“‘There’s one other thing that I’ve heard about over the years, that when a substantial amount of cash is withdrawn, you have to sign . . .'”

“‘This money didn’t come from a bank,’ Balducci said. ‘Judge, I’ve been around long enough to know–and I’ve been involved in enough to know over time–that you always gotta have a slush fund.'”

“‘You can’t have gotten where I’ve gotten in my life at this point and not know that sooner or later things come up that you gotta take care of, and you need a slush fund.'”

“Lackey asked to see a copy of the order that would send the Jones case to arbitration. Balducci produced the document, which he described as ‘pretty straight.’ Then he laid an envelope containing $20,000 in cash on Lackey’s desk.” (187-188)

“Lackey had another entry for the journal prosecutors wanted him to keep.”

“‘As Tim walked out of the office,’ he wrote, ‘I felt so forlorn and sad that our profession had come to this, that a young man of Tim’s ability would be this cowardly and stoop this low at the behest of scum he is trying to help just so he can add another dollar to his pile.'” (189)

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie goes on sale October 19th.

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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Beth Ann and Tom were with me on one of the most important days of my life – the birth of my little girl Harper. Well, not really there in the hospital… let me explain.

In the fall of 2005 my wife Wendy became pregnant with our first child – my reaction was varied – freaked out, scared, happy… you know, the normal stuff. I also started reading parenting books as fast as I could. I read “how to” books and I also read daddy and mommy memoirs. Then came the announcement that Mississippi’s favorite poet Beth Ann Fennelly was publishing a parenting book of sorts. Great With Child is a book of letters that Beth Ann wrote to a pregnant friend about being an expecting mother. Beth Ann’s book signing was on May 25th of 2006 – the very next morning we were due in the hospital for a scheduled induction – around 5:00 in the afternoon of the 26th Harper was born.

So Beth Ann was an interesting part of that very special event, but Tom was there as well – Tom’s third book Smonk was due out later in 2006 and I had just gotten my advance copy before that trip to the Hospital. So there I am reading Smonk on May 26 of 2006 waiting for Harper. Poor Wendy had to endure me reading key passages out loud from Smonk during that part of the day when contractions are far apart and not much is happening.

You get the idea, one of the most important days of your life and you have to endure your husband reading stuff like: “She gazed at her belly and wondered how a girl got knocked up. She was as skinny as a skeleton and no matter how much she ate she couldn’t put on no fat. But you got fat when you got knocked up. Maybe it was a pill you bought or something you shot. She bet a doctor could tell her.” On second thought, reading that passage on that particular day may not have been such a great idea.

At any rate – Beth Ann and Tom are two of the finest writers we have and, I think, the only married couple in Neil White’s Mississippians.

Click here to see all of “Lemuria Reads Mississippians.”

Editor Neil White will be signing at Lemuria on  Thursday, October 28th.

Reserve your copy online or call the bookstore 601/800.366.7619.

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The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“If Dick Scruggs’s name was essential to the success of the superfirm that Tim Balducci and Steve Patterson envisioned, so was the name Biden . . . The Biden connection went back more than twenty years, to the time when Patterson signed on as the southern coordinator for the young Delaware senator in his first, quixotic campaign for the party’s presidential nomination. In the intervening years, Patterson stayed in touch with Biden and became acquainted with members of Biden’s family . . .” (195)

“Patterson and Balducci were both supporting Biden’s quest for the 2008 nomination, and co-sponsored with Scruggs and three others a fund-raiser when the candidate came to Mississippi in August 2007. On that visit, Biden was accompanied by his brother Jim, who used the trip to cement plans with the Mississippians to open a Washington office that would capitalize on the name Biden.”(195-196)

“While senator [Joe Biden] charmed the Mississippi guests at the party, his brother was busy talking with the hosts. It was determined that Jim’s wife Sara, an attorney, could credibly bring the family name to the firm they planned.”

