Today it has the greatest concentration of antebellum mansions in the South, and a culture full of unexpected contradictions. Prominent white families dress up in hoopskirts and Confederate uniforms for ritual celebrations of the Old South, yet Natchez is also progressive enough to elect a gay black man for mayor with 91% of the vote. Much as John Berendt did for Savannah in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and the hit podcast S-Town did for Woodstock, Alabama, so Richard Grant does for Natchez in The Deepest South of All. With humor and insight, he depicts a strange, eccentric town with an unforgettable cast of characters. There’s Buzz Harper, a six-food-five gay antique dealer famous for swanning around in a mink coat with a uniformed manservant and a very short German bodybuilder. There’s Ginger Hyland, “The Lioness,” who owns 500 antique eyewash cups and decorates 168 Christmas trees with her jewelry collection. And there’s Nellie Jackson, a Cadillac-driving brothel madam who became an FBI informant about the KKK before being burned alive by one of her customers. Interwoven through these stories is the more somber and largely forgotten account of Abd al Rahman Ibrahima, a West African prince who was enslaved in Natchez and became a cause célèbre in the 1820s, eventually gaining his freedom and returning to Africa. With an “easygoing manner” (Geoff Dyer, National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author of Otherwise Known as the Human Condition), this book offers a gripping portrait of a complex American place, as it struggles to break free from the past and confront the legacy of slavery.

    This is the interview with the horror author Stephen King from the June 1983 issue.

    Culling over 300 pages of some of today's most thrilling writers, The Best of 2.13.61 Publications hallmarks our company's ten year existence. Excerpts include new material from Henry Rollins and Hubert Selby, Jr, as well as excerpts from Henry Miller's love letters, Nick Zedd's hilarious nihilistic New York urban spelunkings, Ian Shoales' undeniably witty social commentaries and so much more.

    But then again, there aren't many writers with such irrepressible genius as John Fante.The John Fante Reader is the important next step in the reintroduction of this influential author to modern audiences. Combining excerpts from his novels and stories, as well as his never-before-published letters, this collection is the perfect primer on the work of a writer -- underappreciated in his time -- who is finally taking his place in the pantheon of twentieth-century American writers.

    He stays at the edge of an outcast community inhabited by eccentrics, criminals and the poverty-stricken. Rising above the physical and human squalor around him, his detachment and wry humour enable him to survive dereliction and destitution with dignity.

    This collection gathers together the best of her Pulitzer Prize-winning short fiction, including 'Pale Horse, Pale Rider', where a young woman lies in a fever during the influenza epidemic, her childhood memories mingling with fears for her fiancé on his way to war, and 'Noon Wine', a haunting story of tragedy and scandal on a small dairy farm in Texas. In all of the compelling stories collected here, harsh and tragic truths are expressed in prose both brilliant and precise.

    This is the original book compilation of Foxfire material which introduces Aunt Arie and her contemporaries and includes log cabin building, hog dressing, snake lore, mountain crafts and food, and "other affairs of plain living."

    The unfinished novel from which this collection of sketches, stories, and novellas takes its title was Wolfe's final effort. It tells the story of the Joyner family, George Webber's maternal ancestors, in pre-Civil War North Carolina and illustrates Wolfe's fine sense of family traits rooted in a traceable past. "Chickamauga" is the superb Civil War tale that Wolfe received from his great-uncle; "The Lost Boy" renders a second, more tender, treatment of the death of young Grover Gant; and "The Return of the Prodigal" describes Eugene Gant's imagined and then actual revisit to Altamont when he is a famous author. Together the eleven pieces of The Hills Beyond confirm the passion, energy, and sensitivity that made Wolfe the most promising American writer of his generation.

