Memoirs Hunting

Nationally recognized and award-winning humor writer Jim Mize shares his insights from forty years of writing humor. In addition to discussing techniques, Mize credits his original sources so readers can view the materials that first inspired him. Readers will also be entertained with examples from his writing and see firsthand how Mize put these skills to work in his stories. Topics covered include joke writing, humor formats, misdirection, tension, timing, workshops, finding markets, and more. Of course, along the way, quite a few humorous things happened and these stories are shared as ...

In 1896, a Norwegian immigrant and mother of eight children named Helga Estby was behind on taxes and the mortgage when she learned that a mysterious sponsor would pay $10,000 to a woman who walked across America. Hoping to win the wager and save her family's farm, Helga and her teenaged daughter Clara, armed with little more than a compass, red-pepper spray, a revolver, and Clara's curling iron, set out on foot from Eastern Washington.

Janet Messineo knew from the get-go that she wanted to become a great fisherman. She knew she was as capable as any man of catching and landing a huge fish. It took years - and many terrifying nights along on the beach in complete darkness, in search of a huge creature to pull out of the sea - for her to prove to herself and to the male-dominated fishing community that she could make her dream real. Casting into the Light is a book about following one’s dreams and about the quiet reckoning with self in the long hours of darkness at the water’s edge.

A fourth-generation fisherman, Jake Anderson, grew up in the rich fishing environment of Anacortes, Washington. At age 17, Jake began salmon fishing in Bristol Bay, Alaska, and by the age of 25 he was crab fishing in the Bering Sea. Soon after, Jake became a deckhand on the F/V Northwestern and joined the popular television series Deadliest Catch. Aside from fishing, Jake has a harrowing story that has yet to be told. As an avid skateboarder, Jake aspired to become a professional until he was sidelined by injury, addiction, and homelessness.

> The Glass Castle meets Ball Four as Mets knuckleballer R. A. Dickey weaves searing honesty and baseball insight in this memoir about his unlikely journey to the big leagues. An English Lit major at the University of Tennessee, Dickey is as articulate and thoughtful as any professional athlete in any sport - and proves it page after page, as he provides fresh and honest insight into baseball and a career unlike any other.

Collingwood Ingram - known as “Cherry” for his defining passion - was born in 1880 and lived until he was a hundred, witnessing a fraught century of conflict and change. Visiting Japan in 1902 and again in 1907, he fell in love with the country’s distinctive cherry blossoms, or sakura, and brought back hundreds of cuttings with him to England, where he created a garden of cherry varieties. On a 1926 trip to Japan to search for new specimens, Ingram was shocked to find a dramatic decline in local cherry diversity.

In this emotionally-charged letter you can feel Joseph's heartbreak as mobs destroy their homes, steal their livestock, and murder their families. Experience Joseph's frustration as he petitions local government leaders for help and protection with no avail. But through it all, Joseph never gives up hope. He never falters in his faith and has a perfect brightness of hope for the church, for missionary work and for the well-being of his people.

"Big Bob" Bashara put on a respectable face. To his friends in Detroit's affluent suburb of Grosse Pointe, he was a married father of two, Rotary Club President, church usher, and soccer dad who organized charity events with his wife, Jane. To his "slaves", he was "Master Bob", a cocaine-snorting slumlord who operated a sex dungeon and had a submissive girlfriend to do his bidding - and he wanted more slaves to serve him. But Bashara knew he couldn't rule a household of concubines on his income alone. He eyed his wife's sizable retirement account and formulated a murderous plan.

Prior to his untimely death, in 2010, Captain Phil Harris was a star of Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch, the hit show that follows the exhilarating lives of Alaskan crab fishermen as they brave the vicious Bering Sea. He led his crew through hurricane-force winds and four-story-high waves, hauling in millions of pounds of crab and raking in millions of dollars. Phil worked hard, but he played even harder....

On the moonlit evening of September 12, 1970, an ex-Harvard professor with a genius IQ studies a 12-foot high fence topped with barbed wire. A few months earlier, Dr. Timothy Leary, the High Priest of LSD, had been running a gleeful campaign for California governor against Ronald Reagan. Now, Leary is six months into a 10-year prison sentence for the crime of possessing two marijuana cigarettes. Aided by the radical Weather Underground, Leary's escape from prison is the counterculture's union of "dope and dynamite", aimed at sparking a revolution.

