette is not living anymore. She's surviving, running, hiding. All that she knew vanished and what remains doesn't make much sense anymore. Freedom and trust are as difficult to find as warmth and shelter in this desolated landscape. Through her strange encounters, she tries to piece together a frightening puzzle. Pushed to the brink, some emerge as heroes, others plunge into madness. Jeanette is skating on that thin line between both. Fear, doubt, more running... With her trusty companion Rufus by her side, she refuses to give up. She sees things, impossible things. Things that should not exist, yet that are slowly taking over. She has to tell someone, anyone, everyone. She will find hope in the face of despair, and light in the darkest hour of mankind. But mankind might not have that much longer. All Jeanette has are the dreams of her former life, and even those are starting to fade. Welcome to Coma Wagon: The realm of nightmares on a never ending trail toward the truth...

My Story, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, is a human and personal story. Patricia's Memoir covers much of her life, and of the Twentieth Century, including the Post War Years, seen from a young person's perspective. This account of her early life is vivid, it will make you laugh, and it will make you cry. The style is conversational, and is all the more credible for it's lack of exaggeration. This is a straightforward story, well told. It tells of amazing Divine Interventions, of Spiritual Guides, Helpers and Guardian Angels, who have accompanied Patricia through every step of her journey. This book will give hope and comfort to the bereaved, the sick and the lonely. Patricia sadly lost her beloved Husband Ken in October 2009, after a very happy marriage lasting 54 years. This book is almost a poem to Ken. But he has never left her, for there isn no death, as her story will prove. This is a moving memorial to a fine man in Ken, a wonderful Husband, Father, Grandfather and Brother. Gratitude is the heart's memory, and my heart remembers.

Yellowstone National Park. For years, a symbol of vacation time for Americans traveling from all the over the country to marvel at its beauty and treasures. But in the new world first explored inComa Wagon, it is now a faint hope of salvation for weary survivors. Meet Amos, Daniel, Gabe & Reggie, four individuals whose paths would never have crossed before all this happened. Brought together by chance, or fate, they form a bickering crew of hunters. With a familiar loyal dog in tow, they fight back against the beasts... Tired of being on the run, they organize traps to rid the land of the Sniffers. They are ferocious, they are restless, and they are hungry for human flesh.... After having hunted down more creatures than they can remember, and seeing no end in sight for their plight, our group needs a new plan. Rumors, stories, urban legends about Yellowstone... Risking their lives at every crossroads, they move forward. Sometimes as hunters, sometimes as prey. Each with their own motivations, they walk, hide, dream, kill...and bleed. Opening up a new exciting chapter of the Coma Wagon universe, Sniffers shows how the threat to all mankind is slowly revealing its plan.

Writing about oneself, says Patricia Foster, ""engages in truth but depends on the imagination, on the life just beneath the skin, a life that's impressionistic and fragile."" These eleven closely linked personal essays are at once an absorbing chronicle of a life fully undertaken and a model for anyone who has contemplated self-investigation through autobiographical writing. The book's three sections each convey a stage of Foster's journey - still ongoing - toward new levels of insight and maturity. ""Inside the Girls' Room"" takes us back to Foster's life in the rural South from the 1950s through the early 1970s. Here she reveals the mixed messages and stereotypes of southern womanhood by which she was raised - and from which she fled. With adulthood, Foster moves to ""Inside the Writing Room,"" a place dotted with discoveries about autobiography as a path to creative expression and inner coherence. Finally, at the place in her life Foster calls ""Inside My Skin,"" autobiography helps her to explore and to claim her cultural identity. Returning to her native South, she holds a writing workshop for a group composed mostly of middle-aged black women, visits a beloved maid from her childhood, and returns to old haunts as a witness to her concerns about race and class. This gathering of lyrical essays explores the intelligent, intuitive heart of a woman struggling to claim both her identity and her place in the world.

Twenty acclaimed women examine the unique bond between sisters, and its influence on females. Lucy Grealy writes about the myths of twinship; Joy Harjo reveals how her sister survived family violence; Letty Pogrebin talks about the differenecs in her relationshps with two half sisters; and Debra Spark describes the experience of losing her 26-year-old sister to breast cancer--a provocative and fascinating look into this complex bond.

A mulitcultural anthology of fiction and  non-fiction literary narratives which addresses the  psychological and political aspects of a woman's body in  today's culture. An important and much-needed  book for women who seek to understand their bodies  and find independent, imaginative ways to cope with  aging, beauty expectations beauty expectations,  and ethnic comparisons.