The Front Porch Prophet (34 page)

Don’t miss the next novel by Raymond L. Atkins

SORROW WOOD
R
AYMOND
L. A
TKINS

Reva Blackmon is a reluctant probate judge in the small town of Sand Valley, Alabama. She lives in a rock castle with turrets and a moat thanks to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, and she walks on one leg thanks to a drunken railroad engineer on the Southern Pacific. She sings Wednesdays and Sundays in the choir at the Methodist Church and believes in reincarnation the rest of the time. Her husband, Wendell, is the love of her life, and if she is to be believed, he has been her soul mate for many lifetimes, stretching back down the corridors of time.

Wendell Blackmon is the disgruntled policeman in this same small town. He rides herd on an unlikely collection of reprobates, rogues with names such as Dead-hand Riley, Gilla Newman, Otter Price, and Blossom Hogan. Law enforcement in this venue consists of breaking up dog fights, investigating alien abductions, extinguishing truck fires, and spending endless hours riding the roads of Sand Valley. Unlike his wife, Wendell does not believe in reincarnation. Nor does he believe in Methodism, Buddhism, or Santa Claus. But he does believe in Reva, and that belief has been sufficient to his needs over their many years together.

But the routines of Sand Valley are about to change. A burned body has been discovered at a local farm named Sorrow Wood. The deceased is a promiscuous self-proclaimed witch with a checkered past. Wendell investigates the crime, and the list of suspects includes his deputy, the entire family of the richest man in town, and nearly everyone else who knew the departed. As the probe continues, a multitude of secrets are revealed, including one that reaches from the deep past all the way to the rock castle. Who was this woman who met her end at Sorrow Wood? Where did she come from, what were the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death, and what did her presence mean to Wendell, Reva, and the remainder of the inhabitants of Sand Valley?

ISBN# 9781934755631
Hardcover Fiction
US $25.95/GDN $28.95
AUGUST 2009
www.raymondlatkins.com

RAYMOND LATKINS

photo by Kiela L. Beam, Cedartown, GA

R
aymond L. Atkins resides in Rome, Georgia, with his wife. They live in a 110-year-old house that they have restored themselves, and they have four grown children who drop by from time to time. Raymond has had a variety of occupations during the past thirty-five years, but now that the children are grown, he is pursuing his lifelong ambition of being a novelist and writer.

His hobbies include reading, travel, and working on the house. His stories have been published in
Christmas Stories from Georgia, The Lavender Mountain Anthology, The Blood and Fire Review,
and
The Old Red Kimono.
His columns appear regularly in the
Rome News/Tribune
and
Memphis Downtowner Magazine.

His second novel—
Sorrow Wood
—will be published by Medallion Press in August 2009.

www.raymondlatkins.com

Flight
  to
    Freedom
                       D.J. Wilson

I KILLED MY HUSBAND, A TOWN HERO
, and then called the police and turned myself in. “He’s dead as a doornail,” I said to the officer and then spit on Harland Jeffers’ bloody, dead body.

With my head held high, I allowed myself to be escorted to a squad car outside my house. A house which had been more of a prison than the cell I was headed for.

Cameras flashed.

“Why did you kill Harland?”

Because he needed killing. And I, Montana Ines Parsons-Jeffers did just that.

So begins the rest of what’s left of Montana’s life. Not that she ever really had one.

Now she’s headed for prison. There’s no escaping it. It was the ultimate destination in her Flight to Freedom.

But one man might be able to help…

ISBN# 9781933836379
Trade Paperback
US $15.95/CDN $17.95
Available Now
www.doloresjwilson.com