From the start, Robert Hansen seemed destined for an unhappy life. Overworked by his strict parents and relentlessly bullied by his classmates, he spent his teenage years alone. His love of archery and hunting were the only comforts he had until he left his small town for Alaska, the last great frontier. Witness the depraved second life of a respected family man - the life of the worst serial killer in Alaska's history.

In 1979, Brenda Spencer, a seemingly average teenage girl living in a nice suburban neighborhood, made and executed plans that would place her in infamy and set a violent and terrifying national precedent. She recieved a rifle for Christmas and a month later set her sights and opens fire on the elementary school across the street. The event is forever glorified by the song "I Don't Like Mondays" by The Boomtown Rats and marks the bloody beginning of the American phenomenon of school shootings.

Zachary Hanson lived on cruise control. He had a thriving career, designer clothes, and a jet-setting lifestyle. He practiced high-level jiu-jitsu, ran ultramarathons, and pursued academic interests, but nothing gave him what he craved: the antidote to suburban sedation. Hanson knew his life lacked balance. It served no purpose. It held no meaning. In an effort to connect with something true and real, he turned to the wilderness. Leaving the big-city office behind, he learned to hunt, trap, and live in harmony with the land deep in the backwoods of North America. There he discovered new ...

In this first-person account of becoming the FBI's top serial-killer hunter and a member of a religious order in an attempt to discern the true nature of good and evil, Roger L. Depue searches for an understanding of how evil develops. Between Good and Evil is Depue's look back at a life spent apprehending criminals, especially serial killers, first as a small-town police chief, then an FBI-SWAT team member, Behavioral Sciences Unit chief, and a developer of revolutionary law enforcement programs.

What happens when a classically trained New York chef and fearless omnivore heads out of the city and into the wild to track down the ingredients for her meals? After abandoning Wall Street to embrace her lifelong love of cooking, Georgia Pellegrini comes face to face with her first kill. From honoring that first turkey to realizing that the only way we truly know where our meat comes from is if we hunt it ourselves, Pellegrini embarks on a wild ride into the real world of local, organic, and sustainable food.

From the highly successful author of Lightning Boys and Lightning Boys 2, Richard Pike, comes a welcome addition to the Boys series, Hunter Boys. A fascinating insight into the experiences and affections of those who flew the iconic Hawker Hunter. Fifteen aircrew relate their individual recollections of the highs and lows, the dramas and demands of this incredible aircraft, which came into service in July 1951 and changed the future of fighter development.

When two bombs exploded at the densely crowded finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, the whole world watched in shock as the story unfolded. First, the death toll and life-altering injuries. Next, the identification of the suspects - Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev - and the tense manhunt that brought Boston to a standstill. And, finally, the courageous and inspiring recovery of a wounded American city. Long Mile Home is the riveting tale of that tragic, surreal, and ultimately inspiring week.

John Lennon was one of the greatest songwriters the world has ever known, creator of "Help!", "Come Together", "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Imagine", and dozens more. But it was in his correspondences that he let his personality and poetry flow unguarded. Now, gathered for the first time in book form, are his letters to family, friends, strangers, and lovers from every point in his life. Funny, informative, wise, poetic, and sometimes heartbreaking, his letters illuminate a never-before-seen intimate side of the private genius.

With his colorful tattoos and booming hip-hop sound track, Mike Iaconelli has turned the world of big-money competitive bass fishing upside down. In Fishing on the Edge, Iaconelli tells his own story, and it's a whopper: a Philly-born, Jersey-bred Yankee who's been stealing the spotlight from bass fishing's traditionally all-Southern anglers, attracting fans and dominating one of the fastest-growing sports in America.

This is the fascinating true story of a brutal murderer and the detectives who worked the cold case for six years in order to bring him to justice. Combining cutting-edge forensic techniques with old-fashioned detective work, a team of detectives worked to build a case against their prime suspect. But it was a race against time: would he strike again? No one could predict that the killer's appearance on the gameshow Bullseye would provide bizarre but crucial evidence. The operation is now recognised as one of the greatest cold-case reviews ever undertaken in the UK.