The Wild Palms


William Faulkner - 1939
    In New Orleans in 1937, a man and a woman embark on a headlong flight into the wilderness of illicit passion, fleeing her husband and the temptations of respectability. In Mississippi ten years earlier, a convict sets forth across a flooded river, risking his own chance at freedom to rescue a pregnant woman. From these separate stories Faulkner composes a symphony of deliverance and damnation, survival and self-sacrifice, a novel in which elemental danger is juxtaposed wiht fatal injuries of the spirit. The Wild Palms is grandly inventive, heart-stopping in its prose, and suffused on every page with the physical presence of the country that Faulkner made his own.

Strange Fruit


Lillian E. Smith - 1944
    It captured with devastating accuracy the deep-seated racial conflicts of a tightly knit southern town. The book is as engrossing and incendiary now as the day it was written.

50 American Plays


Michael Dickman - 2012
    . . is strikingly different. Michael's poems are interior, fragmentary, and austere, often stripped down to single-word lines; they seethe with incipient violence. Matthew's are effusive, ecstatic, and all-embracing, spilling over with pop-cultural references and exuberant carnality." —The New YorkerIdentical twins Michael and Matthew Dickman once invented their own language. Now they have invented an exhilarating book of poem-plays about the fifty states. Pointed, comic, and surreal, these one-page vignettes feature unusual staging and an eclectic cast of characters—landforms, lobsters, and historical figures including Duke Ellington, Sacajawea, Judy Garland, and Kenneth Koch, the avant-garde spirit informing this book introduced by playwright John Guare."Lucky in Kansas"Judy Garland: This is always the worst partTin Man: The coming backJudy Garland: Yes, it fucking sucks, it's depressing as shitThe Lion: Well, we're lucky to still be employed at this farmStraw Man: I wouldn't call it luckyThe Lion: We were lucky to get backStraw Man: That's not really lucky either I don't think you know what lucky meansJudy Garland: It's funny what you missTin Man: The runningJudy Garland: The flyingTin Man: The flying monkeysJudy Garland: The beautiful flying monkeys above the endless emeralds the unbelievably green worldMichael Dickman and Matthew Dickman are identical twins who were born and raised in Portland, Oregon. Michael received the 2010 James Laughlin Award for his second collection Flies (Copper Canyon Press, 2011). Matthew won the prestigious APR/Honickman Award for his debut volume, All-American Poem.

A Gathering of Old Men


Ernest J. Gaines - 1983
    Set on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s, A Gathering of Old Men is a powerful depiction of racial tensions arising over the death of a Cajun farmer at the hands of a black man.

Fair and Tender Ladies


Lee Smith - 1988
    Ivy's talent as a budding writer is recognized early on, but just as she is about to realize her dream of going north to school, she is betrayed by her passionate nature. Facing an unwed pregnancy and publicly admonished for her sins, Ivy marries a childhood friend who takes her back to the family homestead, where she bears several children and endures the endless toil of a farmer's wife. Through her trials Ivy holds firm, knowing that her life will hold happiness one day.

Between, Georgia


Joshilyn Jackson - 2006
    She's got two mothers, "one deaf-blind and the other four baby steps from flat crazy." She's got two men: a husband who's easing out the back door; and a best friend, who's laying siege to her heart in her front yard. And she has two families: the Fretts, who stole her and raised her right; and the Crabtrees, who won't forget how they were done wrong. Now, in Between, Georgia, a feud that began the night Nonny was born is escalating and threatening to expose family secrets.Ironically, it might be just what the town needs... if only Nonny weren't stuck in between.

The Poems 1921-1940


Langston Hughes - 2001
    The Weary Blues announced the arrival of a rare voice in American poetry. A literary descendant of Walt Whitman ("I, too, sing America," Hughes wrote), he chanted the joys and sorrows of black America in unprecedented language. A gifted lyricist, he offered rhythms and cadences that epitomized the particularities of African American creativity, especially jazz and the blues. His second volume, steeped in the blues and controversial because of its frankness, confirmed Hughes as a poet of uncompromising integrity. Then in the 1930s came Dear Lovely Death (1931) and the radical A New Song (1938). Poems such as "Good Morning Revolution" and "Let America Be America Again" made his pen one of the most forceful in America during the Great Depression.

Mississippi Cotton


Paul H. Yarbrough - 2011
    Young Jake Conner gets on a bus to visit his cousins in the Mississippi Delta. But when the body of an unknown man is found in the Mississippi River, Jake's summer vacation gets a little more adventurous as he and his cousins snoop around in a mystery that is better left to the grown-ups. "Jake Conner, protagonist and narrator of this coming of age novel, reminds me of Mattie in True Grit and Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. Sharp eyes tempered with childhood simplicity." Delta Magazine "First time novelist, Paul H. Yarbrough, masterfully transports readers deep into the world of Mississippi Cotton, where life is not as simple as it seems." Julie Cantrell, editor, Southern Literary Review; author, Into the Free "Paul H. Yarbrough has painted wonderful images with his words. His writing brings back so many memories. Even if you didn't grow up in Mississippi, you will enjoy Mississippi Cotton." Mary Ann Mobley Collins Former Miss America, Miss Mississippi

