Bøger af Will Gibson

RUNNING WITH MR. BELL is a novel about trains and the people who ran the trains. For nearly a century the American passenger train bedazzled the world with its glitz and splendor. In the late 1800s railroad magnate George M. Pullman took passenger trains to new heights, and in the process made so many enemies that he left burial instructions that upon his death his grave be encased in steel so his enemies couldn't defile his body. The enemies he worried about were his disgruntled employees. This is a story about two extraordinary black men who served Mr. Pullman nobly for over forty years as sleeping car porters, and about how that service nearly destroyed both of their families by turning brother against brother. One of those men regarded Mr. Pullman as a benefactor of the Negro race. "Thank the Lord for Mr. Pullman. Where else can a black man find a good job like this one that allows him to travel and see all the possibilities in life," Harold Darden said proudly about being a sleeping car porter. Despite his fifth-grade education, he became Mr. Pullman's most trusted advisor on Negro affairs. Having no children of his own, Harold Darden had big dreams for his nephew Frank in the company. His good friend Claude Bell, the other powerful Negro in the company, viewed the Pullman Company quite differently. He belonged to a group of Pullman porters who wanted a union. They saw Mr. Pullman as a slave driver. Mr. Pullman hated unions. The company suspected Claude Bell of being their leader, but they feared firing him because he was so popular with the men. "Claude's my friend. He's a nice guy, but I don't want you getting involved in his labor activities. You can't be too careful about the company you keep," Harold Darden warned his young nephew Frank when the latter moved up to Chicago from Georgia and got a job at the Pullman Company, where he was assigned to work with Claude Bell. Frank was torn between an uncle he loved very much and a man he admired and highly respected. Then Frank's young brother Haley moved to Chicago and began working at the Pullman Company. Believing Frank had willfully ignored his advice about not getting too close to Claude Bell, Uncle Harold, disappointed and hurt, dropped Frank and transferred his dream to Haley-his dream of having one of his nephews appointed the first black vice president of the Pullman Company, an idea to which Mr. Pullman was amenable, provided the right Negro could be found. That resulted in turning brother against brothers that ended up in a murder and with Haley's being banished from the Darden family in Georgia. Will this proud family ever be set right again?

"My name is Ness and I've sawn off my hand. Blood slaked and screaming, both of us. I lay pale and weltering next to the 255mm slide compound mitre saw. Sirens skirl and I swear I can see them through the fog. This is my ghost story, my nightmare slice of psychological horror. "First there's frayed ends and sympathy, best friends and hospital beds. I cut my food with a guillotine. I sketch with a clipboard. It's not the dental floss and bra straps that disorient me, nor the memories of cold concrete rusted over with blood. It's the groans in my house. It's the breathing of the walls. It's the eyes that creep over the back of my head when I'm certain I'm alone. It's the hint of a fingernail that is regrowing from my stump, scratching away at what remains of my sanity..." Ness decides to reinvent herself while she picks up the pieces of her life following her grisly accident. She strips away the old life she once hated. Darkness manifests in her heart, and as she tries to be someone new, someone that isn't Ness, her old self lingers. Can she escape the horror she once lived? It's a story about self-destruction, self-hatred, and other things starting with self.

