Southern Literary Fiction

Jerene Jarvis Johnston and her husband, Duke, are exemplars of Charlotte, North Carolina’s high society, a world where old Southern money and the secrets behind it meet the new wealth of bankers, real estate speculators, and carpetbagging social climbers. Steely and implacable, Jerene presides over her family’s legacy of paintings at the Mint Museum; Duke, the one-time college golden boy and descendant of a Confederate general, whose promising political career was mysteriously short-circuited, has settled into a comfortable semi-senescence as a Civil War reenactor.

Jim Byrd died. Technically. For a few minutes. The diagnosis: heart attack at age 30. Revived with no memory of any tunnels, lights, or angels, Jim wonders what—if anything—awaits us on the other side. Then a ghost shows up. Maybe. Jim and his new wife, Annie, find themselves tangling with holograms, psychics, messages from the beyond, and a machine that connects the living and the dead. As Jim and Annie journey through history and fumble through faith, they confront the specter of loss that looms for anyone who dares to fall in love.

I’ll Be Seeing You-the new release from Joanne Kukanza Easley, the multi-award-winning author of Sweet Jane and Just One Look A saga spanning five decades, I’ll Be Seeing You, explores one woman’s life, with and without alcohol to numb the pain. Young Lauren knows she doesn’t want to be a ranch wife in Palo Pinto County, Texas. After she’s discovered by a modeling scout at the 1940 Fort Worth Stock Show Parade, she moves to Manhattan to begin her glamourous career. A setback ends her dream, and she drifts into alcohol dependence and promiscuity. By twenty-four, she’s been ...

Carla Damron weaves the stories of four people in Columbia, South Carolina, whose seemingly disparate existences intersect through tragedies realized and tragedies averted. Lena Hastings survived breast cancer and marital infidelity but now faces an uncertain future and crises with her teenaged daughter Becca without the support of the one person she has always counted on.

Jimmy is a kid growing up fast on the poorest street in town. He tries to do everything right and look out for his mum and his younger brother. His older brother is in jail, so it's up to Jimmy to hold things together. But small-town life is unforgiving if you're from the other side of the tracks.

These 10 classic tales attest to the growing depth of Gurganus's genius. Offering characters antic and tragic, Gurganus charts the human condition as we live it now. His parables recall William Faulkner's scope and Flannery O'Connor's corrosive wit. We encounter a seaside couple fighting to save their dog from Maine's fierce undertow; a mortician whose dedication to his departed clients exceeds all legal limits. A virginal 78-year-old grammar-school librarian has her only erotic encounter with a Joe Exotic-like polyamorous snake farmer.

The house is dark, quiet, and empty as Frank Wilcox makes a promise to his daddy, Tom. One day, Frank promises, he will tell the stories—the adventures and misadventures—of life on the family hog farm in north Georgia. The farm is the home where Frank and his brothers, Jack and Wayne, learn life lessons about family and faith. That’s the backdrop of Brookwood Road, a novel inspired by author Scott Douglas Vaughan’s childhood. Vaughan turns those memories into rich stories centered around Frank, the thoughtful and protective oldest brother of the bunch, and his life growing up on the...

Accompanied by his friend, ship’s surgeon and spy Stephen Maturin, Captain Jack Aubrey has returned home to England and the life of a country gentleman. But their comfortable experience is cut short when Jack is made a pauper overnight. He flees to the continent, narrowly escaping debtor’s prison, only to find himself a hunted fugitive from Napoleon’s regime as, yet again, war looms.

Therapy might get her closer to feeling happy, but surviving 50 minutes of psychological interrogation is hard without obsessing about raspberry donuts or wondering why the couch, carpet, and wall color in her shrink's office are all the same shade of kill-me-now-beige, and why every decision she makes is wrong.

In the years after World War II, the bleak yet beautiful plains of South Dakota still embody all the contradictions - the ruggedness and the promise - of the old frontier. This is a place where you can eat strawberries from wild vines, where lightning reveals a boundless horizon, where descendants of white settlers and native Indians continue to collide, and where, for most, there are limited options. René shares a home, a family, and a passion for dance with her older brother, Leon. Yet for all they have in common, their lives are on remarkably different paths.

