"A Dead Night on the Beat" contains sixteen literary short stories with city and rural backgrounds that alternate from adult to adolescent viewpoints. A major theme of many of the "adolescent" stories is coming of age by frustrated youth. The lead story concerns a used-up veteran newspaper reporter who seeks redemption in an incident of an accident affecting a child and the final one, "Last of the Valiant," is an apocalyptic view of a world beset by atomic ruin brought on by repeated attacks by terrorists.

"The Girl Who Saved Baseball" is humorous, yet occasionally bittersweet. Written from the viewpoint of an aging minor league baseball manager who finds new purpose in life by guiding four promising players. One is a girl who has a mission not only to make the major leagues, but also to "save" baseball from the stigma of have and have-not teams, runaway salaries, and the temptations of steroids. It rings with baseball lore, past and present, and takes the reader into the world of baseball--owners, players, managers, agents, talent scouts. Yet it never loses sight that the novel is about...

"Country Music" consists of 24 stories, three of them novelette length, depicting rural life in America during the Great Depression and Army life during the Korean War of the 1950s. The stories are linked through setting and characters to produce the effect of two episodic novels-one concerning the basic training, combat experience and readjustment to civilian life of a group of Army draftees, the other a dissection of "small townism" during the stressful 1930s. Many of the stories are written in a colloquial and dialectal style, from the viewpoint of the characters.

Lanterns
in
the Dawn

"Lanterns in the Dawn"--humorous, sad, realistic, and bittersweet--is the coming-of-age story of a boy living on a small Midwestern dirt farm. It is written in sparse, clear prose with an undertone of haunting images true to the imagination and insights of childhood. Through sharply drawn characters, it depicts a way of life from a recent yet bygone era that likely will never return. Above all, it is the story of strong pioneer-spirited people who loved the land so dearly they somehow managed to survive in it and through it, as if they were a permanent part...