In the best tradition of southern storytelling, Uke Rivers Delivers features raconteurs as beguiling as the tales they tell. These lyrical, darkly humorous monologues portray a range of denizens of the American South desperately trying to come to grips with their inherited pasts. A Confederate reenactor receives a message from the beyond to lay to rest the remains of Stonewall Jackson's horse. A docent at Washington and Lee University's Lee Chapel offers prim instruction on the facts and l...

Home of the first settlement in the United States and known as Old Dominion and The Mother of Presidents, the state of Virginia’s artistic output proves among the most fecund in the nation, evidenced in this ninth volume of The Southern Poetry Anthology. This collection includes well-known, established, and celebrated poets such as Charles Wright, Claudia Emerson, Gregory Orr, Ellen Bryant Voigt, R. T. Smith, Forrest Gander, and Rita Dove, and the editors have dedicated equal focu...

From wild and wacky to knee-slapping, laugh-out-loud fun, these humorous tales represent some of the best of recent seasons of the hit public radio series Selected Shorts. Comedian Wyatt Cenac gives a killer performance of Simon Rich’s hilarious tale of woe from the point of view of a condom in a young man’s wallet. Alec Baldwin gives a delightful over-the-top performance of James Thurber’s wonderfully silly classic tale of the day everybody in a small Ohio town thought the dam broke. Joe ...

A "moving and memorable" novel about a cafe where everyone has a story to tell from the award-winning author of The Women of Brewster Place ( The Boston Globe).In post–World War II Brooklyn, on a quiet backstreet, there's a little place that draws people from all over—not for the food, and definitely not for the coffee. An in-between place that's only there when you need it, Bailey's Cafe is a crossroads where patrons stay for a while before making...

She calls herself Ash, but that's not her real name. She is a farmer's faithful wife, but she has left her husband to don the uniform of a Union soldier in the Civil War. *Neverhome tells the harrowing story of Ash Thompson during the battle for the South. Through bloodshed and hysteria and heartbreak, she becomes a hero, a folk legend, a madwoman and a traitor to the American cause.Laird Hunt's dazzling novel throws a light on the adventurous women who chose to fight instead of st...

For the Colleys of southeastern Missouri, the War between the States is a plague that threatens devastation, despite the family’s avowed neutrality. For eighteen-year-old Adair Colley, it is a nightmare that tears apart her family and forces her and her sisters to flee. The treachery of a fellow traveler, however, brings about her arrest, and she is caged with the criminal and deranged in a filthy women’s prison.But young Adair finds that love can live even in a place of horror and...

"Woodrell writes about violence and dark deeds . . . in compact, musical prose. . . . once you begin reading [these short stories ]you can't stop." — New York TimesDaniel Woodrell is able to lend uncanny logic to harsh, even criminal behavior in this wrenching collection of stories. Desperation--both material and psychological—motivates his characters. A husband cruelly avenges the killing of his wife's pet; an injured rapist is cared for ...

One of the country’s most-acclaimed and popular novelists offers a selection of a dozen short stories set in James Lee Burke’s most beloved milieu, the Deep South.“America’s best novelist” (The Denver Post), two-time Edgar Award winner James Lee Burke is renowned for his lush, suspense-charged portrayals of the Deep South—the people, the crime, the hope and despair infused in the bayou landscape. This stunning anthology takes us back to where Burke's heart...

HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD!From a kill-or-be-killed gunfight with a vampire to an encounter in a steampunk bordello, the weird western is a dark, gritty tale where the protagonist might be playing poker with a sorcerous deck of cards, or facing an alien on the streets of a dusty frontier town.Here are twenty-three original tales—stories of the Old West infused with elements of the fantastic—produced specifically for this volume by many of today’s finest writers. Included are Or...

**In the final volume of the Pulitzer Prize–winner's bestselling and beloved American saga that began with All Over but the Shoutin’ and continued with Ava’s Man,this "evocative family memoir” (Boston Globe)delivers an unforgettable rumination about fathers and sons.Bragg documents a mesmerizing journey back in time to the lush Alabama landscape of his youth, to Jacksonville's one-hundred-year-old mill and to his father, the troubled, charismatic...

A definitive, career-spanning, best-of tribute to a master of the modern American short story, featuring work from his final unpublished collection.A fitting summation of one of America's greatest short story masters, this towering tribute features stories from Airships, Captain Maximus, Bats Out of Hell, High Lonesome, and Barry Hannah's final unfinished collection, Long, Last, Happy. The astonishingly varied stories in...

Isaac McCaslin is obsessed with hunting down Old Ben, a mythical bear that wreaks havoc on the forest. After this feat is accomplished, Isaac struggles with his relationship to nature and to the land, which is complicated when he inherits a large plantation in Yoknapatawapha County. “The Bear” is included in William Faulkner’s novel, Go Down, Moses.Although primarily known for his novels, Faulkner wrote in a variety of formats, including plays, poetry, essays, screenplays,...