Beauty's No Biscuit

A sequel to Moon’s Black Gold, this novel deals with the struggle of George Landsetter to keep his five hundred acres of woodland from Dave Blackmun, a lawless miner, and criminal kingpin. Helped by Mike Barton and the FBI, George brings down Blackmun while trying to court Heidi Leaves, head of a non profit promoting better mining laws.

Author Biography

Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, Peake has lived and taught in the coalfield elds of Southwest Virginia for over forty years. He lived through the coal boom of the late 1960s and early 1970s and worked for sensible reclamation laws. He experienced phone calls at early hours in the morning with deep breathing and curses, but he sympathized with mountain people’s desire to gain some wealth from their coal, wealth that in earlier years went to Philadelphia, New York, and England. An amateur ornithologist, he has published several books of poetry and five other novels: Jaykyll’s Joust, an academic satire, Moon’s Black Gold, and Beauty’s No Biscuit, two novels dealing with murder and romance in the Appalachians during the coal boom of the ’60s and ’70s, and Love and Death on Safari, murder, and romance set on an African birding tour and the latest book Rare Bird Alert.