Jill Fryman (Friday to her friends) is a Line Supervisor at a truck manufacturing plant in a small southern Indiana town—and life on the assembly line is almost as predictable as her love life. When it comes to matters of the heart, Friday always seems to be making the wrong choices. Things go from bad to worse when El, a sultry labor organizer from the UAW, sweeps into town to unionize the plant right after it’s been bought out by a Japanese firm. Sparks fly on and off the line as Jill and El fight their growing attraction for each other against a backdrop of monster trucks, fried catfish dinners, Pork Day USA, and a bar called Hoosier Daddy.

It's spring in Pawpaw County, Indiana and everybody has a bad case of hanky-panky pants. In the Baby Daddy Mystery oldster sleuths Ruby Jane (RJ) and Veenie are on the run, chasing down cheating heart jezebels and shaking child support out of deadbeat daddies. After Avonelle Apple’s husband, William, the esteemed town dentist, passes away, she receives a child support letter from a self-proclaimed mistress. Suspicious, she hires the Shady Hoosier Detective Agency, to determine if her late husband was a philandering baby daddy. The case seems simple until Avonelle’s son, Bromley, heir to his father’s dental empire, and well-known King of the Hanky-Panky Pants Club, pops up dead in a scarecrow costume. The mounting romantic mysteries come to a surprise head as the senior sleuths outrun shotgun showers to close in on the answers at the Moon Glo Motor Lodge, the Original Home of Hillbilly Hanky Panky. Veenie and RJ have to buy an extra case of Bengay and a buttload of BBs just to keep up with the romantic misadventures in this award-winning humorous cozy mystery. This is Book 2 in The Shady Hoosier Detective Agency Series, featuring amateur women sleuths.

Tony Macucci is god in the music industry. Admittedly, he is a rather unscrupulous god, but none of his exploits can prepare him for his ultimate challenge. To keep his cushy job, he must revive the faded career of Dave McGuinn and catapult that dusty hit American Sky into Americas Number 1 Song. Macucci decides that the only way to ensure success is to perfectly time a hit on the aging singer. Trouble is, the music maestro begins to admire the performer. As Macucci ultimately discovers, its far more difficult to call off a hit than to plan one.

Winner of the 2020 Chicago Folklore Prize CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2020 Despite predictions that commercial mass culture would displace customs of the past, traditions firmly abound, often characterized as folklore. In The Practice of Folklore: Essays toward a Theory of Tradition, author Simon J. Bronner works with theories of cultural practice to explain the social and psychological need for tradition in everyday life. Bronner proposes a distinctive “praxic” perspective that will answer the pressing philosophical as well as psychological question of why people enjoy repeating themselves. The significance of the keyword practice, he asserts, is the embodiment of a tension between repetition and variation in human behavior. Thinking with practice, particularly in a digital world, forces redefinitions of folklore and a reorientation toward interpreting everyday life. More than performance or enactment in social theory, practice connects localized culture with the vernacular idea that “this is the way we do things around here.” Practice refers to the way those things are analyzed as part of, rather than apart from, theory, thus inviting the study of studying. “The way we do things” invokes the social basis of “doing” in practice as cultural and instrumental. Building on previous studies of tradition in relation to creativity, Bronner presents an overview of practice theory and the ways it might be used in folklore and folklife studies. Demonstrating the application of this theory in folkloristic studies, Bronner offers four provocative case studies of psychocultural meanings that arise from traditional frames of action and address issues of our times: referring to the boogieman; connecting “wild child” beliefs to school shootings; deciphering the offensive chants of sports fans; and explicating male bravado in bawdy singing. Turning his analysis to the analysts of tradition, Bronner uses practice theory to evaluate the agenda of folklorists in shaping perceptions of tradition-centered “folk societies” such as the Amish. He further unpacks the culturally based rationale of public folklore programming. He interprets the evolving idea of folk museums in a digital world and assesses how the folklorists' terms and actions affect how people think about tradition.

Veenie Goens and Ruby Jane Waskom would like to retire, but they lack a nest egg. In fact, they barely have a nest. They co-own a ramshackle, but cozy home, that’s overrun with quirky characters. Determined to supplement their social security, the amateur aging women sleuths, who live in the small town of Knobby Waters, Indiana, decide to go pro with their one natural talent: nosiness. They sign on as detectives with the Shady Hoosier Detective Agency, run by Harry Shades, an incompetent womanizer. Their knees aching, but their spirits high, the senior sleuths’ first crime case, the Ghost Busting Mystery, finds the lifelong friends chasing ghosts, bank robbers and hillbilly hoodlums through the barnyards of rural Indiana. Follow Ruby Jane and Veenie’s antics in the Ghost Busting Mystery, an award-winning feel-good, funny mystery voted the Best Humor Book 2019 by the Indie Reader. This is Book 1 in the humorous Shady Hoosier Detective Agency Cozy Mystery Series.

‘PRAYER OF THE CONQUERING ANGEL’ THE-COVER-ALL BIG PITCURE IN LIFE (((POINTS DIRECTLY TO YOU.))) “LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION; BUT DELIVER US FROM ‘BECOMING EVIL’ AMEN’... “ALL GOD’S FAMILY” EQUAL-OPPORTUNITY SPIRITUAL CONNECTION? THE POSITIVE SPIRIT, PRESCRIPTION WITHIN, SHEDS LIGHT ON THE BODY OF THE BEHOLDER! ‘PROGRAMING PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITIES FINEST IN BEHAVIOUR...

“A personal glimpse into how the legendary Indiana basketball coach taught and mentored his team.”—Jared Jeffries, former Indiana Hoosier and New York Knick What happens when a 6' 9" kid from Lobelville, Tennessee is recruited by legendary basketball coach Bob Knight? Kirk Haston’s life was changed forever with just a two-minute phone call. With previously unknown Knight stories, anecdotes, and choice quotes, Haston gives fans an inside look at the notoriously private man and his no-nonsense coaching style. Which past Hoosier basketball greats returned to talk to and practice with current teams? How did Knight mentally challenge his players in practices? How did the players feel when Knight was fired? In this touching and humorous book, Haston shares these answers and more, including his own Hoosier highs—shooting a famous three-point winning shot against number one ranked Michigan State—and lows—losing his mom in a heartbreaking tornado accident. Days of Knight is a book every die-hard IU basketball fan will treasure.