2014 Spring Okra Picks

Southern indie booksellers like their okra, and they love their southern books. The new list of Okra Picks --great southern books, fresh off the vine-- has just been released. A dozen new books that all have two things in common: They are southern in nature, and there is a southern indie bookseller that wants everyone to read each one! The SIBA Okra picks offer a curated reading list for every season.

Salvage by Alexandra Duncan

This is literary science fiction with a feminist twist, and it explores themes of choice, agency, rebellion, and family. Ava, a teenage girl living aboard the male-dominated, conservative deep space merchant ship Parastrata, faces betrayal, banishment, and death. Taking her fate into her own hands, she flees to the Gyre, a floating continent of garbage and scrap in the Pacific Ocean. This is a sweeping and harrowing novel about a girl who can't read or write or even withstand the forces of gravity. What choices will she make? How will she build a future on an earth ravaged by climate change?

 Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir by Frances Mayes

A memoir of author Frances Mayes's coming of age in the Deep South, and of the region's powerful influence on her life. Mayes delves into the power of landscape, the idea of home, and the force of a chaotic and loving family

 The Whiskey Baron by Jon Sealy

With its unforgettable characters and evocative setting, The Whiskey Baron is a gripping drama about family ties and bad choices, about the folly of power and the limitations of the law.

 Miss Julia's Marvelous Makeover by Ann B. Ross

In this marvelous addition to the popular series, Miss Julia is sure to have a summer that she--and Abbotsville--will never forget!

 Popular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek by Maya Van Wagenen

Stuck near the bottom of the social ladder at "pretty much the lowest level of people at school who aren't paid to be here," Maya has never been popular. But before starting eighth grade, she decides to begin a unique social experiment: spend the school year following a 1950s popularity guide, written by former teen model Betty Cornell.
The real-life results are hilarious, painful, and filled with unexpected surprises. Told with humor and grace, Maya's journey offers readers of all ages a thoroughly contemporary example of kindness and self-confidence, along with a better understanding of what it means to be popular.

 Natchez Burning by Greg Iles

An American writer at the height of his creative powers, #1 New York Times bestselling novelist Greg Iles returns with his most eagerly anticipated book yet, and his first in five years--Natchez Burning, the first installment in an epic trilogy that weaves crimes, lies, and secrets past and present into a mesmerizing thriller featuring southern mayor and former prosecutor Penn Cage.

 The Same Sweet Girl's' Guide to Life: Advice from a Failed Southern Belle by Cassandra King

Written with a blend of humor and practical wisdom, "The Same Sweet Girl's Guide to Life" by Cassandra King offers inspiration and solid advice to new graduates that can sustain them through life's inevitable ups and downs. In this small book you will find advice that will only grow in meaning throughout the years. It can - and should - be read again and again, by thoughtful people of all ages.

 Bird on Water Street by Elizabeth O. Dulemba

"A Bird on Water Street" is a coming of age story about Jack, the son of a miner growing up in a Southern Appalachian town environmentally devastated by a century of poor copper-mining practices. After a tragic accident and a massive company layoff, the miners go on strike. When nature begins to flourish as a result, Jack fights to protect it, but the cost could be the ruin of everything he loves.

 Between Wrecks by George Singleton

A collection of eccentric and offbeat tours of small-town America packed with heart, honesty, and humor.

 A Southern Girl by John Warley

The worlds of privilege and poverty collide in this moving tale of adoption, identity, belonging, dedication, and love.

 A Long Time Gone by Karen White

When Vivien Walker left her home in the Mississippi Delta, she swore never to go back, as generations of the women in her family had. But in the spring, nine years to the day since she’d left, that’s exactly what happens—Vivien returns, fleeing from a broken marriage and her lost dreams for children.

The Inevitable City: The Resurgence of New Orleans and the Future of Urban America by Scott Cowen

This is the story of the resurgence and reinvention of one of America’s greatest cities. Ordinary citizens, empowered to actively rescue their own city after politicians and government officials failed them, have succeeded in rebuilding their world. Cowen was at the leading edge of those who articulated, shaped, and implemented a vision of transformative change that has yielded surprising social progress and economic growth.

 Flying Shoes by Lisa Howorth

Lisa Howorth’s remarkable Flying Shoes is a work of fiction, but the murder is based on the still-unsolved case of her stepbrother, a front page story in the Washington Post. And yet this is not a crime novel; it is an honest and luminous story of a particular time and place in the South, where even calamitous weather can be a character, everyone has a story, and all are inextricably entwined.

