Fourteen stories focus on a group of southern women who seek happiness and a sense of worth in bars, marriages, divorces, art, drug use, lovers' arms, and earthquakes

    As the St. Petersburg Times review pointed out, the central theme of these ten stories “is the ageless collision of man with woman, woman with man--with the frequent introduction of that other familiar couple, drinking and violence. Most often ugly, love is nevertheless graceful, however desperate the situation.”There’s some glare from the brutally bright light Larry Brown shines on his subjects. This is the work of a writer unafraid to gaze directly at characters challenged by crisis and pathology. But for readers who are willing to look, unblinkingly, along with the writer, there are unusual rewards.

    Rucker Blakeslee, elopes with Miss Love Simpson. He is barely three weeks a widower, and she is only half his age and a Yankee to boot. As their marriage inspires a whirlwind of local gossip, fourteen-year-old Will Tweedy suddenly finds himself eyewitness to a family scandal, and that’s where his adventures begin.Cold Sassy Tree is the undeniably entertaining and extraordinarily moving account of small-town Southern life in a bygone era. Brimming with characters who are wise and loony, unimpeachably pious and deliciously irreverent, Olive Ann Burns’s classic bestseller is a timeless, funny, and resplendent treasure.

    For Lewis Grizzard, gallivanting meant hanging out at the store eating Zagnut bars -- the worst thing a kid ever did was slick back his hair in a ducktail and try gyrating like Elvis. But the '60s exploded with assassinations, terrorism, free love, Vietnam and drugs. In place of Elvis, the Pied Piper of his generation, scuzzy Liverpudlians performed half-naked or in costumes straight from Zasu Pitts. ELVIS IS DEAD AND I DON'T FEEL SO GOOD MYSELF is Grizzard's account of coping with a changing world. We may not feel so good ourselves, but Grizzard's commentary and humor help make us feel better." (Publishers Source)

    But its fortunes fell violently, irrevocably, on Margaret Garden Tradd's scandalous wedding day.To the wild razzle-dazzle of the jazz age....From an ugly duckling love child, Garden Tradd became the glorious belle her mother, Margaret, had longed to be. Garden's marriage to the dashing Yankee, Sky Harris, was a triumph -- the match of a decade.With breathtaking abandon and dazzling innocence, she danced through Paris, London, and New York as the twenties roared...until betrayal turned the glitter to bitter ash....until vengeful secrets of the past sent her home to Charleston--a city waiting to embrace its own or exact its own very special revenge.

    He's an original, one of a kind, and thousands upon thousands of people have laughed as they never laughed before when he tells his stories-tales about the the most unique people who inhabitthe our earth, the great Cajuns of South Louisiana.. . . he is also an artist when it comes to cooking. He can work the same magic with fish and fowl, with vegetables and fruit, as he can with language.He loves to cook. His mission in life seems to be to make people enjoy life, to make them laugh, and to make them eat.(From the foreword by Gus Weill)In this tasty collection, the world's foremost Cajun humorist and acclaimed gourmet chef shares recipes that will stimulate the most jaded taste buds. Sure to be a favorite with old and new Justin Wilson fans alike, The Justin Wilson Gourmet and Gourmand Cookbook combines Justin Wilson's -ga-ron-teed to please- recipes with a liberal sprinkling of his Cajun humor and forty-nine color photographs. Many of the recipes on Justin's PBS show are featured.

    Collections of interviews with notable modern writers

    Like the old master Henry James, Sheila Bosworth uses the chilling device of using the mirror of innocence to reflect evil. It is a lovely achievement, a superior one."-Walker Percy Clay-Lee Calvert is the love child of two people who are as beautiful as models in a magazine but whose similarity ends there. Her father, Rand, is an artist-easygoing, dreamy, principled, and chronically jobless. Her mother, Constance, is the blue-blooded, pampered, delicate but determined daughter of a state supreme court justice. How their intense passion for each other plays out against the sumptuousness and decay of 1950s New Orleans is something to which no innocent should be privy. In Sheila Bosworth's mesmerizing first novel, the era, the place, the people, of Clay-Lee's childhood all form an air as real as our own pasts, alternately dim and indelible, where everyone bears some guilt, and all are almost innocent.

    Its hundreds of miles of navigable tributaries made adoption of the tobacco staple possible and eliminated the necessity of cities and towns; its physical dominance created an essencial unity of lands sharing its shores, despite the political decisions that created separate colonies of Maryland and Virgina. Middleton recaptures the peril faced by the early colonists (Father Andrew White, who arrived in the Ark, wrote that all the Sprights and witches of Maryland seemed arrayed in battle against the ship whn violent storms struck off the coast) and traces how the sttlers persevered and the colonies thrived, due in great measure to the growth of tobacco as the mainstray of Chesapeake commerce (in 1775 it represented over 75 precent of the total value of exports from the Chesapeake colonies and was worth some $4 million).Colonial life and commerce, shipbuilding and the merchant marine, privateers and self-protection--all are treated with insight, drama, and thoroughness in a fascinating maritime history, long out of print and now made widely available for the first time.

    "Some Like It South!" features recipes rich in Southern tradition, which reflects the diversity of the people of Pensacola. A treasure for those who like to cook and eat. Recipient of 2005 Writer's Digest Magazine Cookbook Honorable Mention Award.