Smokey the Talking Dog by Jim Nolan

Shag carpeting, talking dogs, grizzly bears and Emilio Pucci commercials. Jim Nolan has encountered them all and survived.

These stories, most of which first aired on WBFO Public Radio in Buffalo, relate how his love for his hometown and family was able to overcome the obstacles they set in his way, for example, his father’s scrambled eggs and offer to reveal “the secret of math.”

Warm-hearted and hilarious, Smokey the Talking Dog and other tales from the land of loganberry captures a city and era full of eccentricities, hidden dangers and the best local food east of Kansas City.


Captain Blackwell’s Prize by V.E. Ulett

A romantic adventure from the days of wooden ships and iron men, CAPTAIN BLACKWELL’S PRIZE is a story of honor, duty, social class and the bond of sexual love.

In 1802 Captain James Blackwell attacks and takes La Trinidad, a Spanish frigate aboard which Blackwell finds 35,000 gold dollars and the American woman Mercedes de Aragon. On putting into Gibraltar with his treasure and his new mistress Blackwell is informed by his irate evangelical admiral of the Treaty of Amiens, denying him prize money earned by the capture and setting Mercedes at liberty. But the self-possessed American has formed a strong attachment to lusty Captain Blackwell. When she journeys with the captain to the North African coast and is taken into the Dey of Oran’s harem, Captain Blackwell must follow his own code of morality and honor to rescue the woman on whom his future happiness depends.