I Haven't Understood Anything Since 1962


Lewis Grizzard - 1992
    But a lot's happened since then, and he's in the mood to discuss it all, in the inimitable style that's made him the most popular social commentator to tickle people AND tick them off. From being PC to watching MTV, from rednecks to black militants, from singing the praises of the South to sounding off on the problems of just about everywhere else, nothing and nobody escapes when Grizzard shoots from the lip...and hits the "nekkid" truth every time.

Taft


Ann Patchett - 1994
    But when his son is taken away from him, he's left with nothing but the Memphis bar he manages. Then he hires Fay, a young white waitress, who has a volatile brother named Carl in tow. Nickel finds himself consumed with the idea of Taft -- Fay and Carl's dead father -- and begins to reconstruct the life of a man he never met. But his sympathies for these lost souls soon take him down a twisting path into the lives of strangers...

The River Is Home


Patrick D. Smith - 2012
    It is the story of Skeeter, a young boy growing up in a family poor in material goods but rich in the appreciation of their natural surroundings. The river they live on is the source of life—and death.

Eureka Mill


Ron Rash - 1998
    It is even more remarkable if the book is set where we live, a place we thought we'd been. These poems make up a dramatic and lyrical portrait of the migration of poor Buncombe County farmers to a mill village outside Chester, S.C. However, the book is much more than documentary. Rash, whose grandparents and parents worked in the Eureka Mill interweaves his family's personal history with the broader texture of mill life, giving us at once intimacy and perspective, heart and understanding.

Freaky Tales: Erotic Shorts


Sabrina B. Scales - 2019
    Orgasms? Yeah, I give those. Fairytales? Never wanted to live those Because I'm simply not that chick Hearts? Yeah, I broke some Love? These niggas can't get none Commitment? I'm probably the wrong one But you can stop by and lick this clit If a freak is what you're looking for Be prepared when you step through my door On the bed, couch, or kitchen floor I can give you what you need I prefer my kisses down low We can do this fast or we can take it slow Either way, I think it's best I let you know When it's over, please, get up and leave My name is Melody Bledsoe and I got some freaky things to tell you. You ready? Probably not!

Frenchmen, Desire, Good Children: . . . and Other Streets of New Orleans!


John Churchill Chase - 1979
    . . lightened not only by cartoons but by narrative approach."-New York Herald TribuneThe history of New Orleans is a street-level story, with names like Iberville, Terpsichore, Gravier, Tchoupitoulas, and, of course, Bourbon, presenting the city's past with every step. The late John Churchill Chase eloquently chronicles the origins and development of the most fascinating of American cities in this humorous read.Frenchmen, Desire, Good Children details the interesting stories of the developers and families as well as the infamous and famous people, places, and events from which the city's names and character are drawn. First published by now-defunct New Orleans publisher Robert L. Crager in 1949, the book remains funny and informative, generally accepted as a standard reference about the Crescent City.

A Yankee Girl's Guide to the South


Jillian Perry - 2014
    With a conked out ’72 Beetle, and a newly broken heart courtesy of her cheating ex-fiancée, Libby Green finds herself fleeing to tiny Spoonbend, Georgia to claim a cottage willed to her family years ago. Libby must learn the ins and outs of life in the small town south—where the iced tea is sweet, the drawl is slow, the men are sexy, and southern belles aren’t always charming. After embarrassing herself in hopes of assimilating (who knew people actually still called northerners Yankees?) and catching the eye of more than one gallant good ol’ boy, Libby inadvertently uncovers a dark secret that will challenge the very fabric of Spoonbend society.

The Condor Passes


Shirley Ann Grau - 1971
    Like many people in turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleans, Thomas Henry Oliver came to the city to escape a dull life—in his case, a childhood in the backwoods of the Midwest. But few New Orleans immigrants find as much prosperity as Oliver does amongst the city’s lively streets. By the time he’s ninety-five, Oliver has amassed an enormous fortune built from brothels and speakeasies. But as his wealth grows, so does his family’s desire to control it. After a series of strokes, Oliver must choose an inheritor, even though his two entitled daughters and ambitious adopted son don’t always seem worthy of his legacy. The Condor Passes is a simmering dynastic saga of three generations colliding in their battle to control an empire.