“Though purportedly a ‘law group’ with a base in Washington, the firm would specialize in lobbying. No law degree was necessary for any of the firm’s associates in the District of Columbia, freeing Patterson and others to operate under the banner of an office engaged with legal work . . .”

“A month later, the idea had become a reality. On September 27, the same day Balducci handed over the first $20,000 payment to Judge Lackey, Balducci also visited Scruggs’s office to tell him of a more savory initiative. Enthusiastically, he described plans for the firm of Patterson, Balducci and Biden.”

“‘We formalized our relationship with the Bidens,’ he told Scruggs. ‘It’s not going to be some bullshit shingle hung somewhere in a window. This is the real deal.'” (196)

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie goes on sale October 19th.

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

[Scruggs speaking at a panel discussion on legal venues, or so-called ‘magic jurisdictions,’ sponsored by Prudential Financial]:

“‘The trial lawyers have established relationships with the judges that are elected. They’re state court judges; they’re populists. They’ve got large populations of voters who are in on the deal. They’re getting their piece in many cases. And so, it’s a political force in their jurisdiction, and it’s almost impossible to get a fair trial if you’re a defendant in some of these places . . . The cases are not won in the courtroom. They’re won on the back roads long before the case goes to trial. Any lawyer fresh out of law school can walk in there and win the case, so it doesn’t matter what the evidence or the law is.'”(pages 179-180)

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie goes on sale October 19th.

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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William Faulkner very recently became one of my favorite Southern writers.  I somehow managed to complete all of high school and three years of college in Mississippi without encountering Faulkner. My first taste of his writing finally came during my senior year of college in a survey of contemporary American literature.  It came in the form of The Sound and the Fury, easily one of the most difficult texts I’ve studied because of the stream of consciousness technique used in the first three parts.  Needless to say I had to make detailed notes of character names, which events happened in which years, which of Benjy’s caretakers were present for different events in his life, etc.  It amounted to the most tedious note-taking of my college career.

But you know what?  At the end of the class I chose The Sound and the Fury as the novel for my final research paper. I loved it.  For me, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury is a beautifully tragic story in which the Compson family clings to the deteriorating aristocracy of the Old South, and their daughter Caddy’s boldness, sexual awakening and self –sufficiency collide with her family’s languishing Southern ideals.

What’s your favorite piece of Faulkner writing?

Click here to see all of “Lemuria Reads Mississippians.”

Editor Neil White will be signing at Lemuria on  Thursday, October 28th.

Reserve your copy online or call the bookstore 601/800.366.7619.

-Kaycie

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The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“Scruggs’ relentless stalking of the insurance companies brought him into conflict with two statewide elected officials he once supported: Insurance Commissioner George Dale and Attorney General Jim Hood. Both men were running for reelection in 2007, and each felt his political career had been threatened by Scruggs. The trouble with Dale was predictable. The commissioner had long been too cozy with the industry he oversaw.” (page 165)

“He felt that Dale took a laissez-faire approach toward the insurance industry, and Scruggs wanted an activist in the office. So he decided to try to drive Dale from the post he had held for eight terms. Before the 2007 campaign was finished, Scruggs committed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the effort. He retained a public relations firm to conduct an all-out assault on Dale that reached its peak in the full-page newspaper advertisement titled ‘Lipstick on a Pig.’ In a cartoon, George Dale’s bespectacled face, painted with pink lipstick and given porcine ears, appeared on a pig’s body with cloven feet. The beast, labeled, ‘Georgie Dale,’ lounged in a tub, pampered by attendants at a ‘State Farm Beauty Salon.'” (page 165-166)

“Scruggs approved of the ‘Lipstick on a Pig’ idea and paid for the ad, but did not see it before it ran. He thought the pig would symbolize State Farm and didn’t realize that Dale’s likeness would be used in the caricature. But he laughed anyway when he saw the finished product in the Sunday morning paper.”

