Gulf Coast Legends

By James Edward Kimbrough III

On a train ride from Canton, Ohio to Mobile, Alabama, bookworm insurance salesman STEPHEN SMITH enters a world he believes to be fiction when he purchases a collection of local tales and folklore called Mobile Legends from eccentric bookstore owner/author CARTER HIGGINS. However, each story in the collection brings him closer to his own demise.

This frame narrative includes ten stories from the Higgins' book. "Bleed Through" is about a cell phone tower that transmits the voices of the dead. In "Obituary" a man receives an early edition of the local paper which includes his own obituary. "Smoking Costs a Fortune" is about a man who visits a medium named Madam Persephone. Two brothers remember their deceased father in the story "Campfire." Pollution causes calamity in "Toxic Highway." In "Massacre Island" a supernatural bonfire blazes on modern day Dauphin Island, Alabama, once called Massacre Island. In "Initiation" a would-be gang member has to rob a grave to be inducted. "Playground" tells the story of a young woman saved by the ghost of a small child. In "This Tavern" one of Mobile's oldest bars is revealed to be haunted by the ghost of a sadistic friar from the seventeenth century. "The Book Lover" is the story that ends the collection and wraps up the tale of Stephen Smith.

A Walter Mittyesque character who has a tendency to slip into his daydreams, Stephen leads a mundane existence that pales in comparison to his favorite stories and films. If only he could investigate insurance fraud like Edward G. Robinson in Double Indemnity or actually encounter a ghost or some other supernatural phenomena like the ones he's read and seen movies about his whole life.

While in the Deep South, he plans on taking the short trip west from Mobile to New Orleans where he can go on one of the city's famous ghost tours and visit the grave of the Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, but before that happens, he meets the alluring RENEE GLAPION. Like a femme fatale from one of Stephen's favorite films, Renee casts her spell. After meeting Renee, Stephen changes his mind about leaving the charming city of Mobile where they both are attending an insurance seminar.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0C5P7DR7Q
• ISBN13: 9798395284143
• Release Date: May 2023
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"