Cutter, a hard-working woman who makes her living waiting tables and writing obits, is determined to sabotage the sale of her family's dilapidated ancestral home. Every time a potential buyer comes calling, she makes every effort to play down any possible charm that might be found within the crumbling walls.

A lush, glittering short story collection exploring female obsession and desire by an award-winning author Roxane Gay calls "a consummate storyteller." From Kentucky to the California desert, these 42 short stories - ranging from the '80s and '90s to present day - expose the hearts of girls and women in moments of obsessive desire and fantasy, wildness and bad behavior, brokenness and fearlessness, and more.

At 12, Emily Parmenter is left mostly to herself after her mother disappears and her beloved older brother dies. Emily has built a life around the faded plantation where her remote father and hunting-obsessed brothers raise hunting spaniels. It is a meager, masculine world, but to Emily it has magic. And then comes Lulu Foxworth, troubled daughter of a truly grand plantation, who has run away from her hectic Charleston debutante season.

Through events small and large, thirteen-year-old Harold Stevens grows up during a pivotal summer in the red-dirt backcountry of West Texas. With his friend C.K. Crow, the black field hand who works for Harold’s father, he shoots deer and quail, fishes for catfish, mends fences, grows and learns about marijuana, and tests his emerging manhood against bullies, bulls, and the irresistible charms of his horse-riding older cousin.

Ava, 14 years old and totally on her own, has still not fully processed her mother’s death when she finds herself on a train heading to New Orleans, to stay with Lane, the grandmother she barely remembers. Lane is a well-known artist in the New Orleans art scene. She spends most of her days in a pot-smoke haze, sipping iced coffee, and painting. Her grip on reality is shaky at best, but her work provides a comfort. Ava’s arrival unsettles Lane. The girl bears an uncanny resemblance to her daughter, whom she was estranged from before her death.

Janie Treeborne lives on an orchard at the edge of Elberta, Alabama, and in time she has become its keeper. A place where conquistadors once walked and where the peaches they left behind now grow. Elberta has seen fierce battles, violent storms, and frantic change - and when the town is once again threatened from without, Janie realizes it won’t withstand much more.

Tassen siempre ha sido perro de un solo hombre. Y desde que murió el Mayor Thorkildsen, se ha visto obligado a entenderse con la anciana viuda de éste. Ambos echan de menos al Mayor y por las noches, frente al resplandor de un buen fuego, se consuelan leyendo sobre la expedición de Roald Amundsen al Polo Sur, que culminó con éxito gracias a las decenas de intrépidos perros de Groenlandia que el aventurero noruego decidió llevar consigo. Cuando el hijo y la nuera del Mayor planean quedarse con la casa, Tassen y la señora Thorkildsen, inspirándose en los audaces perros de Amundsen.

Lee Smith, one of today's finest writers in the Southern literary tradition, has been compared to Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. This collection of nine stories, ranging from poignant ballads to delightfully inventive forms, showcases Smith's celebrated talent. The stories will make you chuckle and leave you with a satisfying sense that no matter how unruly or warped life may seem, equilibrium can be found after all.

Having justly earned her reputation as a master storyteller, Lee Smith's name evokes images of authentic country folk struggling through life's arduous tests. Saving Grace adds a stunning spiritual dimension. The daughter of a preacher who ignores his destitute family, Florida Grace doesn't think much of Jesus. He's the reason she's lived in squalor and He wasn't there for her through her failed marriage. But in one shining moment He calls out to her and she returns to her roots to heed His call.

"The Serpent and the Menace brilliantly blends the mystery and crime thriller genres and can be enjoyed from both the fictional thriller and historical aspect." –Anne Brownlow, ex-criminal investigator John Doby is many things: a venomous snake hobbyist and societal dissident with a list of priors not for the faint of heart, an autodidact versed in herpetology and Native American languages—and according to some, a “carnival attraction” and “welfare queen.” But is he the person responsible for the disappearance of local boy, JC Wagoner, in this quiet community? Is John involved? ...