A history teacher for nearly 20 years, Barry Jones knows his chosen subject can be what he calls “mind-numbingly boring” to some students. Over the course of teaching, however, he has found a way to peak their interest by turning them onto pivotal events of the 1960s.

“Years and years ago, I began delving into the Watergate scandal and the JFK assassination, and using that in lectures with my students,” Jones said. “The students just ate it up.”

Their avid interest led to even more research by Jones and ultimately, his writing of two recently published books. The first, “Treasonous Cabal,” provides a 722-page nonfiction narrative gleaned from his research that spells out his theory of what happened and why. The book is described as an attempt to answer three basic questions. Why was President John F. Kennedy killed? Who benefited? And who had the power to cover it up?

For his second book, “Wilderness of Fears,” Jones turned to fiction but still rooted the tale in his research of Watergate, JFK and the CIA’s

Medical Manhattan” project. This 634-page book provides the backstory of key figures and events that he sees as interconnected, beginning with the discovery of penicillin in 1928. That discovery, Jones said, triggered a chain of events including epidemics, contaminated vaccines, cancer, AIDS, the “Medical Manhattan” project, assassination plots, government scandals and a lethal bio-weapon.

Jones, formerly of Alpena, will make an appearance July 14 from 1-3 p.m. at Turn the Page Bookstore in the Neiman’s Family Market shopping plaza, where he will have both his books available for sale and signing.

The teacher/author estimates he’s been looking into the JFK assassination for the last 20 years.

“My research led to class discussions. It just fed itself,” he said. “Every year I thought this is the end. I won’t do any more, but the students would be so interested. Fifteen years into it, I had several students say, ‘We would read something about it if you wrote something.'”

That’s when Jones first decided to put his findings and conclusions in writing. In 2012, he ended up with a 100-page booklet on the JFK assassination, but was disappointed in the quality.

“That was my first effort, and I thought that would be it. I wasn’t really happy with the project. I went with a low budget publisher and they did a low budget product. Nevertheless, a lot of kids read it and I had college students contact me later for research projects they were doing.”

His own interest in trying to find out what really happened reached a high point in 2015, when a woman named Judith Vary-Baker came forward claiming to be Lee Harvey Oswald’s girlfriend. She put out a book about her experiences with Oswald during the three-month period in 1963 when he was known to have lived in New Orleans just prior to Kennedy’s assassination.

“I thought I had included everything in the first book, but then this woman appeared on the scene out of nowhere and claimed to be Lee’s girlfriend,” Jones said. “She’s living in Europe, bounces around from country to country and doesn’t want anyone to know where she’s living. What she had to say jived with other facts that previously made no sense. She was the missing piece – that new information.”

He turned his ongoing research efforts toward Vary-Baker and because of what he found, concluded that everything involving JFK, Cuba, the Cold War, Oswald and Watergate was bigger than he’d originally believed. At that point, he decided to self-publish a new book and make it more detailed, plus include many historical photographs.

Jones invited his students to participate in the writing and editing process by posting draft pages from his book in his classroom. The students read his pages and offered suggestions all along the way. He worked on both that book, “Treasonous Cabal,” and “Wildnerness of Mirrors” simultaneously. He said he chose to publish through CreateSpace, a subsidiary of Amazon, that provided the platform he wanted and other assistance.

“I feel much better about these two books. Will I get rich? It was never about that. This was about producing something that my students can access and read.”

Jones currently teaches history at Franklin High School in Williamson County, Tenn. He and Katrina, his wife of 28 years, have four children. They currently are vacationing for three weeks in Alpena, where his parents, Mark and Sue Ellen Jones, reside.

Both books written by Jones are available online at amazon.com and other online booksellers as well as July 14 at Turn the Page Bookstore. The paperback books sell for $25 each.