The acclaimed Nobel Prize winner challenges our most fiercely held beliefs as she weaves folklore and history, memory and myth into an unforgettable meditation on race, religion, gender, and a far-off past that is ever present—in prose that soars with the rhythms, grandeur, and tragic arc of an epic poem. “They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time.” So begins Toni Morrison’s Paradise, which opens with a horrifying scene of mass violence and chronicles its genesis in an all-black small town in rural Oklahoma. Founded by the descendants of freed slaves and survivors in exodus from a hostile world, the patriarchal community of Ruby is built on righteousness, rigidly enforced moral law, and fear. But seventeen miles away, another group of exiles has gathered in a promised land of their own. And it is upon these women in flight from death and despair that nine male citizens of Ruby will lay their pain, their terror, and their murderous rage. “A fascinating story, wonderfully detailed. . . . The town is the stage for a profound and provocative debate.” —Los Angeles Times

While her husband, Grammy Award-nominated vocalist/guitarist Phil Keaggy, traveled the world as a popular performer, Bernadette Keaggy weathered a private story--the loss of five children whom she was unable to carry to term. Now, Bernadette offers her inspiring story--a story of years of honest struggle that brought her near to hope, to love, and to God.

At fourteen, Cassie Wolphe’s way of life in Appalachia is being changed by the influx of modernity/postmodernity. She is in love with Jake McCollum, believes she will marry him and constructs her life around this central act, but like her brother, Ben, Jake rejects a life he believes offers nothing but hard work and poverty. Forced to make a decision between her love of Jake and her love of the mountains, Cassie finds she can't leave, a choice which may define her life forever. At once lyrical, emotionally charged, moving and heartbreaking, Oreads is a literary treat that will keep you compelled right to the very last page and beyond.

Adam Newman once had it all. But then he lost it. Now Adam yearns to reunite with his estranged wife, Evelyn, and recapture the Edenic life they once had running Paradise Dogs, the roadside hot-dog restaurant now legendary throughout central Florida. He has a few obstacles along the way. For starters, there's his impending marriage to Lily. There's also the matter of a quarter million dollars' worth of diamonds that he mislaid, along with what appears to be a shadowy conspiracy that is buying up land around the Cross-Florida Canal (and which may or may not be a product of Adam's alcohol-infused imagination). Despite his own troubles---and a brief stay in Chattahoochee---Adam looks to mentor his son, Addison, in the ways of love. Awkward, unsure, and employed as the world's least accurate obituary writer, Addison pines for a beautiful and painfully earnest linguistic student but must compete for her attention with his older and more sophisticated half brother from Evelyn's first marriage. But if anybody can set these worlds in order, it is Adam, who has an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time and allowing others to believe he's someone he's not. Whether it's delivering a baby, rescuing a marriage, or exposing a Communist conspiracy, our protagonist is up for the job. Paradise Dogs, from Georgia Author of the Year Award winner Man Martin, is a farcical tale of paradise lost, the American Dream, and the true measures of love

"Finally, a novel of literary suspense that gets almost everything right—forensically and psychologically." —Sarah Weinman, Baltimore Sun Secretly, in her heart of hearts, Lena Dawson hides the strangest of beliefs about her childhood. Hiding behind a cool competence as a superb fingerprint analyst in a crime lab in snowy Syracuse, New York, she feels totally out of place in the ordinary world of human interaction. Especially since the controlling husband who guided and protected her, then cheated and left her (though now he wants her back). Her uncanny ability to read a crime scene draws her into investigating a mysterious series of crib deaths—but ultimately the most difficult puzzle she must solve is the one of her own origins. Diana Abu-Jaber, a “gifted and graceful writer” (Chicago Tribune), masterfully “transcends formula” (Kirkus Reviews) as “the tension of Origin escalates, shaped as much by beautifully nuanced prose as menacing events” (New York Daily News).

