The Evergreen Courant's Sports Flashback for Sept. 15, 2011

12 YEARS AGO
SEPT. 16, 1999

“Warriors defeat Greenville 38-32: The Sparta Academy Warriors claimed their first victory of the season with a 38-32 win over the Greenville Academy Tornadoes last Friday night in Greenville.
“(David) Bush was the leading rusher for the Warriors with 121 yards on 22 carries.”
Other standout Sparta players in that game included Lee Booker, Jared Brogden, Derek Faulkner, Kyle Johnston and John McKenzie.

“The Hillcrest Jaguars moved to 3-0 on the season and 1-0 in area play with a big 42-8 win over the Monroe County Tigers last Friday in Evergreen.
“Running backs Sedrick and Fredrick Rudolph accounted for three touchdowns and linebacker Jason Watkins returned a blocked punt for another score as the Jags built a 27-0 halftime lead.
“Stephen Branch and LaCheston Moore added third quarter TDs to give the Jags a 42-0 lead.
“Demetrius Etheridge kicked two extra points, Seth McIntyre had a two-point conversion run, and Ronald Grace tossed a two-point PAT pass to Sedrick Rudolph during the Jags’ winning evening.
“J.R. and Jason Watkins, Sam Fountain, Kelvin Fluker, John Nettles and Reco Williams led another strong defensive effort for Hillcrest.
“The Jaguars have given up only three touchdowns in three games, with two of those scores coming as a result of offensive miscues.”

27 YEARS AGO
SEPT. 20, 1984

“Aggies win 3rd over Sumter: The Evergreen Aggies won their third game of the season with a 41-6 win over Sumter County of York.
“Some of the top players for Evergreen on offense were Andrae McMillan with 11 carries for 168 yards, QB Darrin Bradley who went 4-4-0 with three touchdown passes and Fredrick Middleton who caught three passes for 70 yards and two touchdowns.”
Other standout players for Evergreen that night included Howard Jones, Marion Oliver and Dewan Salter.

“Sparta falls to Escambia 9-6: The meeting between long-time rivals, Sparta Academy and Escambia Academy, turned into a defensive battle as the visitors downed Sparta’s Warriors, 9-6.
“Al Etheridge scored Sparta’s lone touchdown on a four-yard pass from Danny Reed.”
Other standout Sparta players in that game included Chris Cook, Thad Ellis, Thomas Floyd, Chad Grace, Jim Marino, Lynn Ralls, Jim Reed, Mark Rigsby, Todd Townson and Tim Wilson.

“Repton defeats Yellow Jackets: The Repton Bulldogs ran their record to 3-0 on the year last Friday night in the WEGN and Evergreen Courant’s game of the week, when they defeated the Lyeffion Yellow Jackets by the score of 23-2 at Mabry L. Covin Field.”
Standout Repton players in that game included Winston Davison Jr., Mitchell Rankins and John Thompson Jr.
Standout Lyeffion players in the game included Michael Bledsoe Jr. and Joe Mixon.
42 YEARS AGO
SEPT. 18, 1969

“The Evergreen Aggies blasted a big Monroe County High School team here Friday night 20-6 to notch their second straight win of the season. An overflow crowd was on hand long before kickoff time for Evergreen’s home opener.
“Coach Wendell Hart’s team used a ball control offense to grind out two first half touchdowns for a 13-0 lead. The Tigers went into an unbalanced line in the second half, that the Aggies failed to pick up for a while, and got back into the game, but Evergreen came on strong, driving 89 yards for a clinching score in the final minutes.
“The line showed much improvement on blocking assignments over the Atmore performance. They were opening up some nice holes although outweighed greatly by the huge Tiger line.
“(Larry) Peacock came up with his finest performance as he, (Hollis) Tranum and (Jimmy) Bell sparked the runners. Larry got off fast and ran tough as he netted 83 yards on 17 carries. Hollis had two big runs as he traveled 66 on 14 tries. Jimmy, a marked man on whom Monroeville keyed all night, did the toughest running of the night as he battled for 55 on 17 carries. (Eric) Pugh flashed brillance on his two carries and picked up 10 yards.
“If you name a standout on defense, you name all of ‘em. Coach Hart and assistants Mike Bledsoe, Charles Branum and Mickey Goneke termed it ‘a fine team effort.’ Ernest Shipp, Tim Skipper, Eddie Ralls, Reggie Smith, Jimmy Hamiter, John Brantley, Ronald Halford, Tranum, Pugh, Bell, (Larry) Thomas and Peacock were all in the thick of it.”

