Jean Harley Was Here

Finalist for the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction For readers of Everything I Never Told You and When I’m Gone, a profoundly moving, heartwarming debut about family, relationships, and what we leave behind. Jean Harley—wife, mother, lover, dancer—is a shining light in the lives of those who know and love her, full of boundless energy, compassion, and joy. When she's hit by a truck while riding her bicycle and the unthinkable happens, what becomes of the people she leaves behind? Her devoted husband, Stan, is now a single father to their four-year-old son, Orion, who doesn't understand why his mom won't come home. Jean's two best friends, Neddy and Viv, find their relationship unraveling without their third companion. Charley, the ex-con who caused the accident, struggles to reconcile his feelings of elation when the charges against him are dropped with his boundless guilt over knowing he has changed a family forever; while Jean's mother, Pearl, will regret the little girl who left. Gradually, life without Jean goes on, yet her indelible spirit remains. Told from the alternating perspectives of these and other characters who grieve the same death in vastly different ways, Jean Harley Was Here is a moving, poetic novel about loss, memory, and the lives we touch.

Here's an inside look at Harley-Davidson as only family members could tell it! Jean Davidson's Harley-Davidson Family Album presents never-before-seen family photos, as well as personal stories from the perspective of a family member and former Harley-Davidson dealer. Jean Davidson, the granddaughter of Walter Davidson, one of the four founders and the first president of Harley-Davidson, and the daughter of company vice-president Gordon Davidson, shares such family stories as: how four boys built their first bike in a shed in 1902, speculation about how the firm was named, how the family's rich hermit uncle saved the fledgling corporation from bankruptcy, the story behind the Silent Gray Fellow, and the sale and buy-back of the company. It also includes photos and reminiscences from Sarah and Mary Harley, granddaughters of William S. Harley. This memoir of the Harley-Davidson motorcycling dynasty presents a family album of rare photos of family members and fun photos of all those fabulous Harley-Davidson motorcycles: putting a personal face on the world's most famous motorcycle maker.

Motorcycles have been a way of life for Jean Davidson. Her grandfather was Walter Davidson, one of the four founders and the first president of Harley-Davidson. Her father was company vice president Gordon Davidson. And Jean herself was a Harley-Davidson dealer, rubbing elbows with all the Harleys and Davidsons as well as the Hell's Angels and Outlaws, famous racers, and Evel Knievel. This is the history of Harley-Davidson motorcycles no one else knew-until now! Here is the fairy-tale story of how four boys built their first motorcycle in a shed; how a slippery-handed maid stole all the company's earnings from the coffee can that served as their "bank"; and how a hermit uncle donated his life's savings to resurrect the company and set it on the path to becoming the world's most famous motorcycle maker. Here is the inside scoop on behind-the-boardroom-door politics and corporate battles, the unknown history of the first Knucklehead and Sportster, the secret friendship with arch-rival Indian motorcycles, and more. Here are family stories and rare photos from the family album that no one else has seen before.

The New York Times bestselling author of All the Bright Places—soon to be a Netflix film starring Elle Fanning—presents a coming-of-age debut about ill-fated love during the Great Depression—and what it means to be a woman with ambition. Velva Jean’s mother urged her to “live out there in the great wide world,” and growing up in Appalachia in the years before World War II, Velva Jean dreams of becoming a big-time singer in Nashville. Then she falls in love with Harley Bright, a handsome juvenile delinquent turned revival preacher. As their tumultuous love story unfolds, Velva Jean must choose between keeping her hard-won home and pursuing her dream of singing in the Grand Ole Opry. Like All the Bright Places, hailed as a “charming love story about [an] unlikely and endearing pair” (New York Times Book Review), Jennifer Niven’s debut novel is a big-hearted story about the struggle to find happiness.

Of course not all great art has its genesis in pain, and not all pain-not even a fraction-leads to the partial consolations of art. But if lancing an abscess is the surest way to healing, can poetry offer that same cleansing of emotional wounds? Shaping the Fractured Self showcases twenty-eight of Australia's finest poets who happen to live with chronic illness and pain. The autobiographical short essays, in conjunction with the three poems from each of the poets, capture the body in trauma in its many and varied moods. Because those who live with chronic illness and pain experience shifts in their relationship to it on a yearly, monthly, or daily basis, so do the words they use to describe it. This book gives voice to sufferers, carers, medical practitioners, and researchers, building understanding in a community of caring. [Subject: Chronic Illness, Poetry, Health Studies]

Award-winning poet, critic, editor and academic Sarah Holland-Batt takes the helm again as editor of this year’s Best Australian Poems. Previous contributors include Judith Beveridge, Stephen Edgar, Fiona Wright, Clive James, Lisa Gorton, Robert Adamson, Dorothy Porter, John Kinsella, David Malouf, Cate Kennedy and Les Murray. Sarah Holland-Batt is the author of The Hazards (UQP, 2015), which won the poetry prize at the 2016 Prime Minister's Literary Awards, and Aria (UQP, 2008), which won the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, the Arts ACT Judith Wright Award, and the FAW Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted in both the New South Wales and Queensland Premiers’ Literary Awards. She is presently a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Queensland University of Technology and the poetry editor of Island.

