Cody shyly averted her gaze downward after hearing Lance’s seemingly unbelievable compliment to her, but somehow she knew that his azure eyes were burning straight into her with an undeniably newfound fire. As an impoverished and shy teenager, Cody finds a married doctor quite alluring, including his sexy southern drawl. However, once he leaves for Texas, his wife’s life is suddenly ripped from him during a tragic auto accident; and he never fully recovers from her untimely death. The subsequent, everlasting shock waves would ultimately follow him for the remainder of his life, while Cody eagerly joins him for the ride... Thrust from a life of poverty into a life of privilege, Cody ultimately learns that, indeed, money certainly doesn’t buy happiness; although true love can eternally persevere... Southern Bloodlines is the first novel in a two-part series that explores the explosive saga of the Dallas family.

Perhaps more than any region, the American South is haunted by the mythology of the vampire, returned from the dead to drain life from the living.

What southerners do, where they go, and what they expect to accomplish in their spare time, their "leisure," reveals much about their cultural values, class and racial similarities and differences, and historical perspectives. This volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture offers an authoritative and readable reference to the culture of sports and recreation in the American South, surveying the various activities in which southerners engage in their nonwork hours, as well as attitudes surrounding those activities. Seventy-four thematic essays explore activities from the familiar (porch sitting and fairs) to the essential (football and stock car racing) to the unusual (pool checkers and a sport called "fireballing"). In seventy-seven topical entries, contributors profile major sites associated with recreational activities (such as Dollywood, drive-ins, and the Appalachian Trail) and prominent sports figures (including Althea Gibson, Michael Jordan, Mia Hamm, and Hank Aaron). Taken together, the entries provide an engaging look at the ways southerners relax, pass time, celebrate, let loose, and have fun.

In Born Southern, V. Lynn Kennedy addresses the pivotal roles of birth and motherhood in slaveholding families and communities in the Old South. She assesses the power structures of race, gender, and class—both in the household and in the public sphere—and how they functioned to construct a distinct antebellum southern society. Kennedy’s unique approach links the experiences of black and white women, examining how childbirth and motherhood created strong ties to family, community, and region for both. She also moves beyond a simple exploration of birth as a physiological event, examining the social and cultural circumstances surrounding it: family and community support networks, the beliefs and practices of local midwives, and the roles of men as fathers and professionals. The southern household—and the relationships among its members—is the focus of the first part of the book. Integrating the experiences of all women, black and white, rich and poor, free and enslaved, these narratives suggest the complexities of shared experiences that united women in a common purpose but also divided them according to status. The second part moves the discussion from the private household into the public sphere, exploring how southerners used birth and motherhood to negotiate public, professional, and political identities. Kennedy’s systematic and thoughtful study distinguishes southern approaches to childbirth and motherhood from northern ones, showing how slavery and rural living contributed to a particularly southern experience.

Lydia Galatianti, queen of Galatia, is running for her lifeaEUR"the love of her life, King Richard, slain at the hands of his own mother. Hiding her swollen belly from her escort, her mission is to protect her unborn child, even if that means putting her trust in Serene, a strange and creepy old teller who may have an agenda of her own. Seventeen years later, Nylina Galatianti, sole heir to the throne of Galatia, is beautiful, strong, and hardheaded, until an accident triggers a life-changing transformation within her. Learning the dark secrets about her bloodline, Nyla must come to terms with the future she now faces. Who can Nyla confide inaEUR"Kaden, her best friend, who wrestles with his own tragic past, or Samuel, the head of the guard who seems to keep Nyla rooted to her humanity? Her kingdom, Galatia, is on the brink of war with a threatening kingdom, Ridia, now allied with the vicious werewolf, Rothgar. Nyla must fight to control her dark urges when a group of refugees from Ridia offer their help. Are these mysterious newcomers who they seem, and can they be trusted? Can Nyla learn to control herself, or will she reveal Galatia's greatest secret, harming those she loves in the process?

In the first book to explore the theory and practice of eugenics in the American South, Edward Larson shows how the quest for "strong bloodlines" expressed itself in specific state laws and public policies from the Progressive Era through World War II. Presenting new evidence of race-based and gender-based eugenic practices in the past, Larson also explores issues that remain controversial today - including state control over sexuality and reproduction, the rights of disabled persons and of ethnic minorities, and the moral and legal questions raised by new discoveries in genetics and medicine. Larson shows how the seemingly broad-based eugenics movement was in fact a series of distinct campaigns for legislation at the state level - campaigns that could often be traced to the efforts of a small group of determined individuals. Explaining how these efforts shaped state policies, he places them within a broader cultural context by describing the workings of Southern state legislatures, the role played by such organizations as women's clubs, and the distinctly Southern cultural forces that helped or hindered the implementation of eugenic reforms.

There were tens of thousands of races, and all of them stood together! Generation after generation of almighty beings had fallen, one after another rising to prominence as a new star had risen to prominence. In this vast world, who was the master of this world? A youth began with an unremarkable service disciple. Relying on the piece of broken beast skin passed down from generation to generation, he cut through all the thorns and thistles, becoming a king god who ruled the world! Close]

"With a breadth and depth unsurpassed by any other cultural historian of the South, Lewis Simpson examines the writing of southerners Thomas Jefferson, John Randolph, Mark Twain, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, William Faulkner, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Arthur Crew Inman, William Styron, and Walker Percy. Simpson offers challenging essays of easy erudition blessedly free of academic jargon.... [They] do not propose to support an overall thesis, but simply explore the southern writer's unique relationship with his or her region, bereft of myth and tradition, in the grasp of science and history." -- Library Journal

The vampire stories in Blood Lines all take place in New England, where the sense of lineage and place is unmatched in any other region of America.