    Same with me. Instead, for George Weinstein, for his Hardscrabble Road, I have six words: This is a damn good book.”– Sonny Brewer, author of The Poet of Tolstoy ParkThe entire MacLeod clan is haunted by secrets—and young Roger “Bud” MacLeod doesn’t realize he carries the biggest secret of all. Growing up poor in Depression-era South Georgia is hard enough, but Bud is also cursed with a stutter and a birthmark that disfigures his face. His hateful father and amoral mother make life worse still, despite his brothers’ efforts to shield him.To survive in body and soul, Bud must discover his strengths and confront the sins of his parents. First, though, he’ll need to grasp his own truth: that he can’t embrace his future until he comes to terms with his past.“Reading Hardscrabble Road is like discovering To Kill a Mockingbird when no one else knew about it. It has that kind of impact. But then this novel has such fascinating characters, such vivid descriptions of South Georgia during the Depression, and such an uplifting storyline, that one day it may also be considered a classic.”– Jackie K Cooper, author of Memory’s Mist, and critic for The Huffington Post"George Weinstein's authentic voice brings Bud MacLeod to life, a vivid character drawing me into his tough and tender Southern world. Bud fights to save his own soul with determination and heart. Hardscrabble Road is a bittersweet and gripping story that will steal your heart." – Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times bestselling author“George Weinstein's Hardscrabble Road cinematically brings the Deep South of the 1930s and 1940s to life. You'll never forget Roger ‘Bud’ MacLeod.”– Jessica Handler, author of Invisible Sisters: A Memoir“This profoundly told and splendidly written story of Bud MacLeod in his growing up days of the Depression in South Georgia, is one of the most engaging novels I’ve read in years. Rich in character—from Bud’s parents and siblings to his half-Japanese friend, Ry—Hardscrabble Road does what fine literature has always done: it reveals the tragedy and the tender hope of humanity. This is an effort to be celebrated.”– Terry Kay, author of To Dance with the White Dog and The Book of Marie

    In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash represents one of the peaks of his achievement, a compound of irony, affection, and perfect detail that speaks across generations.In God We Trust, Shepherd's wildly witty reunion with his Indiana hometown, disproves the adage "You can never go back." Bending the ear of Flick, his childhood-buddy-turned-bartender, Shepherd recalls passionately his genuine Red Ryder BB gun, confesses adolescent failure in the arms of Junie Jo Prewitt, and relives a story of man against fish that not even Hemingway could rival. From pop art to the World's Fair, Shepherd's subjects speak with a universal irony and are deeply and unabashedly grounded in American Midwestern life, together rendering a wonderfully nostalgic impression of a more innocent era when life was good, fun was clean, and station wagons roamed the earth.A comic genius who bridged the gap between James Thurber and David Sedaris, Shepherd may have accomplished for Holden, Indiana, what Mark Twain did for Hannibal, Missouri.

    It includes character studies and summaries of the plot with discussions of the major themes, as well as a background to John Steinbeck.

    in 2000. It details a year in the life of Jim Glass, who lives, with his mother and three uncles, in the small fictional town of Aliceville, North Carolina in 1934 during the Great Depression.

    Such a man was John Lathrop, a minister in the King's church, who, at the peril of his life, fought for religious freedom. This is the astounding biographical account of Lathrop's struggle and his ultimate exile to America. Winner of the National Freedom's Foundation Award

    For her eldest daughter Amy there is no time to feel sorry, it is all she can do to hold the family together. With no mother and a father who is useless, Amy sees little hope for the future until she meets Tim Gudgeon. Tim, who is secretly in love with Amy, believes that he has seen Agnes. Suddenly Amy is full of determination to find Agnes and discover why she left. But Agnes took with her a secret strong enough to drive a mother from her children and one that Amy may wish she had never heard...

    Even when Jackie's family leave for Australia, Daisy cannot forget her childhood sweetheart.She determines to follow her love to Australia - after all, she would follow him to the ends of the earth if she had to.Though Daisy and Jackie are destined never to marry, their love affair continues. In Australia they both make their fortunes - Jackie in the opal mines and Daisy through the outback bar she runs with her husband. And as time goes on, their various children start new lives thousands of miles away from their East End roots . . .