Sweet Water


Christina Baker Kline - 1993
    When a grandfather she never knew bequeaths her a house and 60 acres of land in Sweetwater, Tenn., a restless young artist leaves New York to recover her past and rethink her future. Cassie Simon's mother Ellen died when Cassie was only three; raised in Boston by her grieving father, she never knew her maternal relatives. Unprepared for the thick veil of mystery that surrounds them, Cassie is especially bewildered by her brusque grandmother, whom rumor credits with hiding a terrible secret about Ellen's death. In alternating sections told from their respective points of view, Cassie and her grandmother fight their separate battles to cope with the truth about the tragedy. Kline perfectly renders each woman's voice: Cassie's, probing and often uncertain, propels the narrative and creates an appropriate level of psychological suspense; the grandmother's quavers with the weight of memory as Cassie's search forces her beyond family myth to a painful and perhaps dangerous truth. The result is a powerful, immensely readable tale of loyalty and betrayal, family and memory, made fresh by Kline's often beautiful and always lucid prose.

Blue Calhoun


Reynolds Price - 1992
    Short as it lasted and long ago, I've never laid it all out yet, not start to finish. But if I try and half succeed, you may wind up understanding things, choosing a better road for yourself and maybe not blaming the dead past but living for the here and now, each day a clean page." April 28, 1956, was the day Blue Calhoun met a sixteen-year-old girl named Luna. And for the next three decades, their love has borne consequences of the most shattering -- and ultimately, perhaps healing -- kind for everyone they know. As Blue recounts the years and their events for us -- fervently, tenderly, knowing full well his own deep responsibility -- we are made witnesses to a story of classic dimensions, a story of love and suffering, family and friendship, death and redemption.

Co. Aytch: A Confederate Memoir of the Civil War


Sam R. Watkins - 1882
    Aytch is the work of a natural storyteller who balances the horror of war with an irrepressible sense of humor and a sharp eye for the lighter side of battle. It is a testament to one man’s enduring humanity, courage, and wisdom in the midst of death and destruction.Early in May 1861, twenty-one-year-old Sam R. Watkins of Columbia, Tennessee, joined the First Tennessee Regiment, Company H, to fight for the Confederacy. Of the 120 original recruits in his company, Watkins was one of only seven to survive every one of its battles, from Shiloh to Nashville. Twenty years later, with a “house full of young ‘rebels’ clustering around my knees and bumping about my elbows,” he wrote this remarkable account—a memoir of a humble soldier fighting in the American Civil War, replete with tales of the common foot soldiers, commanders, Yankee enemies, victories, defeats, and the South’s ultimate surrender on April 26, 1865.

Balls


Nanci Kincaid - 1998
    Mac is in love with football. And football, as every red-blooded Southern man and woman knows, is the most jealous mistress of all....In Nanci Kincaid's stunning new novel, the rise and fall of a big-time college football coach is chronicled by the women in his life: his pretty, easily underestimated wife, his hot-tempered daughter, his God-fearing mother, and an unforgettable cast of players' girlfriends and other men's wives. And while Mac's fortunes are tied to the sport he loves, his women are busy making choices and plans of their own. Until the game on the field, with all its heroic feats, tragic twists, and roaring crowds, is overshadowed by the game played behind closed doors: where a good man risks losing a good woman to the call of her own heart.

The Wedding in the Grove


Kay Correll - 2016
    Or do they? Here's to finding love at any age... A crossover story between the Comfort Crossing series and the Lighthouse Point series.

The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival Show: A Novel of Fire and Water


Terry Roberts - 2018
    From town to town, his Gospel train rides the rails of 1920s Appalachia, spreading the Good News with his daughter and a loyal group of roustabouts in tow. But Jedidiah's traveling revival company has a secret: in addition to offering the gifts of the Holy Spirit, it also delivers spirits of another kind. Prohibition is in full swing, but The Sword of the Lord train keeps the speakeasies in the towns it visits in business by providing the best that mountain stills have to offer. While beyond the gaze of federal agents, the operation eventually runs afoul of an overzealous small town sheriff and a corrupt judge, setting in motion a series of events that could land them all in chains. Told with haunting lyricism, this is the story of a preacher full of contradictions, a man for whom the way is never straight and narrow. It bends like the river, a river that leads him in the paths of a different brand of righteousness--and perhaps even to salvation.

Reign


Elizabeth Knox - 2017
    It's something I've known since I was a kid, and the one part of life that continues to fuck with me.I have a deep, dark past. One I don't enjoy talking about and I'll avoid discussing it until the day I die. That is, until I end up at the Skulls Renegade MC.I came here to finish a job, to take down a gang of bikers who the bureau believed to be involved in a heavy human trafficking ring. But just as life always does, it's thrown me another curveball.Now I don't know how I'm going to get out of this--either as a felon, or as the woman who destroyed everything precious to her.