This new edition of Southern Writers assumes its distinguished predecessor's place as the essential reference on literary artists of the American South. Broadly expanded and thoroughly revised, it boasts 604 entries-nearly double the earlier edition's-written by 264 scholars. For every figure major and minor, from the venerable and canonical to the fresh and innovative, a biographical sketch and chronological list of published works provide comprehensive, concise, up-to-date information. Here in one convenient source are the South's novelists and short story writers, poets and dramatists, memoirists and essayists, journalists, scholars, and biographers from the colonial period to the twenty-first century. What constitutes a "southern writer" is always a matter for debate. Editors Joseph M. Flora and Amber Vogel have used a generous definition that turns on having a significant connection to the region, in either a personal or literary sense. New to this volume are younger writers who have emerged in the quarter century since the dictionary's original publication, as well as older talents previously unknown or unacknowledged. For almost every writer found in the previous edition, a new biography has been commissioned. Drawn from the very best minds on southern literature and covering the full spectrum of its practitioners, Southern Writers is an indispensable reference book for anyone intrigued by the subject.

"A comic opera…tuneful, playful." —New York Times Book Review In Shiver-de-Freeze, Louisiana (population 375), friends and family have gathered for the impending nuptials of Grisham Loudermilk and Ariane Thevenot. This will be no ordinary wedding—not when Boudou Fontana, the last of the star-crossed Fontana clan, the conjoined twins Tous-les-Doux, and a host of others are involved. From a writer of rare grace and comic genius comes a “warm, sad, and hilarious ride through the carnival of life” (Dallas Morning News). Rich in character and insight into the vagaries and varieties of love and memory, Deep in the Shade of Paradise is John Dufresne at his funny and thoughtful best.

Reissue of a favorite novel by “a generous and lyric storyteller” (San Francisco Chronicle) known for his tragicomic voice and unforgettable characters. Ever since Lafayette Proulx quit his day job, left his wife, hauled his dog and his Royal portable across town to Judi Dubey’s house, and set out at last to be a fiction writer, his life has been a sordid mess. Judi’s exotically dysfunctional family isn’t all to blame. Sure, the murders are disconcerting. And, yes, Judi’s father’s gone off the deep end. Worse are the vicious rejection letters Laf gets from editors. To top it off, Laf’s falling for Judi at the same time he’s nettled with guilt, is in marriage counseling with his wife, and is writing his long-hoped-for novel. When Judi is diagnosed with stage IV cancer, they both struggle to find the memory that will comfort, the truth that will redeem in a world where everyone suffers some kind of love disorder. John Dufresne, called “a highly readable Faulkner,” will once again take the literary world by storm with this new tragicomic tale.

As a student working in the dusty archives of the Sewanee Review, John Jeremiah Sullivan came across an article entitled âe~Lost Utopia of the American Frontierâe(tm) and was immediately hooked on the dramatic story of a lost book, an alternative history of the South, a white Indian. It was a story heâe(tm)d chase for the next two decades. In 1735, a charismatic German lawyer and accused atheist named Christian Gottlieb Priber fled Germany under threat of arrest, bound for colonial South Carolina. In the Cherokee village of Grand Tellico, he created a Utopian society that he named Paradise. For six years, Paradise was governed by a set of revolutionary ideas that included racial equality, sexual freedom, and a lack of private property, ideas which he chronicled in a mysterious manuscript he called Paradise. Priberâe(tm)s ideas were so subversive that he was hunted for half a decade and eventually captured by the British âe" making headlines across the world âe" and imprisoned until his death. The only copy of Paradise was apparently destroyed. Now, in a rare combination of ground-breaking research and stunning narrative skill, award-winning writer John Jeremiah Sullivan brings that lost history vividly to life.

A sun-baked, beautifully observed debut for readers who loved Amy and Isabelle—a mother and daughter come of age in Las Vegas. Helen is just fifteen, lanky and striking. She is a lifeguard at the pool at The Dunes hotel this summer—her first job, a step toward independence in a world beginning to treat her as an adult and a woman. Her mother, Kathy, watching Helen grow up, suddenly finds herself in a place equally uncertain: her children getting older, her stable marriage perhaps too stable, the slow days of summer leaving her adrift. When she meets Helen's boss, the manager at the pool, she chooses an affair that opens her to the idea of a different sort of life. Following Helen and Kathy through three summers, this novel is an intimate picture of two sexual awakenings under one roof and their aftershocks on a family. Heather Skyler shows us that the validity of life's deepest experiences—love, betrayal, acceptance—is never compromised by age. Reading group guide included.