Who says a Gen X hipster can't solve old-school mysteries? Harley Jean's a failed college student. Her brief career in corporate banking went up in flames. She can't find Mr. Right and might settle for Mr. Wrong. She's twenty-six-years old--staring down the barrel at thirty--and now she works as a tour guide in the whacko land of Elvis. She's named after a motorcycle. Her dad's an Elvis impersonator. Her Mom talks to spirit guides. Someone kidnaps her family's dog--named King, in Elvis's honor. There's a ransom note. And then, things really get weird. Memphis tour guide Harley Jean Davidson is about to enjoy a rare day off when her parents call with news that King, their border collie, has been dognapped. Harley Jean's mom insists the culprit is Bruno Jett, their next door neighbor. Harley Jean would rather run over her own foot with a motorcycle than talk to him. He's drop-dead gorgeous--with a dangerous attitude she'd like to avoid. But King has to be rescued, so she sets off to find him. Harley Jean gets more than she bargains for when she finds a body, as well. Bruno Jett is definitely involved, but how? The Memphis P.D. wants to pin the murder on Harley Jean's dad. Now it's up to her to clear his name . . . and avoid becoming the killer's next victim. Leaving corporate banking for a job free of stress had been a matter of survival. So here she was, in her late twenties and burned out, but finally in a job she didn't have to take home with her at night. It was a good trade-off--most of the time. At least, when she didn't have to deal with a very sexy possible murderer . . . The basement door opened. Looking up, she saw Jett through the cracks in the wooden stairs. For a moment he just stood on the top step, the door propped open with his foot, then he let it close softly behind him but remained still and silent. He knew someone was here. The lights . . . she'd left the lights on. She barely breathed, just shallow breaths to keep from passing out, afraid he'd hear her. Bruno Magli shoes descended to the second riser. She briefly closed her eyes, thoughts of O.J. and his infamous shoes reverberating ominously in her brain. Surely, it was coincidence. The shoes descended another step, then another, and she held her breath until her ears rang and her lungs ached. The shoes stopped on the second from the bottom stair. She saw denim though the gaps, dark socks, long legs--she looked up and her gaze locked with dark blue eyes peering at her through the risers. Oh damn. He smiled, but it wasn't a very nice smile. "Well," he said, "I seem to have an uninvited visitor." "I . . . uh, was just looking for you." "And now you've found me." He reached the floor and turned to look at her where she'd edged out from beneath the stairs to feel for an escape route in the concrete block walls. "Why yes," she said, aware she spoke too brightly, "here you are. Now that you're home, I'll just be going." "No, I don't think so." He moved a few steps closer, near enough she could see the cold, dangerous gleam in his eyes. Uh oh. "Oh, I don't mind," she said, "really. I think I hear my mother calling me." "They're not home." She stared at him suspiciously. "And how do you know that?" "Because that obscene, puke green van is gone from the driveway." "Oh." That sounded logical. After all, it had been Bobby's first clue. So maybe Jett hadn't done anything to them or was responsible for them leaving. Maybe. He loomed over her. "I don't like you being here, and I don't like my privacy violated. Usually, I tend to get nasty about things like this." Uh oh. Not at all a promising conversation. Virginia Brown is the author of more than fifty novels, most recently the bestselling Dixie Diva Mysteries and the acclaimed mystery/drama, Dark River Road.

Maybe Harley Jean Davidson should have finished college, but at the time it hadn't seemed nearly as important as it did now. She should have stayed in corporate banking. She should have settled down with Mr. Right instead of dallying with Mr. Right Now--irresistible Memphis detective Mike Morgan. It was time to put her shallow youth behind her. She was closing in on thirty, entering the halls of maturity, and proving that she has a talent for catching bad guys. Things could be worse. Much worse. Her job as a Memphis tour guide is about to get even stranger than usual. "Hey," she called, "last stop for all Elvi. This is it, sir. Sir?" He didn't respond, just remained in his seat on the bus, staring out the window. Maybe he'd gotten cold feet about the Elvis contest. With a sigh, Harley walked to the back. "Hey, buddy," she said when she reached his seat, "we're here. Time to go on stage and sing your heart out. Knock 'em dead." When he still didn't respond, Harley put a hand on his shoulder to give him a slight shake. He slumped forward, his head hit the back of the seat in front of him, and she jumped into the aisle. The hilt of a knife protruded from his back. She froze. This couldn't be happening. Not to him, not to her, again. She leaned closer, and the rusty smell of blood made her stomach lurch. Backing slowly away, she fumbled at her waist for the cell phone that she now kept tethered to her with a chain, and hit speed dial. The police dispatcher answered quickly. "Nine-one-one?" Harley said in a voice that sounded a lot calmer than she felt. "We have another dead Elvis." Will her talent (jinx?) for stumbling into crime scenes eighty-six her relationship with Mike? Was he working up to a break up or just still upset about the dead Elvis in her van? Only one way to find out. "So," she said when she put the heated plate of fried rice and egg rolls in front of him, "is this a break up?" He gave her a startled look. "What are you talking about?" "Me finding bodies. You not liking that. Us. Maybe we need to talk about it." "Yeah. Well. I'm not really good at that kind of conversation." "Me either." She sat down in the chair opposite him, and Sam immediately jumped up on the cushioned arm to sniff her plate. He purred. Little beggar. She gave him a piece of rice and he gave her a horrified look. Then he leaped down to cross to Morgan, who had chicken fried rice. Morgan obliged the cat with a piece of chicken, and then looked over at Harley. "Maybe we just need a break from each other. Just for a couple weeks or a month. Something like that. Give us time to think about . . . things." Her throat got tight, but she nodded casually. "I think you're right. I don't want you to feel like I'm jeopardizing your job, and lately I can't seem to stop tripping over bodies. I don't know what it is. Some kind of murder magnet, I guess." One corner of his mouth tucked into a wry smile. "Any chance you can get rid of it?" Virginia Brown is the author of more than fifty novels, most recently the bestselling Dixie Diva Mysteries and the acclaimed mystery/drama, Dark River Road.