Southern Memoirs

Spend an evening with famous southern writer Rick Bragg, listening to him as I did, then wonder as I did, why there wasn't a black face in the house. Maybe there isn't a reason. Maybe there is. Rick Bragg says that no writer tells the whole truth. I tried to...As I saw it. That didn't go over to well...With a special someone in Rick's life. As you will see.

This audiobook tells the story of the Brown family of Caswell County, NC, and their journey over four generations, captured in short stories, vignettes, and whimsical narrative glimpses. The Brown family’s journey began two generations earlier with my grandmother’s grandmother, Queen Evans, who was kidnapped in Africa and brought to North Carolina as a slave on a plantation of a White slave owner. One of the many duties of Queen, the seven-year-old enslaved girl, was to serve as a “foot-warmer”.

The Beak in the Heart is a memoir of growing up “Southern”. Betina Enzminger shares the poignant tales of women who preceded her - misfit women who defied authority and suffered the consequences in the repressive South Carolina of the 19th and 20th centuries. Entzminger links several generations of women from pre-Civil War years to the present, and also shares candid details of her rebellious youth and her own struggles with marriage and parenthood.

I met Amber when I moved across the street from her. As I got to know her, I learned some things about myself. My goal in writing this book is to help anyone that is going through the loss of a loved one or has lost someone. This is not just my own personal journey through grief, but a message of hope and love and a love that survived beyond death. This book is a memoir of personal reflections of the beginning, middle, and end of a soulful relationship between two women and a connection which brought about valuable lessons from love, life, grief, and letting go.

From Curio Bay to Golden Bay, in Down South writer Bruce Ansley sets off on a vast expedition across the South Island, Te Waipounamu, visiting the places and people who hold clues to the south's famous character. Not so very long ago, the South Island had most of New Zealand's people and just about all of the money. Gold miners found fortunes in the hills and rivers, sheep barons straddled mountains, valleys and plains. Wealthy southerners ruled the government. Where now lies the South Island's golden fleece? And what is its future?

By 1966, Hot Springs, Arkansas wasn’t your typical sleepy little Southern town. Once a favorite destination for mobsters like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, illegal activities continued to lure out-of-state gamblers, flim-flam men, and high rollers to its racetracks, clubs, and bordellos. Still, the town was shaken to its core after a girl was found dead on a nearby ranch. The ranch owner claimed it was an accident. Then the rancher was found to be the killer of another woman - his fourth wife.

Prohibition. Mobsters, murder, and mayhem. FBI agents. Cops, robbers, and worse. Sound like the background for a Hollywood epic? It's Ernest Marquez's latest very true story of the renowned gambling ships that anchored in Santa Monica Bay in the 1920s and 1930s. It's the story of Tony Cornero, the cockiest gangster who ever bootlegged a bottle of scotch, the man who helped found Las Vegas, and the smooth operator of the most glamorous gambling ship in the Pacific, the Rex.