This collection of short stories is intended to illustrate a more humorous glimpse of a soldier's life in Vietnam. It's of the times when boredom and a fertile imagination often lead to amusing situations, rather than the "blood and guts" of combat. All the narratives in this book, saves one, are true, or at least were presented to the author as fact. Some are without a doubt true, as they happened to the author. Other Vietnam veterans related the remainder of the yarns, swearing that each and every detail was unquestioningly genuine. We all know that combat veterans do not lie but their memories may, nevertheless recall their experiences slightly altered from actual events. Perusing these stories the reader might logically conclude that ego or passing years might, just possibly, influence a few of the bone-chilling tales. GI's live through numerous happenstances that are not heroic but are embarrassing or mundane. No matter how cynical a GI becomes, some events, maybe only in retrospect, are viewed as ironic or downright funny. These random experiences are what the book are about.

A story based on author's experiences a country store at Lake Kickapoo, Texas.

As a man in a wheelchair crosses a speeding van's path, the driver loses control, rolling the van. When the driver wakes up in the hospital to find his wife and daughter dead, he embarks on a horrific course of vengeance to punish those responsible for his loss . For the past seven years, Bill Colón has fought to accept his diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, a disease he calls The Bastard. Forced to use a wheelchair on occasion, he attends a mobility disabilities support group and is shocked to discover that its members are falling prey to a crazed serial killer-a man who targets men in wheelchairs. When Bill's brother-in-law, a homicide detective named Luis Ortiz, is assigned to the case, Bill feels compelled to become involved with the investigation. One by one, unwitting men in wheelchairs are murdered. Although Bill doesn't want to be categorized as a man who fits the killer's profile, he soon realizes that he too is a target. Bill helps Luis pursue leads as much as his crippling disease will allow, but he has his limitations. Will Luis capture the serial killer before Bill ends up as the next victim?

American jails and prisons confine nearly 13.5 million people each year, and it is estimated that 6 to 7 percent of the U.S. population will be confined in their lifetimes. Despite these disturbing numbers, little is known about life inside beyond the mythology of popular culture. Michael G. Santos, a federal prisoner nearing the end of his second decade of continuous confinement, has dedicated the last eighteen years to shedding light on the lives of the men warehoused in the American prison system. Inside:Life Behind Bars in America, his first book for the general public, takes us behind those bars and into the chaos of the cellblock. Capturing the voices of his fellow prisoners with perfect pitch, Santos makes the tragic--- and at times inspiring---stories of men from the toughest gang leaders to the richest Wall Street criminals come alive. From drug schemes, murders for hire, and even a prostitution ring that trades on the flesh of female prison guards, this book contains the never-before-seen details of prison life that at last illuminate the varied ways in which men experience life behind bars in America.

Powerful True Story of a Twentieth-Century Plantation Slave Over fifty years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Robert Sadler was sold into slavery at the age of five--by his own father. This is the no-holds-barred tale of those dark days, his quest for freedom, and the determination to serve others born out of his experience. It is a story of good triumphing over evil, of God's grace, and of an extraordinary life of ministry. An updated edition of a classic title.

This is the story of a young Marine's struggle through unwanted separation from friends and family caused by the consequences of the Great Depression and by the demands of World War II. During the twenty-two plus months my brother, Cpl. Buel Wesley Bray, served as a Marine in World War II, he wrote more than sixty letters to Bobbie Waren, a young woman whose sister had married his older brother. Bobbie saved fifty-seven of those letters and made them available in 2007. The substance of his letters and the recollections that emerged from a number of conversations with Bobbie formed a theme upon which to build an account of Buel's military and nonmilitary experiences, both factual, as well as fictional. In addition, his military personnel records, obtained from the National Personnel Records Center, included a schedule of movement and location of training and combat during his tour of duty. Utilizing information from these sources as the story unfolds, especially from the letters, relationships were encouraged to develop and grow, attitudes were permitted to surface and change, and events were identified and described. The places Buel and his Ordnance Company visited for training and combat duty are valid. While the events that occurred at these various locales are largely fictional, the activities in which the characters of the story engaged were those experienced by marine trainees and later on, when trainees became combatants. Perhaps the merging of facts with fiction can best be exemplified by the equator-crossing activities that occurred when his battalion sailed into the South Pacific war zone. Buel's personnel records document his initiation as a Shellback on 20 March, 1943, therefore the last part of Chapter IX describes this ship-wide event that included activities that were prevalent during the late 1930's and early 40's. Research validated the participation of polliwogs (inductees) in assisting ship's company crewmen in preparation for the "mutiny" and in the construction of initiation obstacles. This was a necessity aboard ships carrying several thousand troops. However, polliwogs were barred from the final stage of preparation. They discovered that when they mastered the obstacle themselves. While all individuals referenced in Buel's letters were real people influencing his life, the only other person who actually played a role in the story is First Sergeant Charles V. Bomar, the author of the final letter in the book. All others are fictional. Ulmon C. Bray November 11, 2009 Fresno, California