Bøger af Mike Kelly

The surface smashes, droplets fly. The pond is shaken and the tiny fish is taken from his world without the blinking of an eye. The moorhen starts, the heron cranes his neck around to look, but they only hear the whistling of the Jewel of the Brook..." David Freedman's epic tale of the trials of life of one of our most treasured birds is beautifully illuminated by the stunning artwork of Mike Kelly, creating a timeless tale for nature lovers of all ages to enjoy. David and Mike are both keen observers of British wildlife, spending many happy hours staring into ponds and watching the skies. Their first book Stunt Crow is an aeronautical adventure following the antics of a brave crow. Jewel of the Brook is a lavishly illustrated insight into the precarious life of one of our favourite birds.

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 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.About the AuthorElected Family Court Judge for fifteen years, Mike Kelly has been a practicing attorney for forty years in the areas of civil rights, employment, and family law. He is a former Deputy Attorney General for Civil Rights, a recipient of the Governor's Civil Rights Award, a fellow of the West Virginia Bar Foundation, former counsel for the West Virginia chapters of NOW, Common Cause and other community organizations, and former columnist and travel writer for The Charleston Gazette. Kelly has two children and lives in Charleston.