The story of Jimmy Kelly's Steak House, Nashville's oldest fine restaurant and the family who started it—of stills, saloons, and speakeasies, and of a family who was tough and resourceful, who lost everything, and picked themselves up and started again. When young James Kelly fled the Irish Famine in 1848, he arrived in America with a roll of copper tubing under his shirt. To make whiskey, of course. And he did—in the green rolling hills of Middle Tennessee. Later his son John would open a saloon, initiating the family custom of serving up “a great steak and a generous pour of whiskey” that continues to this day. Readers will delight in tales of bootleggers and rumrunners, saloons and speakeasies, of hard workers with strong family values, the old genteel Nashville and the new Nashville recording industry, and the mysterious difference between whiskey and bourbon. There are stories about Jack Daniel, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans (and even Trigger), Al Capone, Bob Dylan, Grantland Rice, John Jay Hooker Sr., and local characters only a Nashvillian could love. The story of the Kelly family in Tennessee takes readers from the Civil War to Nashville’s postwar boom and the turn of a new century: the Roaring 20s that followed the first World War, the temperance movement that led to Prohibition, and the speakeasy solution that led honest Kelly men to defy a patently bad law as they built a family legacy of beloved restaurants in Nashville. Mike Kelly—James’s great-grandson—has written a fine and rollicking tale of a most interesting time in American history. His affection for his family and his community shows on every page.
Marrowbone By: Mike Kelly Marrowbone delves into family, politics, the law, corruption, and West Virginia. It weaves through a primary election season (December through early May), following the races for Governor and a Supreme Court justice, while exploring the histories of the Murphy and Quinn families and touching on the Matewan Massacre, the fight for civil rights, and the murder of Jock Yablonski. It also develops two major cases that are helping to shape the election, one a murder of the protagonist’s best friend by an out-of-control work release inmate and the other an appeal by a convicted serial rapist seeking a new form of DNA testing. Though not set in a specific time, Marrowbone laments the failure of politics to move West Virginia forward and honors the basic goodness of the people.
As the morning sunlight crept over the limestone walls of Jerusalem’s old city, two young Americans flagged down a bus and got on. It was 6:45 am, February 25, 1996—an otherwise ordinary Sunday in Israel. Sara Duker and Matthew Eisenfeld settled into their seats as the door closed on Jerusalem’s Number 18 bus which would take them across the spine of this ancient city of hills. On this day, they had risen earlier than normal in the hope of touring an archaeological site. After a few more stops, their bus turned on Jerusalem’s Jaffa Road and rolled up a slight hill and stopped again. A young man, who seemed to be a student and was carrying a black duffle bag, got on. No one paid much attention to him, witnesses said later. Students carrying duffle bags or backpacks are a common sight in Jerusalem. But this man was no student. He took a seat. After several more stops, he stood and pushed a button attached to his duffle bag—and set off a huge bomb. Sara and Matthew died in the explosion. So did 24 others, along with the bomber. Their grieving families of the Americans set out to get answers and justice. So begins the story of “The Bus on Jaffa Road.” The narrative weaves from the streets of Jerusalem to a West Bank refugee camp to the White House, the Congress and a U.S. courtroom where the victims’ families filed a lawsuit against Iran for financing the bombing—then to a prison in the Negev desert in Israel where the author confronts the man who build the bomb on the Jaffa Road bus. It is a story that prefigures many of the difficulties of America’s “war on terrorism” and reminds us of the intractable nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that continues to this day.
MICHAEL A. KELLY’S THIS VET’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY, is an autobiographical account of his life to date, through the good and the bad and the ups and the downs. It details his only brother’s capitol crime. It also details his difficulties in dealing with, as he sees it, a corrupt and fraudulent veteran’s administration. The injustices and lack of social and administrative justice in both the State and Federal Judicial systems. The few friends the author has have helped him considerably; for it not for these few friends, this book would have been written from prison as opposed to the public library.
The man who ruled daytime TV for two decades displays the same engaging style that made him so enormously popular--in a memoir bursting with terrific stories told with nostalgia, wit, and more than a touch of class. 100 photos throughout.
Growing up in a broken home during the turbulent 1970s wasn’t easy, particularly if you were a city kid marooned in Northern British Columbia. One castaway, Mike Turkki, survived his childhood shipwreck and made it out alive. Now he’s ready to share just how dysfunctional, confusing, and humorous his teenage years were. In a bid to stay one step ahead of debt collectors and antagonistic relatives, the Turkki family—Mike, Kelly, Laina, Pat, and Olavi—left Vancouver and moved to Ootsa Lake in 1972 with little more than each other and the clothes on their backs. Eleven-year-old Mike was initially unimpressed by his new surroundings—why was everyone so distrustful of outsiders?—but soon became part of a ragtag group of boys intent on making money, chasing girls, and challenging authority in an isolated community on the brink of change. Though the bond between the boys weakened over time, their penchant for causing trouble never did. A tale of fishing trips, first drinks, family outings, and other near-mishaps, Mike Turkki’s coming-of-age memoir will have you laughing, crying, and reflecting on your own journey to adulthood.
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