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A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthurs Court
By: Mark Twain
You might wonder what prompted Mark Twain to sidle from 'straight' fiction into the realm of outright fantasy. Twain transports a Connecticut shop foreman twelve centuries into the past [and 5 000 kilometres!] to Camelot and Arthur's court. Initially confused and dismayed, Hank Morgan's Yankee practicality is quickly aroused and he becomes a major figure among the panopolied knights. With the title of The Boss, his rank equals The King or The Pope with its uniqueness. His elevation doesn't distract him from a more profound impulse, however. Hank's Yankee roots and wide experience evoke an ambition - nothing less than revolution. He wants to sweep away the monarchy and aristocracy and establish an American-style republic in Arthurian Britain.
Mark Twain's scathing criticism of the sham of hereditary monarchy bolstered by an Established Church makes this among his choicest writings. He resents the condition of a Church which 'turned a nation of men into a nation of worms.' A fervent believer in individual freedom, Twain uses Hank to voice his disdain of Britain's royalty. It's no more than might be expected of a man who boasted of but one ancestor - who sat on the jury that executed Charles I. Hank knows revolutions never succeed when implemented from above. Revolution be achieved only when the individual's attitude changes from meek acceptance to self assertion. Hank's method reaches people through clandestine schools and factories, publication of a newspaper and establishment of a telephone system. These new forms of manufacture and communication become the foundation by which Hank expects to abolish the ancient, mis-named, chivalric tradition. Does he change the course of history?
Twain relocates the roots of American democracy from the heart of the frontier yeoman farmer to the brain of the urban industrial worker. Here the man of wide, practical experience shows how to survive compared to those with a formal education. Hank has a simple ambition - establishment of a republic - but utilizes a broad spectrum of ideas to bring it about. He would gladly replace the Established Church of Rome with his own Presbyterian ideals, but is aware that it would be swapping one evil for another. 'Each man should select his own religion, or make one' he contends. Yet, finally, it is this dread force that impairs his desire for change. The final sequence stands as a peer to the biblical Armageddon, Twain wallowing in a frightful bloodletting unseen in any of his other works.
Mark Twain contrasts the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution with the centuries of slavery, serfdom, and poverty that killed countless more people than that spasm of excising of aristocracy. What else spurred him to write of human rights with such passion? He had written of slavery before, but this book is especially wrathful in describing the 'peculiar institution' eliminated in his homeland but a generation before. He forces the king to experience the slave's condition, a form of degradation he would have all aristocrats endure. Every feature of the human condition is examined in this timeless treasure. He challenges you to follow his gaze, considering whether today's societies, monarchical or not, will endure the scrutiny.

Sometimes you have to blow your own horn. I not only publish books but I write them.
These three books are not found on this web site but on Amazon - because I am
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to help provide income in my retirement.
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Fancy
Eighty-two year old Frances Smith, known as Fancy, is suffering from senile dementia. She doesn’t know it; neither does her family. Ten of her younger years were consumed with her love for Carlos, a man who worked on her father’s farm. Their love blossomed and grew until one fateful day.

As an old woman, Fancy spends more and more time in her past, through both her dementia and her conscious remembrances of Carlos. She remembers how they loved to dance at fire halls and other dances. She constantly asks him when they will once again dance. His reply is always the same, “Soon my love.”

All the while her family tries to come to grips with her dementia.

Get Fancy here

Centerville
Sheriff John Shambach is consumed with the tragedies happening, without rhyme or reason, in the nearby village of Centerville. While he tries to track down the murderer of little Betsy Smith, two teenagers, Jimmy Harris and Ben Snyder, who live in the village, are well on the way of discovering who this evil monster is. They discover who was responsible for the horrible events at the Firemen’s Carnival, where Betsy Smith was brutally murdered and another girl attacked and nearly raped. They piece together the clues to what actually happened to Patrick Marks and why his pants were on backwards. And why he was found down a well. Through this summer of horror they unearth the facts that the sheriff is unable find and they identify the serial killer in their midst. How does a small insular society cope with tragedy after tragedy in that hot summer? Twenty years pass and now Ben Snyder is a detective deputy sheriff in the same quiet central Pennsylvania area where he grew up. The peacefulness in Centerville is shattered by the murder of an elderly woman who is confined to a wheelchair. Ben finds it suspicious that the woman is found in the cellar with her wheelchair but the wheelchair is too wide to fit through the doorway. Not long after that a local Mennonite girl is brutally murdered and Ben struggles with the few clues to solve either case. A sudden revelation opens things up and leads him back to his own childhood and the horrible events of the summer of 1955.
This is an expanded second edition combining Watermelon Summer and Ben's Story into one volume. Material has been added, and some rewritten.
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Stories My Mother Never Told Me
Here is a collection of short stories your mother surely never told you. You will find genres from humor to horror to science fiction.

Meet Sam, the millionaire, he has almost everything. All he wants is a house of his own.

Then there is King Boots, by far the best mouser at a distant spaceport. There mousers are very important.

Take a walk through the woods and the fields, but be careful what you kick.

Murder is most rare in a distant galaxy, far, far away.

Discover what strange things happen during thunder storms. You may not like thunder so much after that.

Explore a cave in a little town in Pennsylvania.

Or meet your very distant cousin and learn what he asks of you.

You see, these are stories your mother never told you, but there’s a lot to enjoy and never a dull moment.
Get Stories here