Southern Memoirs

“Southern Discomfort is a raw, thought-provoking examination of privilege, racism, sexism, the masks we wear to conform to society’s expectations, and the journey toward authentic identity.” —Read with Us: Caste, An Oprah’s Book Club Discussion Guide For fans of beloved memoirs like...

Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina - a place "easy to pass by on the way somewhere else" - has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, listeners meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be "the rare bird, the oddity".

“Courageous and compelling…essential and critically important.” —Bryan Stevenson An award-winning scholar of white supremacy tackles her toughest research assignment yet: the unsolved murder of a Black man in rural Mississippi while her grandfather was the local sheriff—a cold case...

Winner of the 2025 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction and the 2025 GLCA New Writers Award By a prize-winning, young Black trans writer of outsized talent, a fierce and disciplined memoir about queerness, masculinity, and race. Even as it shines light on the beauty and toxicity...

The story of the intelligence war in South Africa during the Second World War is one of suspense, drama and dogged persistence. In 1939, when the Union of South Africa entered the war on Britain’s side, the German government secretly contacted the political opposition, and the leadership of the anti-war movement, the Ossewabrandwag. The Nazis’ aim was to spread sedition, undermine the Allied war effort, and - given the strategic importance of the Cape of Good Hope sea route - gain naval intelligence. Soon U-boat packs were sent to operate in South African waters, to deadly effect.

In Elvis Presley: A Southern Life, one of the most admired Southern historians of our time takes on one of the greatest cultural icons of all time. The result is a masterpiece: a vivid, gripping biography, set against the rich backdrop of Southern society - indeed, American society - in the second half of the 20th century.

Back in the days before Vegas was big, when the Mob was at its peak and neon lights were but a glimmer on the horizon, a little Southern town styled itself as a premier destination for the American leisure class. Hot Springs, Arkansas was home to healing waters, Art Deco splendor, and America's original national park - as well as horse racing, nearly a dozen illegal casinos, countless backrooms and brothels, and some of the country’s most bald-faced criminals.

Master storyteller Chris Offutt’s acclaimed crime series has been praised by Ian Rankin as “righteous Kentucky noir with top notes of Daniel Woodrell and S. A. Cosby,” and in this breakneck new novel, sheriff Mick Hardin navigates the treacherous terrain of a town’s festering secrets and...

When you are born in the South you are different. And you always will be.

One of the most studied and written about episodes in US history, the American Civil War remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. The conflict was one of the earliest industrial wars in which mass-produced weapons were employed. The mobilization of civilian factories, shipyards, transportation, and food supplies all foreshadowed the impact of industrialization in World War I, World War II, and subsequent conflicts.

In this unflinching, honest narrative, an award-winning journalist discovers his family’s heritage as slave owners in the South and grapples openly with his whiteness to inspire others to do the same. "Bracing, candid, and rueful." —Kirkus Baynard Woods thought he had escaped the backwards...

When a squad of federal agents burst through her parents' front door, Victoria Fedden felt ill-prepared to meet them: She was weeks away from her due date, and her T-shirt wasn't long enough to hide her maternity undies. As for the question of how to raise a child when you've just discovered that your mother and stepfather have allegedly masterminded a pump-and-dump scheme? She was pretty sure that wasn't covered in What to Expect When You're Expecting.

Ellen Ann Fentress is a veteran writer for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She’s also a seasoned southern woman, specifically a white Mississippi one. “Women do a lot for free, no matter the era, no matter the location,” she observes in The Steps We Take: A Memoir of Southern Reckoning. As a good southern woman, Fentress felt a calling to help others.

In thinking about her native land, Julia Reed quotes another Southern writer, Willie Morris, who said, “It’s the juxtapositions that get you down here.” These juxtapositions are, for Julia Reed, the soul of the South and in her warmhearted and funny new audiobook, South Toward Home, she chronicles her adventures through the highs and the lows of Southern life - the Delta hot tamale festival, a masked ball, a rollicking party in a boat on a sand bar, scary Christian billboards, and the southern affection for the lowly possum.

In the summer of 1964 Jacksonville, Florida teenager Ronnie Van Zant and some of his friends hatched the idea of forming a band to play covers of the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Yardbirds, and the country and blues-rock music they had grown to love. Naming their band after Leonard Skinner, the gym teacher at Robert E. Lee Senior High School who constantly badgered the long-haired aspiring musicians to get haircuts, they were soon playing gigs at parties, and bars throughout the South.

A front row seat to the life and mind of an addict, Stripped of Shame is a captivating listen that puts a human face on the crippling effects of drugs, alcohol, and childhood trauma. Stripped of Shame details the powerful journey of Doreen Stumpf who found hope through the redemption of Christ’s love. After a horrific accident, Doreen found herself bedridden in her childhood home, a place full of triggers and traumatic memories. She must recover from the aftermath of the accident and overcome the repressed memories she's fought so long to bury.

Leaving Aberdeen is the story of a young Southern girl's awakening during a turbulent time of racial reckoning, from reading torn textbooks in a one-room schoolhouse to attending a premier HBCU, from professional modeling to motherhood, and from accepting her "place" to supporting her husband's membership as a Black Panther.

The Southern Fault Line explores the under-appreciated division in the South between the oligarchic rule of plantation owners and industrialists on the one hand, and the more democratic mindset of the mountain-dwelling small farmers on the other. These two mindsets were in continual tension from the 1800s to the 1960s, when the adherents of the more democratic side of the struggle capitulated to the oligarchical side in response to the Civil Rights movement. Bryan Jones draws from his own family's centuries-old history in the region to explore the rise and fall of the "two minds" of the South.

From living in the country and jamming with her cousins to the latest Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam album, to being forced by a determined great-aunt to play the role of a disgruntled Peter Cottontail in the annual church Easter program, to experiencing the worst relationships in the history of mankind, before being reunited with her one true love (life was good!), join this Southern girl as she shares her 32 years of growing up in Georgia.

Set in New Orleans in the years after the Civil War, A Separate Country is based on the incredible life of John Bell Hood, arguably one of the most controversial generals of the Confederate Army--and one of its most tragic figures. Robert E. Lee promoted him to major general after the Battle of...