This is a quirky but smart novel about the Stubbs family. The father Joe Stubbs is content with his small law firm where making lots of money is unimportant to him. A widower and single parent, he raises his two small daughters to be very successful lawyers. Joe is very proud of them. They are a very close-knit African American family. One day Joe, a poor Southern boy in his youth, learns from a friend how much weddings cost nowadays, some exceeding $20,000. "You have two grown daughters, don't you, Joe? Well, get ready. You're probably next," the friend says. This worries Joe immensely, for he hadn't realized that weddings could be so expensive. He doesn't make that kind of money. Now for the first time in his life he begins to think of himself as a failure, both as a father and a lawyer, despite that he had played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. He goes into a humorous funk. His daughters, however, see him as their hero. Meanwhile in the story, Joe Stubbs' oldest daughter Ollie, a deputy district attorney, has a big fight with her superiors, and threatens to resign. Her sister Risa is pleased that Ollie might resign, because maybe now they can have that family law firm she has long dreamed about that would help people, instead of just making money. A few days later, thinking Ollie wasn't home, Risa lets herself into Ollie's apartment to get something, and finds her sister Ollie in bed naked with a white woman. Risa is shocked because she had no idea that Ollie was gay. All her life Ollie has been her role model. Before storming out of Ollie's apartment in tears, Risa exclaims, "I don't care what your sexual preference is. That's your business. But when it puts down black women, that's another matter entirely." Also in tears Ollie replies, "What does my loving Jane has to do with putting down black women?" The daughters need Joe's help to keep the family together, but he's deeply mired in gloom about his financial inability to give his daughters the great weddings he thinks they richly deserve. He too had no idea that Ollie was homosexual. Can this close and loving family be put back together again?

This is an unconventional story about a beautiful, internationally acclaimed African American dancer named Lola Fleming and a well-known white American race-car driver who share a secret that, if known, could destroy everything Lola has worked a lifetime to achieve. This is not a romance novel. It's a story about friendship and betrayal. It's about Lola Fleming's exciting artistic life and what happened to it when it became entangled with Buddy's bawdy, action-packed life as a world-class Formula One race-car driver. Lola's life is one involving modern dancing, while Buddy's world is one of bars, heavy drinking, whore-chasing, fist-fights, fast cars, and the death-defying chase each year called the Formula One World Grand Prix Championship. "If not for his heavy drinking, Buddy Shortt could be the greatest Formula One driver ever," a Belgium sports reporter wrote about him, high praise for an American whose country was enthralled with NASCAR racing that Europeans saw as a hillbilly sport. Lola and Buddy first met when she was in elementary school. Lola's father had a longtime gig playing jazz piano for diners at the restaurant where Lola spent a great deal of time with him after school. When not away racing somewhere in the world, Buddy, a big fan of Lola's father, could always be found in the bar at the restaurant drinking. He and Lola became pals, and they often played dominos in the bar. The short, stocky redhead regarded Lola as his little sister. One night when Lola's dancing career was getting underway, the teenager came to Buddy in tears about a personal problem. Lola was an emotional wreck. In the course of consoling her, they slipped into sex, something they hadn't done before. In fact, it was something that would have been unthinkable to both of them before that night, and both regretted that it happened. The next day they resumed their platonic friendship as if nothing had occurred. A couple of months later as Lola was about to tour Europe with her dance troupe, she learned she was pregnant with Buddy's child. She decided not to tell him, and raised the child on her own. She became the rave of Europe as a modern dancer. The Le Monde newspaper in Paris called her an "exciting young black Martha Graham." Lola and the child remained in Europe as expatriates. Years later when Lola was at the apex of her dancing career, and Buddy was nearly washed-up as a race-car driver, Lola's conscience got the best of her. So she told Buddy about their child. Because they both were celebrities, she made him promise to keep it a secret. It was a decision she would deeply regret, for it nearly destroyed her life.