57 YEARS AGO
SEPT. 16, 1954

“2500 Persons Watch Aggies Crush Tigers in Rough Contest: The Evergreen Aggies struck like lightning, scoring twice in less than two minutes, midway of the first quarter and then coasted in for a 26-12 victory over the Bay Minette Tigers last Friday night.
“Perhaps the largest crowd ever assembled in Brooks Stadium watched the long rough game marked by numerous penalties and poor officiating. More than 2,300 paid admissions plus bands, teams, etc. brought the crowd to upwards of 2,500 persons.”
“(Buck) Lewis led the Aggie ball carriers with 113 yards in five carries for 26-yard per average.
Other standout players for Evergreen that night included Ward Alexander, Timmy Boykin, Jimmy Frazier, Wayne Frazier, Charlie Roberts and Richard Taylor.

“Coach Albert Arnold’s Repton Bulldogs start off their 1954 football season with a road trip to Coffeeville tomorrow (Friday).
“Repton’s attack will be built around the hard running of full back Eddie Kelly and the shiftyness of speedy Floyd Morgan. Tommy Nall will handle the quarterbacking chores and Terry Nall will get the starting nod at the right halfback slot.”
Other players on Repton’s team that year included William Ashcraft, Ray Blackwell, Billy Farish, Charles Lee, Lowell Lee, Johnny McInnis, Cleveland Morris, Jerry Nall, Gerald Owens, Wendell Roberson, Selvyn Robinson, Braxton Ryland, Clinton Ryland, Thomas Salter, Bert Stacey and Warner Watson.

Compiled by Sports Reporter Lee Peacock from past issues of The Evergreen Courant. To read The Courant’s weekly Sports Flashback feature online, visit leepeacock2010.blogspot.com.

Evergreen's Jeff Daniels completes Appalachian Trail hike

Jeff Daniels of Evergreen became the first Conecuh County resident to ever “thru-hike” the world famous Appalachian Trail when he completed the 2,181-mile trek on Monday.

Daniels, 53, reached the peak of 5,268-foot-tall Mount Katahdin in Maine on Monday at around 9:45 a.m., officially setting foot on the terminus of the trail, which begins over 2,000 miles away in Springer Mountain, Ga.

“It hasn’t really sunk in yet,” Daniels told The Courant in a phone interview from Maine on Tuesday morning. “But I’ve just got this ‘wow’ feeling that it’s finally over with, something that I’ve always wanted to do.”

Daniels noted that his final day on the trail was one of the toughest with a long climb to the frosty top of Mount Katahdin.

“It was cold with strong winds,” he said. “And the top was enshrouded with clouds. It’s was pretty cold too, somewhere between 38 and 40 degrees. I definitely needed to put on my down jacket once we got above the tree line.”

Daniels began his trip on March 13 and said he was pleased to finish on Sept. 12, which means he’ll always be able to say that he finished the trip in less than six months.

The trail, commonly referred to as the “AT,” is arguably the most famous hiking trail in the world. The trail passes through 14 states, including Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

Daniels said that he planned to take it easy before his flight tomorrow (Friday) from Bangor, Maine to Mobile. He noted that he’s lost over 30 pounds during the trip, with his body weight now down to around 150 pounds, so more than a few big meals are in his plans for the coming days.

When Daniels arrives in Mobile Friday, he plans to put off his trip back home to Evergreen for a few more hours, so that he can travel to Selma to watch his son play in the Sparta Academy-Ellwood Christian game on Friday night.

“And on Saturday, I plan to enjoy watching Auburn play football from the comfort of my own home and then go watch my younger sons play youth football that day too.”

He’s already been asked to speak at several civic club meetings as well as to local schools about his trip, and he has thought about writing a book about his AT hike.