2013 Fall Okra Picks

Southern indie booksellers like their okra, and they love their southern books. The new list of Okra Picks-- great southern books, fresh off the vine-- has just been released. A dozen new books that all have two things in common: They are southern in nature, and there is a southern indie bookseller that wants everyone to read each one! The SIBA Okra picks offer a curated reading list for every season.

The Alligator Man by James Sheehan

Kevin Wylie's crooked boss wants to run him out of town, and Kevin's long-time girlfriend is ready to take a hike. He decides that now is the time to leave Miami, visit his father, who he hasn't seen in 28 years, and get some answers. Heading back to his hometown, he doesn't realize that he and his dad will become embroiled in a murder case.
The victim, one of the richest and most-hated corporate criminals in America has been dubbed The Alligator Man since pieces of his clothing were found in a local swamp. Billy Fuller had every reason in the world to want Johnson dead and all the evidence leads right to his doorstep. But legendary trial lawyer Tom Wylie believes in Billy and he and his son reunite to fight the courtroom battle for Billy's life.
The Alligator Man is a story of greed, anger, love, redemption and two powerful trial attorneys who fight to the end-- and risk everything--for the truth.

The Funeral Dress by Susan Gregg Gilmore

A deeply touching Southern story filled with struggle and hope.
Emmalee Bullard and her new baby are on their own. Or so she thinks, until Leona Lane, the older seamstress who sat by her side at the local shirt factory where both women worked as collar makers, insists Emmalee come and live with her. Just as Emmalee prepares to escape her hardscrabble life in Red Chert holler, Leona dies tragically. Grief-stricken, Emmalee decides she'll make Leona's burying dress, but there are plenty of people who don't think the unmarried Emmalee should design a dress for a Christian woman - or care for a child on her own. But with every stitch, Emmalee struggles to do what is right for her daughter and to honor Leona the best way she can, finding unlikely support among an indomitable group of seamstresses and the town's funeral director. In a moving tale exploring Southern spirit and camaraderie among working women, a young mother will compel a town to become a community.

Guests on Earth by Lee Smith

It is 1936 when orphaned thirteen-year-old Evalina Toussaint is admitted to Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, a mental institution known for its innovative treatments for nervous disorders and addictions. Taken under the wing of the hospital's most notable patient, Zelda Fitzgerald, Evalina witnesses the cascading events leading up to the tragic fire of 1948 that killed nine women in a locked ward, Zelda among them.

Lookaway, Lookaway by Wilton Barnhardt

Presiding over her family and its legacy of masterpiece Civil War art, North Carolina society maven Jerene Jarvis Johnston takes increasingly haphazard steps to protect her grown children from their own heedlessness.

Love and Lament by John Milliken Thompson

A dauntless heroine coming of age at the turn of the twentieth century confronts the hazards of patriarchy and prejudice, and discovers the unexpected opportunities of World War I
Set in rural North Carolina between the Civil War and the Great War, "Love and Lament" chronicles the hardships and misfortunes of the Hartsoe family.
Mary Bet, the youngest of nine children, was born the same year that the first railroad arrived in their county. As she matures, against the backdrop of Reconstruction and rapid industrialization, she must learn to deal with the deaths of her mother and siblings, a deaf and damaged older brother, and her father's growing insanity and rejection of God.
In the rich tradition of Southern gothic literature, John Milliken Thompson transports the reader back in time through brilliant characterizations and historical details, to explore what it means to be a woman charting her own destiny in a rapidly evolving world dominated by men.

Moonrise by Cassandra King

When Helen Honeycutt falls in love with a man who has recently lost his wife in a tragic accident, their sudden marriage creates a rift between her new husband and his circle of friends, who resent her intrusion into their circle. When the newlyweds join them for a summer at Moonrise, his late wife's family home in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, it soon becomes clear that someone is trying to drive her away, in this writer's homage to Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier.

Mother of Rain by Karen Spears Zacharias

Maizee Hurd was an easy target for hard times, according to Burdy Luttrell, the town healer. Burdy is a Melungeon woman with striking features and mysterious ways who owns the land the Hurds leased following their marriage on June 3, 1940.

