Best of
Southern-Gothic

2017

Desperation Road


Michael Farris Smith - 2017
    His sentence now up, Russell believes his debt has been paid. But when he returns home, he discovers that revenge lives and breathes all around him.Meanwhile, a woman named Maben and her young daughter trudge along the side of the interstate. Desperate and exhausted, the pair spend their last dollar on a room for the night, a night that ends with Maben holding a pistol and a dead deputy sprawled in the middle of the road.With the dawn, destinies collide, and Russell is forced to decide whose life he will save—his own or those of the woman and child.

Gradle Bird


J.C. Sasser - 2017
    But when Leonard moves her to a crumbling old house rumored to be haunted by the ghost of Ms. Annalee Spivey, Gradle is plunged into a lush, magical world much stranger and more dangerous than from the one she came.Here she meets Sonny Joe Stitch, a Siamese Fighting Fish connoisseur overdosed on testosterone, a crippled, Bible-thumping hobo named Ceif -Tadpole- Walker, and the only true friend she will ever know, a schizophrenic genius, music-man, and professional dumpster-diver, D-5 Delvis Miles.As Gradle falls deeper into Delvis's imaginary and fantastical world, unsettling dangers lurk, and when surfaced Gradle discovers unforeseen depths in herself and the people she loves the most.Gradle Bird is an unusual tale of self-discovery and redemption that explores the infirmities of fatherly love, the complexities of human cruelty, and the consequences of guilt, proving they are possible to overcome no matter how dark and horrible the cause.

The Weight of This World


David Joy - 2017
    His mother, April, is haunted by her own demons, a secret trauma she has carried for years. Between them is Aiden McCall, loyal to both but unable to hold them together. Connected by bonds of circumstance and duty, friendship and love, these three lives are blown apart when Aiden and Thad witness the accidental death of their drug dealer and a riot of dope and cash drops in their laps. On a meth-fueled journey to nowhere, they will either find the grit to overcome the darkness or be consumed by it.

A Map Of The World


Zev Good - 2017
     In the opening story, "The Sweet By-and-By," an inexplicable tragedy brings to light the cracks in a family's foundation. In "Had," a man recalls his youth and must, at last, come to terms with the one love he could never have. The title story alternates between the present and the past, and tells us a truth we all know but find hard to admit: that to rescue ourselves, we sometimes have to leave others behind. These stories, populated with mothers and children, friends and lovers, the living and the dying, reveal the intricate and tenuous bonds that unite us all.

Gilt


Raena Shirali - 2017
    The rich wisdom you glean from the powerful pages of Gilt will leave you spent and enchanted. — Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of Lucky Fish Raena Shirali is a poet who keeps asking what poems can actually do, and these formally inventive lyrics ask for activity, for travel. Her comment on culture, on identity, on justice is her comment on poetry. It is not fixed; and if it is, it shouldn’t be. Gilt is a book of danger and sarcasm and heart. — Jericho Brown, author of The New Testament

Spook Lights II: Southern Gothic Horror


Eden Royce - 2017
    Y’all gather round for thirteen more tales of Southern Gothic horror: Boys find evil in their favorite sweet treat, a perfume shop that makes more than scents, a hurricane carries a mother’s vengeance, a conjure woman lies dying, unable to name a successor… This is Gothic horror Southern style—shadowy rice fields, creatures that assume humanity at will—where even the most damaged and delicate have their power.

Some Dark Holler (The Redemption of Ephraim Cutler Book 1)


Luke Bauserman - 2017
    With a bounty on his head, Ephraim flees to the hills and hollers where he discovers that his crime has drawn more than the law’s attention—the Devil’s in town with his eye on Ephraim’s soul. Desperate to escape, Ephraim is torn between two clashing figures: an outcast granny doctor rumored to be a witch—and the local preacher. As the line between grim reality and the supernatural disappears, Death rides the ridgetops on a pale horse, and the Devil’s hound haunts the backwoods. Ephraim must decide who to trust, evade the hangman’s noose, and find redemption.

The Snake Handler


Cody Goodfellow - 2017
    To that end, he has held a monopoly on not only their souls, but also their thriving drug addiction.But times have changed, and forces larger than him have moved in to take control of both the church and the flow of narcotics.When he suffers a lethal bite from a rattlesnake someone placed in his mailbox, a dying, venom-addicted Clyde has only hours to undo a lifetime of sin, avenge his own murder and save his godforsaken town from the human monsters he’s unleashed.

