Ralph Bland

Maleva is a fictional sequel to the Universal film, "House of Dracula."(1945) It features many of the same characters from both that film and the earlier film, "The Wolf Man (1944). The book's premise is that Gwen Conliffe, the former lover of Larry Talbot, returns to Llanwelly in Wales two years after Talbot's death and later supposed "cure" and enlists the aid of the gypsy woman Maleva to help her find Talbot, for it is rumored he is not dead but has been resurrected from his tragic end and still walks the earth as a werewolf. The search begins in Wales and crosses the Irish Sea to Ireland, as Maleva and Gwen, with the aid of Gwen's former romantic interest and a band of Irish Travellers journey across Ireland to several locales to find Larry Talbot and help him find his predestined end. Told in alternate third-person and first-person stream of consciousness, Maleva is the story of Gwen Conliffe's and Maleva's quest to bring peace to the torturous existence of Larry Talbot

Ralph Bland's thirteenth novel, Fast Car, is the story of the friendship shared between an older man in his fifties and a young man closing fast on his thirties in current day Nashville, Tennessee. The two meet while working as automobile mechanics for an elite foreign car repair shop that caters mostly to the wealthy; the younger, Leonard Wright, is the nephew of the owner and a recent rehabilitation graduate from a bout with drugs and theft of company funds from his previous place of employment, and the elder, Sam Thornton, is an ex-con from peddling drugs back in his college days and the owner of a battered 1965 Sunbeam Tiger that has seen better days but is his lifetime pride and joy, having inherited it as a young boy after his father's death. Leonard takes a job with his uncle as a means of finding himself a better standing and an escape from his failed former existence, while Sam arrives under mysterious circumstances to work at John Wright's business as an elite mechanic with a special know-how of repairing expensive foreign cars. Fast Car is the story of two men and a car that once was a classic, and how sometimes portions and sections of hopes and wishes have to be sorted through and decided upon to discover which to keep and which to let go. It is a coming-of-age story and a study of class differences, romance, and the inevitable abandonment of dreams. Ralph Bland is the author of thirteen novels and three collections of short stories and novellas. He is a graduate of Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, and lives with his wife, dogs, his Frank Sinatra music collection, and an eccentric MG on the outskirts of Music City, USA.

Ralph Bland's eleventh novel, Lockhart, is the picaresque tale of Thomas Lockhart from his college days in the 1970s to his landing spot thirty years later in his hometown of Rhodes, Tennessee. Escaping from a dark past and a disreputable present, Tom Lockhart returns to Rhodes to confront the ghosts and demons of his past and somehow carve out a place to stand his ground against age, time, and the worst of all his enemies: himself. From a haunted incident to a shattered romance and the promise of a happy ending, Lockhart walks, runs, and shapeshifts himself through the labyrinthian corridors of the magically realistic world in his path.

A Baker's dozen's worth of short stories and a novella from the author of ACE and STARS RAIN SUN MOON.

From drinking sweet tea on a beloved grandmother's porch to playing army to witnessing prejudice and violence or receiving the lash, these stories illustrate growing up in the South during the 1950s and 1960s, what it felt, tasted, and looked like through the eyes of the boys who lived it.