In my novel THE MAN WITH THE SILVER TONGUE, when only seven years old, Luther Carruthers braved the alligator-infested waters with his parents so they could join the Seminole Indians in the Florida swamps, where as runaway slaves they would be safe. And Luther and his family ended up living as Indians. It was 1794. The Seminoles hated slavery and helped runaway Negroes whenever they could. The Seminoles called Luther "the boy with the silver tongue" because of all the languages he could speak, including most of the Indian languages. When sixteen Luther went to work as an interpreter for a grizzled old English trader named Cap Adams who needed Luther to interpret for him when dealing with the Spaniards. Although Luther liked working for Old Cap and learned much from him, he always worried when the two of them traveled outside of Seminole country. For Old Cap had warned him of how strange white men sometimes walk up to Negroes traveling alone and claim them as their property, charging them with being runaway slaves. "Many free Negroes end up in slavery that way," Old Cap told him. One day in a case of mistaken identity, Luther wound up being pursued by a white plantation owner named Hector Smote, who was sure Luther was his runaway slave named Ben. He unsuccessfully tracked Luther for years, even hiring professional bounty hunters. Years later a bounty hunter captured Luther and brought him back to the Smote farm. As the bounty hunter was about to leave, he advised Hector, "By the way, that nigger of yours is very rich. He owns most of the Town of Lutherville. You should talk to your lawyer to see if under the law all that property is legally yours. I don't think slaves can own property, but I'm not a lawyer." "I don't give a damn what he owns," Hector Smote cursed, "I don't want anything that black bastard has. I just wanted Ben back here where he belongs." The bounty hunter eyed Smote warily; for now he was sure he was dealing with a madman, even thinking twice about taking his money. Hector Smote held Luther in bondage for most of the rest of Luther's life in a relationship that puzzled even Luther. Then the truly unbelievable happened.

Have you ever watched a fly that's caught in a spider's web? How it tangles itself up all the more when it tries to fight its way out? The more it struggles and kicks, the more a prisoner it becomes. The few flies that do escape do so by just quietly flying away. I was in a web and it seemed the more I kicked, the more I became entangled. So I decided just to quietly fly away. Just leave town. Torn between Texas and California, I flipped a coin and California won. My name is Kolton Phelps. I was co-owner of Sunburst Products, Inc., a company that manufactured skin-care products, which I recently lost to creditors in bankruptcy. In the process I came dangerously close to going to prison. The day my lawyer had the criminal charges against me dismissed for failure of the complainant to appear in court, I bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. Jake Bufferum, it seemed, lost interest in putting me in jail once he learned he had successfully destroyed me otherwise. "I think that hard-headed, stuck-up bastard has suffered enough," Jake is reported as saying when he heard that my wife Kelly had thrown me out. Bufferum was my arch enemy and my business partner from hell. I hope Jake Bufferum doesn't get wind of this, but what lies ahead frightens the hell out of me.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ Lecture Correlative To A Course, On Surgery, In The University Of Pennsylvania, Embracing A Short Account Of Eminent Belgian Surgeons Physicians Will Gibson J. G. Auner, 1848

This is a novel. The central character Rev. Flowers' cherished dream is to lead her gospel church to respectability in mainstream religious circles. Every day her religious views are evolving, but are they evolving fast enough for issues like homosexuality and same-sex marriage? Would her evangelical congregation follow her? Even before she was born, her grandfather, founder of their church, had taught his flock not to wander too far a field because the secular world was a dangerous place for real God-fearing people like them, and he distrusted mainstream churches. Also has Rev. Flowers evolved enough in her personal life to handle the fact that she might still be in love with a man other than her husband? Genre: Women's fiction, African American fiction, Christian fiction, Gay/Lesbian

A magic lamp. Three wishes. Any desire made real, untwisted by petty minds. Would you trust a stranger with that power? Would you trust yourself? Djinn are discovered in the modern world bound to everyday trinkets. Strangers are united by the magic of the lamps to have their deepest wishes granted.

