The Parchman Preacher


Book Description

Martha, Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist, Satan, and Jesus are key figures in this 1950s good-versus-evil suspense allegory of Christ's beginning ministry. Twists, turns, and suspense make a preacher's murder mystery chilling. A tantalizing murder mystery filled with chilling explorations of hypocrisy, true faith, and small-town secrets. It's about sin and redemption. It's about the search for truth, in both the physical and spiritual realms. And it's all wrapped up in a puzzle that keeps even skeptics on their toes. Underneath it all is an allegory of Christ's ministry. "I highly recommend The Parchman Preacher short in length, but deep in meaning, I could hardly put this book down." -Linda Lacour Hobar, author of The Mystery of History series. "Michael Thompson has brought to life the Mississippi of my youth, complete with small town scandals, murders, prison, and the powerful southern female. Sit back, put your feet up, and enjoy a glass of sweet tea and a romping good tale." -Carolyn Haines, author of the on-going Sarah Booth Delaney mystery series. "If you love southern gossips and party lines and communal mail, you'll feel right at home in Solo, Mississippi biblical in its proportions, with a revolving Episcopal pulpit, a moonshine-swilling postmaster and a murdering villain. Jesus, Martha, Mary, John the Baptist, Satan-what a place." -Rheta Grimsley Johnson, author of Enchanted Evening Barbie & the Second Coming, and other books. "In The Parchman Preacher, Michael Thompson has written a true southern story of tragedy, darkness, and destiny with unpredictable twists and turns and genuine characters that provide comic relief in the midst of malevolent schemes a page turner we loved it." -Janet and Reverend John Sartelle, author of What Christian Parents Should Know About Infant Baptism. "The Parchman Preacher penetrates the facades of southern cultural Christianity to take us to the true gospel There is no Savior but Jesus and no salvation from the judgment of God but faith in Christ alone." -Richard L. Pratt, Th.D. theologian, author of several books, including Designed For Dignity: What God Has Made It Possible For You To Be, and founder of Third Millennium Ministries, Orlando, FL. Clarion Review Twists, turns, and suspense make a preacher's murder mystery chilling. A tantalizing murder mystery filled with chilling explorations of hypocrisy, true faith, and small-town secrets. The Christian faith colors his work, which is an allegory inspired by the ministry of Christ. It's about sin and redemption. It's about the search for truth, in both the physical and spiritual realms. And it's all wrapped up in a puzzle that keeps even skeptics on their toes.(for the complete review, visit www.michaelthompsonauthor.com) Diane Gardner September 25, 2013 ForeWord Clarion Reviews




Have You Heard


Book Description

Three separate narrators tell differing versions of a story when the media's attention is thrown on Jerry Chiffon, a suspected assassin, and his small North Carolina hometown after the attempted murder of a senator. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.




27: Robert Johnson


Book Description

Robert Johnson was, according to Eric Clapton, "the most important blues singer that ever lived." An itinerant street musician, with a weakness for whisky and women, his is a life of pure legend-the man who sold his soul for the devil, and thereby invented modern music. Precious little is known about his 27 years, or the circumstances of his death, and even the site of his grave is contested. In this mini-biography, acclaimed music critic Chris Salewicz investigates the truth behind the myth, evoking an incisive profile of an enigmatic figure who, with just 29 songs, changed popular music for ever.




Preachers and Misfits, Prophets and Thieves


Book Description

In this compelling book, G. Lee Ramsey Jr.mines the riches of southern fiction and discovers a colorful assortment of ministers who arise out of the religious South. At once mystical and mischievous, these ministers haunt the margins of southern life while preaching a gospel that startles and compels. But their oddness is also their appeal--and part of their gift. For through these colorful portraits of Christian ministry, today's readers are challenged to think about what matters in ministry and to re-imagine ministry in ways that bring new life to the church and community. Throughout, Ramsey shows how ministers such as Roger Hagan in Will Campbell's The Conventionand Hazel Motes in Flannery O'Connor's Wise Bloodcan help show us the stumbling blocks to faithful ministry and steer clergy and congregations forward in today's world.







Kinnie Wagner Story


Book Description

On a beautiful spring afternoon of April 13, 1925, 5 officers converged on the Holston River bank in Kingsport, Tennessee, guns drawn and ready for action. They were there to arrest a youthful fugutive named Kinnie Wagner, a native of nearby Scott County Virginia, now wanted by the law in Mississippi for allegedly shooting and killing a deputy sheriff. Thus began what may be one of the most well known stories of a southern gunman, his trial, escapes from jail and prison, and his eventual surrender in another state to a woman sheriff. This story, told in the vernacular of an old time Kingsport resident named Pug Potter, contains all the facts and reports of the shootings, the trial, escape, and later career. No southern library is complete without it! Paper back.




Follow Me Down


Book Description

A mesmerizing novel of faith, passion, and murder by the author of The Civil War: A Narrative. Drawing on themes as old as the Bible, Foote's novel compels us to inhabit lives obsessed with sin and starving for redemption. A work reminiscent of both Faulkner and O'Connor, yet utterly original.




The New Rolling Stone Album Guide


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Publisher Description




Brokered Justice


Book Description

This powerful account of the history of the Mississippi penal system examines the factors that have molded and continue to mold, penal law and administration in that state and sheds new light on the contemporary debate on correctional policy. Beginning with the birth of the Mississippi territory in 1798, Brokered Justice addresses first the continuing legacy of racial inequity in public law from the days of slavery and Jim Crow to the federal judiciary's attempt to confront the problem. The study goes on to explore the specific conflict in Mississippi, a conflict that pits a pragmatic republican political process against the callings of a nobler moral and jurisprudential heritage. Finally, it examines the weaknesses of the correctional ideal within the framework of the state political process and the plight of a convict population subject to an ever-changing body politic. Essential reading for criminologists, public policymakers, historians, correctional practitioners, and all those who care about the inequities in the way society treats offenders, especially African-Americans, Brokered Justice challenges prevailing views of the relationship between criminal justice and the political system and shatters simplistic notions of crime and punishment.




Worse Than Slavery


Book Description

In this sensitively told tale of suffering, brutality, and inhumanity, Worse Than Slavery is an epic history of race and punishment in the deepest South from emancipation to the Civil Rights Era—and beyond. Immortalized in blues songs and movies like Cool Hand Luke and The Defiant Ones, Mississippi’s infamous Parchman State Penitentiary was, in the pre-civil rights south, synonymous with cruelty. Now, noted historian David Oshinsky gives us the true story of the notorious prison, drawing on police records, prison documents, folklore, blues songs, and oral history, from the days of cotton-field chain gangs to the 1960s, when Parchman was used to break the wills of civil rights workers who journeyed south on Freedom Rides.