Southern Literary Fiction

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.

The Connoisseur trails the evolution of Muhlbach, an insurance executive on a business trip in Taos, New Mexico, who develops an obsession with pre-Columbian figurines after meandering through a curio shop. Entranced yet bewildered by his sudden affinity for a little figurine, Muhlbach succumbs to his intrigue and, 30 dollars later, begins his journey as a connoisseur. With superb delivery and subtle clarity, Connell allows us to see and feel Muhlbach’s emerging mania, with its impending tension and sudden exhilaration.

Welcome to Lemon Bliss, Louisiana, where an abandoned lemon tea factory is the most happening place in town and witches secretly rule the roost. Violet Broussard gets called back to the hometown she left in the dust when a dead body is found in the abandoned factory bequeathed to her by her grandmother. Violet has plans, and they most definitely don't involve staying in Lemon Bliss any longer than necessary. The town is mostly famous for its lemon tea infused with enough alcohol to make one experience bliss, hence the town's name. Yet, once she's there, things get a tad wacky.

La obra de una de las grandes maestras de la literatura norteamericana con prólogos actualizados. Los relatos más significativos de la singular y sutil narrativa de Carson McCullers, que han accedido ya a la consideración de clásicos de la moderna literatura norteamericana. Prólogo de Paulina Flores.

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.

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.

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.

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....

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.

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.

Retired racehorse jockey and Vietnam veteran Anse Caulfield rescues exotic big cats, elephants, and other creatures for Little Eden, a wildlife sanctuary near the abandoned ruins of a failed development on the Georgia coast. But when Anse's prized lion escapes, he becomes obsessed with replacing her - even if the means of rescue aren't exactly legal.

Building on her critically acclaimed novel The Last Days of California and her biting collection Always Happy Hour, Miller slyly transports listeners to her unapologetic corner of the South - this time, Biloxi, Mississippi, home to 63-year-old Louis McDonald, Jr. His wife of 37 years left him, his father has passed - and he has impulsively retired from his job in anticipation of an inheritance check that may not come. One day, he stops at a house advertising free dogs and meets overweight mixed-breed Layla.

The Altamaha River, Georgia's "Little Amazon", is one of the last truly wild places in America. Crossed by roads only five times in its 137 miles, the blackwater river is home to 1,000-year-old virgin cypresses, direct descendants of 18th-century Highland warriors, and a staggering array of rare and endangered species. The Altamaha is even rumored to harbor its own river monster, as well as traces of the oldest European fort in North America.

Self-educated and brown skinned, Cassie works full time in her grandmother's laundry in rural Mississippi. Illiterate and white, Judith falls for "colored music" and dreams of life as a big-city radio star. These teenage girls are half-sisters. And when they catch wind of their wayward father's inheritance coming down in Virginia, they hitch their hopes on a road trip together to claim what's rightly theirs. In an old junk car, with a frying pan, a ham, and a few dollars hidden in a shoe, they set off through the Deep South of the 1950s.

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.

Alice always thought she'd see her brother again. Rob ran away when he was 15, with so many years left to find his way home. But his funeral happened first. Now that she has to clear out her childhood home in Georgia, the memories come flooding in, bringing with them an autopsy report showing her family's lies - and sealed, addressed letters from Rob.

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.

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.

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.