The City of High Bluffs was called the "Lilac City of the World" because of all the beautiful lilac bushes for which the city was famous. It was the second largest city in the state, and was the county seat. Hicks County, with its smooth rolling hills and its vast spread of green corn fields, was a typical county in a typical Midwestern state. One might think that a town like High Bluffs would be extremely provincial, made hidebound by the rich conservative farmers who still controlled the state. Indeed not. High Bluffs considered itself quite cosmopolitan, and had a symphony orchestra that could hold its own with any in the East. Furthermore, it proudly boasted of its most pleasant curiosity, often favorably comparing it with Harlem in New York City or Chinatown in San Francisco: Cedar Hill, a section of the city where the colored people lived in harmony with their white working class neighbors. This was the part of town where lively dance-joints and quaint food houses stayed opened late on Saturday nights, and where slumming was fun. Yes, High Bluffs was a good town, and then to everybody's sorrow, they came! With enlivened economic prosperity came problems. Problems in the form of people. Before anyone knew it, High Bluffs was bulging at the seams with too many people. Strange-looking people: white and black strange-looking people. Crude, hulking and rough-looking people. Black people who wore grimy felt hats and big shoes; and peculiar-smelling white people with dirt under their fingernails. People who always seemed to have too many children. Little dirty youngsters whose noses always needed blowing and babies who always had awful odors coming from their diapers. No one in High Bluffs really knew when these people came to town or whence they came. One morning when everyone arose, there they were, thousands of them. Some say jokingly that the new factories had sneaked them in with their crated machinery. The more serious folks, however, say they came from the Southern Appalachians, particularly the ones with the dirty red necks, while others say that the black ones came from the sun-baked cotton fields of Alabama. Others say they came in from all directions-East, West, South and North, but it is doubtful if anyone really knew, for it came one morning and there they were. This was before the days of the internet and cell phones and when television was in its infancy, and people depended mainly on newspapers for their daily news. In fact it was the heyday of the dailies when most towns and cities had several newspapers, usually having at least one morning paper and one evening newspaper read by fathers after work. Then came the Second World War. One day the largest newspaper in High Bluffs had enough and declared war on the newcomers, and started blaming them for all the bad things in High Bluffs, particularly crime. Consequently, the town began hating the newcomers. This was before the days of the internet, cell phones, and ubiquitous TV sets, and folks relied mainly on newspapers for their daily news. This is a thrilling story of how inflammatory journalism nearly destroyed a good town that didn't deserve that fate. A good town that truly believed in the brotherhood of man. It is a story of two powerful men-one a newspaper publisher and one a district attorney-who have different views on right and wrong, and who hold the fortune of High Bluffs in their hands. Two powerful men who bump heads like two mighty rams, with the town about to go up in racial flames hanging in the balance. Unavoidably, therefore, it is a story about Cedar Hill

Edwina Kitchens, the beloved mother of her church for nearly 50 years, dies. In her early years she was affectionately known by friends and family as "Eddie." After the funeral her teenage granddaughter finds an old trunk in her attic, and tells her mother about it. Her mother is the old lady's oldest daughter, who doesn't believe her eyes when she goes through all the photos, letters, and photography equipment in the trunk, especially all the torrid love letters from China. She wonders how the beautiful young woman in the photos could have been her quiet, meek, religious mother. Digging deeper into the trunk, she comes upon some letters that strongly suggest that the Chinese man who authored the love letters was possibly her real father. "Am I half-Chinese?" she gasped, horrified that possibly her religious mother's life had been a gigantic hoax, and that she herself was living a lie. No one in the family knew that when a young woman this saintly old lady from a small Iowa town had gone to New York City as a photojournalist in the 1930s and taken Harlem by storm. They didn't know that when abroad she photographed and interviewed famous people like Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung. While in China covering the Sino-Japanese War, she reported on the awful massacre in Nanking, and her amazing photos shocked the world. China was where she met and fell in love with a handsome Chinese Communist military officer, and became pregnant by him. This is a story about the search for identity by the daughter, and the surprising life her mother had lived as a young reporter in Asia just before the Second World War.

One summer Rev. Viola Flowers, a highly respected pastor of a church in Los Angeles, returns home from a family reunion in the Deep South with an old dog-eared Bible that relatives at the reunion claimed was her late grandfather's Bible. Upon examining it closely she discovers that certain pages had been ripped out. ?What happened years ago so horrendous that our family history had to be torn from the family Bible she wonders with alarm. She's so troubled by the obliterated material that she travels to the South to investigate her family history. And she's not prepared for what she finds there?a grisly double murder in 1910. ?Sweet Jesus, was grandpa involved in those awful murders she moans to herself. Her grandfather was a legendary bishop in the Church of God & Spirit. Her father was also a prominent minister in that church. This is not a thriller or murder mystery. It's a novel about a courageous lady preacher whose religious faith must carry her through many serious challenges, including the possible disgrace of her family.