“Diane Scruggs was not amused. She thought the ad in poor taste, and she wondered about her husband’s decision to underwrite the anti-Dale campaign. She felt Dick had been unduly impressed by his PR team from Washington. He had bragged of their talents. Some of his advisors were sophisticated practitioners of ‘black ops,’ he said, with experience overseas, working on contract for the U.S. government to destroy the credibility of foreign opponents. One of Scruggs’s contacts appealed to him precisely because of the whispers about his agency’s operations. The head of the group, John Rendon, had been profiled in Rolling Stone in 2005 as ‘The Man Who Sold the War’ on Iraq. The article described Rendon as ‘a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment’ who was ‘in charge of marketing’ the war for the CIA and the Pentagon. Scruggs was intrigued by such credentials.” (page 166)

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie goes on sale October 19th.

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“Another significant change took place in Scruggs’s life, but few knew of it. In May 2000 he underwent back surgery for a herniated disk. A second operation followed in June. To deal with the pain, he was a given a prescription for Fioricet. Scruggs found that the drug not only relieved his discomfort but, infused him with an extraordinary sense of well-being.”

“To satisfy his craving, he asked his employees to obtain prescriptions in their names. The drug would be ordered impersonally, online through bulk distributors, and turned over to Scruggs.”

“When the drug took hold, Scruggs’s cares receded. After the turmoil of asbestos and tobacco, Fioricet delivered a feeling that all was well.” (page 99)

Reserve a signed copy online or call the store at 800/601.366.7619.

Curtis Wilkie will be signing at Lemuria on Thursday, Oct. 21^st.

Click here to see other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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“. . . On the most sensational inspirational celebrational Muppetational . . . This is what we call the Muppet show!”

Now I bet this has brought a smile to your face and Muppets are racing through your head…Kermit, Fozzie, Animal, Miss Piggy and last but not least Gonzo!!!  I don’t know many people that as children didn’t sit in front of the TV to watch Sesame Street and The Muppet Show.  Jim Henson is who we can thank for these memories but did you know that Jim Henson is from Mississippi?  In fact, Deer Creek in Leland, MS is the birthplace of Kermit, the Frog.

I have actually seen with my own eyes Kermit the Frog two times in my life!  The first time was 1981, The Art of the Muppets show at the New Orleans Museum of Art. My Aunt Patsy took my cousins, David and Dottie and myself to the show. We had a wonderful day!

My most recent foray with Kermit and the rest of the Muppets was this past year at the Mississippi Museum of Art for Jim Henson’s Fantastic World.  It was a great show that brought back so many memories from Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.  Jackson, Mississippi was so Muppet crazy that Malcolm White named a Muppet theme for the St. Patrick’s day parade — “It ain’t easy being green” — and Kermit the Frog was the Grand Marshall.  We all had so much fun building the floats and getting all of our costumes together and telling stories about our own Muppet experiences! Our childhoods were greatly touched by Jim Henson and his imagination.

Click here to see all of “Lemuria Reads Mississippians.”

Editor Neil White will be signing at Lemuria on  Thursday, October 28th.

Reserve your copy online or call the bookstore 601/800.366.7619.

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A late Saturday afternoon at my desk, I looked out my window, and there stood Willie. He was just back from New York, as excited as a kid could be about seeing the screening for My Dog Skip. He glowed with charm and excitement about what was to come. That was my last conversation with Willie. He died the following Monday.

Now being sentimental as Willie often was, I think fondly about the wonderful baseball prayer he wrote for my little league team. The result was a colorful book illustrated by another loving pal, Barry Moser. Willie’s gifts to Lemuria were many and generous.

If only that Saturday visit, ever so special, could have been longer.

Millsaps College is featuring David Rae Morris, Willie’s son, with H. C. Porter in “A Katrina Perspective.” Morris’ photographic exhibit “Wake of the Flood: Katrina at Five” documents the city of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast after Katrina’s landfall and five years later. Click here for more details.

Click here to see all of “Lemuria Reads Mississippians.”

Editor Neil White will be signing at Lemuria on  Thursday, October 28th.

Reserve your copy online or call the bookstore 601/800.366.7619.

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