Southern Literary Fiction

Alexandra Haywood and her sister Neely have always loved Whistledown, the family's Shelby County horse farm. After their billionaire father's sudden and tragic death, Alex returns to find the family fortune in shambles, and Whistledown has to go. But Joe Welch, the sexy farm manager, refuses to cooperate. Sparks of rage give way to a fiery attraction when Joe and Alex meet head-on. But just as a volatile passion flares between them, the discovery of a shocking murder with ties to the past rocks the county.

A secret dark past and a string of messy affairs haven't stopped self-made millionaire Jamison Jackson from becoming mayor of Atlanta. But while he may have a gorgeous new wife and new alliances, he can't quite escape his past and those who want to see him fail. There's his jilted first wife, a lover he'd rather forget, and a ruthless faction of old guard politicians and power lords who have no problem getting blood on their hands. And the fact that Jamison's ambitious current wife, Val, schemed and blackmailed her way into his arms - despite his mother's not-so-subtle warnings - is far from the least of his problems.

Jean Louise Finch, dite "Scout", l'inoubliable héroïne de "Ne tirez pas sur l'oiseau moqueur", est de retour dans sa petite ville natale de l'Alabama, Maycomb, pour rendre visite à son père, Atticus. Vingt ans ont passé. Nous sommes au milieu des années 1950, et la nation se déchire autour des questions raciales. Confrontée à la société qui l'a façonnée mais dont elle croit s'être affranchie en partant vivre à New York, Jean Louise va découvrir ses proches sous un jour inédit...

The theme of trust, betrayed or fulfilled, runs through this collection of short stories: Parents lead children into peril, husbands abandon wives, wives manipulate husbands, and time undermines all. Love pangs, a favorite subject of the author, take on a new urgency as earthquakes, illnesses, lost wallets, and deaths of distant friends besiege his aging heroes and heroines.

Meet the women of American Housewife: They wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it's cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. They pump the salad spinner like it's a CPR dummy. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies out of the oven. These 12 irresistible stories take us from a haunted prewar Manhattan apartment building to the set of a rigged reality television show, from the unique initiation ritual of a book club to the getaway car of a pageant princess on the lam.

With two biological sons and a promising career, Coleman Carter seems set to fulfill his promise as a resourceful trial lawyer, devoted husband, and dutiful father until his wife, Elizabeth, champions their adoption of a Korean orphan. This seemingly altruistic mission estranges Coleman's conservative parents and demands that he now embrace the unknown as fully as he has always entrenched himself in the familiar.

In the rural South, a retired colonel in an upscale retirement community grieves the sudden death of his wife on the tennis court. On the other side of the highway, an elderly Black woman grieves the murder of her niece by a white man. Between them lies an abandoned field where three centuries of crimes are hidden, and only she knows the explosive secrets buried there.

In this book, Jaime Harker uncovers a largely forgotten literary renaissance in southern letters. Anchored by a constellation of southern women, the Women in Print movement grew from the queer union of women's liberation, civil rights activism, gay liberation, and print culture. Broadly influential from the 1970s through the 1990s, the Women in Print movement created a network of writers, publishers, bookstores, and readers that fostered a remarkable array of literature.

Bear it or perish yourself. Those are the words Helen Jean hears that fateful night in her cousin’s outhouse that change the trajectory of her life. Spanning decades, Perish tracks the choices Helen Jean—the matriarch of the Turner family—makes and the way those choices have rippled across generations, from her children to her grandchildren and beyond. This family’s “reunion” unearths long-kept secrets and forces each member to ask themselves important questions about who is deserving of forgiveness and who bears the cross of blame.

Growing up in Erob, Alabama, Nina Little Bit Barnes Enloe lived in the shadow of her imposing and harsh grandmother, Nina Biggie Barnes Enloe. If she wasn't being bossed around by Biggie, then the task fell to her best friend Win…who did win…at everything.