This novel is about a beautiful young lady from a small Iowa town whose longtime college sweetheart becomes a famous NBA basketball star, and how this affects her own hopes and dreams. This is more than just a smart love story. It's also about friendship, family, and the unexpected surprises in life. It's set in San Francisco in 1982. Terri Ross and Harold Tomlin have lived together since college, and they intend to marry someday. But after Harold signs his big pro contract he begins to change to the detriment of their relationship. It hurts Terri deeply to watch him become a different person before her very eyes. It pains her to hear the other players' wives and girlfriends talk behind her back about how badly Harold's treating her. "Terri's so sweet, but for the life of me I can't understand why she takes that shit from Harold. I would've left him a long time ago," one of them said about her. Harold hasn't always been like that. When he first came into the NBA, he was fresh, innocent and unspoiled. Being from a very poor family, when in college he worried about the welfare of his mother and his brothers and sisters. When he graduated from Iowa and went high in the draft, he bought his mother a nice home in the white suburbs with his big signing bonus. "You deserve it, Ma," he told her. Terri was very proud of him. That was the Harold she had fallen in love with right out of high school. Now Harold seems like a hostile stranger, and Terri feels trapped and isolated in his world of jocks, admiring fans and pretty groupies. She hates the glare and glitter of big-times sports. One day Terri meets a handsome, successful songwriter named Peter Shepherd. About the same age, he and Terri become good platonic friends, and he shows her a side of San Francisco she didn't know existed. He introduces her to a new world view that she finds utterly fascinating. In the process Terri changes. Peter falls in love with her, and writes a song about her, which doesn't come easily for him since Terri is such a complex person when seen in her own right. In the end, she has to decide between Harold and Peter.

In this novel Granny Estella is the matriarch of the Caldwell family. She's just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. This is a story about her race against the clock to pass down the family lore before she dies. She doesn't want all that history to be lost to posterity, and sees her own life as a large part of that rich history. Her problem is that her family members are too engrossed in their own personal lives to have time to listen to her. Only her fourteen-year-old great granddaughter LaDora is interested in what she has to say. In fact, LaDora is so enthralled by Granny Estella's amazing life story that every day when she meets with her great grandmother, she takes copious notes. The teenager learns, for example, that Granny Estella, a former WAAC, shot down a German bomber while she was on a troopship going to Europe in the Second World War. LaDora learns much about what African American female soldiers had to endure in that war. Estella would prefer to share her life stories with Sylvia, her only child, but the two of them can't talk to each other, going back to Sylvia's childhood. Their strained relationship has long been a source of trouble in the family. Sylvia, a good mother who gave Granny Estella plenty of beautiful grandchildren, isn't totally to blame for their lack of communication. The situation is much deeper than that. It's this "deeper" situation that this novel explores. And yes, the novel also deals with the miseries of the Alzheimer Disease and what it's like to be a caretaker. This is an important read for those of you who have elderly parents.

Are you concerned about the future and what lies ahead for ourselves and the next generations? Do you worry about the rapid environmental degradation that is occurring globally? With the world at a crossroads, the decisions being made by adults today will have a profound effect on our children's tomorrow. Paradigm Time, Two Tales of the Future, depicts very different views of the years ahead for us. In the first tale, Resource Wars, ecological and economic disasters have brought great changes to people's lives. Severe weather conditions and collapsed food production have placed extreme pressure on uncontrolled expanding populations. In tale two, Resolution Days, the world has finally faced the challenges of education, economy, and environment. A new way forward has been forged that now benefits all people, all cultures, and all of life's creations. So, what does the future hold for us and our children? We still have time to make the changes that will create that better world but the clock is ticking. Paradigm Time is a call to action before it is too late and before we have too many regrets. There are two paths to take, which one will we choose?