Necessary Lies by Diane Chamberlain

Caring for her family on their mid-20th-century tobacco farm after the loss of her parents, 15-year-old Ivy connects with Grace County social worker Jane, who strains her personal and professional relationships with her advocacy of Ivy's family, whose dark secrets test Jane's resolve against racial tensions and state-mandated sterilizations.

Respect Yourself by Robert Gordon

Set in the world of 1960s and ‘70s soul music, Respect Yourself is a story of epic heroes in a shady industry. It’s about music and musicians—Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, the Staple Singers, and Booker T. and the M.G.’s, Stax’s interracial house band. It’s about a small independent company’s struggle to survive in a business world of burgeoning conglomerates. And always at the center of the story is Memphis, Tennessee, an explosive city struggling through heated, divisive years. Told by one of our leading music chroniclers, Respect Yourself brings to life this treasured cultural institution and the city that created it.

Someone Else's Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson

Someone Else's Love Story is Joshilyn Jackson's funny, charming, and poignant novel about science and miracles, secrets and truths, faith and forgiveness; about falling in love and learning that things aren't always what they seem--or what we hope they will be. It's a story about discovering what we want and ultimately finding what we need.

The Stories South by William Ferris

"The Storied South" features the voices--by turn searching and honest, coy and scathing--of twenty-six of the most luminous artists and thinkers in the American cultural firmament, from Eudora Welty, Pete Seeger, and Alice Walker to William Eggleston, Bobby Rush, and C. Vann Woodward. Masterfully drawn from one-on-one interviews conducted by renowned folklorist William Ferris over the past forty years, the book reveals how storytelling is viscerally tied to southern identity and how the work of these southern or southern-inspired creators has shaped the way Americans think and talk about the South.
"The Storied South" offers a unique, intimate opportunity to sit at the table with these men and women and learn how they worked and how they perceived their art. The volume also features 45 of Ferris's striking photographic portraits of the speakers and a CD and a DVD of original audio and films of the interviews.

The Tilted World by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly

Set against the backdrop of the historic flooding of the Mississippi River, The Tilted World is an extraordinary tale of murder and moonshine, sandbagging and saboteurs, and a man and a woman who find unexpected love, from Tom Franklin, the acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, and award-winning poet Beth Ann Fennelly. The year is 1927. As rains swell the Mississippi, the mighty river threatens to burst its banks and engulf everything in its path, including federal revenue agent Ted Ingersoll and his partner, Ham Johnson. Arriving in the tiny hamlet of Hobnob, Mississippi, to investigate the disappearance of two fellow agents who'd been on the trail of a local bootlegger, they are astonished to find a baby boy abandoned in the middle of a crime scene.

What I Came to Tell You by Tommy Hays

Since his mother died earlier this year, Grover Johnston (named after a character in Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel) has watched his family fall to pieces as his father throws himself into his work rather than dealing with the pain. Left to care for his younger sister, Sudie, Grover finds solace in creating intricate weavings out of the natural materials found in the bamboo forest behind his North Carolina home, a pursuit that his father sees only as a waste of time.
But as tensions mount between father and son, two unlikely forces conspire to lead the Johnstons on a new path -- a presence that seems to come to Grover in his darkest moments and new tenants in the rental house across the street who have come from deep in the Carolina hills and plopped themselves right into Grover's life. The families seem so different but become increasingly intertwined, bound together in unexpected ways. Until one devastating disaster threatens to tear them apart.

2013 Summer Okra Picks

Southern indie booksellers like their okra, and they love their southern books. The new list of Okra Picks --great southern books, fresh off the vine-- has just been released. A dozen new books that all have two things in common: They are southern in nature, and there is a southern indie bookseller that wants everyone to read each one! The SIBA Okra picks offer a curated reading list for every season.

A Place at the Table by Susan Rebecca White

As it sweeps from a freed-slave settlement in 1920's North Carolina to the Manhattan of the deadly AIDS epidemic of the 1980s to today's wealthy suburbs, White celebrates the healing power of food and the magic of New York as three seekers come together.

And Then I Found You by Patti Callahan Henry

Kate Vaughan is no stranger to tough choices. She's made them before. Now it's time to do it again. Kate has a secret, something tucked away in her past. Just when Kate thinks she can love, just when she believes she can conquer the fear, she's filled with dread.

The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel

As America's Mercury Seven astronauts are launched on death-defying missions, television cameras focus on the brave smiles of their young wives. Overnight, these military spouses are transformed into American royalty, and will rally together as tragedies begin to touch their lives.

