Books by Jacob Hay

The editor of a strait-laced national magazine for "young adults" is bound to be a clean-living, high-minded individual -- especially one who has just been appointed to a presidential committee investigating juvenile delinquency. But then, you haven't met Freddie Lazenby.When an old army buddy turned sociologist asks if he may store some boxes in Freddie's attic, our hero innocently complies. In no time at all, Freddie discovers that his friend's unspecified scientific project is disastrously Kinsey-like: the material contained in the boxes represents the hottest collection of pornography north of Mexico. Even more appalling, his sociologist friend has made arrangements to add to his collection, using Freddie as a middleman. Chaos prevails: the Committee sets its sights on obscene literature as the major cause of juvenile crime, and Freddie -- haplessly wheeling and dealing in the pornography trade -- finds himself in the absurd position of a man chasing himself.One fast, hilarious episode follows another as Freddie attempts to keep his shady associates at bay while concealing the terrible truth from his wife, his employers, and his fellow committee members. The result is mayhem and many a riotous moment.

When free-lance writer Nick Saltire arrives in the town of Textilia, North Carolina, he little suspects he is destined to do for this charming little backwater what Sherman did for Georgia. Nick, familiar only with history as it is written in books and presented by Yankee publishers, is only too willing to go along with the commonly held notion that the Civil War ended at Appomattox. Indeed, his primary interest in history may be said to be limited to the dates that appear on his paychecks.Unfortunately, history is now his job. For Pierre Mindleberg, a textile tycoon who virtually ovens Textilia, lock, stock, and cracker barrel, has decided there can be no finer contribution to the town's Civil War Centennial than an account of the noble part played in the Great Conflict by the Mindleberg Textile Mills. There is, however, one small stumbling block-a Mindleberg ancestor whose role in the war could not be called exactly heroic. It could be called many things-but definitely not heroic.Undeterred, and despite distractions-distractions that take the forms of a pretty research assistant and a local heiress and a buxom carhop-Nick plunges into the past and emerges with a bundle of mysteriously coded letters. In them lies a revelation that transforms a dead reprobate into a Gallant Son, spurs the town to a frenzy of enthusiastic activity, and, most important to Nick, opens up new and spacious vistas of personal gain. That is, until a certain history professor arrives (from the North, of course) with information that, if revealed, can make the Stars and Bars hang at half-mast and can turn "Dixie" into a dirge. More than that, Nick realizes as he views the fanatic light burning in southern eyes, it can easily make him the final casualty of the Civil War.