Showing results by author "Donald A. Davis" in All Categories

We all have our personal phobias and white-knuckle moments. The title story of Irrational Fear tells of Davis's mother's fear of snakes and the way she eventually got even with him for making fun of her. (She always came out on top.) The second story, "The Red Coat", tells why his father and his father's brother-in-law finally stopped playing Christmas tricks on their sisters and wives. Here's another hilarious send-up from one of America's favorite storytellers.

An American general is captured by Islamic extremists in the Middle East. They threaten to behead him within days. One strange fact: Moments before he is rendered unconscious during the attack, the general notices that his unseen captors speak American English. What's going on?

Perhaps the most compelling murder case of our day, the death of six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey galvanized the nation - and years after it occurred, the mystery still endures. Who killed the young beauty queen and why? Who is covering up for whom, and who is simply lying? In JonBenet, the most authoritative and comprehensive study of the Ramsey murder, a former lead Boulder Police detective, Steve Thomas, explores the case in vivid and fascinating detail.

When the Southern Bells brought the telephone to rural North Carolina, it looked like a "big black daffodil". What the telephone company had not counted on in conceiving its eight-party line service was a pair of "past-middle-age, unmarried sisters", the chatty Misses Lucy and Lena Leatherwood. Once the Leatherwood sisters were connected by the Southern Bells, nobody else on that line had a chance!

A top Russian intelligence agent has defected to the West, and the only man with whom he will speak is Kyle Swanson, who busted him out of the US Marine Corps Scout/Sniper School years ago. The defector proves to be an Edward Snowden-type gold mine of amazing secrets about the when, where and how of President Vladimir Pushkin's next grab for lost Soviet territory. But Swanson, now a special contractor with the CIA, soon begins to believe that it is all fool's gold being sprinkled by Moscow to ignite an open military fight with NATO and the United States.

Growing up in North Carolina, Donald Davis heard stories that came to America through Scots-Irish immigrants about a fellow named Jack who was so real that young Davis thought he was a distant relative or otherside-of-the-mountain neighbor. Now Davis knows that Jack is a universal legendary figure who, by various names, is found in nearly every culture.

"Years later," Donald Davis remember of his childhood," I came to realize that when you come from a long-dammed-up Scots-Irish gene pool it is an okay thing to wish for something, but it is not an OK thing to get it."

Screen Drive-In Theater hired a young Donald Davis to work his high school summers there. Employment at the Sulpher Springs Big-Screen Drive-In Theater consisted of working the concession stand, catching "slip-ins", and patrolling the back row to learn about love and life. The theater survives Davis and his friends' summer hijinks until Labor Day.

In this follow-up to the highly successful Kill Zone, former marine sniper Kyle Swanson faces his most deadly enemy yet, a legendary enemy sniper working with a fringe Islamic organization that has created a terrifying new weapon of mass destruction.

Spain is on the brink of economic collapse, and European banks demand that any bailout be linked to harsh domestic changes. An alliance of Islamic bankers counters with a rescue package containing no conditions at all. The underlying goal: to break the unity of Europe and put Madrid on the path back to Islamic rule. When the United States stridently opposes that deal, terrorists storm the American consulate in Barcelona and slaughter an entire six-man US Marine security guard.

In rural North Carolina, in 1951, despite parental reassurances, a typhoid shot hurt. It hurt even more when the children saw who would be administering the shot: Miss Winnie, a large, dictatorial nurse who had been "especially built by the nursing school so she would never blow away in a hard wind".

The Central Intelligence Agency is under attack, and so is its top field operative, Kyle Swanson. The highly decorated former marine corps gunnery sergeant is attending the funeral of a friend when a terrorist blows up the grave. A week later he narrowly survives a grenade attack in Berlin. In Washington, Congress is being told that Swanson has been turned, his private employer is corrupt, and the agency itself cannot be trusted.

Kyle is captured and thrown in prison. Lauren is accused of being a double agent. The one person they trust to help is the man who sent them on the black operation - Jim Hall, a legendary CIA agent, Kyle's sniper mentor, and Lauren's boss and former lover. But Hall has gone rogue. He is selling America's innermost secrets to a ruthless Pakistani warlord who wants to mold al-Qaeda into a legitimate political party and secure a nuclear arsenal.

If you have never ridden a mule along a 48-inch wide trail whose ledge drops off, in places, 700 feet to the Colorado River, straight down, you may have difficulty picturing the temporary insanity that leads otherwise responsible adults to sign away the remainder of their natural life expectancy just for the chance to see the Grand Canyon's natural beauty close-up.

In Too Much Hair!, Donald Davis focuses on the trouble with little brothers, especially his own. In the title story, he gives his little brother the haircut he badly needs. The next story explains how he came to be permanently fired as his brother's babysitter. The third tale recounts one of the many science projects for which his brother served as Davis's personal chemistry set. These stories will call forth memories from anyone who has had to live with siblings.

Now Coughlin has written a highly personal story about his deadly craft, taking readers deep inside an invisible society that is off-limits to outsiders. This is not a heroic battlefield memoir but the careful study of an exceptional man who must keep his sanity while carrying forward one of the deadliest legacies in the U.S. military today.

Top-ranked sniper Kyle Swanson was a promising young marine on a dangerous peacekeeping mission in Mogadishu when he first captured "the Cobra", and a lifelong blood feud began. Twenty years later Kyle works for the CIA while the Cobra emerges from prison to become an efficient killing machine, and he has never slackened his hatred for Swanson. To draw out his ultimate target, the Cobra launches a violent campaign against the United States and attacks the second-largest shopping mall in America.

Braces hurt. Braces look funny. Braces are downright embarrassing. And just about the time you think they're going to feel normal, it's time to tighten them up again. Worst of all, most of us get braces just at that time of life when the last thing we want to do is to look conspicuous, to call attention to ourselves in any way. This new coming-of-age story employs storyteller Donald Davis' trademark descriptions and humor to address the question: is this worth all the pain and embarrassment?

Broken Bones is a double set of double stories. The first set is made up of a story Davis's grandmother told about the time his mother broke her arm - twice! The second story in the first set is about how his little brother's collarbone was broken - twice! The second set of stories concerns Davis' neighbors, the Leatherwoods, and explains what happens when two big brothers team up against two little brothers. It also tells us that fathers are always smarter than their sons!

Donald Davis was born into a southern Appalachian mountain world rich in stories. He grew up listening to his father and his Uncle Frank tell stories of their boyhood, all the while taking in the details of his own childhood experience.