Take Me Back To Tipton

This book is a compilation of short stories set in rural Oklahoma in the 1940s. It depicts the early life of three brothers, who lost their mother and went to live with their grandparents. They had no electric lights, no refrigeration, no air conditioning, no running water, and no indoor toilet. They did not know of television, computers, video games, or the internet. And yet they were happy. This book has no plot, per se, but the stories give an insight into the brothers lifestyle in a small Oklahoma farming community. The book has significant historical value and a touch of nostalgia for a bygone era. It is a light-hearted and fun read.

Cedar County is the story of a newspaper reporter who quit his job in Seattle and went home to Iowa for a while. He lived alone for 13 months in Cedar County, a place where he had lived as a boy of 8 and returned to as a man of 52. The narrative wanders through family history, memories of life on a Cedar County farm in 1945, the good and bad of newspaper work, road trips from Iowa to the West Coast. It's about life in Tipton, Cedar County, Iowa: a ghost story or two, conversations at the Maid-Rite cafe, the ways of modern farming, spending time with aging parents, listening to people talk about themselves. By the end of his sojourn, the author realized he was someone who didn't quite belong in Cedar County but was never quite a stranger.

Who Decides? Competing Narratives in Constructing Tastes, Consumption and Choice explores how tastes are shaped, formed, delineated and acted upon by normalising socio-cultural processes, and, in some instances, how those very processes are actively resisted and renegotiated.

A heart that had been stopped, and thought dead, began to beat once more. The rythm was faint and sporadic but beating just the same. The blue eye lids twitched frantically as the rest of the body began to tremble, ever so slightly. Suddenly the brilliant blue eyes flew open but could perceive nothing. All was cold and black. An angry growl grew in the belly of the beast until it erupted violently and with painful force. "WHERE AM I?!"

Their lives would be tempered by adversity, expanded by faith, polished by perseverance. Based on an actual 1852 Oregon Trail incident, All Together in One Place, Book One in the Kinship and Courage series, speaks to the strength in every woman and celebrates the promise of hope that unfailingly blooms amidst tragedy and challenge. For Madison "Mazy" Bacon, a young wife living in southern Wisconsin, the future appears every bit as promising as it is reassuringly predictable. A loving marriage, a well-organized home, the pleasure of planting an early spring garden--these are the carefully-tended dreams that sustain her heart and nourish her soul. But when her husband of two years sells the homestead and informs her that they are heading west, Mazy's life is ripped down the middle like a poorly mended sheet forgotten in a midwestern storm. Her love is tried, her boundaries stretched, and the fabric of her faith tested. At the same time, she and eleven extraordinary women are pulled toward an uncertain destiny--one that binds them together through reluctance and longing and into acceptance and renewal.