The Girl from Felony Bay by J.E. Thompson

Debut author Thompson presents the story of a girl, a crime, and a great unsolved mystery set deep in the heart of South Carolina.

Heart of Palm by Laura Lee Smith

Utina, Florida, is a small, down-at-heels southern town. Utina hasn't seen economic growth in decades, and no family is more emblematic of the local reality than the Bravos, who are held together by love and tenuously brokered truces. Little do any of them know that Utina is about to become a land of opportunity.

In the Garden of Stone by Susan Tekulve

"This debut novel opens in 1924 with the derailment of a passing train that buries 16-year-old Emma Palmisano's house in coal. Caleb, the railroad man who rescues Emma, marries her a week later and gifts her with 47 acres of Virginia farmland. The novel tells the story of the successive generations of Emma and Caleb's family, who endure an d grow despite poverty and hardship."--Library Journal.

Looking for Me by Beth Hoffman

A Southern novel of family and antiques from the bestselling author of the beloved Saving CeeCee Honeycutt. Hoffman rekindles her flair for evocative Southern settings and the inimitable eccentrics in a compelling new novel.

Moonrise by Cassandra King

When Helen Honeycutt falls in love with a man who has recently lost his wife in a tragic accident, their sudden marriage creates a rift between her new husband and his circle of friends, who resent her intrusion into their circle. When the newlyweds join them for a summer at Moonrise, his late wife's family home in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, it soon becomes clear that someone is trying to drive her away, in this writer's homage to Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier.

The Time Between by Karen White

The "New York Times"-bestselling author delivers a novel of two generations of sisters and secrets set in the stunning South Carolina Lowcountry. Eleanor Murray seeks the truth about the past of two sisters' secrets that could help heal her troubled relationship with her own sister.

Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall

Determined to get to Nashville to find her mother in 1963, nine-year-old spitfire Starla Claudelle runs away from her strict grandmother's Mississippi home, eventually accepting a ride from a Eula, a black woman traveling alone with a white baby.

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiScalfani

A lush, sexy, evocative debut novel of family secrets and girls'-school rituals, set in the 1930's South. For her mysterious role in a family tragedy, a strong-willed 15-year-old is cast out of her home and exiled to an equestrienne boarding school for Southern debutantes.

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Ann Fowler

 

When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is 17 years old and he is a young army lieutenant. Before long, the "ungettable" Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn't prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame.

 

2013 SIBA Book Award Winners

The Southern Independent Bookseller's Alliance, or SIBA, choses six books each year from the best in southern literature. One title is chosen from each category: Children's, Young Adult, Cooking, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. The titles are nominated by southern, independent booksellers (like me) and their customers (like you). While we are all reading globally, it is nice to have a regional minded award list compiled by the people who are at the forefront of localmindedness. The interest of SIBA stretches from Louisiana on up to North Carolina, but this year's seems to sit close to home for us! One of the winners, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by Louisiana's own William Joyce, is one of my favorite books. I am so thrilled to have this book on the SIBA list, while it was inspired by Hurricane Katrina it is a beautiful story for readers across the globe. I'm also excited to note that the winning book of poetry, though not written by a Louisiana native, was published by LSU Press. Southern literature has a deep and rich history and these authors (and many more) are a constant reminder that we will continue to build on that history.

Children's Winner

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce and Joe Bluhm (ills.)

The book that inspired the Academy Award-winning short film, from "New York Times"- bestselling author and beloved visionary Joyce. Stunningly brought to life, this book is a modern masterpiece, showing that in today's world of traditional books, eBooks, and apps, it's story that we truly celebrate.

Poetry Winner

Descent by Kathryn Stripling Byer 

Navigating the dangerous currents of family and race, Kathryn Stripling Byer s sixth poetry collection confronts the legacy of southern memory and landscape, where too often "it s safer to stay blind."

Cooking Winner 

The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook by Cheryl Day and Griffith Day

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Savannah landmark Back in the Day Bakery, here is a fabulously fun book filled with customers' favorite recipes and irresistible full-color photographs of food and behind-the-scenes bakery shots.

Fiction Winner

A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash

In his phenomenal debut novel--a mesmerizing literary thriller about the bond between two brothers and the evil they face in a small North Carolina town--Cash displays a remarkable talent for lyrical, powerfully emotional storytelling.

