Twice a year America's rose lovers cut the prettiest blossoms off their best plants and travel to the national rose show, where they lovingly groom their precious blooms for hours in a frigid hall in
When Robey Childs's mother has a premonition about her husband, a soldier fighting in the Civil War, she does the unthinkable: she instructs her only child to find his father on the battlefield and b
It was the 1950s, a time of calm, a time when all things were new and everything seemed possible. A few years before, a noble war had been won, and now life had returned to normal.For one little boy,
This anthem to the writer's own North Mississippi land and the hard-working, hard-drinking, hard-loving men it spawns is the story of one year in the lives of five characters - an old farmer with a n
Following the success of Poetry Out Loud (now in its eighth printing), an affectionate celebration of the declaimed poem, Love Poetry Out Loud now turns to the choppier waters of affection itself. Fr
With our nation's urban schools growing more segregated every year, Susan Eaton set out to see whether separate can ever really be equal. An award-winning journalist, Eaton spent four years at Simpso
Strikingly different since childhood and leading very dissimilar lives now, sisters Frances and Cynthia have nevertheless managed to remain "devoted"—so long as they stay on opposite
Fresh out of college and following a brief and disastrous stint playing minor league baseball, David Goodwillie moves to New York intent on making his mark as a writer.Arriving in Manhattan in the mi
Jack Lemmon was one of our most beloved movie stars. A two-time Academy Award winner, he appeared in dozens of memorable films, including such classics as Some Like It Hot, Mister Roberts, The Odd Co
The average human brain weighs three pounds—80 percent of which is water—and yet it's capable of outstripping the computational and storage capacities of the most complex computer. But ho
The exquisite antebellum mansions of the Garden District. Giant oaks stretching across boulevards and back in time to before the Civil War. The decadence of Bourbon Street. The vibrant sounds of jazz
Charged with the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl in 1984, Kirk Bloodsworth was tried, convicted, and sentenced to die in Maryland’s gas chamber. From the beginning, he proclaimed hi
It is 1953 in the tight-knit Italian neighborhood in Wilmington, Delaware. Maddalena Grasso has lost her country, her family, and the man she loved by coming to America; her mercurial husband, Antoni
Since 1986, New Stories from the South has brought the best short fiction of the year to the attention of a national audience. The series has been called “the collection others should use as a
In 1980, a twenty-three-year-old student named Aaron Lansky set out to rescue the world’s abandoned Yiddish books before it was too late. Twenty-five years and one and a half million books
When we first meet Tessie Lockhart in 1958, she is pinning her hair into a French twist, dabbing Jean Nat? on her wrists, and getting ready to change her life. This widowed mother of a thirteen-year-
Sterling Glass has built a nice appraisal business in her small Virginia town. She's sought after to examine antiques, research their history, present her clients with approximate values, and help th
"During my life, I've spent thousands of hours and thousands of dollars on my hair, my makeup, and my clothes, trying to look prettier because I grew up believing that pretty girls had happier l
On a moonlit night in December 1900, a prosperous Iowa farmer was murdered in his bed - killed by two blows of an ax to his head. Four days later, the victim's wife, Margaret Hossack, was arrested an
American chef Marlena de Blasi and her Venetian husband, Fernando, married rather late in life. In search of the rhythms of country living, the couple moves to a barely renovated former stable in Tus
Take one adolescent boy with an overactive imagination and a flourishing libido. Add a narcissistic father who can shower his children with love one minute and verbally cut them to shreds the next. T
The great Yiddish scholar Max Weinreich was delivering a lecture in Finland when the Nazis invaded his native Poland. The lecture saved his life. He made his way to New York, where he opened his door
Last year's bestselling anthology of outstanding stories and original watercolors A Very Southern Christmas was an instant hit. This year we are pleased to present another stellar collection of short
The book that Entertainment Weekly called "hilarious," Publishers Weekly declared "a true pleasure," Booklist called "heartwarming," and the Dallas Morning News praised as "rich and funny" is now ava
Growing up in the tiny rural town of Forty-Five, South Carolina, Mendal Dawes wants nothing more than to escape his backwater hometown and his crazy father, who buries stuff in their backyard, calls M
Only sixteen years old, Josie Summers murders her abusive stepfather and, wearing his clothes to disguise herself as a man, flees the family farm. Almost immediately lost in the snowy woods, she acce
When one of America's best-loved, bestselling authors faces a life-altering crisis, she responds by creating a remarkable sequence of poems that offers hope and reassurance to others seeking comfort.
The year is 1976 and Newell has just moved to New Orleans. His good nature, good looks, and a daring stunt in a popular bar make him a fast favorite in the French Quarter. As he is lured into the gay
Ah travel! New scenery, exciting adventures, time alone with a loved one. Truth is, travel can make or break a relationship. Just negotiating when to leave for the airport can be tricky: she insists
When beloved Judge William Dupree dies at eighty-two, he leaves his widow, two adult sons, and a more than devoted clerk to mourn him. The Judge-gentle, reserved, henpecked, and a lifelong Republican
Dori was taught to cook homegrown foods in her mother's kitchen: dishes like Smothered Chicken, Fried Green Tomato Parmigiana, Warm Honey Gingerbread, and Pecan Pie with Black Walnut Crust. And every
For more than a decade, gardeners have been turning to a beautiful little hardcover book called Gardener's Latin, by Bill Neal. Neal understood that as Latin terms began appearing with increasing fre
In The Christmas Letters, three generations of women reveal their stories of love and marriage in the letters they write to family and friends during the holidays. It's a down-home Christmas story ab
How did cranes come to symbolize matrimonial happiness? Why were magpies the only creatures that would not go inside Noah's Ark? Birds and bird imagery are integral parts of our language and culture.
The Powell brothers, Muir and Moody, are as different as Cain and Abel. Muir is an innocent, a shy young man with big dreams and not the slightest idea of what to do about them. Moody, the older and
It would be easy to describe the stories in this year's collection as typically Southern, if we only knew what that was. As Lee Smith writes in her engaging and provocative preface, the South is both
The Bronsons were the first Jews to ever live in the small town of Concordia, Tennessee-a town consisting of one main street, one bank, one drugstore, one picture show, one feed and seed, one hardwar
You can hear it in the hottest clubs in New York, the hippest rooms in New Orleans, Chicago, and San Francisco, and in top concert halls around the world. It's a joyous sound that echoes the past. It
The relationship between a mother and daughter is often fraught-but never so much as during the preparations for a daughter's wedding. Who better to offer a fresh perspective on weddings than the mot
She's had no education, hardly any shelter, and you can't call what her father's been trying to give her since she grew up "love." So, at the ripe age of seventeen, Fay Jones leaves home.She lights o