“Writing a book about it is still in the back of my mind,” he said. “But that will come later. Mostly I’m just looking forward to getting back home and getting back in the groove.”

When asked about any future plans to tackle any of the nation’s other long-distance hiking trails, such as the Continental Divide Trail and Pacific Crest Trail, Daniels couldn’t help but laugh.

“I have to admit that I’ve thought about it,” he said. “But I just don’t see myself being away from my family for that long again, that is, unless I were to do it with one of my sons. Of course, there are always a lot of shorter trails, and I might do some of those later.”

Daniels said that “his next great adventure” will probably be a trip in which he would float on the Sepulga River all the way to Pensacola Bay.

“Depending on the water levels, that would probably take about a month,” he said.

(Daniels kept an online journal of his trip, and it can be read at www.trailjournals.com/moondoggie.)

August UFO reports from across Alabama

It’s the third week of the month, so this week I’m giving you an update on UFO reports in Alabama from the past month, courtesy of the Mutual UFO Network.

A search for UFO reports in Alabama between Aug. 1 and Aug. 31 on MUFON’s website, www.mufon.com, resulted in three reports from within our state.

The first report involves an incident that occurred on Tues., Aug. 23, when a husband and wife and their nine-year-old son supposedly saw an unusual light moving rapidly across the night sky.

On that night, the wife and her son were in a bedroom around 9:30 p.m. reading a book together. The husband was out walking the dog. He returned after a couple of minutes, saying that he’d seen a UFO.

“Knowing my husband, I knew he meant that he saw something he couldn’t explain,” the wife said in her report. “I listened to his account and then told him to go back outside with my son to see if they could see it again.”

The wife joined them after a couple of minutes on their back deck. The husband pointed over the power lines in the field behind their house, saying that he saw the strange lights in that direction.

“I stood with them for just a minute, watching the sky when I saw a light appear,” the wife said. “It was white, then turned into a bright green light. It was stationary and had just ‘switched on’ in the sky.”

She asked her husband if the light was the same thing that he’d seen earlier, and he said that it was. No sooner had her husband said “yes,” the light went out and reappeared to the left of its original position. It disappeared and reappeared four more times in a clockwise arc pattern, she said.

“As I watched it appear, disappear, always a bright green light, I tried to make sense of what I was seeing,” she said. “It behaved like a RC (radio-controlled) airplane as it arced and darted. The color of the light looked like a laser color, but I couldn’t see any clouds or smoke that would show a laser. I saw stars in the sky.”

Their son said that he could see the object darting back and forth as well as “small bits of electricity shooting from behind” the object.

“Its ‘movement’ was only assumed because the light would turn off and reappear somewhere else again and again in a darting pattern,” the wife said. “At one point, it looked as if the light stretched out, again like a laser lighting a wire. My mind was thinking one of the power lines was being illuminated by a laser light.”

The whole event lasted only about 20 seconds, she said.

“We didn’t hear any sound,” she said. “No engines or motors. No people out in the field.”

The woman then got her phone and tried to use its video camera to record the event.

“Even though the video is dark and nothing was seen after that, our first recount and discussion of what we saw was captured on the video,” she said.

The report doesn’t say where this incident occurred other than to say that it was somewhere in Alabama.

The second report involves an incident that occurred on Wed., Aug. 24, when a witness named “JB” saw a “bright star-like object” that caught his attention after it rapidly flashed about eight different colors.

JB lives east of Eufaula and was taking the trash out when he looked north-northeast and noticed what initially appeared to be a star five to 10 miles away.

“I then noticed while gazing at it, it dropped from its original position,” JB said. “I immediately screamed for my mother, and she also witnessed the single object was changing positions in the sky.”

JB watched the object for over 30 minutes and noted several changes.

“I also noticed that kind of in a formation pattern of a triangle, there’s two more objects, which I observed having the same characteristics as the first, blinking, jerking back and forth quickly and flashing a multitude of brilliant colors,” JB said.

JB reported that he’s seen small UFOs before, but he’d never seen one that was visible for that long.

