Written and collected over the last 20 years, Ron has been fortunate to bring back tales from his time while wandering “out there” with like-minded companions, always moving toward “yonder,” and, sometimes, if we were very lucky, just a bit beyond.
Non-Fiction

Join award-winning author Richard Parker as he takes you on a journey through fifteen of Western Kentucky’s most nefarious people, places and events.
An illuminating history of the banjo, revealing its origins at the crossroads of slavery, religion, and music. In an extraordinary story unfolding across two hundred years, Kristina Gaddy uncovers the banjo’s key role in Black spirituality, ritual, and rebellion.
Had Elizabeth "Bess" Clements Abell (1933–2020) been a boy, she would likely have become a politician like her father, Earle C. Clements. Effectively barred from office because of her gender, she forged her own path by helping family friends Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson.
In War & Homecoming: Veteran Identity and the Post-9/11 Generation, Travis L. Martin explores how a new generation of veterans is redefining what it means to come home. More than 2.7 million veterans served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their homecomings didn't include parades or national celebrations. Instead, when the last US troops left Afghanistan, American […]
A Washington Post journalist’s wry but warm and deeply reported exploration of a pop-culture icon on its 100th anniversary, There She Was unfolds on two narrative tracks: The rise and fall of the Miss America pageant, told through the piercing stories of the women who wore the crown through decades of social change and then […]
Gaining weight as you age is not inevitable. It’s avoidable and even reversible. In fact, research shows that you can help stop—and even reverse—age-related weight gain and muscle loss. And you can lose those excess pounds at any age with the science of protein timing! That’s the shockingly good news in The Whole Body Reset, […]
The Tree You Come Home To tells the story of Jane Olmsted’s family’s struggle with mental illness, addiction, and the crises that followed the murder of her youngest son. It can provide hope and comfort to those facing similar situations and encourage empathy and compassion in those who haven’t.
A powerful true story about a shocking crime and a mysterious illness that will forever change your notions of how we punish and how we heal—an expansion on one of the most popular This American Life episodes of all time.
Wendell Berry has never been afraid to speak up for the dispossessed. The Need to Be Whole continues the work he began in The Hidden Wound (1970) and The Unsettling of America (1977), demanding a careful exploration of this hard, shared truth: The wealth of the mighty few governing this nation has been built on […]
Written in the last years before his death, this memoir by renowned Kentucky poet and photographer James Baker Hall goes in search of the mother he lost to suicide when he was eight years old. Working his way through a memory shattered by trauma, he tries to recover the story of his beloved mother Lurlene […]
The Little Book of Whiskey Cocktails sets out to share the stories of the whiskey-making world and recipes suitable for whiskey enthusiasts of all expertise levels. Bryan Paiement takes a practical approach to exploring the various ways in which the spirit can be mixed and enjoyed.