Octane Press

The breakneck story of a wild breed of men - and their thrill-hungry women. The tearing shriek of metal against metal, the stink of gasoline fumes, the sweat of men working all night in the pit, and the cheap perfume of the girls who hang around the track looking for kicks . . . this is the souped-up world of the stock-car racer. This is also the story of Ace Jones, a man whose flesh and soul have grown attuned to the battered iron heaps that are his whole life - and of a girl named Sandy, who sees in him the same fever that burned out her husband, the same wild streak that made her love him. Ace is running from his wild past when he comes across Town, a run-down spot in the middle of nowhere with a racetrack of its very own. Can Ace make an honest life for himself in Town, or will he crash and burn, taking Sandy with him? Originally published under the pseudonym Angus Vicker, this is Felsen''s first rodding novel for adults.

Automotive journalist Peter Egan is probably best known for his many years of columns and feature stories about cars and motorcycles in Road & Track and Cycle World magazines, but in the early 1980s he finally gave in to his lifelong fascination with classic airplanes and managed to pursue the third branch of his addiction to romantic modes of travel - namely, flying. While living in Southern California, Peter and his wife Barbara both earned their pilot''s licenses, saved up six weeks'' vacation from their respective jobs, and took off on a seven-thousand-mile trip around the US in their yellow 1945 J-3 Piper Cub. Flying low and slow, they crossed the deserts of the Southwest and sneaked through the Rocky Mountains to visit friends in Texas, then down through the bayou country of Louisiana and around the Gulf to visit Peter''s father in south Florida. From there, they flew up the Atlantic Coast to Kitty Hawk, across the battlefields of the Civil War to the old Piper factory in Pennsylvania, and back to their home state of Wisconsin. The return to California took them across the farmlands of the Midwest and ranches of the Great Plains, with another shot at the dreaded mountain passes of the Rockies. The story is partly travel adventure, with occasional camping under the wing and a survey of the nation''s small towns and budget motels (with the rare surrender to luxury and self-indulgence), but also a memoir of the post-Vietnam era of 1980s America, with personal reflections triggered by the places and names along their route. And always in the background of their trip is the unspoken search for a new place to live, far away from urban sprawl and crowded freeways, a possible rehearsal for someday flying home.