The third report involves an incident that occurred on Thurs., Aug. 24, that involved multiple objects in the sky that gave off “star like” light and displayed erratic flight patterns while staying in the same general spot in the sky.

The witness said that he observed the objects around 8 p.m. and that he’d witnessed the same event two nights in row.

“The objects have shifted their placement in the sky slightly but are still doing the exact same show as last night,” the witness reported. “This is amazing. The only difference is one object seems to stay orange while the other distant craft seem to be flickering or strobing different colors.”

This report also doesn’t say where this incident occurred other than to say that it was somewhere in Alabama.

In the end, I’d be very interested to hear from any readers of The Courant who have witnessed a UFO in Conecuh County. I think a lot of other people would be interested in hearing your story too, and I’d be willing to accept your report on an anonymous basis if you’d be more comfortable with that arrangement. You can contact me by e-mail at courantsports@earthlink.net or by phone at 578-1492.

My movie picks this week are 'Stay Cool' and 'Thor'

It’s Wednesday, so today I give you my weekly list of movies that will open in theatres this week as well as a list of movies that will be released this week on DVD.

I hope this will serve as a useful guide as to what’s going on this week if you happen to be near a movie theatre or if you’re looking for something to drop into your NetFlix queue.

Movies that are scheduled to hit theatres this week include:

Back Door Channels: The Price of Peace (Documentary, War, Crime, Mystery, Not Yet Rated): Directed by Harry Hunkele.

Drive (Action, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller, R): Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn and starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mullingan, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks and Albert Brooks.

Happy, Happy (Comedy, Romance, R): Directed by Anne Sewitsky and starring Agnes Kittelsen, Henrik Rafaelsen, Joachim Rafaelsen, Maibritt Saerens and Oskar Hernaes Brandso.

I Don’t Know How She Does It (Comedy, PG-13): Directed by Douglas McGrath and starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Greg Kinnear, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Munn and Seth Meyers.

Muran (Action, Suspense, Not Yet Rated): Directed by Rajjan Madhay.

Restless (Drama, Romance, PG-13): Directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Mia Wasikowska, Schuyler Fisk, Jane Adams, Henry Hooper and Lusia Strus.

Stay Cool (Comedy, Romance, PG-13): Directed by Michael Polish and starring Mark Polish, Hilary Duff, Josh Holloway, Winona Ryder and Hilary Duff.

Straw Dogs (Crime, Drama, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, R): Directed by Rod Lurie and starring James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, Alexander Skarsgard, James Woods and Willa Holland.

The Treasure Hunter (Action, Drama, Not Yet Rated): Directed by Chu Yen Ping and starring Lin Chi Ling and Jay Chou.

The Weird World of Blowfly (Documentary, Music): Directed by Jonathan Furmanski.

New DVD releases for the week of Sept. 13 include:

Bill Cunningham New York (Art and Experimental, Documentary, Special Interest, Not Rated): Directed by Richard Press and starring Bill Cunningham, Tom Wolfe, Anna Wintour, Carmen Dell’Orefice and Annette De la Renta.

Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop (Comedy, Documentary, Special Interest, R): Directed by Rodman Flender and starring Conan O’Brien, Andy Richter, Jimmy Vivino, Scott Healy and Mike Merritt.

The Dog Who Saved Halloween (Family, Comedy, PG): Directed by Peter Sullivan and starring Dean Cain, Gary Valentine, Elisa Donovan, Joey Lawrence and Mayim Bialik.

Hesher (Comedy, Drama, R): Directed by Spencer Susser and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Natalie Portman, Rainn Wilson, Devin Brochu and Piper Laurie.

Incendies (Drama, R): Directed by Denis Villeneuve and starring Lubna Azabal, Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin, Remy Girard, Maxim Gaudette and Allen Altman.

Love, Wedding, Marriage (Comedy, Romance, PG-13): Directed by Dermot Mulroney and starring Mandy Moore, Kellan Lutz, Jessica Szohr, Jane Seymour and James Brolin.

Meek’s Cutoff (Drama, Western, PG): Directed by Kelly Reichardt and starring Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Zoe Kazan, Paul Dano and Shirley Henderson.