Pauline Smith, a retired insurance processor, is comfortable in her habits and her home. She is a born worrier with strong opinions and believes in family taking care of family. When her mother is injured in a fall, Pauline and her sister Perk must move Mama from their childhood home in Roanoke, Virginia to an assisted living complex in Richmond, where they live. As she is confronted with her mother's frail health, Pauline struggles to confront her own fear of death and the grief she's harbored since her father died when she was a child.

Irene, a lonely 19-year-old in rural North Carolina, works long nights at the local pool hall, serving pitchers and dodging drunks. One evening, her hilarious, magnetic coworker Luce invites her on a joyride through the mountains to take revenge on a particularly creepy customer. Their adventure not only spells the beginning of a dazzling friendship, it seduces both girls into the mysterious world of pills and the endless hustles needed to fund the next high.

The gravy train hasn’t stopped in the hollers of western Virginia for more than 30 years when Stony Shelor starts his junior year at Jubal Early High. Class divides and racism are still the hardened norms as the Eisenhower years draw to a close. Violence lies coiled under the calm surface, ready to strike at any time.

Eve Mann arrives in Ideal, Georgia, in 1972 looking for answers about the mother who died giving her life. A mother named Mercy. A mother who for all of Eve’s 22 years has been a mystery and a quest. Eve’s search for her mother, and the father she never knew, is a mission to discover her identity, her name, her people, and her home. Eve’s questions and longing launch a multigenerational story that sprawls back to the turn of the 20th century.

In the hurricane-ravaged bottomlands of South Mississippi, where stores are closing and jobs are few, a fierce zealot has gained a foothold, capitalizing on the vulnerability of a dwindling population and a burning need for hope. As she preaches and promises salvation from the light of the pulpit, in the shadows she sows the seeds of violence. Elsewhere, Jessie and her toddler, Jace, are on the run across the Mississippi/Louisiana line, in a resentful return to her childhood home and her desolate father.

Marvin Spangler is a self-centered, ill-equipped teacher of high school history, tasked by his principal to form an auctioneering team that has a chance in hell of winning a Tennessee state championship. He assembles a team comprising three very different souls: Larry Jr., the damaged prodigy, is led by fate; Eric, the obsessed jock, by unrequited love; and Helen, the usually disinterested beauty, by an inexplicable fascination. Together they surrender to a journey that carries them to the cusp of the summit of their dreams...and the nightmares awaiting far down below.

In 1788, Thomas Kendall, a naïve 19-year-old sentenced to transportation for burglary, finds himself bound for Sydney Town and a new life in the wild and lawless land beneath the Southern Cross. Thomas fathers a dynasty that will last more than 200 years. His descendants play their part in the forging of a nation, but greed and prejudice see an irreparable rift in the family which will echo through the generations. It is only at the dawn of the new millennium - as an old journal lays bare a terrible secret - that the family can finally reclaim its honour....

At 40, Ford Carson has forged a new life as a visual artist in the mountains of North Carolina. A chance meeting with Grace Burnett leads to a burgeoning love affair. But the romance is complicated by Grace’s estranged husband and the unexpected arrival of Ford’s own estranged son.

As a young man, Virgil Moody vowed he would never be like his father, he would never own slaves. When he moves from his father's plantation in Savannah to New Orleans, he takes with him Annie, a tiny woman with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue, who he is sure would not survive life on the plantation. She'll be much safer with him, away from his father's cruelty. And when he discovers Annie's pregnancy, already a few months along, he is all the more certain that he made the right decision. As the years pass, the divide between Moody's assumptions and Annie's reality widens ever further.

When Cuban fisherman first spotted the Key West lighthouse floating in Florida waters, they called her Stella Maris, Star of the Sea. It’s a beacon that draws people from everywhere seeking the end-of-the-line bohemian oasis that can still be found amidst the condo share towers, chain stores, and Redneck Riviera clientele. And it’s a mecca for gay men and the women who love them. Sue Kaufman Prize-winning author Michael Carroll knows the territory intimately. His stories wind in and out of the bars and guesthouses and lives of this singular paradise.