Southern Memoirs

Mistress Vixen is intelligent, sophisticated, and charming, with a wicked sense of humor, which She loves to indulge at Her slaves expense. Naturally Dominant, She exudes sensuality and eroticism that you sense as soon as you enter Her presence: spellbound, you'll leave the everyday world behind you're in Hers now. A soft smile to lull you into a false sense of security, then the single word Strip to remind you of your place naked at Her feet and you'll hurry to obey.

A lyrical and evocative memoir from Frances Mayes, the Bard of Tuscany, about coming of age in the Deep South and the region’s powerful influence on her life. The author of three beloved books about her life in Italy, including Under the Tuscan Sun and Every Day in Tuscany, Frances Mayes...

This Is Not Real Life is a memoir about the total, unfiltered chaos behind the scenes of my time in media. From an evangelical upbringing and a steady diet of Fox News to going viral and playing my first part in media disinformation, to meeting with terrorists, neo-Nazis, intelligence agents, and political crime rings.

Coming back home was supposed to be normal - not that my life had ever been normal, but it was getting there. Then I opened the door and found a man, broken, bloodied, and fighting for his life. I don’t know why, but I said I would take care of him. I had to - needed to. He was a mystery, showing up from out of nowhere. But he might have already stolen my heart.  

In Mandela, former foreign correspondent Bob Crew demystifies the icon and his legacy. After over a decade of travels in South Africa, Crew seeks truth in the unexpected details of the lives of Mandela and current South African president Jacob Zuma, comparing them to other world icons in order to bring a new understanding of their legacies to Western listeners.

On a beautiful October day in the San Fernando Valley, teenager Missy Avila was lured into the woods, beaten, tortured, and drowned. Missy's best friend, Karen Severson, publicly vowed to find the killer and even moved in with Missy's family to help. Three years later, a surprise witness exposed the murderers as Missy's two best friends—one of whom was Karen. New York Times bestselling author Karen Kingsbury delivers a story full of twists, turns, betrayals, and confessions.

I never wanted to be a cowboy - living in a small town was suffocating. The military was my out. I saw every place I ever wanted and everything that nightmares are made of...until I almost lost my life and ended up back home.

It is difficult to find another soldier's story to equal Captain Darrell Watt's in terms of time spent on the field of battle and challenges faced. Even by the lofty standards of the SAS and Special Forces, one has to look far to find anyone who can match his record of resilience and valor in the face of such daunting odds and with resources so paltry. In the fight, he showed himself to be a military maestro. After 12 years in the cauldron of war, his cause slipped from beneath him, and Rhodesia gave way to Zimbabwe.

The Grammy- and Academy Award- nominated singer-songwriter's haunting, lyrical memoir, sharing the story of an unthinkable act of violence and ultimate healing through art Mobile, Alabama, 1986. A fourteen-year-old girl is awakened by the unmistakable sound of gunfire. On the front lawn, her...

From the beloved, best-selling author of All Over but the Shoutin', a delectable, rollicking food memoir, cookbook, and loving tribute to a region, a vanishing history, a family, and, especially, to his mother. Margaret Bragg does not own a single cookbook. She measures in "dabs" and "smidgens"...

Here, for the first time, is the private and most intimate correspondence of one of America’s most influential and incisive journalists: Hunter S. Thompson. In letters to a Who’s Who of luminaries from Norman Mailer to Charles Kuralt, Tom Wolfe to Lyndon Johnson, William Styron to Joan Baez—not to mention his mother, the NRA, and a chain of newspaper editors—Thompson vividly catches the tenor of the times in 1960s America and channels it all through his own razor-sharp perspective.

Andre Scheepers grew up on a farm in Rhodesia, learning about the bush from his African childhood friends, before joining the army. A quiet, introspective thinker, Andre started out as a trooper in the SAS before being commissioned into the Rhodesian Light Infantry Commandos, where he was engaged in fireforce combat operations. He then rejoined the SAS. Andre writes vividly about his experiences, his emotions, and his state of mind during the war, and reflects candidly on what he learned and how war has shaped his life since.

From Ben and Erin Napier, the stars of the hit HGTV show Home Town, comes a memoir that tells us all to seek out the good in life, celebrate the beauty of family and friends, and prosper within our communities because everything we need in life to be happy, is within our grasp. Long before their...

After years of gigging everywhere from suburban backyards to dive bars, Van Halen - led by frontman extraordinaire David Lee Roth and guitar virtuoso Edward Van Halen - had the songs, the swagger, and the talent to turn the rock world on its ear. The quartet's classic 1978 debut, Van Halen, sold more than a million copies within months of release and rocketed the band to the stratosphere of rock success.

Anyone living in Rhodesia during the 1960s and 1970s would have had a father, husband, brother, or son called up in the defense of the war-torn, landlocked little country. A few of these brave men would have been members of the elite and secretive unit that struck terror into the hearts of the ZANLA and ZIPRA guerrillas infiltrating the country at that time - the Selous Scouts.

Levon is the dazzling, epic biography of Levon Helm - the beloved, legendary drummer and singer of The Band.

New York Times bestselling author and Nashville legend Loretta Lynn tells the story of her rise from deep poverty in Butcher Holler, Kentucky, to the top of the male-dominated country music industry. ​ Reissued for the 40th Anniversary of the Oscar-winning, Sissy Spacek-starring film of the...

Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa’s most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of passage. Like every other child born in the hopelessness of apartheid, he learned to measure his life in days, not years. Yet Mark Mathabane, armed only with the courage of his family and a hard-won education, raised himself up from the squalor and humiliation to win a scholarship to an American university.

After his father's heart attack in 1984, Peter Godwin began a series of pilgrimages back to Zimbabwe, the land of his birth, from Manhattan, where he now lives. On these frequent visits to check on his elderly parents, he bore witness to Zimbabwe's dramatic spiral downward into the jaws of violent chaos, presided over by an increasingly enraged dictator. And yet long after their comfortable lifestyle had been shattered and millions were fleeing, his parents refuse to leave, steadfast in their allegiance to the failed state that has been their adopted home for 50 years.

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...