Thor (Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, PG-13): Directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins and Samuel L. Jackson.

True Legend (Action, R): Directed by Yuen Woo Ping and starring Man Cheuk Chiu, Xun Zhou, Michelle Yeoh, Xiaogang Feng and Andy On.

If I could only watch one movie at the theatre this week, it would be “Stay Cool,” and if I had to pick just one DVD to rent this week, it would be “Thor.”

In the end, let me know if you get a chance to watch any of the new movies in theatres this week or if you’ve already seen any of the movies that have just been released on DVD. What did you think about them? Which would you recommend? Let us know in the comments section below.

'Into the Wild' movie would have made Steinbeck, Kerouac and London proud

I watched a really good movie the other night that I think many of you would enjoy watching, “Into the Wild.”

Released in September 2007, this movie is the film adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s 1996 book of the same name, which spent over two years on the best-sellers lists. The book and the movie give us the story of Christopher McCandless, who began the life of a wanderer soon after his graduation from Emory University in Atlanta in 1990.

He donated his $25,000 in life savings to charity, abandoned his beloved Datsun car and changed his name to “Alexander Supertramp.” Moose hunters would find his dead body deep in the Alaskan wilderness in September 1992.

Months earlier, in April 1992, McCandless is believed to have entered the Alaskan wilderness with only 10 pounds of rice, a .22 caliber rifle, a few boxes of ammo, a camera and a few books. He’s believed to have survived on his own for about 100 days before dying of still unexplained causes, but most likely from starvation.

The film version of “Into the Wild” was directed and produced by Hollywood legend Sean Penn. Emile Hirsch starred in the role of McCandless. Others in the movie were William Hurt, Vince Vaughn, Kristen Stewart, Marcia Gay Harden and Jena Malone.

I don’t consider it a spoiler to tell you that McCandless dies in the end, since it’s mentioned on most of the promotional material, and I only bring that up here to say that the movie is not all doom and gloom.

The movie has a strong John Steinbeck/Jack Kerouac/Jack London feel too it, and portions of the movie show McCandless doing some pretty awesome things. He survives a flashflood, lives with hippies, works for a contract grain harvester, learns to dress and preserve wild game, kayaks the Colorado River down into Mexico, crosses back into the U.S. on foot, hops a freight train, befriends a lonely Army vet and learns leatherwork among other adventures.

One of the things that made this movie remarkable was its soundtrack. I don’t comment on movie soundtracks often, but this one was especially good. Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder and singer-songwriter, Jerry Hannan performed the songs on the soundtrack, and Vedder would go on to win a Best Original Song Golden Globe Award in 2008 for the song, “Guaranteed.” Some of the songs gave me chills they were so good.

The movie, which is longer than most at nearly 2-1/2 hours, was shot on a budget of around $15 million. It posted box office revenues of over $56 million.

This movie has also made me want to check out some of Krakauer’s other books. Some of the other books he’s written include “Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountain” (1990), “Into Thin Air” (1997), “Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith” (2003), “Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman” (2009) and “Three Cups of Deceit” (2011).

In the end, I really enjoyed this movie, and I’m planning to read the book version of it soon. How many of you have seen “Into the Wild”? What did you think about it? How many of you have read the book? Did you like it or not? Let us know in the comments section below.

'Ghost Hunting' will put you in the mood for Halloween

Halloween is next month, and to put myself in the mood a little early, I recently read a fine book called “Ghost Hunting: True Stories of Unexplained Phenomena from The Atlantic Paranormal Society.”

Published in 2007 by Simon and Schuster, the primary authors of this 273-page book will be no strangers to fans of the hit SyFy Channel show, “Ghost Hunters.” Written by Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, the co-founders of The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), with award-winning writer Michael Jan Friedman, this book has something that will appeal to skeptics and believers alike.

Most of the commentary in the book comes from Hawes, and he begins by explaining the origins of TAPS as well as the group’s scientific approach to ghost hunting. The book also contains a glossary of supernatural and paranormal terms as well as a “Ghost Hunter’s Manual.”