Gully Dirt: On Exposing the Klan, Raising a Hog, and Escaping the South


Robert Coram - 2017
     In this incandescent memoir, Robert Coram tells how a rough-edged boy escaped from a nowhere little town in rural southwest Georgia and became an accomplished writer. With a flawless ear and an unblinking eye, Coram escorts us across a unique landscape, capturing the nuances of life in a small southern town during the 1950s, not by writing of the romantic south, but rather of a south that can be narrow and harsh and brutal. He takes on the big issues: race, religion, love, death, and family values. His coming-of-age story is troubling, sometimes embarrassing to read, but always hilarious. As a native son, Coram captures in pitch-perfect tone the voice of a teenage boy, a new voice from the old south—a voice as fresh and as blinding as a southern sunrise. Coram holds nothing back. No part of his early life is too embarrassing or too personal, including losing his virginity in a church and public beatings by his father. Though centered on Coram’s long-suffering mother, his brutal father, and his dog that lived in hope, the main feature of his story may be the humor. Rarely does a writer draw so much humor from such a harsh childhood. His story will linger in your heart. Coram is the author of seven novels and seven works of non-fiction, including four acclaimed biographies. He lives in Atlanta.

Classics Reimagined, Edgar Allan Poe: Stories Poems


Edgar Allan Poe - 2017
    Baltimore-based artist David Plunkert takes you on a dark journey into the gothic stories and poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. Classic stories of the macabre take on a whole new meaning when you experience them accompanied by David Plunkert's mystical, and sometimes haunting, interpretations. With this edition of the Classics Reimagined series, you'll find these densely written classics boring…nevermore.The Classics Reimagined series is a library of stunning collector's editions of unabridged classic novels illustrated by contemporary artists from around the world. Each artist offers his or her own unique, visual interpretation of the most well-loved, widely read, and avidly collected literature from renowned authors. From The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and from Jane Austen to the Brothers Grimm, collect every beautiful volume.

Three Classic Novels: Tobacco Road, God's Little Acre, and Place Called Estherville


Erskine Caldwell - 2017
    Bigotry, poverty, social injustice, and sexual squalor in the Deep South—hallmarks of one of the most daring and phenomenally popular bestselling novelists of the twentieth-century. Here, in one volume, are three of his best-known works. “None of [his] characters would be caught dead in a novel by John Steinbeck, Carson McCullers, or Eudora Welty” (The Daily Beast).  Tobacco Road: The Great Depression compromises the morals of a poor farming family in Georgia. This classic, a Modern Library 100 Best Novels selection, was adapted for the stage in 1933 and made into a 1941 film directed by John Ford.  God’s Little Acre: Desperation takes its toll on a deluded Southern farmer obsessed with sex, violence, and the promise of gold. Banned in Boston, censored in Georgia, and prosecuted by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, this international bestseller was adapted into a film in 1958.  A Place Called Estherville: In the pre-civil-rights-era South, a biracial brother and sister move to a small segregated town to care for their aunt, only to be subjected to systematic racism, sexual violence, and prejudice.   “What William Faulkner implies, Erskine Caldwell records,” said the Chicago Tribune of the author who earned his reputation by writing about sex, racism, and religious hypocrisy when no one else was. Caldwell remains one of the most widely translated American authors of all time.  This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erskine Caldwell including rare photos and never-before-seen documents courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library.

The Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery's Early Life


Karin Roffman - 2017
    H. Auden for the 1955 Yale Younger Poets Prize. Roffman shows how Ashbery’s poetry arose from his early lessons both on the family farm and in 1950s New York City—a bohemian existence that teemed with artistic fervor and radical innovations inspired by Dada and surrealism as well as lifelong friendships with painters and writers such as Frank O’Hara, Jane Freilicher, Nell Blaine, Kenneth Koch, James Schuyler, and Willem de Kooning.Ashbery has a reputation for being enigmatic and playfully elusive, but Roffman’s biography reveals his deft mining of his early life for the flint and tinder from which his provocative later poems grew, producing a body of work that he calls “the experience of experience,” an intertwining of life and art in extraordinarily intimate ways.