The Town Talk

Think "Woodstock" and the mind turns to the seminal 1969 festival that crowned a seismic decade of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. But the town of Woodstock, New York, the original planned venue of the concert, is located over 60 miles from the site to which the fabled half a million flocked. Long before the landmark music festival usurped the name, Woodstock-the tiny Catskills town where Bob Dylan holed up after his infamous 1966 motorcycle accident-was already a key location in the '60s rock landscape. In Small Town Talk, Barney Hoskyns re-creates Woodstock's community of brilliant dysfunctional musicians, scheming dealers, and opportunistic hippie capitalists drawn to the area by Dylan and his sidekicks from the Band. Central to the book's narrative is the broodingly powerful presence of Albert Grossman, manager of Dylan, the Band, Janis Joplin, Paul Butterfield, and Todd Rundgren-and the Big Daddy of a personal fiefdom in Bearsville that encompassed studios, restaurants, and his own record label. Intertwined in the story are the Woodstock experiences and associations of artists as diverse as Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Tim Hardin, Karen Dalton, and Bobby Charles (whose immortal song-portrait of Woodstock gives the book its title). Drawing on numerous first-hand interviews with the remaining key players in the scene-and on the period when he lived there himself in the 1990s-Hoskyns has produced an East Coast companion to his bestselling L.A. canyon classic Hotel California. This is a richly absorbing study of a vital music scene in a revolutionary time and place.

As the sleepy courthouse town of Alexandria, Louisiana, began to recover from the devastation and trauma of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Daily Town Talk appeared. Nicknamed Alexandria's postage stamp paper by a rival publication, the Town Talk aimed to be the best daily outside of New Orleans and became one of the most successful regional newspapers of its kind. Fredrick M. Spletstoser tells the story of the paper's first sixty years and of the town's triumphs and setbacks during that same time. An unpretentious country journal, the Town Talk would become in the second half of the twentieth century a pioneer in newspaper technology under the leadership of Joe D. Smith, one of the most respected names in American journalism. The Town Talk was inextricably bound up with - and often directly behind - transformations in Alexandria's urban landscape, the development of municipal services and education, efforts to attract industry and cultivate trade, and the stimulation of surrounding agribusiness. occurred across the turn of the century, the large and enduring military presence in central Louisiana, and the impact of Huey P. Long's political career. Along the way, he narrates colorful stories culled from the Town Talk's pages and describes the fascinating family members who published the paper during this entire period. Talk of the Town illustrates the role provincial journalism played in the planning and expansion of towns throughout the country as it relates the engrossing history of one southern place and the people who lived there.

New York Times bestselling author Lisa Wingate captures the heart and faith of small-town America in Talk of the Town. Daily, Texas, has never really been known for much until Amber Anderson becomes a finalist on a television singing show. The producers want to stage a surprise concert for one of the final episodes--only everyone in town seems to know the secret. And paparazzi are arriving. And word from Hollywood is that Amber has disappeared with a bad-boy actor. Can anything go right in this tumbleweed town? Widow Imagene Doll loves her town, but without her beloved husband, life seems lonely--and a bit dull. At least until that fancy-dressed television producer pulls into town, looking terrified and glamorous all at once. Soon life's not the least bit boring as the town finds itself at the center of a media maelstrom . . . with a young girl's future on the line.

A mysterious hacker is on the loose in Greenfield. A mysterious hacker is on the loose in Greenfield. When an embarrassing message between Charla and Daniel goes out to the whole class, Jessie finds herself stuck between her feuding best friends. As she helps Charla investigate how this happened, they find that someone has been tampering with Charla's lawyer mom's computer, and it could spell trouble for her mom’s legal case. In order to keep the culprit from walking free, Jessie and Charla need Daniel’s help. But when some messages go out, they’re hard to take back.