The vast bulk of the book, 246 pages, consists of descriptions of TAPS’s early cases and a few cases that viewers of “Ghost Hunters” saw during the first two seasons of the show. Cases described in the book include investigations of Race Rock Lighthouse; Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania; Topton House Restaurant in Topton, Pa.; The Armory in New Bedford, Mass.; The Myrtles Plantation in Louisiana; The DeVille House in Louisiana; Brennan’s Restaurant in New Orleans; Bradley Playhouse in Putnam, Conn.; the Mordecai House (Birthplace of Andrew Johnson) in North Carolina; the USS North Carolina; Beechwood Mansion in Newport, R.I.; The Crescent Hotel and Spa in Eureka Springs, Ark.; Rolling Hills Asylum in Batavia, N.Y.; the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, Calif.; the St. Augustine Lighthouse in St. Augustine, Fla.; and the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo.

To me, the most interesting portions of the book were those that discussed how Hawes and Wilson became involved in ghost hunting. The television show has often alluded to the fact that each man had separate paranormal experiences, which sparked their interest in the paranormal, but they decline to go into any detail on the air. The same is pretty much the case for Wilson in the book, but not Hawes.

Hawes traces his initial experiences back to when he was 20 years old and learned about Reiki, a “Japanese technique for stress reduction, relaxation and healing that depends on the manipulation of a person’s life force energy.” After about six months of exposure to Reiki, Hawes began seeing things – really weird things – like transparent animals and humans ghosts.

He thought that he was losing his mind, so he turned to John Zaffis, a paranormal researcher in Connecticut. Zaffis did a number of tests on Hawes and told him that he’d become sensitive to the paranormal. Zaffis suggested that Hawes start a ghost-hunting organization. Later, Hawes met Wilson, who’d been having his own paranormal experiences, and the eventual result was the formation of TAPS. The rest, as they say, is history.

In the end, I really enjoyed this book and recommend it to fans of the television show “Ghost Hunters” as well as to those interested in the paranormal and “ghost hunting.”

How many of you have had a chance to read this book? What did you think about it? Let us know in the comments section below.

Cheney book tops nonfiction best-sellers list

It’s Sunday, so that means that it’s time for my weekly review of this week’s Publishers Weekly Best-Seller List. According to the list, we’ve got three new books at the top of the four major best-seller lists this week.

"Kill Me If You Can" by James Patterson and Marshall Karp replaced "Flash and Bones: A Novel" by Kathy Reichs as the No. 1 book on the hardcover fiction best-sellers list.

"In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir" by Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney replaced "A Stolen Life" by Jaycee Dugard as the top book on the hardcover nonfiction best-sellers list.

"The Reversal" by Michael Connelly replaced "Wicked Appetite" by Janet Evanovich as the top book on the mass market paperback best-sellers list.

"The Help" by Kathryn Stockett retained the top spot on the trade paperbacks best-sellers list.

There are six books on this week’s hardcover fiction best-sellers list that weren’t on the list last week. They (along with their place on the list) include "Kill Me If You Can" by James Patterson and Marshall Karp (1), "The Sookie Stackhouse Companion" by Charlaine Harris (3), "A Trick of the Light: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel" by Louise Perry (5), "The Leftovers" by Tom Perrotta (6), "Only Time Will Tell" by Jeffrey Archer (7) and "The Language of Flowers: A Novel" by Vanessa Diffenbaugh (13).

There are three books on this week’s hardcover nonfiction best-sellers list that weren’t on the list last week. They include "In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir" by Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney (1), "Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health" by William Davis, MD (14) and "What It Is Like to Go to War" by Karl Marlantes (15).

There are nine books on this week’s mass market paperbacks best-sellers list that weren’t on that list last week. They include "1105 Yakima Street by Debbie Macomber (2), "Port Mortuary" by Patricia Cornwell (3), "American Assassin: A Thriller" by Vince Flynn (4), "Canyons of Night: Book Three of the Looking Glass Trilogy" by Jayne Castle (5), "Only Yours" by Susan Mallery (7), "Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue: A Cynster Novel" by Stephanie Laurens (9), "Love Come to Me" by Lisa Kleypas (10), "One Grave at a Time: A Night Huntress Novel" by Jeaniene Frost (13) and "Shotgun Bride" by Linda Lael Miller (14).

