The Hunt For The Panther

The Islands hold secrets for those brave enough to discover them. Scarlet McCray and the Lost Souls are happy as clams at high tide until they learn two very curse-worthy things. One: There is a new pirate captain sailing the seas. And two: Scarlet's family is coming to the tropics, forcing her to trade her pirate's cap for a petticoat. Now Jem Fitzgerald is in charge. And his most important mission--after guarding the treasure from the pirates and keeping peace among the crew--is to find the ferocious black panther that lives on Island X before the panther finds a single Lost Soul.

Best friends, Zack and Kyle, have fought many battles against the school bullies, but this time, they have found themselves against something more sinister: a panther. Lurking in the forest behind their subdivision is something more frightening than either of them expected. Before long, a confrontation will leave one boy fighting a battle for his life, and the other, a battle for his faith.

Hunting wild boar is a keenly held tradition in the Mississippi Delta. Fraught with danger, it challenges the hunter, observer, wildlife enthusiast, and landowner alike. Panther Tract is an insider's observance of extraordinary hunting, southern hospitality, camaraderie, and the love of dogs, horses, and hair raising excitement. The over 160 photographs are representative of a "day at the hunt," starting at dawn and ending well after dark. The tales center on vivid hunting experiences, both at Panther Tract, a large wilderness paradise in Yazoo County, owned by legendary southern gentleman Howard Brent, and in other locations in the Mississippi Delta. The narratives come from men, women, doctors, lawyers, judges, businessmen, politicians, farmers, sharecroppers' sons, and even a Hollywood screenwriter. Melody Golding's photographs focus on the Delta landscape and on the people and animals involved in the hunt. Portraits of the hunters, and their interactions with one another and their dogs and horses, fascinate. An award-winning photographer and an expert horsewoman, Golding brings a knowledgeable and critical eye to these images. The stories she collects range from traditional often humorous hunting tales to more serious accounts of the history of hog hunting in America. Hank Burdine, a Mississippi native and hunter who has written for many statewide publications, lends a broad vision to the history, statistics, and lore of hunting wild hogs. An appendix features hunt recipes by Chef John Folse and philosophy on the stewardship of harvesting the hog. A colorful and diverse assemblage of beautiful photographs and tales, this book reveals a treasured regional tradition.

Hunting and its imagery continued to play a significant role in archaic and classical Greece long after hunting had ceased being a necessity for survival in everyday life. Drawing on vase paintings, sculpture, inscriptions, and other literary evidence, Judith Barringer reexamines the theme of the hunt and shows how the tradition it depicts helped maintain the dominance of the ruling social groups. Along with athletics and battle, hunting was a defining activity of the masculine aristocracy and was crucial to the efforts of the Athenian elite to control the social agenda, even as their political power declined. The Hunt in Ancient Greece examines descriptions of hunting in initiation rituals as well as the ideals of masculinity and adulthood such rites of passage promoted. Barringer argues that depictions of the hunt in literature and art also served as striking metaphors for the intricacies of courtship, shedding light on sexuality and gender roles. Through an exploration of various representations of the hunt, Barringer provides extraordinary insight into Athenian society.

On a remote hammock in the heart of the Florida Everglades, a young wildlife biologist discovers the remains of one of the endangered Florida panthers she was monitoring. Her efforts to determine the cause of its death are met with frustration until she meets a troubled engineer who is seeking his own answers. Together, they are immersed into a tangled world of deception as they work to expose the truth about the animals demise against a backdrop of swampland wilderness and political jungles.