Southern Historical Fiction

Fifteen-year-old Mattie Lee Watson dreams of men, not boys. So when James T. Cullowee, the Kudzu King, arrives in Cooper County, North Carolina, in 1941 to spread the gospel of kudzu—claiming that it will improve the soil, feed cattle at almost no cost, even cure headaches—Mattie is ready. Mr. Cullowee is determined to sell the entire county on the future of kudzu, and organizes a kudzu festival, complete with a beauty pageant. Mattie is determined to be crowned Kudzu Queen and capture the attentions of the Kudzu King.

When aspiring musician Twyla Finch arrives in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1977, the nineteen-year-old Texan is dazzled by the fringe-and-rhinestones country music scene. Live music flows from bars, open mic nights tempt with the chance of stardom, and record label execs seek the next hot new act.

Coal miner Joshua Morgan managed to do the impossible-he broke away from the stranglehold of the iron-fisted Barton family and the Company Store, to whom all the miners in the Appalachian Mountains are indebted. But it cost him the life of his young daughter, who was run down by a posse led by Thomas Barton while coming to collect Joshua's payment to the store.

In West Texas in the summer of 1937, Cottonwood tells the story of two families thrown together by tragedy and the bounds of racial injustice. Sheriff Rube Whitlock is faced with raising his two young sons after the death of his infant daughter leaves his wife too grief stricken to care for them. Overwhelmed with the responsibility, Rube hires Esther, a local black woman whose husband has just purchased his second mule and ignited a stirring of dissonance and contempt within the usually quiet community.

Jasper Perry has a home, a family - everything he thought was lost to him forever after war broke out. With Clara's love, Jasper believes he has everything he has ever wanted. As he awaits marriage to Clara, he finds himself overcome with homesickness. When a Confederate militia kidnaps him, determined to punish him for his defection, Jasper has a choice: to give up the loyalty he once held to the Confederacy and fight to get back to Clara; or leave his new home behind, and return to all that is familiar.

Sentiments are running high following the battle of Gettysburg, and although the draft has not yet come to Knox, "Bloody Knox" will claim lives the next year as citizens attempt to avoid the Union draft. Clara's brother Solomon is missing, and Clara has been left to manage the family's farm, caring for her mother and her younger sister, Cecelia.

The war is over, and America is trying to heal, but Clara can take no joy in it. Even as the farm prospers and her family is once more at peace, Clara faces unimaginable grief: she has been unable to carry a child to term, and the loss of her children has nearly destroyed her. She has tried to remain strong for the sake of her family, but now, pregnant again, Clara finds herself consumed with fear - if she loses this baby as well, she is not sure she can go on.

With Jasper and Cecelia returned, and Solomon cleared of treason for his actions during the war, life at Dalton Farm has almost returned to normal. Of course, there's the small matter of Cecelia's pregnancy and her engagement to Abraham Thompson, the reverend's son. In Solomon's eyes, all is as it should be, and the pair will be married quickly to avoid any gossip. But Clara, who has endured her own unhappy engagement, sees sadness in Cecelia's eyes....

Marching to Zion is the tragic story of Minerva Fishbein and Magnus Bailey, a charismatic Black man and the longtime business partner of Minerva's father. From the brutal riots of East St. Louis to Memphis, Tennessee, during the 1920s and the Depression, Marching to Zion is a tale of passion, betrayal, and redemption during an era in America when interracial love could not go unpunished.

The Kingston Trio’s folk song “Tom Dooley” tells the story of the murder of Laura Foster, a simple country girl involved with returning Confederate soldier Tom Dula. But Tom was also engaged in a passionate affair with his childhood sweetheart, the beautiful - and married - Ann Melton. One May morning in 1866, Laura Foster stole her father’s horse and left home, telling a neighbor that she was eloping to Tennessee. Three months later, her body was found in a shallow grave only a few hundred yards from where she was last seen.

Visiting from Chicago, 14-year-old Clement is unfamiliar with the social customs of the tiny town of Money. Striding into a general store, he offends the white store clerk by not placing his nickel in her hand. This seemingly innocuous act leads to a horrific murder and a conflict drawn along racial lines.

When a black boy named Paris saves Trudy from being crushed by a runaway Sunbeam Bread truck, they become friends. Navigating a multi-racial friendship in 1964 is no easy thing, however. The racism they encounter inspires them to go on an audacious adventure: to take down the Confederate flag that flies atop the South Carolina State House. And they can't do it without the help of Trudy's grandmother, Ida.

The summer of 1966 burned hot across America but nowhere hotter than the cotton fields of Mississippi. Finding herself in a precarious position as a black woman living alone, Bernice accepts her brother Floyd’s invitation to join him as a servant for a white family, and she enters the web of hostility and deception that is the Kern plantation household.

Bezellia Grove was born into the most prominent of Nashville families, but that didn’t stop her from having an alcoholic mother and a distant, adulterous father. Her nanny, Maizelle, and Nathaniel, the handyman, are the people who have taken care of her since she can remember. She considers them family, but her parents just consider them servants because they are Black. When Bezellia has a clandestine romance with Nathaniel's son, Whites and Blacks unite in fury at the young couple.

Let the people of West Mills say what they will about Azalea 'Knot' Centre; they won't keep her from what she loves best: cheap moonshine, 19th-century literature, and the company of men. And yet, when motherhood looms, Knot begins to learn that her freedom has come at a high price. Low on money, ostracized from her parents and cut off from her hometown, Knot turns to her neighbor, Otis Lee Loving, in search of some semblance of family and home.

After an airless childhood in Savannah, Smoky O'Donnell arrives in Atlanta, dazzled and chastened by this hectic young city on the rise. Her new job as a writer with the city's Downtown magazine introduces her to many unforgettable people and propels her into the center of momentous events that will irrevocably alter her heart, her career, and her world.

Bells for Eli is Adeline (Delia) Green’s first person narrative of her relationship with her first cousin Ellison (Eli) Winfield throughout their childhood into their young adult lives. The novel opens in 1978 in Green Branch, SC, with Delia appearing inert from an unknown sorrow. The story then flashes back to 1959 when Eli drinks Red Devil Lye, the chemical his father used to blow up balloons for Eli’s third birthday celebration and negligently left in a Coca-Cola bottle.

Author Lawrence Reid Bechtel has captured the story of Isaac Granger, a slave from Thomas Jefferson's plantation as told through the eyes of amateur historian Reverend Charles Campbell. In 1852, after much searching through the Black districts of Petersburg, Virginia, the amateur historian Charles Campbell finally located Isaac Granger, a former slave of the late Thomas Jefferson.

Neighborhood tensions reach a breaking point in the finale of New York Times best-selling author Mary Monroe's captivating series that sweeps listeners back to 1930's Alabama and into the lives of two neighboring couples whose deceitful friendships and imperfect marriages are just the beginning of their troubles...

In rural North Georgia two decades after the Civil War, 13-year-old Lulu Hurst reaches high into her father's bookshelf and pulls out an obscure book, The Truth of Mesmeric Influence. Deemed gangly and undesirable, Lulu wants more than a lifetime of caring for her disabled baby brother, Leo, with whom she shares a profound and supernatural mental connection.