There are two books on this week’s trade paperbacks best-sellers list that weren’t on the list last week. They include "Fall of Giants: Book One of the Century Trilogy" by Ken Follett (8) and "Succubus Revealed" by Richelle Mead (15).

As a reminder, I’m posting these lists each Sunday because they, as a whole, represent a great, contemporary recommended reading list. These lists are initially released each week on Thursday, and if you’re interested in reading them then, visit Publishers Weekly’s Web site at www.publishersweekly.com. Below you’ll find all four of this week’s best-seller lists.

HARDCOVER FICTION
1. "Kill Me If You Can" by James Patterson and Marshall Karp
2. "A Dance With Dragons" by George R.R. Martin
3. "The Sookie Stackhouse Companion" by Charlaine Harris
4. "Flash and Bones: A Novel" by Kathy Reichs
5. "A Trick of the Light: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel" by Louise Perry
6. "The Leftovers" by Tom Perrotta
7. "Only Time Will Tell" by Jeffrey Archer
8. "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett
9. "The Omen Machine" by Terry Goodkind
10. "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" by Stieg Larrson
11. "Cold Vengeance" by Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston
12. "The Paris Wife" by Paula McLain
13. "The Language of Flowers: A Novel" by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
14. "The Measure of Magic: Legends of Shannara" by Terry Brooks
15. "Full Black" by Brad Thor

HARDCOVER NONFICTION
1. "In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir" by Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney
2. "A Stolen Life" by Jaycee Dugard
3. "The 17 Day Diet: A Doctor's Plan Design for Rapid Results" by Dr. Mike Moreno
4. "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand
5. "Go the F--k to Sleep" by Adam Mansbach and Illustrations by Ricardo Cortes
6. "In the Garden of Beasts" by Erik Larson
7. "The Greater Journey" by David McCullough
8. "The Dukan Diet" by Pierre Dukan
9. "Prime Time" by Jane Fonda
10. "1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created" by Charles C. Mann
11. "After America: Get Ready for Armageddon" by Mark Steyn
12. "Bossypants" by Tina Fey
13. "Rafa" by Rafael Nadal and John Carlin
14. "Wheat Belly" by William Davis, MD
15. "What It Is Like to Go to War" by Karl Marlantes

MASS MARKET PAPERBACKS
1. "The Reversal" by Michael Connelly
2. "1105 Yakima Street by Debbie Macomber
3. "Port Mortuary" by Patricia Cornwell
4. "American Assassin: A Thriller" by Vince Flynn
5. "Canyons of Night: Book Three of the Looking Glass Trilogy" by Jayne Castle
6. "Wicked Appetite" by Janet Evanovich
7. "Only Yours" by Susan Mallery
8. "The Confession: A Novel" by John Grisham
9. "Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue: A Cynster Novel" by Stephanie Laurens
10. "Love Come to Me" by Lisa Kleypas
11. "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin
12. "A Clash of Kings" by George R.R. Martin
13. "One Grave at a Time: A Night Huntress Novel" by Jeaniene Frost
14. "Shotgun Bride" by Linda Lael Miller
15. "A Storm of Swords" by George R.R. Martin

TRADE PAPERBACKS
1. "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett
2. "Heaven is for Real" by Todd Burpo, Sonja Burpo, Colton Burpo and Lynn Vincent
3. "One Day" by David Nicholls
4. "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
5. "Sarah's Key" by Tatiana de Rosnay
6. "Safe Haven" by Nicholas Sparks
7. "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell
8. "Fall of Giants: Book One of the Century Trilogy" by Ken Follett
9. "Cutting for Stone" by Abraham Verghese
10. "Room" by Emma Donoghue
11. "Unlikely Friendships" by Jennifer S. Holland
12. "The Glass Castle: A Memoir" by Jeannette Walls
13. "The Art of Racing in the Rain" by Garth Stein
14. "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho
15. "Succubus Revealed" by Richelle Mead

In the end, let me know if you’ve had a chance to read any of these books. What did you think about them? Which would you recommend? Let us know in the comments section below.