The Women of Magnolia


Marlene Mitchell - 2007
    The wealthy plantation owners enjoyed an opulent life during this golden age of prosperity. The Vine family owned one of these vast plantations. Hundreds of acres of lush cotton plants covered their property and was home to over three hundred slaves. When Evan Vine's father dies suddenly he is summoned home from France to manage Vine Manor: a task that he does not relish. It is only when he meets Mary Elizabeth Cates that his life changes forever. She returns his love and accepts his proposal of marriage. As a wedding gift he presents her with a magnificent summer home called Magnolia. Mary Elizabeth begins the legacy of women who inhabit Magnolia. In this novel written in a unique style, you will meet and explore the lives of Mary Elizabeth Vine, her daughter; Hallie Vine Simmons, and granddaughters; Mary and Lydia. You will meet the prostitutes who come to Magnolia to seek refuge and the black slave women who have endured the wrath of their masters. Their compelling story will endear itself to you in the detailed profile of the women. Witness the early years when life is good, only to change at a moment's notice by an outbreak of cholera or a slave uprising. There are the middle years when the civil war tears apart the south leaving tragedy and desolation in its path. Finally. the restoration when everyone attempts to find a new life.a new life at Magnolia.

Oakshot Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Illustrated, Inline Footnotes) (Classics Book 1)


Edgar Allan Poe - 2016
    Ebook comes with main table of contents and interlinked sub table of contents. Ebook contains illustrations and inline footnotes where applicable. Each chapter is clearly marked so user knows which book within the boxset is being read. The Novels. • Narrative Of A. Gordon Pym. (Inline Footnotes) • The Journal Of Julius Rodman. (Illustrated / Inline Footnotes) The Complete Tales. (Inline Footnotes) The Complete Poetry. (Inline Footnotes) The Play. • Politian. The Non Fiction. • The Conchologist’s First Book. • A Chapter On Autography. • Marginalia. (Inline Footnotes) • Fifty Suggestions. (Inline Footnotes) • The Literati. (Inline Footnotes) The Letters Of Edgar Allan Poe 2 Vols. The Complete Essays. (Inline Footnotes) The Biographies. • Death Of Edgar A. Poe. By N. P. Willis. • Edgar A. Poe, A Psychopathic Study By Robertson, John W. (Illustrated / Inline Footnotes) • Edgar Allan Poe by Woodberry, George Edward. (Inline Footnotes) • Figures of Several Centuries by Arthur Symons. • Famous American Writers By Sherwin Cody. • The Home Life of Poe by Susan Archer Talley Weiss. (Inline Footnotes) • Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe by Mary Newton Stanard. • Edgar Allan Poe by Stedman, Edmund Clarence. (Illustrated / Inline Footnotes) • Edgar Allan Poe A Critical Study By Ransome, Arthur. (Inline Footnotes) • Edgar Allan Poe; How To Know Him By Smith, C. Alphonso. (Inline Footnotes) • Israfel The Life And Times Of Edger Allan Poe Vol I & II By Hervey Allen. (Illustrated / Inline Footnotes) Update 2 - 3rd November 2016 Reviewed and updated all books to include either paragraph indents or correct line spacing between paragraphs to make it easier for the user to read and distinguish paragraph start and end.

Cane River


Lalita Tademy - 2001
    They are women whose lives begin in slavery, who weather the Civil War, and who grapple with contradictions of emancipation, Jim Crow, and the pre-Civil Rights South. As she peels back layers of racial and cultural attitudes, Tademy paints a remarkable picture of rural Louisiana and the resilient spirit of one unforgettable family.There is Elisabeth, who bears both a proud legacy and the yoke of bondage... her youngest daughter, Suzette, who is the first to discover the promise-and heartbreak-of freedom... Suzette's strong-willed daughter Philomene, who uses a determination born of tragedy to reunite her family and gain unheard-of economic independence... and Emily, Philomene's spirited daughter, who fights to secure her children's just due and preserve their dignity and future.Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Cane River presents a slice of American history never before seen in such piercing and personal detail.

Waking


Ron Rash - 2011
    Ron Rash the poet is back and giving us poems that are both the river stones and the water making them shine. If allowed only two words for this wonderful poet, they would have to be clear and lithe.

The Man With the Heart in the Highlands and Other Early Stories


William Saroyan - 1968
    Offers a selecttion of the master of human comedy's short stories from the 1930s and 1940s.

Bastard Out of Carolina


Dorothy Allison - 1992
    At the heart of this story is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a bastard child who observes the world around her with a mercilessly keen perspective. When her stepfather Daddy Glen, "cold as death, mean as a snake," becomes increasingly more vicious toward her, Bone finds herself caught in a family triangle that tests the loyalty of her mother, Anney—and leads to a final, harrowing encounter from which there can be no turning back.

Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen


Susan Gregg Gilmore - 2008
    The town of Ringgold, Georgia, has a population of 1,923, one traffic light, one Dairy Queen, and one Catherine Grace Cline. The daughter of Ringgold's third-generation Baptist preacher, Catherine Grace is quick-witted, more than a little stubborn, and dying to escape her small-town life. Every Saturday afternoon, she sits at the Dairy Queen, eating Dilly Bars and plotting her getaway to Atlanta. And when, with the help of a family friend, the dream becomes a reality, she immediately packs her bags, leaving her family and the boy she loves to claim the life she's always imagined. But before things have even begun to get off the ground in Atlanta, tragedy brings Catherine Grace back home. As a series of extraordinary events alter her perspective and sweeping changes come to Ringgold itself Catherine Grace begins to wonder if her place in the world may actually be, against all odds, right where she began. Intelligent, charming, and utterly readable, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen marks the debut of a talented new literary voice.