Nonfiction Winner

Stand Up That Mountain by Jay Erskine Leutze

The true story of an outdoorsman living alone in Western North Carolina who teams up with his neighbors and environmental lawyers to save a treasured mountain peak from the mining company.

Young Adult Winner

Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage

Washed ashore as a baby in tiny Tupelo Landing, North Carolina, Mo LoBeau, now 11, and her best friend Dale turn detective when the amnesiac Colonel, owner of a cafe and co-parent of Mo with his cook, Miss Lana, seems implicated in a murder.

SIBA's 2012 Book Award Winners

I wrote about the SIBA awards last year, and I am happy to announce that the time has come again. These are the six best books in southern literature. One title is chosen from each category: Children's, Young Adult, Cooking, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. The titles are nominated by southern, independent booksellers (like me) and their customers (like you).





Children’s Winner: Jo MacDonald Saw a Pond by Mary Quattlebaum
 
“A delightful riff on ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’” -- Books Plus

Blurp. Croak. Quack. What is making those sounds? Come along with Jo MacDonald and learn about the wild creatures at the pond on her grandfather's farm. You'll find fish, frogs, ducks - and a few surprises.  Author Mary Quattlebaum engages little ones with rhythm, repetition, wordplay, and onomatopoeia and illustrator Laura Bryant charms them with lively watercolors of a pond community. And check out the outdoor activities and games in the back, sure to encourage young naturalists at home and school.


Cooking Winner: The New Southern Garden Cookbook by Sheri Castle 

“This book helped me make the most of my vegetable garden!” --Quarter Moon Books and Gifts

In The New Southern Garden Cookbook, well-known food writer Sheri Castle aims to make "what's in season" the answer to "what's for dinner?" This timely cookbook, with dishes for omnivores and vegetarians alike, celebrates and promotes the delicious, healthful homemade meals centered on the diverse array of seasonal fruits and vegetables grown in the South, and in most of the rest of the nation as well.

Fiction Winner: Iron House by John Hart

“I enjoyed Iron House because it had so much more to offer the reader than ‘whodunit.’  John Hart is southern mystery writing at its best.”  -- The Country Bookshop

A New York Times-bestselling author delivers his most devastating novel yet--the remarkable story of two orphaned brothers separated by violence at an early age. When a boy is brutally murdered in their orphanage, one brother runs and takes the blame with him. Twenty years later--a seasoned killer--he returns to North Carolina.

Nonfiction Winner:  Lions of the West by Robert Morgan

“I really appreciate Mr. Morgan's distinction that the historical figures through which he delves into the westward expansion weren't all ‘hero’, nor all ‘villain’, but usually a mixture of both.”  -- The Fountainhead Bookstore

From Thomas Jefferson's birth in 1743 to the California Gold rush in 1849, America's Manifest Destiny comes to life in Morgan 's skilled hands. Jefferson, a naturalist and visionary, dreamed that the U.S. would stretch across the continent. The account of how that dream became reality unfolds in the stories of Jefferson and nine other Americans whose adventurous spirits and lust for land pushed the westward boundaries.

Poetry Winner: Abandoned Quarry  by John Lane 

“Lane's poetry is rich with love of place and environment.”  --City Lights Bookstore

Abandoned Quarry is a collection of poems by one of the South's most admired environmental writers. The collection makes available for the first time under one cover poems from a dozen full collections and chapbooks. The poems range in subject matter through relationships, nature, improvisational pieces, and rants about the strangeness of the modern condition.

Young Adult Winner: Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact by A.J. Hartley

“Takes place in Atlanta Georgia, and incorporates fantasy along with the real struggles of being a teen in a new place, adjusting to a new school, and a new culture.” –Fountainhead Bookstore

Eleven-year-old Darwen Arkwright has spent his whole life in a tiny town in England. So when he is forced to move to Atlanta, Georgia, to live with his aunt, he knows things will be different - but what he finds there is beyond even his wildest imaginings!  Darwen discovers an enchanting world through the old mirror hanging in his closet - a world that holds as many dangers as it does wonders. Scrobblers on motorbikes with nets big enough to fit a human boy. Gnashers with no eyes, but monstrous mouths full of teeth. Flittercrakes with bat-like bodies and the faces of men! Along with his new friends Rich and Alexandra, Darwen becomes entangled in an adventure and a mystery that involves the safety of his entire school.