The Barn Burner

In 1933 while running from a bad situation at home and suspected of having set fire to a barn, fourteen-year-old Ross finds haven with a loving family which helps him make an important decision.

Poetry. BARNBURNER by Erin Hoover is the winner of the 2017 Elixir Press Antivenom Poetry Award. Kathryn Nuernberger, contest judge, had this to say about it: "The epigraph to BARNBURNER is a call to burn it all down: 'According to an old story, there was once a Dutchman who was so bothered by the rats in his barn that he burned down the barn to get rid of them. Thus a barn burner became one who destroyed all in order to get rid of a nuisance.' There is honesty in this epigraph, raw and brutal, like the narrative voices in Erin Hoover's poems. But there's an irony at play here, an irony perhaps borrowing a bit from the ironies of Frost's 'Mending Wall': these poems don't burn down the cruelties of a homogeneous, racist patriarchy. Instead, they make a muse of it. A muse that can be objectified, stripped bare, and put on a pedestal for all to scorn. Hoover fridges that muse so that one speaker of a heroine after another is vaulted by the shock of such violence into a journey of personal discovery. There are mean-spirited, ruthless characters in these poems and, in a kind of reverse Bechdel test, Hoover wipes away their inner lives and never lets them talk to each other about anything except those they have hurt."

In 1933 while running from a bad situation at home and suspected of having set fire to a barn, fourteen-year-old Ross finds haven with a loving family which helps him make an important decision.

Reprinted from Collected Stories of William Faulkner, by permission of Random House, Inc.

Simpsons Comics Barn Burner, brought to you by Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, takes the blue–ribbon prize for being one jimdandy of a good time. Get ready for the dadburndest, rootin'–tootin'–est riot of cotton–pickin' Simpsons comics EVER! First, Bart takes his life in his hands when he rats out the school bullies. Next, Homer squares off against Diamond Joe Quimby when he runs for mayor. And when the kids from Springfield form their own boy band, nobody's eardrums are safe. Then watch the oven mitts come off when Smithers moves in and starts catering to Homer's every need ... leaving Marge out in the cold. And read all about it when Bart makes headlines and learns the true meaning of yellow journalism. Cap it all off with a story of biblical proportions, and you've got one bronco–bustin', banjo–pluckin', cattle–rustlin', moonshinin', hog–tossin', tobacky–spittin', mule kickin', cousin–kissin' collection that'll have you promenadin' across the floor at the next ice–cream social. This big, burstin' barrel o' fun will have you plum–tuckered out from laughter.

How did the Democratic Party--party of JFK, LBJ, and civil rights--fall from glory? How did Texas become Bush territory? What do politicians on either side need to do today to get our country back on track? Ben Barnes has the answers. Barnes had a front-row seat through it all. He won a seat in the Texas Legislature in 1960, at the age of 22, and four years later became the youngest Speaker of the House since the Civil War. In 1968, he helped Congressman George H. W. Bush get his son into the National Guard. How did his party lose its place in Texas, and the nation? Here, Barnes takes readers inside the rise and fall of the party he loves. He uses lessons learned in the Texas trenches as a guiding light for a new generation of lawmakers and political hopefuls, and calls for a return to bipartisan consensus building.--From publisher description.

In 1933 while running from a bad situation at home and suspected of having set fire to a barn, fourteen-year-old Ross finds haven with a loving family which helps him make an important decision.

In the tales that make up The Elephant Vanishes, the imaginative genius that has made Haruki Murakami an international superstar is on full display. In these stories, a man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald’s in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard. By turns haunting and hilarious, in The Elephant Vanishes Murakami crosses the border between separate realities—and comes back bearing remarkable treasures. Includes the story "Barn Burning," which is the basis for the major motion picture Burning.