From a New York Times–bestselling author, the true crime story of a Rhode Island family murdered by a Sunday school teacher.When prosperous lawyer Ernest Brendel mysteriously disappeared, along with his wife Alice, and their eight-year-old daughter Emily, friends in the close-knit Rhode Island neighborhood worried that family had been kidnapped. It would be agonizing months in a massive FBI search before they would know the heartbreaking truth.The sh...

This is a double set of double stories. The first set is made up of a story my Grandmother told me about when my mother broke her arm...twice! The second story in this set is my story of when we broke my little brother's collarbone...twice! It is about how trouble is genetic in families. The second set follows up with the same neighbor boys, the Leatherwoods, and shows what happens when two big brothers team up against two little brothers. It also shows us that fathers are always smarter t...

"Common Efficiency Mistakes Companies Make" by Don Davis, PhD, MBA, is a practical guide that addresses the pivotal issues affecting organizational efficiency. This eBook delves into five prevalent mistakes: lack of clear goals, ineffective communication, poor time management, neglecting employee development, and ignoring feedback for continuous improvement. Through actionable insights and strategies, it equips readers to navigate and rectify these common pitfalls, thereby enhancing effici...

Donald Davis was a young United Methodist minister when the telephone rang one morning. "It's your daddy," the caller said, "Mama just couldn't get him awake this morning. He is gone.""A million questions about him began to line themselves up in my mind." Davis writes. "Where did he go to high school? I did not know." Did he get any education behind that? What were his early jobs, and where did he live then? I was now only twenty-eight, my father was dead, and I had been to young a...

For 16 years, Donald Davis has performed during the Christmas season at Fearrington Village, a unique destination community near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Hundreds of people fill the seats in this historic barn, now converted for use as an events venue.Recorded live at Davis's December 15, 2007 performance, this audio captures the familiar and special relationship between a skilled and beloved storyteller and the audience that has sustained him year after year.In three m...

When Donald Davis walked into his 45th high-school reunion, he had two startling visions. The first was that the only signage he saw read, WELCOME HARLEY RIDERS.After discovering that he and his classmates would be sharing space with the bikers, Davis had his second surprise: "I was amazed to see how many parents had come."In The Time Machine, Davis offers us both the story of the reunion and the collectively remembered story of his classmates' senior year. In 1962...

"It was the forty-second year she had taught fourth grade," and the A's through GR's were thinking that Miss Daisy had probably seen her better days. A mouse entered the classroom through an open door while the frail figure of a teacher stood before her desk on the first day of school. Her new class thought they were about to see the old woman wither -- or worse. What followed, however, convinced them that this would not be an ordinary year in elementary school.In fact, Miss Daisy ...

The title story here is the story of my Mother's fear of snakes and of the way she eventually got passively even with me for making fun of her. She always came out on top. The second story we put on this recording is called 'The Red Coat,' as it is a story that happened in the same family setting. It is the story of how my father and his brothers-in-law finally stopped playing Christmas tricks on their sister-wives. --Donald Davis

We all know someone like them: women whose lives revolve around their cats. Here Donald Davis paints verbal portraits of two very different women in his life who shared a fiercely unshakable sense of priorities. It was simply understood that the cats came first, and once you accepted that, everything else made perfect sense.Employing his trademark Carolina drawl, droll wit, and sharp observations, Davis is in top form here as he pays homage to these two remarkable women and their d...

There was a time during Donald Davis's college freshman year when he wasn't really sure if he wanted to claim his hometown of Sulpher Springs, North Carolina. But a boy by the name of Stanley Easter changed his mind."The year after that," he recalls, "I did go home from college for Thanksgiving. In fact, I had now become so proud of where I was from that I could hardly wait to get home. I no longer had to lie about where I was from. The world of childhood was quickly becoming a dea...

Storyteller Donald Davis had a very sensible mother. She had a pretty good idea what boys would do, so she was always on the lookout. As Davis later learned, always being on the lookout is what mamas do. His vigilant but gentle mother gave her son multiple gifts in life, and—as we learn in the end—gifts that do not end with her passing.

A winding highway; children fighting in the back seat; parents suggesting diversionary games and holding onto their own hopes and fears for the vacation ahead. It's not an uncommon scene. But it is Donald Davis's genius that turns a lackluster family vacation into a week to remember. The 1950s-era plastic seat covers were not the only thing to leave a lasting impression. In her spontaneous (and desparate) invention of games like Cow Poker and See Rock City, Mother keeps the rules one step ...